The shadowy think tanks plotting the USA’s continued world domination.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States ended the twentieth century as the unchallenged global\n superpower, and its ruling class are determined not only to keep it \nthat way but also, if possible, to extend their control over world \nevents. The Free Trade Area of the Americas, for instance, which is due \nto be introduced in 2005, will enable the US to rule the roost in \nCentral and South America, using cheap labour and preventing other \ncountries from imposing import controls. Already, the North American \nFree Trade Agreement has helped ensure that most ordinary Mexicans are \npoorer than their parents were, to the benefit of US financial and \nindustrial companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One particular vision of the future along such lines was contained in the documents of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) from which the quotations below were taken). This was a think-tank and pressure group whose members include top politicans and industrialists; many past members are high up in the Bush administration, so it is in no way a fringe organisation. They argue that cuts in US defence spending (so-called) in recent years have made it difficult to sustain American influence around the world, so such spending needs to be significantly increased (recall that it is at present nearly $400 billion per year!). Armed forces that are ready for \u201ctomorrow’s battlefields\u201d will serve the nation well and act as a deterrent against any possible upstart. In their own words: \nNot much critical scrutiny is needed to see through this language of \nstrategic interests and a safer world: the aim is to control access to \nraw materials (oil in particular), to ensure the availability of cheap \nlabour, and to enable military bases to be sited and maintained where \nthe US rulers wish. At the end of the 1970s, the US was powerless to \nprevent or undermine the takeover of the Iranian government by the \nayatollahs, and the ensuing rise in oil prices; this is just the kind of\n situation that the US rulers and their mouthpieces seek to render \nimpossible in future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nIt may be felt that the capitalists in PNAC simply wish to get their \nsnouts in the trough and to gain their firms’ share of the massive US \nmilitary spending. No doubt this is part of the truth, and there is some\n degree of conflict between companies that benefit from the defence \nbudget and those that do not do so but still have to pay taxes. However,\n there is no firm and unvarying line between corporations that have big \ngovernment orders placed with them and those that miss out on this \njamboree. Most big companies stand to receive some gain from increased \nmilitary spending \u2013 or hope to do so \u2013 and they are the ones that have \nthe biggest say in determining government policy. But it is not simply a\n matter of some having their greedy fingers in the big-spending pie: \nsuch policies really are undertaken in the interests of the whole ruling\n class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nThis, then, is the vision of America’s rulers for the coming century: an\n enormous US military presence on a global scale, laying down what other\n countries can do, intimidating them into acceptance of the US order, \nand bombing them into submission when they forget their place. A world \nof \u201cfree trade\u201d where the biggest bully in the playground enforces \ntreaties and agreements in its own interest. A world of massacres and \ndictatorships, where the American capitalists rake in the billions, and \nordinary people, wherever they live, are just pawns on the \nprofit-oriented chessboard. Already, as the military budget grows under \nBush, US spending on health care and education is being cut: teachers \nare getting the sack, and thousands of workers are losing health cover.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n \nFor a contrasting view of the USA, we can look at Studs Terkel’s book My\n American Century. Terkel, who was born in 1912 and is still going \nstrong, is a superb interviewer and oral historian who is able to get \npeople to talk in eloquent and often moving ways about their lives. My \nAmerican Century is a selection from his publications over the years, \nfrom Division Street (1967) to Coming of Age (1995), and provides an \nunforgettable portrait of twentieth-century America, mostly through the \nwords of ordinary people. It is worth reading just for the story of CP \nEllis (from American Dreams, 1980). Ellis was once president of a local \nKu Klux Klan branch; he had joined because the Klan gave him a chance to\n \u201cbe something\u201d, which had been beyond him as a poor white worker. But \ngradually he came to see that the rich were using him and his Klan \ncolleagues to keep ordinary workers, black and white, in their place, \nand that all workers had the same problems. When Terkel interviewed him,\n Ellis was a union official, elected by a predominantly black \nmembership. Author: Paul Bennett<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to the Politics Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cAt present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.\u201d
\u201cThe willingness to devote adequate resources to maintaining America’s military strength can make the world safer and American strategic interests more secure now and in the future.\u201d
The PNAC were of course strong advocates of the US attack on Iraq, claiming that a regime change would lead to democratisation not just of Iraq itself but of the whole of the Middle East, \u201can objective of overriding strategic importance to the United States\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe other side<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\nTerkel’s own position can be seen from the heartfelt opening of his introduction to Working (1972):
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\n\u201cThis book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence \u2013 \nto the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as \naccidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous \nbreakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or \nbeneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph \nenough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.\u201d
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\nTime and again, Terkel’s subjects talk of the boredom and \nmeaninglessness of work, of how they feel they are treated worse than \nthe machines they operate, of how they have no control over their job \nand feel no pride in it. But some kinds of work are rewarding. Tom \nPatrick, firefighter:
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\n\u201cI worked in a bank. You know, it’s just paper. It’s not real. Nine to \nfive and it’s shit. You’re looking at numbers. But I can look back and \nsay, ‘I helped put out a fire. I helped save somebody’. It shows \nsomething I did on this earth.\u201d
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\nBut despite their frustrations, workers feel unable to find a real way \nof fighting back: as CP Ellis says, \u201cHatin’ America is hard to do \nbecause you can’t see it to hate it.\u201d
\nAnother remarkable theme is the way that workers look back to past times\n and see them as examples of solidarity and co-operation. There is quite\n likely some viewing the past through rose-coloured glasses here, but \nthe way people value mutual help is clear over and again, especially in \ndescriptions of the thirties:
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\n\u201cThat period was the high point of my life. It was the Depression, when \nworking people had a feeling for each other. We helped each other out in\n times of trouble.\u201d
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\n\u201cA lot of times one family would have some food. They would divide. And everyone would share.\u201d
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\nHere’s Tom Patrick again:
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\n\u201cI like everybody workin’ together. You chip in for a meal together. One\n guy goes to the store, one guy cooks, one guy washes the dishes. A \ncommon goal. We got a lieutenant there, he says the fire department is \nthe closest thing to socialism there is.\u201d
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\nNot quite \u2013 but workers who combine together towards a common goal in \ntheir own interests point far better towards the future than the \nplutocrats who want the whole world to become a means to their own \nwealth and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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