Volume
53, Number 8 | January 2002
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Volume
53, Number 8 | January 2002 |
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The U.S. news media coverage of the current war has again drawn attention to the severe limitations of our journalism, and our media system, for a viable democratic and humane society. The coverage has effectively been stenography to those in power, and since the Democrats have offered dismal resistance to or even interrogation of the war policies, uncomfortable facts that undermine enthusiasm for the war, and the broader wave of militarism it is part of, appear only briefly on the margins. Dissident opinions, as they do not come from elite quarters, are all but nonexistent in the premier media outlets. The most striking admission of the propaganda basis of U.S. journalism came from CNN, when it insisted that its domestic coverage of the war be sugarcoated so as not to under-mine popular enthusiasm for the war, while its international coverage would regard the United States in a more critical manner; i.e. exactly as credible journalists should regard it. | more | REVIEW
OF THE MONTH We live at a time when capitalism has become more extreme, and is more than ever presenting itself as a force of nature, which demands such extremes. Globalization—the spread of the self-regulating market to every niche and cranny of the globe—is portrayed by its mainly establishment proponents as a process that is unfolding from everywhere at once with no center and no discernible power structure. As the New York Times claimed in its July 7, 2001 issue, repeating now fashionable notions, today's global reality is one of "a fluid, infinitely expanding and highly organized system that encompasses the world's entire population," but which lacks any privileged positions or "place of power." AN
EXCHANGE Two years ago, in 1999, I gave a talk at the Caucus for a New Political Science on left politics today. In that talk, I summarized the situation of the world left at present in the following way: (1) after five hundred years of existence, the world capitalist system is, for the first time, in true systemic crisis, and we find ourselves in an age of transition; (2) the outcome is intrinsically uncertain, but nonetheless, and also for the first time in these five hundred years, there is a real perspective of fundamental change, which might be progressive but will not necessarily be so; (3) the principal problem for the world left at this juncture is that the strategy for the transformation of the world which it had evolved in the nineteenth century is in tatters, and it is consequently acting thus far with uncertainty, weakness, and in a generalized mild state of depression. Transition to What? Immanuel Wallerstein has advanced three provocative theses. First, the world capitalist system is facing a "true systemic crisis," placing us in an age of transition between capitalism and whatever it is that will eventually succeed it. Second, for the "first time" in the five centuries of existence of world capitalism "there is a real perspective of fundamental change." Third, the revolutionary strategies associated with the revolutions of 1848 and 1917 are both in tatters, leaving the left in strategic disarray—a situation partly compensated for by the continuing impact of what Wallerstein has elsewhere characterized as the "world revolution of 1968." From these three theses he goes on to advance a number of political propositions for the present. In what follows we will address both these theses and the political propositions that he derives from them. Transition to an Uncertain Future
I hoped that my article would provoke debate. I see that I have gotten it. Let me start with the key empirical argument of the Editors: they see no "long-term tendency toward declining efficiency, that is declin-ing productivity, within capitalism." Neither do I. I see a long-term tendency toward declining surplus-value, which is not the same thing, because the costs of production are rising. These rising costs cannot be compensated for by rising prices, precisely because of the reality the Editors talked about—the increase in polarization—a thesis with which I completely agree. The Editors say Marx is not dead. I agree. But I had always thought that one of the key points of Marxist analysis was that systems collapse not because we don't like them but because they reach the limits of their internal contradictions. This is exactly what I was trying to show: what are some of the central contradictions of the capitalist system, and why the capitalist world-economy has reached the structural limits of the possible adjustments it could make to maintain the system in relative equilibrium. The Unemployed
Workers Movement in Argentina Latin America has witnessed three waves of overlapping and interrelated social movements over the last twenty-five years. The first wave, roughly from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, was largely composed of what were called "the new social movements." They included human rights, ecology, feminist, and ethnic movements as well as Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Their leadership was largely lower middle class professionals, and their policies and strategies revolved around challenging the military and civilian authoritarian regimes of the time. Straight Talk on Terrorism Eqbal Ahmad first wrote for MR in 1968, and was a valued friend and contributor over the years, writing articles on a number of occasions on topics relat-ed to the third world, including his important article "From Potato Sack to Potato Mash: On the Contemporary Crisis of the Third World" (March 1981). For many years he was managing editor of the important journalRace and Class. This article is taken from a speech he delivered at the University of Colorado at Boulder on October 12, 1998, the year before his death. It is part of Terrorism, Theirs & Ours, a book of Ahmad's writings with a foreward and interview by David Barsamian, recently published by Seven Stories Press. It is reprinted here by permission.— The Editors BOOK
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