Introduction
Capitalism. Ask anyone what this word means and you
will get a wide variety of responses. Some enthusiastically explain
the high degree of freedom that is afforded to societies that adopt
it. Others decry it for the promotion of greed, forming a powerful
motivation for misdeeds if they are profitable enough. In the modern
day of massive wealth inequality and a 1% that owns 80% of the
wealth, perhaps it is worth asking if Capitalism could be reined in a
little? In general, such conversations generally go back to the
historical examples of other wealth distribution systems that failed
utterly: Communism and Socialism.
Most economists, political theorists, and historians
generally agree that Capitalism is an economic system based on the
private ownership of property, extending to the means of production.
This stems from John Locke’s (1632-1704) political theory surrounding
his theory of natural rights – in a “natural state”, all people
were equal and independent, and everyone had a duties to their
neighbours. To not kill them, not steal from them, and not oppress
them – from this, the natural rights to life, property, and liberty
are formed. According to this philosophy, everyone is entitled to the
products of his or her own labor, and the profits that they bring. In
theory, this is a sound principle, and as a counterpoint to the
previously established “divine right” aristocracy, this was quite
a liberating idea for the population of pre-Industrial Europe. The
rapid advancement brought about by the Industrial Revolution is
partially due to the implementation of Capitalism in most of the
societies that practiced it. But as we will see, the practical,
real-world implementation of Capitalism would have some downsides.
I want to note here, that this book is not an argument
to completely abolish Capitalism – rather, I think it’s a little
narcissistic to believe in the perfection of ideas. We should be
honest with ourselves – nothing is perfect, reality is rife with
imbalances and slight imperfections. However, the advancement of
humanity has mostly been accomplished by making intelligent
trade-offs to increase quality of life. In comparison to the systems
of the past, capitalism has allowed for humanity to experience an
unprecedented amount of abundance and wealth. The factories of the
industrial revolution have produced enough to support a higher
population than has ever been possible. Unfortunately, it has not
been a straight path to prosperity for all of humanity, down to the
individual level. Some individuals are born into very unfortunate
circumstances, with practically no hope of progressing beyond the
rampant poverty they are surrounded by.
The beginning of the industrial revolution was marked
by a massive migration of laborers from the countryside into cities.
The reason for this was that they were made economically obsolete by
the introduction of the factory system – no longer could tradesmen
run independent shops. They just could not compete with the massive
production that the new technology could supply. Textile workers were
priced out of the market by the new textile mills, and had no choice
but to take whatever wages the factory owners deemed acceptable. In
practice, this was often barely enough for food and shelter. Some of
them rejected the technologies that had forever changed their way of
life – the Luddites. An anti-technological movement that started
with riots against the textile factories that revolutionized the
industry, and ended with a government crackdown. This was only the
beginning of the “labor unrest” that would plague industrial
society through the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Luddites’ rage was justified. No longer could a
person live a life with their families in the homes they were born in
– they were all forced to relocate to barely-livable cities, work
in extremely difficult conditions, for just enough money to cover
their living expenses. There was very limited opportunity for workers
due to the technological shift that now found that the market did not
value their labor anymore, and education or retraining were not
cheap, if they existed at all. In the beginning of the revolution,
children were expected to work, and factory owners resisted governors
that tried to make it illegal. Even though it was eventually made
illegal, the lack of inspectors had made it prevalent in Europe and
the United States until the 20th century.
The Union movement rose in the industrialized world
after the concentration of labor into mills, factories, and mines.
Combinations or Trade Unions were formed to advance the interests of
the workers. They bargained with the factory owner with the threat of
withdrawing their labor – a strike. Such events were painful for
both the unions and the management, the former sacrificing wages and
the latter losing productivity. Laws were put in place to restrict
the workers from striking, due to heavy effort from factory owners
and powerful financiers, but continued, persistent effort allowed
workers to overcome legal restrictions on the right to strike.
The right to strike and the idea of Trade Unions were
respected in most First World countries for decades. Recent history
has seen a decline of Labor Unions in most countries. Milton
Friendman (1912-2006), noted economist, also spoke out against Unions
during his time. Since the late 1970s, one can see a marked decrease
in the number of unionized workers across most first world countries.
Statistics Canada and the Economic Policy Institute have both
reported decreases in the number of unionized workers for the past
few decades. What is the reason for this? Well, consider that the
Soviet Union also began to really unravel economically and
politically after the Era of Stagnation, beginning under the rule of
Leonid Brezhnev.
Is this a coincidence? Or without the credible threat
of what can happen when the labor force is treated poorly enough to
enact a Coup to seize power, did management suddenly feel that their
workers were slightly more disposable? A disgruntled employee can be
fired or replaced if there is no Union to defend them. The interests
of each company are to be represented first and foremost – if a
worker isn’t productive, then they are not worth paying.
Communism does appear to share some common properties
with the Union movement, perhaps most notably in the most common
definition of the system: “the workers owning the means of
production”. It is a much more extreme form of this, however –
there is zero private ownership, and instead everything is owned by
all of society: the “collective”. A strike is basically just a
temporary assertion of this idea. The workers cease production, to
remind the management that the production is impossible without
workers that supply their labor, and they can assert this fact to
demand a higher share of the profits. It is not surprising that
Communism began its rise during the heyday of the Union Movement,
before which, government powers consistently sided with factory
owners to protect their assets.
In 1820, the Scottish Insurrection took place. A week
of strikes and unrest, caused by high unemployment, high food prices,
unfair working conditions, and an unresponsive government. The
insurrection was quashed by the army, with many of the leaders being
executed or sentenced to penal transportation.
Such inequality and the active repression of worker
organization seems to have been the primary factor for the emergence
of Communism, beginning with the publication of the Communist
Manifesto in 1848. Written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the
manifesto takes an analytical look at society and the class struggle.
It argues that post-industrial capitalist society is divided into two
classes – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are
the “owners of the means of production”, and the proletariat can
only sell their labor to the owners in exchange for a share of the
profits, in order to secure “the means of sustenance”: usually
food and shelter. The manifesto argues that the bourgeoisie
constantly exploit the proletariat for labour power, creating more
and more profit for themselves and accumulating capital. According to
Marx and Engels, the bourgeoisie will eventually exploit the
proletariat too much and they will become concious of their potential
and attempt to rise to power through revolution.
History has shown us the effects of Communism. The
Russian revolution in 1917 led to the rise of the bolsheviks, and the
creation of Soviet Russia – declaring itself a fully Communist
state. Following the Second World War after being subject to the
brutalizations of the Japanese and the Western powers, China also
began its own Communist revolution in 1945. It had begun spread
throughout most of Asia, beginning movements in Vietnam, the
Phillipines and Cambodia among many others. The West had been aware
of the ideas since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, but
after World War Two, Westerners really started their resistance
against the ideology, and the Soviet Union that spread it by osmosis.
The United States led this movement with their foreign policy of
“Containment”, enlisting their allies to aid in stopping the
spread of Communism. The embargo on the Soviet Union and on Eastern
European countries was most likely another factor in the economic
hardship faced by the Communist states. The “Cold War” began at
the end of the second World War – with their former enemy removed,
the superpowers of East and West found themselves with massive
militaries and the very real fear of what they could accomplish with
nuclear weapons after the examples in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From a historical perspective, it seems fairly obvious
why the West would resist Communism: the numerous human rights
abuses, the starvation, and the slow decline of society are all
definitely good reasons to avoid a system which may result in those
things. Shortly after the end of WW2, Stalin was afraid that economic
integration with the West would allow newly acquired Soviet
territories to escape their control, so the tension was not entirely
one-sided. But, by only trading with other Communist states, it’s
hard to imagine that a country could be economically successful if it
restricted its trading partners to only a handful. Another factor to
consider is the deterioration of the work ethic – if everyone is
getting paid the same no matter what, then workers will only be
motivated to put in a minimal amount of effort. The Stagnation Era
and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union marked the practical
death of Communism in 1991.
China in the current day is ruled by the Communist
Party, but they still allow free enterprise and have a lot of trade
with the West. It seems that Communism has, for the most part, become
extinct on Earth. Probably a good thing, considering that the
ideology was the cause of millions of deaths. But now that Capitalism
has won the war of ideas and Communism has been defeated. Should we
let it go unchecked? Or could we find ourselves repeating history?
Chapter 1: Fertile Grounds for
Revolution
For a moment, I
would like to go back in time. To truly understand the historical
context of events, it is important to consider the flow of history.
Thanks to Darwin and being able to understand of how life evolves
with time, along with incredible advances in the fossil record, we
have a pretty good picture of the evolutionary background of the
planet we inhabit. Hunter-gathering tribal societies formed our early
history, dating back roughly one million years. This way of life
persisted until the agrarian revolution, allowing humans to secure a
reliable food supply with agriculture. The first farms really began
to appear about 20,000 to 10,000 years ago, mostly in the Great Rift
Valley (Eastern Africa) and the Fertile Crescent (the Middle East, in
the form of Mesopotamia). With their food source now secure, people
did not have to spend all of their time foraging for sustenance.
This led to numerous technological advances that
increased the effectiveness of human labor. I think that this is
perhaps best encapsulated by the Sumerian civilization. They
constructed towering walls that still stand to this very day in the
middle east. They had began the use of the Wheel, the Plow, Writing,
a centralized Government, Mathematics, a Measurement of time,
Metalworking, and even a Calendar.
It seems that the population explosion also had the
result of increasing the level of competition between different
tribes or groups for land and resources. The formation of the first
organized armies, and the increased scale of warfare is, I would
argue, a natural consequence of an increased population.
The emergence of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam came shortly after, during the lifetime of
these competing civilizations – Moses famously led the Jews to
Israel out of Egypt, where they were slaves. Monotheistic religion
began to replace the Polytheistic religions of antiquity. It propose
that each human life is equally sacred and that the world is not
simply a chaotic unpredictable mess, changing at the whim of
capricious Gods of the polytheistic religions of the time.
Christianity, notably, rose at the began its rise
during the height of the Roman Empire, as the story tells that Jesus
was crucified by the Romans. Many have argued that Jesus Christ was
most likely simply a Jew that sought to see the end of the cruelty
and oppression of the Roman Empire. Slavery, Hedonism, the Arenas –
the Empire was decaying, and I do not think it is a surprise that
someone would see the pointless suffering around them, and seek to
bring about some sort of meaningful change, in direct opposition to
the Romans. The birth of this religion in Jerusalem during the Roman
Occupation of Judea (modern day Israel), along with the timing of the
gradual decline of the Roman Empire I believe is worth consideration.
The death of Christ was an important factor in the slow demise of the
Empire – the spread of a powerful idea is unstoppable, even by the
most oppressive of regimes. The idea of a gracious god that can truly
accept you, values you, and asks that you be kind to those around you
as you move through life, was appealing to many in a time of such
hardship, I believe. Much more appealing than the uncertainty of a
chaotic fate that can change in an instant, at the hands of those
more powerful than you, because they were endowed with slightly more
“divine favour”.
Christianity began to spread throughout Europe shortly
after the death of Christ. While the decline of Roman Civilization
and the Dark Ages that followed had caused significant amount of
technological regression, the process of slowly converting an entire
continent into a single religion was underway. Most notably is the
absence of sanitation in most medieval cities of Europe – Roman
cities utilized aqueducts and cisterns, and enjoyed a much higher
degree of cleanliness compared to the cities that would be built
after the fall of the Roman Empire. The many illnesses and plagues
that wracked the time period are undoubtedly related to the absence
of adequate sewage systems.
Light Banishes the Shadows
Those who spread Christendom across Europe were
peaceful missionaries at times, and fervent crusaders at others. The
ideals of Christianity were noble, but the deaths of millions of
pagans and other heathens testify to the violent nature of humanity,
even when their cause is just, no matter how benevolent they believe
their ideals are.
The Christian unification of Europe, with the Catholic
Church acting as a sort of “medieval United Nations”, but
wielding the power of God, was a large component of European history.
The European Christians carved out a place for themselves in the
chaos of reality. I say this, because I believe it’s also very
important to consider the entire historical context of the time
period. Many pagan religions were quite violent in nature, as the
German, Viking, Celtic, and numerous other Stone, Bronze, and
Iron-age societies of ancient history can attest.
The formation of a society with a religion preaching
Virtue, Divine Grace, and Thoughtful Prayer was a difficult journey
for humanity. And although the power of Christian ideas had slowly
been abused over time to serve the interests of a few, the stability
and progress enjoyed by Christian society was largely greater than
anything humanity had ever seen. This, along with a few other
historical factors including the introduction of more books into
Europe from the Crusades and the Great Plague, provided the
conditions for the Renaissance.
Starting in the
14th
century due to the increased supply of books from the invention of
the Gutenburg Printing Press in 1455, this was a time of reclaiming
the knowledge of the ancients. The Printing Press was a massive
factor in dispersing information – before, only nobles and rich men
had enough money and time to learn to read and also purchase books.
The renaissance led to many changes in culture,
including a new philosophy of Humanism. Reclaiming the wisdom of the
Classical philosophers began to slowly thaw the icy grip that the
church held on information. But the Roman Catholic Church would not
surrender their power over society easily, which perhaps culminated
in the inquisition trial of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).
A short time later,
Isaac Newton (1642-1726) began to delve into the mysteries of the
universe, armed with a mighty intellect, blessed with a stable
society, and given access to an information dispersal mechanism that
could spread his ideas to the world with lightning speed. The fruits
of his inquiry came to civilization first in the form of the
Principia Mathematica,
published
in 1687. He proposed that the Copernican system Galileo had
hypothesized was entirely correct – the Earth revolved around the
Sun. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) had discovered a more accurate
astronomical model than any other created, and began the study of the
stars and planets, dubbing it “celestial physics”, and formed the
foundations that Galileo and Newton would use to do their research.
Newton
proposed that we could understand the forces that made the planets
revolve around the Sun, if they could be understood with a
mathematical model, as Kepler and Galileo had attempted. The planets
were not carried on the backs of angels – they were moved by some
kind of underlying force driven by the physical nature of reality.
Reality that, with calculation and reasoning, we could predict and
understand. The publication of the Principia
Mathematica
was a landmark moment in history. Newton also began to research the
natural phenomenon of light, and worked to revolutionize humanity’s
understanding of the strange phenomenon to a new level, with his
publication of Opticks
in 1704.
This
was a huge step forward for Science. Not just the understanding of
the celestial forces, but the idea that human reasoning could
understand something as unfathomable as the motion of the planets, or
light – the reason that the sun rose and set every day,
illuminating the Earth. With Leibnitz’s contributions, the two of
them erected the foundations of Calculus – an extremely powerful
analytical tool for Science. This, I believe, is a root cause for the
Enlightenment of the 17th
and 18th
centuries.
Knowledge and Purpose
Science
was now a force to be reckoned with. A century after the publication
of the Principia,
the Industrial Revolution began in England. James Watt (1736-1819) is
generally credited with the first implementation of a practical
version of a Steam Engine. But the Industrial Revolution started
before the invention of this device – the Factory system was first
applied to the textile industry, making the weaving of cloth hundreds
of times more productive with the introduction of massive Textile
Mills – mills that could be powered by the water currents of
rivers. The first “industrial scale” textile mills would emerge
by 1721. The Steam Engine was an acceleration of the industrial
revolution, bringing huge numbers of factories into cities.
Unfortunately, this had a bit of a dark side – Oliver Twist and
other works give us plenty of examples of the sentiments of the time,
and the problems that arose with rampant wealth inequality.
The
industrial revolution was not the only one of the time period,
however. Many nations had revolutions with the interest of
establishing democratic societies ruled by the people, instead of a
monarch and an aristocractic class of nobles. The American revolution
and the French revolution were the first and most notable of the
time, taking place in the late 17th
and 18th
centuries, respectively. These revolutions deposed the old
aristocractic systems and replaced them with representative
democracies. The establishment of democracy with parliaments led to a
huge advancement in human rights, freedoms, and personal liberty.
The turn of the century led to the Russian revolution
and the establishment of Communism. The cause of this was terrible
conditions and massive wealth inequality of early industrialized
society – sometimes, a lack of employment meant no food. The
ideology of Communism was attractive, because its advocates argued
for Worker’s rights, the complete abolishment of child labor, and no
private ownership. The practical implementation of it, however,
required a Proletariat (a term for laborer or working person)
Dictatorship. History has shown us just how easy it is for this kind
of totalitarian society to become extremely repressive, resulting in
many crimes against humanity to maintain absolute control over the
population. Political repression such as of imprisonment for “crimes
against the party”, mass killings of the “bourgeosie”, and the
corruption that results from this dysfunction, are all very real
problems that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The
very strong aversion in the modern day to the idea of “Communism”
that is well justified, as many point to these human rights
infractions as evidence of its evil nature. In fact, they are still
practiced by the persisting forms of “Communist” systems –
modern day North Korea and China.
The reason that this ideology spread so much throughout
Russia was because of the extreme poverty brought about by the
industrial revolution and the new class of factory owners that were
able to massively profit, while the common people were left with
whatever the owners decided was sufficient. The time period was rife
with dangerous working conditions, child labor, and extreme income
inequality. There was no representation of the interests of those at
the bottom of society – those that sold their labor to factory
owners for their livelihood. The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl
Marx and Frederich Engels, argued that because the poor vastly
outnumbered the rich, there was truly nothing stopping them from
“seizing the means of production” with a violent revolution.
The effect was felt across the face of the earth. In
the West, in Britain and North America, labor disputes regularly
claimed the lives of workers in strikes and demonstrations. Most
notable for this is perhaps the Coal industry, with the most
egregious act of force against striking workers perhaps taking place
in the Ludlow Massacre. But as Communism began to spread across the
East, the factory owners and employers of the West were given pause.
If the ideology spread across the entire planet, as it claimed as its
final goal, then it would not stop until the entire world was
Communist. It was far away for a time, but the West really came to
grips with Communism after World War 2. The resulting Cold War
between the Soviet Union and the United States of America was a
dominating aspect of history for the past few decades, until recently
coming to a close after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tensions
appear to be growing once again – the rise of the “second Cold
War” is happening in real time as of this writing. The Trump
Administration claims that Russia has been breaking the Arms
Agreement that brought the threat of thermonuclear war (ie. With
nukes) to an end at the end of the 20th
century. Some sources state that nuclear proliferation has begun
again as a result of breaking the treaty.
As I said before, the threat of Communism seems to
finally have gone dormant ever since the collapse of the Soviet
Union. North Korea is an isolated country, but China still receives a
large deal of trade with the West, as it has reformed to allow free
enterprise. The contest between Communism and Capitalism has left
Capitalism victorious – the right to property is recognized by most
governments across the planet, along with several other rights
depending on the country. And this is a good thing. The repressive
nature of a Proletariat Dictatorship has resulted in millions of
deaths and an immeasurable amount of human suffering in the name of
the “greater good”.
Now that we find ourselves in a fully Capitalist world,
we can celebrate, right? But unfortunately, not all within society
find themselves with cause to celebrate in the modern day. Wealth
inequality, unemployment, and record suicide and addiction rates are
all uncomfortable realities of the modern Capitalist system. What I
seek to do here is analyze the economics and societies of today and
determine if they are truly “Capitalist”, or even democratic. I
wish to look at the effects of unfettered Laissez Faire
Capitalism on the world, and on society in general. With historical
evidence and thoughtful analysis, I hope to reclaim some of the noble
ideas that Communism brought to humanity, while still recognizing the
numerous human rights infractions that the resulting totaliarian
societies experienced, and avoiding repeating this dark chapter of
history for the rest of time.
Chapter 2: Global Conflict
The most iconic confrontation of the Cold War period is
most likely the Vietnam War. Beginning in 1955 (by covert involvement
of the CIA to support the French in maintaining colonial control) and
stretching to 1975, the war would claim millions of lives and leave
hundreds of thousands more maimed forever. The war itself had
produced unimaginable cruelty and brutality – even though the
Geneva Convention was ratified in 1949 after the second World War, it
was routinely ignored by both sides in pursuit of their objectives.
The United States was widely denigrated for their
involvement in the conflict, for their involvement in human rights
infractions and crimes against humanity. This is best exemplified in
the malice of the My Lai Massacre, where American soldiers descended
upon the village of My Lai and were ordered to “kill anything that
moves”. They were indiscriminate in their slaughter, and often
seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the suffering they caused.
War truly is hell – these men were subject to the
assaults of an enemy that looked the same as these peasants. After
suffering hundreds of casualties at the hands of this hidden enemy,
they took out their grief and rage on the only target available to
them. Another example of the American’s capability for brutality is
the infamous Tiger Force, that would routinely attack civilian
villages to increase their bodycounts.
These incidents would cause further backlash against
the War, which was very poorly understood by the American people. Why
should they send their brothers, sons, and fathers to go fight an
enemy halfway across the world? Photographs emerging from the war,
such as the “self-immolation” demonstration where a monk set
himself on fire in protest, and other pictures of the suffering the
war was causing among the civilian population, such as the famous
“Napalm Girl” – a civilian child that was burned by an airstrike
that dropped its napalm on the wrong target.
The politicians of the time were fearful of the spread
of communism. And with good reason: the Soviet, Chinese, and Korean
regimes of the time were extremely repressive, and had all allied
with each other to advance international Communism. To maintain their
totalitarian control on the population, they resorted to many
different methods to force the people into capitulation. Communism is
famous for starvation, and this is one of the reasons why: food
allocation was carried out by the state, and if they wanted to apply
pressure to a certain unruly demographic, they would prioritize them
last for food.
The Truman administration needed allies on the world
stage after the second world war had given way to the Cold War. The
French were a valuable ally, and they knew it: they threatened to
join the communist alliance if America supported the Vietnamese
Independence movement. Their hand was forced: they had to help fight
against the Vietnam, who had just helped them against the Japanese
only a few years before.
After Eisenhower had brought the Korean war to an end,
he threatened the Chinese Communist state with the threat of nuclear
weapons. In doing so, he had halted the spread of Communism through
Asia – for the moment, at least. He brought his time in office to
an end with his famed address that mentioned the “military-industrial
complex”, in 1961.
The Kennedy administration that followed would begin a
gradual escalation of the conflict. The first U.S. Direct support to
the South Vietnamese forces in combat would land in downtown Saigon
on 11 December 1961. They did not directly attack the enemy, but the
help of the U.S. Air support was a great asset, allowing paratroopers
to achieve tactical surprise.
Kennedy would eventually find the dysfunction and
corruption that was rife throughout the South Vietnamese regime too
difficult to operate with. The CIA would back a coup d’etat, leading
to the brutal murder of governor Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy’s
assassination a short time later was perhaps influenced by his desire
to withdraw the United States from the conflict. The assassination of
Kennedy in 1963 was a shadowy affair, and Americans questioned the
truth surrounding it for a long time.
Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s replacement, would continue
the war, escalating it and sending a great deal of military support
to aid in the fight against the North Vietnamese. The escalation
included the “Rolling Thunder” campaign (headed by Johnson),
which had hoped to essentially “bomb the enemy into submission”
with overwhelming firepower. The North Vietnamese Army knew the
American’s approach, and used insurgency tactics to strike at their
opposition, then disappear into the jungle. Traps such as punji
spikes, explosives, or ambushes were the most common methods used by
the “Vietcong”. The Americans fought a conventional war against
an unconventional enemy.
The public outcry against the war became a defining
facet of the discourse surrounding it. Even though the Cold War and
the cultural narrative had firmly entrenched Communism as the enemy
of freedom (which, to be fair, it was), many still felt that the
suffering that was being caused was not worth the notion of opposing
“the Reds”.
The history of the conflict is very complex, as it is
with all history. The French had colonized Vietnam, and established
colonial rule upon their subjects as a part of the French Empire,
using puppet emperors and interpreters to carry out their wishes. The
colonies of the past are often the topic of derision, and for good
reason: the human rights abuses carried out by the colonists were
established methods of securing dominance.
It is a terribly tragic sequence of events that would
lead to U.S. Involvement in later years (they actually helped Ho Chi
Minh when he was starting out), bringing to bear the full force of
their military might against a developing nation fighting for
independence. The ensuing war would end only after immeasurable
suffering on both sides, resulting in the eventual defeat of the
Americans and their withdrawal. Vietnam won its independence with the
blood of millions of its people.
What could America claim from the war? Thousands of
scarred veterans, a massive distrust in their government, and a
divisiveness over the entire affair that still divides people to this
very day. Why did America go to Vietnam? Was it really to “stop
Communism”? After the end of the second world war, Roosevelt stated
that all peoples of the world should be able to choose the government
under which they lived. Unfortunately, the Cold War, and the threat
that the Soviet Union posed to America and their allies, changed the
geopolitical climate in a very short period of time. If France hadn’t
decided it wanted to keep its colony, the Vietnamese may have been an
instrumental ally for the Americans in southeast asia.
During the Vietnam War, Cambodia was also seeing a rise
in communist ideology. This led to the Cambodian Civil War and the
establishment of “Democratic Kampuchea”, headed by the infamous
Khmer Rouge. The war was fought between 1968 and 1975, ending with
the Khmer Rouge seizing power and beginning the Cambodian Genocide.
The Khmer Rouge barbarically killed approximately 1.5 to 2 million
people in their effort to establish their Communist Utopian State
that Pol Pot had envisioned.
The Americans were involved in the conflict, as they
carried out a massive bombing campaign of the region in attempt to
fight the Khmer Rouge. This seems to be an unfortunate consequence of
the anti-war movement back home: Americans were already engaged in
the protracted conflict of Vietnam, and were weary of seeing their
men killed. The bombing campaign significantly reduced the risk to
the Americans, allowing them to strike without much concern for
counter-attack.
President Nixon launched the Cambodian incursion in
1970, as an amendment to the rules of conflict for American troops,
allowing them to pursue Northern Vietnamese forces into the jungles
of eastern Cambodia. They did so with an umbrella of air support, but
American troops would never engage the Khmer Rouge directly – they
only pursued Vietcong and NVA combatants into the jungles of
Cambodia, to prevent them using the national boundary as an
“invisible fence” that the Americans could not cross. The
American Air Force would lend their support to the local guerillas
against the Khmer Rogue, providing air support in the form of bombing
runs. The fighting in Cambodia between the anti-government rebels and
the Khmber Rouge would end with the Khmer seizing control of the
country, and attempting to enforce their totaliarian regime with a
reign of terror. This marked the beginning of the genocide that would
see the Khmer Rouge brutally murder approximately twenty percent of
its own population. It seems that if America had sought to stop any
tragedy stemming from the reign of Communism, they had utterly
failed.
The country itself, however, seemed to be experiencing
a period of economic growth. The corporations of Monsanto, Colt, and
Dow Chemical had received a huge number of defense contracts to
supply the military with armaments. Monsanto supplied Agent Orange,
Colt the M16s for the soldiers, and Dow Chemical made the napalm for
the bombing missions carried out by American forces. They had been
able to turn a large amount of profit from the war.
It seems that America had suffered a terrible defeat.
With their defeat and withdrawal, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia
actually preemptively attacked the Vietnamese, with the fear that
Vietnam would attack after claiming victory. The Vietnamese ended up
liberating the population of Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge by
removing them from power in the ensuing conflict. But not before
millions would suffer at the hands of Pol Pot’s regime.
After America left southeast Asia, Communism still
managed to spread across the islands to Indonesia and the
Phillipines. After an attempted coup that was quickly put down by the
sole-surviving Indonesian General, he ordered the summary execution
of hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists. Many communist
movements would rise in other parts of southeast Asia during this
period, but after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the spread of
Communism appears to have halted and the ideology has mostly died.
North Korea and China are perhaps the most notable remaining
communist states, but Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos are also counted in
this category as well. The fear of the spread of Communism appears to
have mostly dissipated over many years, as much of the world seems to
trade with each other with little restriction. Private property is
recognized by most countries in the modern world.
From this perspective, it seems like if America had
hoped to stop the spread of Communism, they had failed, and if they
hoped to prevent any tragedies that the ideology would cause, it
seems that they utterly failed. The only thing that America gained
was increased stock price for corporations with military contracts,
and the suffering of an entire generation.
Winner Take All
The
reality of warfare is that if one side thinks that they will gain
more than they will lose by attacking, there is not really much to
stop them from doing so. The threat of invasion and war is constant
throughout human history – feudal lords would take payment from
their subjects in exchange for protection. For most peasants, this
was a good deal, because the law of the land basically forced them to
pay: if they didn’t they would be driven off the lord’s land. Such
were the times. Lords had laid claim to the land, thanks to the
actions of their ancestors who had usually fought to scrape out some
territory from the anarchy that swept across the land. Bandits,
barbarians, and brigands were all very common in human history –
there was no law or order except for that which you could create, and
this requires force.
As stated before: if there is a gain to be had by using force, then
without enough threat of retaliation, there will be those that will
be desperate or unscrupulous enough to use force to get what they
want. Civilization has been slowly built up over millennia, slowly
developing across Earth in many different directions. The fossil
record seems to show that humans evolved in the Great Rift Valley of
eastern Africa, and migrated across the planet as our evolutionary
advantages made us excel in almost any environment or ecosystem we
found ourselves in. Almost everywhere you go on planet earth, there
have been humans there at some point, whether it’s now or centuries
in the past. A constant across all human cultures seems to be some
sort of warfare. Every single culture in history has their own
weapons and warriors, evolving with different technologies and
civilizations all across the world.
The events of the enlightenment and the rapid development of science
and technology that would follow were instrumental to the Age of
Discovery and the resulting Colonial Era. These advancements would
give Europeans access to the most advanced weaponry on the planet:
gunpowder and steel. Along with the religious and historical
background of the West that ingrained in Europeans a sense of agency
in the world – if one truly labored hard enough, they could
accomplish anything. There was no limit to the understanding of
humanity – Galileo and Newton would exemplify this and unlock the
secrets of the heavens: a sun-centered solar model, and the theory of
gravity. This was also part of the Humanist movement of the
Renaissance.
The
strength of gunpowder weapons proved the advantage that the colonists
had over the native populations of the colonies. Many actions of the
colonizing Europeans would show just how much the difference in
advancement between cultures can express itself as a difference in
power. North America, Pacific America, South America, Africa,
Oceania, Asia – take your pick and there is no shortage of what we
would consider today to be blatant abuses of human rights. The Opium
Wars of China perhaps cast a clear example of how military force can
be abused for pure economic and geopolitical advantage. The British
wanted to maintain a trade route with China for tea, but the only
thing that there was demand for, was opium. China tried many times to
get the British to stop selling drugs to their people, but the
British wanted to maintain control. Two wars would be fought over
this in the 19th
century.
Power Dynamics
The effect of the economy of a nation on the power of its military
would be noted by many throughout the ages. The power advantage that
the Europeans had over their colonies was granted to them by the
technology that gave them their weapons – gunpowder rifles and
steel breastplates were immeasurably more effective than stone axes
and tanned animal hides. All across the world, the empires of the Age
of Discovery spread their influence with their advancements: ships
armed with cannons, compasses to guide their sailors, and the
aforementioned weapons to protect them from whatever they find on
their travels.
The legacy of the colonists can be seen all around us, and the
historical effects of the imperialist tendencies of the Europeans has
had many terrible effects on developing nations. But, spreading of
European technology across the world had some relatively positive
effects, when considering the state that some of the colonists found
the New World in. Most of the inhabitants outside of Europe had
technological developments ranging from an iron age in most of Asia,
to stone age in the majority of the Americas. The lifestyles that
such civilizations had were quite primitive, were extremely demanding
on the people that lived in them, and would often involve the threat
of violence. The history of the colonies is a clear indicator that
the Europeans would not be above using lethal force either, but the
Europeans thought it was necessary to help bring these people
progress, instead of just leaving them to their “savage” ways.
Their customs have evolved over the course of centuries, just like
the European’s, but the progressiveness of Europe at the time when
compared to most of the underdeveloped world cannot be understated.
This is perhaps best personified by Sir Charles James Napier, once
the Commander-in-Chief in India. When he heard that some priests
wanted to burn a widow, he vehemently reprimanded them, stating:
“Be
it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral
pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we
hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall
therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow
is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”i
The civilizations that Europeans encountered ranged quite a lot in
the way their stages of development and civility. Some cultures were
even so barbaric as to condone cannibalism, as noted by explorers in
the isles of Fiji. It is easy to understand why so many of the
Europeans thought of themselves as “noble Christians” bringing
“order and civilization” to the “brutal savages”. It is
unfortunate how much this would allow them to justify their
mistreatment and dehumanization of the local native populations.
The long term affect of colonization and European influence has
allowed some countries to thrive in the modern industrial world.
South Korea, Japan, India, and China are perhaps the most noteworthy
examples of thriving economies that have rapidly developed in the
past century.
The uncomfortable reality is that not all places have equally
benefited from the introduction of industrialization, and many places
suffer some very negative effects as a result of it. Africa and South
America are ravaged by unrest, partially influenced by lack of
economic opportunity. And where there is opportunity, it often
has many external factors that can cause problems. Environmental
damage is extremely prevalent in underdeveloped nations, as companies
can bribe the local government with the massive amounts of funds
available to them as international corporations.
The modern “power dynamic” of the world shows many similarities
to those of the past. Change does not happen overnight, and changing
the world in a constructive way requires a great deal of effort. The
international community has made a great deal of progress since the
cruelties of the past, but recent history and current events prove
that the process is still ongoing. The Rwanda genocide of 1994 and
the establishment of the International Criminal Court under the
United Nations in response is an encouraging effort. But the
involvement of partisan and corporate interests, along with general
dysfunction and incompetence has damaged the institution’s reputation
in the eyes of many across the world.
The Cold War resulted in wars and military actions on
the part of the Soviet Union and the United States of America across
the globe. The unfortunate reality of warfare is that the wounds of
modern weaponry take a great deal of time and effort to heal. South
America and Africa still roil with unrest, and Asia still bears the
memories of millions dying to the warfare of the last century alone.
Why would the Soviet Union fall, and the United States
prevail? On the military front, the two sides appeared to be roughly
evenly matched, though they would hardly ever directly engage each
other. The availability of nuclear weapons to both sides along with
their massive industrialized economies granted them “superpower”
status for the time period, until the Soviet Union finally collapsed.
Historians appear to indicate a large factor on the Union’s collapse
was the overallocation of industry on military resources, rather than
consumer goods, along with the well-known corruption of the system.
So why did America not have the same problem?
Eisenhower’s
Warning
The United States of America
was the most powerful nation in the Western alliance of the Cold War
period – the reasons for this were multifaceted, but the heart of
it was their robust economy. Almost all of the fighting during the
second world war took place in the European, Pacific, and African
theatres. America took a blow during the events of Pearl Harbor,
often believed by historians to be in retaliation to the oil embargo
placed upon Imperial Japan during the early days of the war. Other
than that, mainland America was for the most part untouched by the
fighting.
In comparison, much of
Europe and Asia was devastated by the fighting – giving the Soviets
and their satellite states a disadvantage in economic terms. This was
compounded by the numerous embargoes emplaced upon the East by
America and her allies. The economy of the communistic system was
barely functional to begin with, due to the military force used to
install it. Exacerbated by lack of trading partners, the economies of
the communist states of history seem like they were doomed to fail.
During this time, a
troubling phenomenon began to reveal itself among the higher levels
of government and business in America. Coined by Dwight Eisenhower,
he called it “the Military-Industrial Complex”, during his
Farewell Address to the Nation as President of America, on January
17, 1961.ii
His observation is exemplified by this line of his final address as
President:
“Until the latest of our world
conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American
makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as
well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of
national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent
armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a
half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense
establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the
net income of all United States corporations.”
Eisenhower had spent his life as a
soldier. He was experienced in warfare because he had first-hand
experience. He fought in both of the World Wars, and led America into
China and Korea as Commander-in-Chief – he learned what Communism
would do to these people if it consumed the entire nation. The threat
of the radical, pernicious ideas was very real (as the rise of Soviet
Russia had shown them), and many found themselves fighting on the
side of freedom against those that would claim to liberate the people
while actually just replacing their oppressors. To protect individual
freedom and liberty, Eisenhower opposed the Communists, who
threatened to take all in the name of “collective, social justice”.
He noticed that, in forming such a
strong opposition to the communist dictatorship of the East, the
United States was beginning to amass a frightening deal of military
power, justified by the ever-present threat of enemies outside
America’s borders. “In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”iii
Eisenhower saw the threat that this
“military-industrial complex” posed to global stability if it
went unchecked. It is unfortunate that his involvement in providing
military aid to the French in maintaining their colonial rule in
Vietnam would lead America into one of the most protracted conflicts
in contemporary history. The results of Vietnam, and the end result
of the war being only a delay
in the spread of Communism to the region (along with the events of
Cambodia during the period), along with the massive amounts of
military spending that would be justified by the war, seem like
Eisenhower’s warning went unheeded.
The
Military-Industrial complex, as Eisenhower understood it, was not as
simple as “war for profit”, as many could easily misinterpret his
observations. In a letter to Theodore R. Kennedy, a Professor at the
Michigan State University, he stated that “My 1961 caution in this
matter was not inspired by any belief that any sector in the United
States now wanted war. Rather I wanted to point out that so many
sectors of our nation – defense forces, industry and political
officials – were all influenced toward greater and greater armament
production in time of piece. This identity of interest could,
obviously, occasion a very frightening trend in this country. Indeed,
this may be happening now.”, he wrote in reply, on June 21, 1967.iv
Indeed,
there was a fear present in the Whitehouse; that in fighting an enemy
as evil as the Communists, such a struggle could change the nation,
and not in a good way. The concern of the rise of militarism in
America was felt by members of Eisenhower’s staff as well. Ralph E.
Williams wrote in a memorandum concerning the upcoming State of the
Union address for 1961. He noted that “flag and general officers
retiring at an early age take positions in war based industrial
complex shaping its decisions and guiding the direction of its
tremendous thrust. This creates a danger that what the Communists
have always said about us may become true. We must be very careful to
insure that the ‘merchants of death do not come to dictate national
policy’.”.v
Many were aware of the threat to global security and the good of
humanity that an ever-growing armament industry could pose.
The Iron Triangle
The warning voiced
by Eisenhower would be heeded by many, as many would begin to
question America’s foreign policy in light of this information,
coming from someone as esteemed as a former president that had
managed to avoid the horror of thermonuclear war. Many scholars and
intellectuals would begin to study the so-called “military-industrial
complex”, as named by Eisenhower. Foremost among them is most
likely Gordon Adams, who has written an entire book on the subject:
The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron Triangle. The
book analyzes the connection between the United States Department of
Defense, and the numerous military contractors that enjoy enormous
profits from America’s foreign policy of fighting and supplying wars
on foreign soil.
The notes of a
culture of militarism have begun to take root in America. After all,
the army did a noble thing by going to Europe and the Pacific to
defeat the Axis Powers. So eager to aggrandize themselves, they
forget to acknowledge that the first soldiers in Berlin were Russian.
Sure, the Americans provided support in Normandy, and by supplying
the Allies, but Russia was the country that invaded Berlin. This
historical fact is the very reason for the beginning of the Cold War
– without the enemy that the Axis posed, the alliance that the East
and West had forged to defeat Hitler died with him. Now, a clear
enemy presented itself, but no clear solutions seemed to be
available: the threat of mutually-assured destruction was too much
for either side to risk. But, the need for a strong military in the
face of such a dire foe can be felt throughout the time period –
Americans did not want to lose their “freedom” to the Communists.
This culture
justifies any military expenditure in the face of such a threat.
Adams analyzes the massive expenditure in his book. The book is a
financial study of eight major defense contractors that dominated the
top 10 contractor list two-thirds of the time between 1970 and 1979,
and really looks over the money flows between defense and politics.
The findings are not surprising. These companies received “over
$100 billion in DoD contracts, 25 percent of all DoD awards. Nearly
$25 billion of this was for research and development – 37 percent
of the DoD total for R&D.”vi
Adjusted for inflation, total amount of money awarded to defense
contractors comes in at more than $350 billion. This amount of money,
spent solely on defense, comes at the expense of other government
programs, as it is a part of the government budget. It is not
surprising in the slightest that public infrastructure and education
are suffering as a result of less priority on the budget as this
trend continues over the years. Another troubling trend that the
study reveals is NASA’s reliance on defense contractors for
expertise. According to Adams, the companies in the study “received
over $11.4 billion in NASA contracts, 36 percent of the NASA total.”vii
Not a very good look, for an organization that is supposed to be
impartially guiding the advancement of science.
The study details
many more findings that further explore the connection between the
government and the arms industry. Lobbying costs undertaken by five
of the eight companies “spent a total of $16.8 million during a
two-year period in the 1970s to operate their offices in Washington.
… This amount includes substantial spending on lobbying and
government relations, much of which is subsidized by the taxpayer.
These five contractors charged $15.8 million of this amount to the
Department of Defense as part of general and administrative
expenses… all eight companies had registered lobbyists in
Washington in the late 1970s.”viii
Corporate Political
Action Comittess (PACs) are also heavily involved in the spending of
military contractors. According to Iron Triangle, “PACs of
the defense industry, according to the most recent available data
(1977-78), are the largest corporate PACs, averaging $81,000 a year
in total disimbursements and $55,000 in contributions to Federal
campaigns. The eight PACs in this study, created between April 1976
and February 1978 had spent over $2 million by summer 1980, 60
percent of it in Federal campaigns.”. Adjusted for inflation, this
would be $7 million dollars in current day value. The conflict of
interest arising from the arms industry and a nation’s foreign policy
should be enough to give one pause.
The lack of data
around the cash flows exacerbates the problem, and the frequency of
individuals moving between companies and the government raises more
concerns of possible conflict of interest. The “review of DoD data
showed that 1,942 individuals (uniformed and civilian) moved between
DoD/NASA and the eight companies between 1970 and 1979”ix
Admittedly, this in itself is not immediately considered wrong-doing,
and Adams notes that they “may have been resolved in ways that
eliminate any conflict” but also that “the high number suggests a
need for more adequate reporting requirements, stricter conflict of
interest legislation, and new legislation to put greater distance
between DoD and the industry.”x
The real extent of
the armament industry’s business is alarming, and to a large degree,
unknown. The prospect of selling weapons to those with nefarious aims
is a very reasonable concern for corporations that have grown to the
size and capacity of international corporations, and trade in
armaments for massive profits. The study found that “all eight amit
to some involvement in overseas payment about which some questions
have been raised. In some cases, such payments were linked to
military sales. The three companies most involved with overseas
sales-Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas-also have the highest
amounts of such overseas payments.”xi
It raises concern that a culture of obfuscation has taken hold, and a
lack of transparency is apparent in the industry. While on some
degree it does make sense that the military should be secretive with
the exact nature of their operations to prevent espionage, especially
in the time the book was written with the Cold War in full swing, and
the possibility of KGB agents sharing such information against the
interests of the American military is a reasonable concern.
The degree this
lack of transparency has gripped the industry seems likely to be
abused by bad actors. It seems that the culture has grown very
secretive, as Adams noted in his book: “The eight companies all
refused to disclose information on their government relations
practices, pleading cost, lack of time, proprietary information, and
national security. In response to our request that each company
review the preliminary draft of its profile, three companies-General
Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell-failed to respond in any
way. Northrop and Lockheed replied with hostile and totally
uninformative communications. Boeing and United Technologies provided
a small amount of additional information, rating poor in disclosure.
Grumman provided an informative review of the profiel, making its
fair rating the best in the study.”xii
The industry’s hostility and reluctance to disclose financial
information is obviously suspicious, but due to the importance placed
on national security, it appears that the inquiry has not really
progressed in any meaningful way that actually resulted in much
change. Adams notes that “Information on government relations is
hard to come by. The secrecy of the contractors is matched by the
inadequacy of Federal record keeping and requirements on disclosure.
Data on research and development spending is uneven and
uninformative. Data on subcontracting is undisclosed, and lobbying
data is thin.”xiii.
The lack of information surrounding the flow of money makes it
worringly easy for potential bad actors to abuse the system.
The “iron
triangle” described by Adams is composed of “a powerful flow of
people and money” that “moves between the defense contractors,
the Executive branch (DoD and NASA), and Congress.”xiv.
Eisenhower’s concern of an armament industry that continually
pressured government for a constantly increased level of arms
production seemed quite valid, and the measurable effect of financial
growth enjoyed by the companies in Adams’ study alone, seem to
confrim the existence of a military-industrial that will continue to
perpetually grow if action is not taken. It is a difficult problem to
solve, as the creation of this “iron triangle” on defense policy
and procurement is very exclusionary to outsiders and alternative
perspectives.xv
In the concluding chapter of the study, the authors suggest that
wider disclosure and collection of data would be an effective
strategy, along with greater restriction on government relations,
such as corporate PACs and lobbying. Adams states that “National
security cannot be debated wisely in military terms alone. The claims
for military spending must be weighed against those of economic
renovation, energy independence, full employment, a healthy and
educated citizenry and national economic prosperity. Greater
disclosure and restraints on the arms industry’s political power can
help lead to a wider debate on national needs and a definition of
national security that is set in a wider context.”xvi
Ultimately, this can be seen across most of the nation through the
decades – as the military budget increases, various other programs
like Education, Medicaid, and Social Security are often the first
things to be cut to make room. The amount of money spent on America’s
military is more than any other nation, and the effectiveness of that
expenditure is hotly debated.
Sand and Oil
The Gulf War and America’s continued global operations
for intervention against communism and human rights infractions
basically meant that America had always had at least some degree of
mobilization. Along with this are their many military bases in
countries across the world, like Germany, Japan, South Korea, and
many others. Most of these were meant to oppose the spread of
Communism during the Cold war.
After the end of the Cold War, America mainly utilized
its military might in the interest of intervention. Somalia, Bosnia,
Haiti, Serbia – most times when America went to a battle, they
tried to make absolutely sure that they only involved themselves as
absolutely necessary with interest of reducing violence. It seemed
that they had learned from the drawn-out conflict of Vietnam, and
were reluctant to repeat their mistakes.
The events of September 11, 2001 would change
everything. The invasion of Iraq and the operations in Afghanistan
would drag on for another decade and a half. Once again, America
found itself stuck halfway across the world, fighting another foreign
enemy. And once again, private corporations would enrich themselves
with the business of war. Dick Cheney and his holdings at
Halliburton, and their involvement in the development of oil
resources in the middle-east after the devastation caused by the Iraq
war, are a large ethics violation in the eyes of many. Many
journalists and ethics lawyers have argued that the use of “enhanced
interrogation techniques”, as signed off on by Dick Cheney and
George W. Bush during the Bush Administration, should classify the
two of them as being guilty of war crimes.xvii
All of the events of the invasion of Iraq were cast in
the light of retaliation for the events of 9/11, but in the years
that has seen the invasion etched into history, many have begun to
doubt America’s motivation for entering the country. The removal of a
tyrant like Saddam Hussein, and the countless cruelties that were
perpeptrated under his rule by his son alone, Uday Hussein, are
definitely positive results of the invasion – such evil should not
walk the Earth freely. It is undeniably a good thing that the
Hussein’s despotic regime was removed. The devastation caused by the
war, and the damage caused by the fighting, still remains, and the
reality is that soldiers are better at destruction than repair. The
occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US military has not been
very restorative for public order or human quality of life –
soldiers are there to fight, not to build. The development of a
robust infrastructure with modern institutions that can be trusted
has never been established by any act of “regime change”
conducted by the United States. The reality of the occupation is that
the continued unrest has made most of the population reliant on the
Americans as a force of order. The existing forces that are trained
by the Americans are woefully inadequate, and are rife with problems
like robbery, sexually abusing children, and corruption. Ben
Anderson, a war journalist, has completed many documentaries on the
Middle-East. One of them “This Is What Winning Looks Like”,
showcases the extent to which these problems grip the local forces.xviii
It is an extremely difficult situation to rectify.
Unnatural Competition
War is an unavoidable part of human history. It is
woven through our timeline like a ribbon of destruction. Why is it
that we’re the only species on the planet that competes in such a
brutal fashion? Animals will often compete for territory or mates,
and sometimes this competition can result in the demise of one of the
participants. But the way that humans practice this “intraspecies
competition” (competition within the species, between members of
the species) is much more violent – history is full of accounts of
entire villages, towns, and cities being slaughtered by invading
armies. Sexual violence, forced labor, and torture are also extremely
prevalent in warfare, on all sides, no matter the conflict or time
period. The saying exists for a reason: War is hell.
So why do we, as
advanced civilizations, still practice this horrible act? Why does
humanity still fight amongst itself? The answer is complicated and
difficult to analyze. Conflicts in the modern day that still rage on
have their roots in history – there is typically a buildup of
resentment between two opposing sides, due to some sort of inequality
that distinguishes the two groups. Usually, both sides perceive
themselves as the victim of the other’s selfishness; therefore,
taking action to remove the “parasites” can be supported by a
frustrated population. This is most easily observable in recent
history, regarding Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric around the Jews, and his
vision for a “utopian” (by his definition) future.
Violent conflict
has been present in the world for as long as there have been humans.
The first battles were fought between rival tribes, fighting over
territory and resources. The brutality of conflict at this point in
history is difficult to fathom, but some societies did have varying
levels of lethality, along with laws and customs around death in
combat to prevent revenge-killings. Prehistoric humans saw rival
tribes as threats to their very existence – if they don’t attack
first, they will be attacked,
and they will most likely suffer more than if they had seized the
initiative. Such conflicts often ended with either one side fleeing
and conceding the territory, or losing all the males in the tribe
with the females being forcibly assimilated into the attacking tribe.
Most children would be killed – they are not descended from the
males of the tribe, so they have no stake in keeping them alive.
Early history is barbaric. Steven Pinker has done a fair bit of
research in this area.
This
“zero sum game” thinking has extended into modern conflict, I
believe. Most modern militaries of today operate on the principle
that they should be strong enough that if anyone were to attack, they
would take too much damage for it to be worth any advantage to be
gained by attacking. The principle of “mutually assured
destruction” is based on this idea. The Cold War is full of
competition between the two dominant superpowers, including the
accumulation of armaments to deter invasion by the other side. The
stockpiling of nuclear weapons during the Cold War is a testament to
this; it got to a point that the two superpowers began to see who
could outdo the other in “overkill factor” i.e. how many times
over that they could completely destroy the planet. Civilization
during this period was teetering on the edge of destruction.
It
can be hard to believe that humanity was so close to eradication.
Most people don’t really know just how close the world was to nuclear
warfare – the Cuban missile crisis saw the soviets send a nuclear
submarine (loaded with nuclear warheads) to the Gulf of Mexico in
response to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, sponsored by the
CIA. For thirteen days, the world held its breath, before the Soviets
pulled out their submarine and lowered the tension between the
superpowers. Never again would the two countries wish for such a
direct confrontation again. Wars fought by proxies across the world
would replace direct competition between global powers. The Vietnam
war is a perfect example – the south supported by America, the
north by the Communists of China and the Soviet Union.
Chapter 3: Contest of Ideas
The ideology of Communism, as implemented in the
nations that would come to practice it, required the installation of
a Proletariat Dictatorship to maintain military power. The
totaliarian control of the party over all things – the economy, the
military, the legislature – was a breeding ground for corruption
and the abuse of power. Very little oversight and the motivation to
promote the Communist Ideal instead of addressing the reality of the
situation were extremely repressive infringements upon human rights.
Chernobyl is a very good example of the disaster that can strike when
the State enforces absolute control over the population, even
ignoring expert advice in the name of political ideology and
totalitarian control and promotion of the “Communist Ideal”.
It is overall a political and economic system that has
resulted in a great deal of suffering and persecution of those who
disagreed with the ideology, and those who had benefited from
Capitalism – the bourgeosie. The suppression of democractic
elections and replacing politics with a single-party system is not
good for the average person’s liberty in society. The battle between
Capitalism and Communism has resulted in the Western system emerging
victorious. It’s a good thing that humanity has protected some of our
most valuable of gifts – Democracy and Freedom of Speech. The right
to property and the sanctity of the individual – all very great
things for human civilization. An important facet of life to remember
is that most things are perpetually imperfect – everything has it’s
own set of “pros and cons”. What else does Capitalism offer?
Well, to start on a good note, Capitalism has lifted
more people out of poverty than any other economic system. The level
of abundance and plenty that the first world can enjoy allow us to
live lifestyles better than almost any other in human history. The
rapid advancement of technological and the quality of products is
unrivalled by any other civilization in history.
While this level of opulence is unique to our time
period, partially due to the level of technological advancement we
enjoy, it is also not perfect. After all, we made the system that
gives us access to it, and we are human, and we are not perfect by
any means. There are many problems that still grip society today:
Crime, Disease, War, and Natural Disasters. Some of these are
consequences of nature, but others seem to be caused by people –
often for very complicated reasons with many interconnected factors.
War itself is a very complex subject that exists throughout history,
even though it’s universally looked upon as a very negative thing.
And no wonder – war is the man-made cause, whether direct or
indirect, of perhaps more human suffering than almost anything else
in reality.
We have many institutions and systems in place,
developed over centuries, to deal with these various problems:
Hospitals for the sick, Police to protect the innocent, and a
Military to defend the nation against disaster. Some of these
institutions are government-controlled, and others are private, while
a few are a mixture of the two. Capitalism maintains that each
individual has the right to their own property – extending to the
“means of production”. The opposition from decades past,
Communism, states that the means of production must be owned
collectively by the entire population. In practice, this actually
meant that the government owned everything, and when the government
is composed of real, flawed people, there will be problems.
The battle between the two ideologies is marked by this
difference – who owns the factories? Individuals or “the people”?
Or alternatively, why not a group of people – corporations and
shareholders often fulfill a similar role. The question becomes one
of interest – who should decide what to do with the massive amount
of production that industry can supply? The individuals that
privately own it, or the Communist Dictatorship? Should the profits
be put towards improving production, or is up to the owner’s
discretion what is done with their profits? If they have the right to
property, they can choose what to do with their profits.
In the past, the West held the stance that the
government should stay out of the way of business, and allow the free
market to drive the direction of industry – after all, if the
factories were privately owned, then it’s your right to do whatever
you want with the production. Unfortunately, this also has problems
in practice – you still need labor for the factory to be able to
produce; a portion of the profits must go to the worker’s wages.
Without paid workers, you have no production, and no profits. This
was well understood by many in the past, who would regularly strike
and attempt to force their employers to improve working conditions or
compensation. Before the writing of safety laws, owners could ask
their workers to work in dangerous conditions and pay them barely
enough to survive. The practice of “strike-breaking” was also
very common – using hired thugs to harass the striking workers to
make them disperse or go back to work. Luckily, the West has
progressed a great deal in that area in modern times – fatal
workplace accidents are thankfully very rare, wages are much more
livable, and working conditions are astronomically better.
But, the power of free enterprise, without anything to
oppose it, has run rampant over society. International corporations
have grown greatly thanks to technology and ever-increasing
connectivity of the planet. This has progressed to the point that
many corporations and financial groups have amassed a higher amount
of wealth than some existing countries. While the power of free
enterprise has allowed for a lot of progress, the sheer size of some
of these organizations can be absolutely staggering. This poses a
problem when the government, which was supposed to be all-powerful,
becomes overshadowed by massive international corporations.
The most obvious symptom of this is the slow decline of
the Union movement. After the Soviet Union rose to power and entered
its mortal struggle with the United States of America, the old
practices of strike-breaking and worker suppression stopped – for
some reason. Perhaps the government and business owners were afraid
of a Revolution? But ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we
can see a new trend slowly emerge – no longer afraid of a working
class revolt, the wealthier in society begin to hoard their wealth
once again. When considering this graph, remember that the Cold War
lasted from 1947 to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The story seems very simple – after the threat of
Communism was dead, and any notion of “labour organization” was
demonized as “Socialist”: Capitalism was the undisputed victor.
Whether intentionally or not though, through the promotion of free
enterprise and the rejection of “class”, the victorious
capitalists have forgotten a fundamental lesson: we are all human.
There are flaws in human nature – flaws that cause the problems with
Communism seem to find their way into Capitalism and wreak havoc, one
way or another.
Unfortunately, mentioning this in any contemporary
discussion often has the same effect as displaying sympathy for the
Nazi Party of Germany. I understand this, as the horrors that
humanity has experienced as a result of Communism are well
documented. But this often leads to a defense of the current system,
a condescending lesson in economics, or a suggestion that you’re an
authoritarian that cannot handle differing methods of thought. My
stance is this: Communism was a failure, but Capitalism is not
perfect either. It needs some work to actually function well for
humanity. Just explaining things away as the “nature of the free
market” is not good enough – rigorous inquiry is always essential
for getting closer to the truth.
Cultural and Media Narratives
There appears to be an interesting phenomenon in recent
years, perhaps becoming most apparent during the 2016 U.S. Election:
a growing distrust in the “mainstream” media. What mainstream can
really mean can differ depending on who is asking: most of the time,
this seems to be a result of the Trump Campaign and his inflammatory
rhetoric around the “Fake News” media. Many conservatives
completely distrust any source of media that is not on the right or
“conservative” side of the spectrum: Breitbart and Fox News come
to mind.
Upon closer inspection, it seems this is a problem on
both sides of the aisle, and perhaps has actually resulted from some
elements of the liberally aligned media as well. During the 2016
election, Donald Trump’s opponent was Hillary Clinton, who notably
owns shares in CNN, a very large news network. For a large number of
moderates, this has wreaked havoc on their credibility, especially
because most of the coverage of Hillary during the election seemed
skewed to show her in a good light to increase her odds of election.
Another large element of this political discontent with
liberal politics stems from the “political correctness” in some
areas, particularly surrounding a very large part of leftist politics
for the last few decades: identity politics. The notion that all
white people are priveleged, for example, does not sit well with many
rural Americans that have been dealt a difficult hand at life.
Refusing to acknowledge the connection between Islamic Extremism and
the possibly repressive religious ideology behind it is another
frustration for many moderates as well. The recent trend of some of
the increasingly toxic feminism that seems to breed misandry among
its followers, is yet another example of insufferably ideological
radical leftism.
The underlying cause of both of these phenomena is the
interaction of the massive amounts of wealth that international
commerce has begun to supply, and the media institutions that are
supposed to provide impartial reporting. Sometimes, this may require
holding corporations and individuals to account, and if there is a
conflict of interest that arises because of money, connections, or
other factors, this can have an adverse effect on the impartiality of
the reporting. A large part of the problem is the magnitude of media
corporations in the modern day – they require a large amount of
resources to operate, and are constantly hungry for news to cover.
The most profitable news, is bad news – most media companies
know that people are drawn to negative information more than positive
information, because of cognitive bias. Negative information is more
important to your brain, because its important to avoid bad things –
our cortexes have evolved over millennia in environments full of
hazards.
The rise of the internet age and the “Post-Truth”
era of information means that as people have increased their
unfiltered access to information about the world, they have found
many times when the media has been found to be just as corruptible as
any other people-run insitution. Underreporting on pollution in favor
of corporate interests, and failing to hold individuals to account
has bred discontent in among the populace. Many often completely
recede from politics or world affairs, or limit their sources to only
a few, trusting that their political bias will make them somehow more
impartial than their counterparts.
The rebirth of independent journalism seems to be
slowly turning the tide. The internet has quickened the transfer of
information like no other technology in history. By using the
internet, it is possible for journalists to build an audience with
very little resources to begin with. Philip DeFranco is noted for his
seperation of his opinion from the facts available, which many of his
viewers favor. In general, it seems like most of the public takes
anything from the mainstream media with a pinch of salt. But once
this trust is lost, it seems to be very difficult to regain. The
“mainstream” media has had its image forever tarnished by
political bias, conflict of interest, and inflammatory rhetoric. The
“dark money” of billionaires and corporate interests, spent with
sole purpose of increasing their wealth, gives many people aversions
to almost any source of media that isn’t outspokenly impartial.
The largest conflict of interest appears to be arising
from the narrative of climate change denial. Massive fossil fuel
corporations could easily have influence in the media with the
finances available to them; when you’re making billions of dollars, a
few million dollars spent on the media is a drop in the bucket. This
has also created its own backlash, rooted in the same suspicion: many
climate deniers often insinuate that climate scientists and
environmentalists are perpetuating the “hoax” of global warming,
in the interest of “getting rich”.
This is provably false, as most scientists are paid
very average wages. But the distrust in the mainstream media has
already taken root: people will not believe it because they suspect
the climate scientists of acting in bad faith for selfish gain.
Phantom of a Slain Demon
Mentioning the word “communism” in the modern day
can often have undesirable effects in a conversation. Most people go
quiet for a moment, as the deaths of millions flash through their
memory. That, along with the history of the Cold War, make the
ideology a very polarizing one.
The definition of communism is fundamentally clear –
there is no private ownership, everything belongs to the collective.
The state controls all assets, distributes rations, and allocates
housing. The fundamental opposite of this system is Capitalism: free
enterprise is protected by the government, to allow the free market
to thrive, promoting the most amount of liberty to society due to
prosperity. The discourse in America has been so fervently
pro-capitalist and anti-communist that is has slowly begun to shift.
Any mention of government action is categorized as “socialist”,
which in the minds of many in the West, is practically the same thing
as communist.
This conflation of the two definitions is one of the
primary reasons for the resistance against many government reforms in
America, from my perspective. Public, single-payer healthcare is
often demonized as “socialist”, and the state of Venezuela
defines itself as a socialist system, so many politicians and
commentators often point to the adversity caused by Maduro’s regime
as a reason to oppose anything remotely “socialist”.
Venezuela, at the time of writing (2019), is
experiencing a high level of economic distress and political unrest.
To analyze the factors that influence this, let’s consider the
historical situation of the country. An oil-rich nation, they have
capitalized on their access to natural resources by increasing their
connection to the global petroleum market. With such a lucrative
resource, the country enjoyed a period of rapid growth.
Unfortunately, the authoritarian government of Maduro has
micromanaged the resource, and along with global economic instability
surrounding the oil market, recent years have seen Venezuela in a
dire economic situation.
The currency has been overvalued by the government,
which has been unable to compete with the “black market” of
exchanging US dollars for Venzuelan Bolivars. The practice of posting
high costs and then taking the leftover US dollars and selling them
on the black market has been abused by many Venezuelan companies.
Along with that, the oil price crashed in 2014, putting further
strain on the country’s economy.
This, along with poor government decisions made by
Maduro’s regime, have slowly led the country into crisis. Maduro
increased oil subsidies and printed more money, driving inflation
even further. Along with his silencing of government critics and
jailing of political opponents, Maduro has used the military to
enforce his strict regime. It’s an ugly situation. But the situation
is made even worse by economic pressures exerted by other nations,
especially the United States, in the form of sanctions.
Chapter 4: Income Inequality
A large of the problem with Laissez Faire
Capitalism seems to be income inequality. If the magnitude of the
inequality becomes too great, it can destabilize society. Of course,
the true heart of the problem with Communism is that it tries to make
everyone equal in all aspects, but functionally, this would be
impossible. Who would make decisions if everyone is equally valued?
If there is disagreement, should everything be resolved with a vote?
Is that really practical, or even beneficial? Overall, as a
civilization, we value democracy, but sometimes it is clear that a
“hierarchy of competency” is necessary for society to function.
Could a welder really do a doctor’s job with the same competency?
Obviously not – this can perhaps most easily be seen in government
and military organizations. There will still most likely be a chain
of command in these cases, related to the experience of each
individual, and the knowledge they’ve accumulated over their careers.
And if this hierarchy becomes threatened? Well, sometimes a dispute
over power occurs, which can be resolved in many ways, depending on
the circumstances. Stalin was noted for “removing” those that
threatened his position, or superiors that he wished to supplant.
Modern capitalism seems to promote a “meriticratic” system, in
which those that are most successful, are rewarded the most for their
merit. Unfortunately, it seems that the practical implementation of
the system can have problems, such as nepotism or the gradual
replacement of democracy with plutocracy.
This central tenets of the Communist philosophy – no
class division, money, or private ownership – fundamentally fail
when introduced to reality. People are not the same – everyone is a
unique combination of genetics, experiences, and surroundings that
makes every person fundamentally different. Everyone has different
interests, passions, and talents. This is just a fact of nature. Some
will perform greater than others, and there needs to be a decision
making process that is time-efficient enough to be practical.
Communism goes wrong in trying to force an equality of economic
outcome, because it can cause a stagnation of competition within an
economy.
But, the Communist Soviet Union did have a few
advantages over Capitalist America. Most strikingly is the Soviet’s
victory in the famous Space Race – in October of 1957, the Sputnik
satellite was launched into orbit, flying through the night sky above
an onlooking America. It seems that Soviet science was slightly more
advanced than American science. This can perhaps be explained by
their different philosophies surrounding education and scientific
research, but it should also be mentioned that the Russians had been
developing rocket technology for many years before the Cold War even
began. Their Katyusha
rocket launchers were used to great effect in the second World War.
The Communists thought that industry should be made to
work for all of society, not just the owners of the productive
assets, or “means of production”. From this, it follows that the
best minds and the best technology should be dedicated to
improvements that all of society will benefit from. Essentially, by
the people, for the people. The education system in the Soviet union
was highly centralized and government run. It allowed total access
for all citizens and post-education employment. They believed that
the foundation of their system depended upon an educated population
and development in the broad fields of engineering, the natural
sciences, the life sciences, and social sciences, along with basic
education.
By comparison, the Western education systems were much
more fluid and decentralized, at the time. They focused more on the
Classics, the writings of ancient philosophers, and on writing in
general. Every person was expected to pay for their own education. As
a result, the only educated people were generally in the upper class
with a fair amount of wealth. Public education is generally handled
by the provincial or state government in the West, and it is only in
very recent history that the federal government has begun to directly
fund public education, depending on the case.
While the natural drive of competition for wealth is
beneficial for the economy because it forces competitors to try as
hard as possible to earn their income. Losing in this system has
drastic consequences: if you don’t have a job, you might not be able
to afford food or shelter. Unemployment can be rectified by
retraining or shifting industries, but there is always a limited
demand for labor, and retraining can require a large time and money
commitment that is not attractive to a person struggling to feed
their kids.
This was the result of a great deal of hardship during
the Industrial Revolution, and the drive for many labor
demonstrations and unemployment protests, as mentioned earlier. If
one was smart and lucky enough, they could use their intellect and
assets to create a factory, and become enormously wealthy. This
wealth came at a cost – often borne by the laborers. Safety
regulation as we know it did not exist. Employers could ask their
workers to work in any conditions, and only guaranteed payment if
their wishes were fulfilled. The employer was basically all-powerful.
At the time,
legislators and government officials would often side with the
employers, often as a result of payment or the promise of a favor in
the future. Strike-breaking was a very common practice. The
production was more important than the laborers, as many slain
workers during strikes at the hands of the goverrnment, or privately
hired enforcers, can attest.
The rise of a
proletarian revolution was first conceived of by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, during their time in the communist party in
Germany, gathering in secret. They thought that the current direction
of industrial society was enriching a class of the “bourgeosie”
at the expense of the working people: the “proletariat”. Their
works, culminating in the Communist Manifesto,
called for several reforms of society, starting with a revolution by
the working class of society to seize the “means of production”
i.e. attack all the rich people and their conspirators and declare
ownership over the factories and assets necessary to sustain the
population.
The last part was main
influence on Vladimir Lenin to call for revolution in russia during
the early 19th
century. The Russian Revolution of 1905 failed to overthrow the
government, and the Tsar Nicholas II accepted a series of liberal
reforms in his October Manifesto. Lenin would return to St.
Petersburg and continue to privately advocate for the continual
escalation, which he believed was necessary for a successful
revolution. The resulting carnage against the bourgeoisie,
and the repression, torture, and murder of any opposition to the
regime that would come to follow, made this a bloodbath in the
practical sense.
The following years that the Soviets spent establishing
their regime were marked with widespread corruption, human rights
abuses, and dysfunction that led to starvation. But the economic
hardship was partially influenced by the destruction influenced upon
eastern Europe during the fighting of the second World War. The
implementation of the communistic system was having some problems,
and the absolute power of the government meant that it was impossible
for the people to really have their voices heard. The economy was not
functioning well with Communism – incompetent leadership, low pay
resulting in low productivity, and very few trading partners had
doomed the Communist experiment to fail.
Aptitude Inequality
As discussed, the heart of the problem with Communism
is the idea that all people truly are equal – Darwin teaches us
that as biological creatures of the same species, we are going to
have a slight degree of difference between individuals due to our
genetics, our environment, and our experiences. Reality is never
perfect – the chaos of the universe seems to dictate that nothing
will ever truly be flawless, no matter how great it is, and no two
things will ever be completely symmetrical, down to the atomic level:
entropy is relentless. No matter how hard we work to make our lives
easier, the enormous magnitude and staggering complexity of the
planet, the galaxy, and the universe, basically necessitate that most
of everything has both good and bad aspects. This goes for any
economic or political system that we choose for our society.
Capitalism does have some positive aspects for economic
growth, that is definitely true: it rewards innovation, hard work,
and individual merit. The proponents of it often point to these facts
as the best reasons for adopting the system. In the Industrial
Revolution of the 18th century, the system was widely
adopted in the interest of enriching the nations that practiced it.
Without sufficient regulation or historical precedent, however, those
that supplied the labor for the economy were often put in a position
of inescapable poverty: they would work to live, and live to work.
Many social reforms would follow from the sentiment of
discontent. The French and Russian Revolutions were anchored in this
desire – to somehow distribute some of the massive amount of wealth
that the rich had among the general population. France established a
democracy, but unfortunately, instability resulted in a Civil War and
the rise of the Napoleonic Empire. The Russian Revolution failed at
first, but after the First World War, the government powers of Russia
were weakened enough for a working class revolution to unseat the
rich and powerful. The October Revolution, led by the Bolsheviks,
would establish the Communist economic system in Russia.
The general trend of liberal and socialist reforms
would continue to ripple through most of the West: unions and safety
regulation were very strong, ensuring that workers would be fairly
compensated, exposed to minimal risk, and the old practices of
“strike-breaking” had stopped. Science and technology were
improving to protect the people that labored to support the economy,
and toxic chemicals have been slowly phased out in favor of less
noxious alternatives, when possible. The automation of processes has
allowed for safer working conditions, and for workers to stay out of
toxic or harmful environments when possible. The New Deal, which
brought Social Security to America during the Great Depression to
prevent unemployed workers from starving, is another example of a
“socialist” reform.
Recent decades have seen a noticeable shift in economic
trends, however. For years, pay had risen with productivity. The
Soviet Union really began its decline after Khruschev was removed
from office by Leonid Brezhnev and his conspirators (don’t worry,
they gave him a pension) – most historians seem to believe that a
large part of the problem was that the government had shifted the
economy to focus much too heavily on the military, instead of
consumer goods.
The Reagan administration had also come to power in
America during this time. He would be sworn into office in 1981,
serving two terms. Interestingly, this is also when the trend of
increasing pay with productivity began to drop. Union membership
began to decrease, income inequality increased, and many sectors of
America’s economy suddenly found their workforces obsolete.
Manufacture, Steel, Automobiles – the increased connectivity of the
globe and the profits that could be enjoyed by shipping jobs overseas
were very great.
The newly displaced laborers from the workforce faced a
difficult problem – their skillset had made them worthless to the
market. They found themselves unable to compete with the market
shift, and the market began to value the abilities of other positions
much more than the hard labor of the past. They were basically at the
bottom of this “Aptitude Inequality” spectrum, with the coders
and salesmen quickly finding their aptitude much more suited for the
modern landscape. The laid-off workers could no longer trade their
time for money, and this understandably puts a lot of pressure on
people: if you don’t have an income anymore, you have to find another
job. The problem was that the market was saturated with a high level
of labor; lots of people lost employment and were searching for a
replacement. Some were unable to find alternative employment, due to
long-term injuries accumulated during the course of a career in a
labor position. Many would opt for disability, and the combination of
this with chronic pain appears to have been a factor in the Opioid
Epidemic currently gripping America.
After losing employment, the solution that many turn to
is retraining for a different occupation. This is possible, but it
requires quite a few external factors: the person needs to be suited
for education, they need to have enough savings to pay for training,
and also have to hope that the market will still be open after they
retrain. For many, after a decades-long career in a labor position,
education or retraining is simply not an option. The reality is harsh
for many in the modern industrial economy – they can go into debt
as they look for a new job, become burdened with medical expenses, or
even lose their home. Social Security and Employment Insurance can
only mitigate the problems of limited economic opportunity to an
extent – they are not perfect solutions.
Perhaps one might say that planning for such
eventualities is the best solution? Well, the future is always
uncertain and can change in an instant. Along with that, the reality
for every person is uniquely different – they are all born into a
specific set of circumstances that can make preparing for the future
very difficult. They might be at the mercy of a hostile environment
that feeds off of them. The result for many is apathy: what is the
point of struggling if the chaos of life is just going to wipe it all
away?
Another very important factor in this situation is the
inequality of being born into different circumstances: life is very
different if you’re the child of a billionaire, than if you’re born
into a pathological environment like a trailer park or an inner-city
ghetto. This creates a sort of perpetual poverty in which people are
born into poverty, and have children that perpetuate the same
mistakes because the environment makes it almost impossible for them
to escape.
Working Smart, Not Hard
The only answer to climbing out of poverty is a great
deal of effort – it is not in dispute that breaking the cycle of
poverty is very difficult. Some things that can make that journey
much easier for someone finding themselves in poverty, is education.
This is exemplified in the modern economy – labor jobs are
increasingly scarce and require higher and higher levels of
qualification. Along with that, higher levels of education generally
indicate a specialized skillset, which can also be a reason for more
compensation.
Compounding this problem is the exhorbitant cost of
education in North America. In Canada it isn’t quite that bad, but
the US has a very high tuition cost for the majority of their
schools. Canadian student loans are also generally more forgiving
when it comes to being unable to pay, but American loans charge a
large amount of interest, even if students can’t afford the payments.
Add a healthcare bill of a few thousand dollars for an unexpected
problem, and you have a system that appears to stack debt on people
with no consideration of circumstances or affordability.
The capitalist model, when applied to the education
service, seems to fail. Education is not something with an easily
measurable return on investment; it’s difficult to tell if the
resources being spent on it are actually being effectively utilized.
The spending on education has risen in past decades, but the
effectiveness of this spending (and the increased cost) are
debateable.
The creation of a private sector of education
exacerbates the problem. The richest of society most often utilize
this when it is available, because it is often of much higher
quality. While they may still pay into the tax system which funds the
private sector of education, from their perspective, they are not
using the public system so they do not see any benefit from it. The
result is that they will favor politicians whose policies include
reducing taxes and government spending – which can cause the public
education system to suffer. The very intention of education becomes
subject to scrutiny: does one put effort into their studies to enrich
their minds, or is it to enrich their bank accounts in the future?
I would propose the abolishment (or at least, heavy
regulation) of the private sector of education and a complete
overhaul of the system to rectify this. The world of the 21st
century is rapidly changing, and the previous methods of a broad
approach to education are quite inefficient. The West, in my opinion,
should adopt a more of a “two-stream” approach: academic and
vocational. Not every person wants to be a doctor, lawyer, scientist
or an engineer, and it is past time for the education system to
recognize that in a practical manner. The money wasted on keeping
schools open and paying a bloated administration could be reduced by
separating the students at an earlier age. Most European models do
something like this, with separate schools after the 8th
grade.
Strong public education is a requirement for equality
of opportunity. Those born into the worst conditions must be granted
a way out – education fills this role. With a good education in the
world today, you can get a better job and work your way out of
poverty. A recent study on human development has found that childhood
poverty is the largest factor that will determine success in adult
life. A strong education and an investment in the development of the
child are the best way to mitigate the effect of growing up in
poverty. Education is the best way to empower an individual, because
the gift of knowledge is priceless. Without knowledge, Bill Gates,
Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, and Elon Musk wouldn’t have achieved all
they could. The science discovered by our predecessors brought about
the industrial revolution, and gives us access to all of the comforts
of modern life. An educated population makes for a more productive
economy, if that’s what the only purpose of education is.
Work With, Instead of Against
Still working on this segment. I wanna talk about how
unions can get too powerful, and end up hurting the workers by having
unrealistic demands.
Perpetual Poverty
The
Chapter 5: Autocratic Corporatism
The sanctity of the right to private property, and the
absolute boundary around this right that disallowed any government
interference with it is a centrel tenet of Capitalism. Another is
that individuals should be granted maximum ability to exercise their
right to free enterprise – the act of using your time to make
profit. Ideally, all can exercise this right, and access the free
market to sell their labor. In practice, the modern economy requires
an advanced skillset or education to earn enough to really survive
and save for the future. Often, the tactic in the past would be for
the workers to unionize, but most companies in the first world
actively root out any notion of unionization. Wal-mart and Amazon are
noted for this practice. Another argument may be that “collective
bargaining” is not really fair, but without any representation,
workers simply must accept what wages they can get or find different
employment. This process, however, is not always simple.
I think that this “right to private property and free
enterprise” is most prominent in America – Capitalism seems to
have been a perfect arguing point for international corporations that
sought to maximize profit. It was their right, after all.
In practice, this has resulted in amazing amounts of
growth across the planet, thanks to globalization. The effects of
this explosion of growth are easy to witness: the development of many
agrarian societies into fully-fledged industrial economies has had
great effect for quality of life in many countries across the world.
Vietnam has come a long way since the destruction of the war with
America in the 60’s and 70’s. India, Japan, South Korea, many
countries seem to thrive and rapidly develop once they adopt
Capitalism. The question is – does that growth come at a cost? Why
does the system function flawlessly everywhere?
It appears from some cursory observation, that the
answer appear to be yes: the massive explosion in growth that
developing countries can see after adopting Capitalism is hardly a
painless process. The shift from peasant farmers to industrial
workers can be difficult, but it can be made easier with education,
training and more gradual development. Unfortunately, it appears that
the profit motive becomes an extremely powerful motivator for people
trying to survive. Numerous unfortunate realities can make themselves
apparent: drug trafficking, prostitution, and child slavery, among
many others.
These problems are often very difficult to effectively
remedy. Many of them still persist to this day. And most appear to
have a common factor: money. The transition from a medieval era
economy to a modern industrial one was not as smooth as one might
hope.
The data provides a very promising outlook: the rates
of poverty are rapidly declining thanks to the implementation of this
system across most of the Third World. People are slowly digging
their way out of poverty. The exact form of this is not always clear,
and may often have some very negative aspects as discussed – most
common of which is environmental destruction and pollution, because
the population becomes focussed on rapid profit and does not think
about how to sustain production. Many forests in South America and
Africa were completely logged and never replanted, completely
deforesting the area and removing an entire ecosystem.
The root of this problem, I believe, is the rapid
introduction of advanced technology into a culture that is unfamiliar
with it and unaware of the possible implications of overuse.
Education is basically nonexistent in the case of the Third World,
and even the services provided to the developing world are often
lacking. Without sufficient education, many must find other forms of
more labor-oriented employment. Luckily, with the technology and
advanced production capabilities supplied to them from the First
World through international corporations, they are able to quickly
improve their quality of life. But, they seem to be lacking the same
strength in institutions that the “First world” mostly enjoys.
Corruption and dysfunction are rife in developing nations.
Accelerated vs Sustained Growth
The argument for the introduction of a capitalist
democratic system in the developing world is the rapid growth and
development that an underdeveloped country (at least when compared to
“first world” nations) can experience. The side effects of such
an extreme pace of growth by the introduction of modern technology
can be disastrous. It is an unfortunate reality of the Colonial era
that many native populations of the planet were subverted for the
gain of colonists. The effects of this are still observable to this
very day, as many current conflicts in Africa and the Middle-East
have their roots in tribal strife.
The effects of the Cold War, and the power exerted by
the Soviet Union and the United States of America, have left a great
deal of destruction in their wake. The Vietnam War notably began as a
mission of global alliance keeping – France held the colony, and
petitioned America to help keep hold of their regime. America might
have supported the country’s independence movement, but France
threatened to fall into the Soviet’s orbit if the Americans did not
go to Vietnam.
It is unfortunate that so many peoples found themselves
caught in a conflict between two world-spanning empires. Most
developing nations and cultures were not viewed as emerging
independent nations on the world stage, but rather as pawns in a
struggle for world dominance between the Soviet Union and United
States. By expressing support for Capitalism or Communism, a country
could expect to attract attention from the two competing superpowers.
For countries that wished to develop their countries beyond a peasant
economy, the choice was required in order for support from one of the
two sides. Otherwise, neither would lend their aid to an aspiring
nation. After it was clear that America would not support Vietnam in
their bid for independence, they were forced to turn to the Soviets
for aid.
The Cold War has come and gone, and left Capitalism the
victor. The system is generally the default across the world, with a
few exceptions such as Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba. The legacy of the
tension between East and West remained, but after the Soviet Union
collapsed, this tension was eased with the promise of trade deals and
an optimistic outlook towards a better future. Gorbachev saw the
development of the West, and let the Union collapse to bring the war
to an end. He wished to see his people have access to the progress of
the West – progress they had enjoyed thanks to Capitalism.
After the end of the Union, global trade saw a huge
upturn. The Cold War was over, the threat of Communism defeated. No
longer did the world need to fear a Communist revolution, or the
fulfillment of “mutually assured destruction” at the hands of
warring superpowers with nuclear weapons. Even with the Communist
nations of the world, trade restrictions were relaxed. The world was
open for business.Vietnam in the modern day has enjoyed a great deal
of economic growth by allowing private enterprise and international
trade.
Any growth this fast will inevitably have growing
pains. Across the world, we can see some unfortunate side effects of
Capitalism, as discussed before: human trafficking, prostitution,
arms trade, drug trafficking, and environmental damage. Introducing
the profit motive to a relatively underdeveloped nation, often only
at a “stone age” or “bronze age” level of development, has
some very undesirable effects in the short term.
The most common problem is corruption of government,
and other institutions of power. The introduction of a democratic
government into a third world nation is very difficult, and if a
select group of people become the point of contact for more advanced
nations, this gives them power over the other locals.
A problem that often arises is the rigging of votes, a
problem often exacerbated by the lack of active journalism and an
uneducated population. A government can easily morph into a
tyrannical dictatorship, where the one who controls the army,
controls the country. Many times in history, and often with exterior
involvement, have Coups been carried out in an attempt to seize
power. The generals are slain, and the standing army is defeated. The
members of the military either defect to the new rulers, flee, or are
executed.
A strange phenomenon of global conflict is the “proxy
war”, in which two opposing sides fight over another nation. This
generally takes the form of supporting an existing group or leader
inside the “third world” country. The Bay of Pigs invasion of
1961 is an example, as the United States provided the locals with
weaponry, and used military agents to train the local anti-Castro
recruits to attack the Cuban communist government with CIA support.
The chaos of the developing world seems to perpetuate
itself: conflicts begin, wars rage, and the destruction remains.
Families shattered, homes destroyed, and the countryside littered
with the evidence. Landmines and unexploded ordinance are a very
dangerous reality for those that try to reclaim their lives after the
conflict is over. The unseen scars of war are even worse – child
soldiers are frequent appearances in these conflicts, and exposing a
maturing child to something as extreme as warfare causes lasting
damage. Many warlords and war criminals were often pressed into
service as child soldiers. War is the only thing they know, and the
suffering they’ve had inflicted upon them after years of bloodshed
often leaves nothing but malice behind. Very few can escape the cycle
of violence.
Providing an effective solution, while avoiding any
notion of the colonialist history of Europe, proves to be one of
modern history’s most difficult challenges.
Growing Pains
The effect of installing Capitalism into a developing
country is very rapid growth. The side effect of that rapid growth,
is that some things are unfortunately left behind by the breakneck
pace of an industrialized economy, with connections to the global
market. The economic growth is beneficial for the population, but the
nature of the global market means that the labor cost of developing
or impoverished nations is extremely low. The technological and
infrastructural development of these areas makes it relatively
expensive for international companies to operate there, and regional
instability increases the risk.
The quality of life that industrialized society
provides to a developing nation is incomparable to any “less
advanced” technological level: peasants working in fields to
provide food for their families, using animal power to pull their
plows have to work extremely
hard as it is to produce goods. Working in a factory is something
that many of them are gladly willing to do, in exchange for money
that they can use to put food on their family’s table. When it
functions well, the free market has an enormously positive effect on
society, and especially on nations that have an unfortunate history
of colonial interference and subjugation, due to the advantages of
gunpowder and steel. Industrialization is often the first step to
independence for developing nations, and a huge factor in pulling
themselves out of relative poverty.
The reality of the
situation of the
globalized industrial can be quite ugly. The remnants of our colonial
history are everywhere – Apartheid in South Africa, Child Labour in
India, and Drug Trading in South America, to name just a few
complicated situations that have arisen out of this combination of
factors. The level of education, and by extension, technological
development and infrastructure, is often at a stone or bronze-age
level. The interaction of two civilizations with two vastly different
technology levels has shown us that such a difference in technology
leads to a difference in military force, and is very easily abused.
This fact has defined the last two hundred years of human history –
Europeans were able to dominate the world with their technology and
the will to use it. As stated earlier, the Chinese actually developed
the printing press (earliest artifacts are dated to 650-670 AD)xix
and gunpowderxx
before Europe. Gunpowder actually migrated to the West from the East
in the hands of the Turks, during the Fall of Constantinople in 1453,
by using Dardanell Cannons to fire stone boulders at the wallsxxi.
Swords to Rifles
This
event is noted by many historians as the end of the Medieval era, for
a few reasons. Constantinople was renowned across Europe for having
the strongest walls of the known world. The use of cannons on the
walls had shown just how effective the advancement of gunpowder was
on permanent emplacements like stone walls. Up to this point, the
only available weapons to effectively attack castle walls were
catapults, trebuchets, battering rams, and sappers – people that
would tunnel beneath the walls to attempt to make them collapse, an
extremely dangerous job. The introduction of gunpowder basically
rendered most existing walls completely useless: they were not
resilient enough to stand up to cannonballs. Advancements in
fortifications led to the development of sloped walls, to deflect the
incoming cannonball to prevent the energy from being absorbed by the
wall, but these were mostly found in the colonial world, to defend
against native aggressors. They were most likely more effective
because of the lack of avalailable weaponry in the colonies, and
would continue to be constructed from the late 16h
to the 18th
century.
Gun
emplacements and firing slots became more important as well,
centuries later, as the advancements of muskets would allow entire
armies to be equipped with them. The renaissance and the printing
press was instrumental in the spread of the knowledge of firearms
manufacture and use. Gunpowder production spread all across Europe by
the mid 14th
century, and cannons were beginning to appear in almost every major
country’s arsenal. Even earlier documented uses of gunpowder in
Europe have been discovered by historians: the use of cannons by the
English in the Battle of Crecy, but they were primarily used in a
defensive manner.xxii
The
siege of Constantinople is still significant, because it marks the
first time in Europe that a major city would have its fortifications
overpowered with the use of gunpowder. Assaulting walls had
fundamentally changed, and it would not be long before gunpowder
production began to spread across Europe, and by the 14th
century, advancements in safety and storage made the substance much
more easy to work with, and the people were more willing to accept
the risks in return for the powerful rewards of gunpowder. By the
19th
century, with the introduction of explosive shells, the previous
methods of wall construction had largely been rendered obsolete. All
countries of the modern world: the Britain, France, the United
States, and Russia – had begun to highly explosive artillery shells
at the turn of the century.xxiii
The manufacture of these early explosives took many forms depending
on the availability of specific chemicals and materials, but the end
result was ultimately the same: the creation of long-range weapons
that could be fired over hundreds of yards, out of sight of their
target, with devastating effect. The construction of large scale
fortifications largely ceased, as continued advancements in the
technology of war had essentially rendered most fortifications
useless – passive defense could no longer be provided by the
strength of stone, concrete, or steel. Walls needed guns and men to
defend them, now.
The Best Defense
The
course of history proved that even those might not be enough, with
the introduction of thermonuclear warheads. The first documented is
the world famous events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the entire
world witnessed the destruction that nuclear weapons could bring
forth.xxiv
The demonstration of the effectiveness of the “nukes” continues
to define the scope of military action to this very day. The power of
thermonuclear detonation is so powerful, that any conflict waged with
such weapons would most likely destroy both sides of the conflict –
for which the phrase “mutually-assured destruction” was named.
The
events of the Cold War would have a huge effect on the advancement of
pre-industrial nations in Asia and Africa. America was directly
involved in Vietnam and Korea, and would continue to act discreetly
most of the world to oppose the Soviets. The invasion of Afghanistan
in 1979 was a major factor in the decline of the Soviet Union, as the
strain of the war would prove too much for their economy to bear. The
Soviets eventually left the country, but the fighting still raged
on.xxv
The civil war continued, and the unrest still grips the region at the
time of writing. The recent conflict between America and the Taliban
appears to be slowly proving an old adage true: “Afghanistan is
where empires go to die.” – the “graveyard of empires”.
The global conflict of the Cold War period, especially
after the Cuban missile crisis, was fought mostly in foreign
countries by supporting proxies with weaponry, training, and
supplies. Covert and indirect involvement was the form that most of
the conflicts of this period took – Vietnam, El Salvador, Indonesia
and many others were all fiercely contested by the United States, in
an effort to halt the spread of Communism and keep it from springing
up anywhere. The resulting carnage has been etched into history, and
the nations still live with the consequences of the actions made in
the past. Asia has seemed to recover the fastest from the influence
of colonialism and the two contending superpowers of the Cold War –
perhaps with the exception of North Korea, which is still held by the
tyrannical regime of Kim Il Sung.
Crumbling Pillars
The recent decades of world events have been marked by
a pronounced lack of faith in authority figures and institutions like
the government, the church, and the media. Even academia isn’t safe –
Scientists are routinely accused of allowing their ideologies to
interfere with the impartiality of their findings. Where is this
coming from? What happened?
The “Post-Truth” or “Post-Facts” Era is
something you probably have already heard about. The phenomenon comes
as a result of a few factors that combine to create this problem. The
first of these is the huge distrust of institutions
of all sorts, but especially the mainstream media.
The profession of journalism has been a relatively new
practice, in historical terms. It really came to prominence with the
widespread adoption of mechanized printing presses, in the Industrial
Era after the revolution of factories and the application of the
steam engine. Newspapers started to mushroom across the
industrialized world of Europe and North America, as well as some
colonies and developing independent nations in Asia and Oceania.
Impartial journalism became an extremely important part of democracy,
because it took the power of information, and brought it to the
people. Freedom of Speech was written into the American Constitution
to protect this very idea from the power of tyrannical government.
While the founding fathers should be lauded for their
efforts at establishing a free, democratic nation, they were still
human and had their limitations and imperfections. They did not
foresee the massive power of unrestrained free enterprise and the
magnitude of international corporations. Even the hypocrisies of
their time are difficult to understand: how could they state that
“all men were equal” while owning slaves?
iNapier,
William. (1851) History of General Sir Charles Napier’s
Administration of Scinde, London: Chapman and Hall p. 35
iihttps://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
, Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961,
Yale University Avalon Project,
Lillian Goldman Law Library.
iiihttps://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
, Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961,
page IV, Yale University Avalon
Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library.
ivhttps://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/farewell-address/1967-06-21-dde-to-kennedy.pdf,
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, June 13, 1967 Letter from
Professor Theodore R. Kennedy to Dwight D. Eisenhower [DDE’s
Post-Presidential Papers, 1967 Principal File, Box 5, BE (Business
Economics) (6); NAID #16972245]
vhttps://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/research/online-documents/farewell-address/1960-10-31-mfr.pdf
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, October 31, 1960
Memorandum for the file regarding the State of the Union 1961 [Ralph
E. Williams Papers, Box 1, Chronological (1); NAID #16972132]
viAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 11
viiAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
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viiiAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 12
ixAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
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xAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 14
xiAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 15
xiiAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 15
xiiiAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 15
xivAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 15
xvAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 15
xviAdams,
Gordon. (1981) The Politics of Defense Contracting: The Iron
Triangle, Transaction
Publishers, p. 216
xviiLeopold,
Jason (December 29, 2008). “Cheney Admits He ‘Signed
Off’ on Waterboarding of Three Guantanamo Prisoners”. Atlantic
Free Press. Archived from the original on December 10,
2015. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
xviiiAnderson,
Ben “This Is What Winning Looks Like”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI,
May 27, 2013. Retrieved September 9, 2019
xixPan,
Jixing. “On the Origin of Printing in the Light of New
Archaeological Discoveries”, in Chinese Science Bulletin,
1997, Vol. 42, No. 12: 976–981. ISSN 1001-6538. Pages 979–980.
xxLorge,
Peter A. (2008), The Asian Military Revolution: from Gunpowder
to the Bomb, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-60954-8
xxi“The
fall of Constantinople”. The Economist. 23 December
1999. Archived from the original on 18 June 2017.
Retrieved on 26 September 2019
xxiiAndrade,
Tonio (2016). The Gunpowder Age China, Military Innovation, and
the Rise of the West in World History. Princeton University
Press. ISBN 9781400874446.
xxiiiBrown,
G.I. (1998) The Big Bang: a History of Explosives Sutton
Publishing ISBN 0-7509-1878-0 pp.151-163
xxiv“U.
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xxv Borer,
Douglas A. (1999). Superpowers defeated: Vietnam and
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Box of Soap 