November 10, 2003
GEORGE W. BUSH, TROTSKYITE
Is the U.S. really launching a 'global democratic revolution'?
by Justin Raimondo
It's just a coincidence that George W. Bush gave a speech announcing that
the U.S. was leading a "global democratic revolution" on the eve of Leon
Trotsky's birthday, but it is one that neatly illustrates the militant
revolutionism at the core of American foreign policy in the post-9/11 era.
The proximity to Trotsky's birthday was fortuitous, but the venue of this
revolutionary proclamation was not: it was a speech commemorating the
twentieth anniversary of the founding of the National Endowment for
Democracy (NED), the brainchild of neoconservative ideologues, many of
whom have their roots on the Trotskyite Left. Having given up the dream
of revolutionary socialism for the more practical project of global
"democracy," the troublesome little sect of neoconservatives, not so
affectionately known as "neocons," is at last having its moment in the sun.
The NED was a sop thrown to the neocons during the Reagan
administration, so they could have a little domain of their own, a small but
strategically placed contingent of "Socialists for Reagan" embedded deep
in the bowels of the U.S. government. The first President of the group,
Carl Gershman, was a longtime member of the Social Democrats, USA,
formerly the Socialist Party, a group dominated by the legendary Max
Shachtman. The founder of "third camp" neo- Trotskyism, Shachtman broke
with Trotsky in the 1940s and evolved, over the years, into a firm supporter
of U.S. military intervention worldwide, while retaining â like Sidney Hook â
his dedication to the "democratic" socialist cause.
As top advisors to the Lane Kirkland wing of the AFL-CIO, Shachtman and
his followers burrowed deep in the labor movement, and lobbied
extensively for the establishment of a government-subsidized "quasi-
private" foundation that would help them extend their labor connections
internationally, The effort bloomed in the Carter years, when the two
parties agreed to share in the spoils, and bore fruit at the start of the
Reagan years. The legislation establishing the National Endowment for
Democracy mandated that most of its funding, at least initially, would go to
the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), an arm of the AFL-CIO's International
Affairs Department.
Aside from the subsidy, however, the benefits to the Shachtmanites were
also ideological: from their perch at the NED, they could egg on the
administration to confront the Soviet Union and agitate for the
prosecution of the cold war to the fullest â all at taxpayers' expense.
When the Soviet Union imploded, however, so did the rationale for the
NED â and it narrowly escaped the budget ax. But post- 9/11, the NED â
along with the neoconservative movement â was given a new lease on life.
Certainly George W. Bush's conversion to Shachtmanism, as evidenced by
his NED address, represents the apotheosis of neocon dominance in
Washington.
The odd combination of Soviet-style phraseology with ostensibly
conservative rhetoric made for a speech of unsurpassed weirdness. On the
one hand, the President celebrated the victory of capitalism, hailing the
triumph of "democracy," "free enterprise," and "markets," and yet somehow
managed to do it the style of a socialist orator out of the 1930s.
The U.S., according to Bush, was no ordinary country, nor even one
especially blessed, but an "inspiration for oppressed peoples," whose
acolytes worldwide "knew of at least one place â a bright and hopeful land
â where freedom was valued and secure" â kind of like the Soviet Union was
to the Commies of yesteryear. Here, too, are references to the necessity
for "sacrifice" â a favorite theme of the old Soviet rhetoricians â including
this Orwellian formulation:
"By definition, the success of freedom rests upon the choices and the
courage of free peoples, and upon their willingness to sacrifice."
Freedom is, "by definition," slavery. War is peace. And Ignorance, as we all
know, is Strength.
The speeches of the Soviet leaders, and their American imitators, were
always filled with new "turns," announcing the most recent twist in the
party line, and the Bush speech displays the same grandiose tic:
"We've reached another great turning point â and the resolve we show will
shape the next stage of the world democratic movement."
America as the leader of a "world movement" â the idea is positively
Leninist.
Full of revolutionary resolve, the U.S. must now focus on the Middle East
"for decades to come," said Bush. For some strange reason, Mesopotamia
does not yet share Montana's enthusiasm for democratic governance, and
this is impermissible:
"Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty?
Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or
culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and
never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I
believe every person has the ability and the right to be free."
Yes, but as Frederick Douglass put it, he who would be free must strike
the first blow. It is not for us to say how or if the peoples of the Middle
East will find their way to freedom and, consequently, to prosperity.
Perhaps it is religion, and the willful pull of tradition, that holds that whole
region of the world back: but doesn't freedom also include the freedom to
say no to modernity? Oh, but we mustn't say that, it's politically incorrect
to even imply that all peoples everywhere and at every time are something
more or less than multi-cultural clones of Homo Americanus:
"Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are
inhospitable to the representative government. This 'cultural
condescension,' as Ronald Reagan termed it, has a long history. After the
Japanese surrender in 1945, a so-called Japan expert asserted that
democracy in that former empire would 'never work.'"
Speaking of cultural condescension: Japan had "democracy" long before
World War II, with an elected Diet, a figurehead monarch, and a relatively
free _expression_ of Western liberal and even radical ideas. The assertion
that U.S. troops brought these alien concepts with them for the first time
and imposed them by force on reluctant Japanese is laughable.
And the idea that postwar Japanese democracy is an unqualified success is
certainly arguable, as Tokyo proves unable to reform its entrenched
bureaucracy and put its economic house in order. Even the determined
revolutionist Junichiro Koizumi has only just managed to lurch from one
crisis to another: the land of the rising sun may yet fall beneath a tsunami
of bank debt. So much for the virtues of Japanese democracy: Japan is still
a society run by consensus, where Western-style individualism is
considered a form of mental illness.
The President applies this same mindless universalism to the problems of
the Middle East, which can all be solved if only we recognize that, in the
end, ideology must trump such reactionary vestiges of the past as culture
and religion:
"It should be clear to all that Islam â the faith of one-fifth of humanity â is
consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many
predominantly Muslim countries â in Turkey and Indonesia, and Senegal and
Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. Muslim men and women are good citizens
of India and South Africa, of the nations of Western Europe, and of the
United States of America."
Turkey is democratic â except when the military decides that democracy is
bringing the country too close to the edge of an Islamic revolution, in
which case it reverts to its roots as the prototypical Oriental despotism.
Before we set up Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone as exemplars of the
democratic progress, perhaps it would be wiser to wait and see if they
don't return â some time tomorrow â to historic patterns of repression and
civil war.
Albania â a bastion of democracy? Only if you consider â like many
libertarians â that all governments, democratic or otherwise, are the moral
equivalent of little more than gangsters.
We are told that the Middle East needs to be "transformed" before we can
sleep safe in our beds at night. But if "more than half of all the Muslims in
the world live in freedom under democratically constituted governments,"
as the President averred, then what's the problem? These very same
peoples hate our guts, that's what, and democracy hasn't ameliorated their
hatred â only given it freer _expression_.
While the President goes on to assert â wrongly, in my view â that Islam is
compatible with the Western concept of limited government and individual
rights, for some unexplained reason there seems to be a "freedom deficit"
prevalent in Muslim countries:
"Whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead. These are
not the failures of a culture or a religion. These are the failures of political
and economic doctrines."
But political and economic doctrines cannot be understood except as
they relate to and are derived from cultural and especially religious ideas.
As Murray N. Rothbard showed in his monumental "An Austrian Perspective
on the History of Economic Thought," the development of economic ideas
in the West â the varieties of socialism, including Marxism, as well as
capitalism â was rooted in the religious and cultural trends prevalent in
pre-industrial Europe. The idea that political and economic doctrines are
something separate and aloof from the cultural traditions of a given
country or region, to be applied by social engineers at gunpoint, is a grave
error inherent in our "liberationist" foreign policy.
Like the Commie leaders of the past, who disdained the role and power of
religion, and were conscious enemies of tradition, Bush sees himself as the
instrument of History. All progress is measured by the speed of his
victories. He is shocked â shocked! â that
"There are governments that still fear and repress independent thought
and creativity, and private enterprise â the human qualities that make for a
â strong and successful societies."
Yes, and one of them is Israel â a country that systematically steals
Palestinian land, bulldozes private homes and businesses, and won't even
let its helots travel from one city to another, let alone provide some outlet
for their "creativity." Billions per year in U.S. aid pays for the systematic
dehumanization of an entire people at Israel's hands.
The Israelis are not mentioned by the President, but he has plenty of
advice for the Palestinians:
"For the Palestinian people, the only path to independence and dignity
and progress is the path of democracy. And the Palestinian leaders who
block and undermine democratic reform, and feed hatred and encourage
violence are not leaders at all. They're the main obstacles to peace, and
to the success of the Palestinian people."
Is it really only Yasser Arafat who blocks and undermines "democratic
reform"? What does "democratic reform" mean in the context of having
your house bulldozed, your shop destroyed, your olive trees uprooted and
sold, your land stolen out from under your feet?
By urging the adoption of democracy from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, the
President should be careful, for he may get what he wants: the end result,
however, will almost certainly not resemble anything desirable from the
American point of view. Democratic elections in Algeria, held in 1991, led
to a radical Islamist victory at the polls, and the election was promptly
cancelled. A similar result would surely ensue if, today, Bush could press a
button and instantly implement his democratist panacea throughout the
region â thanks, in large part, to U.S. military intervention in Iraq and our
unconditional support to Israel.
The President then turns his Olympian gaze on Iraq, praises the Iraqi
Governing Council â even as the U.S. contemplates plans to ditch it â and
rallies his fellow revolutionaries around a long-term commitment of troops
and treasure:
"This is a massive and difficult undertaking â it is worth our effort, it is
worth our sacrifice, because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi
democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers
to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region.
Iraqi democracy will succeed â and that success will send forth the news,
from Damascus to Teheran â that freedom can be the future of every
nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will
be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution."
The idea that we must wait for the democratization of the Middle East
before we can even begin to recapture the safety of the pre-9/11 world is
ludicrous. Do we really have to conquer most of the rest of the earth
before we can ensure our own legitimate national security interests? This
is precisely what Trotsky theorized about the Soviet Union â that the
revolution must spread, to protect the "workers' state" from its implacable
enemies. The neocons are selling us the same sort of malarkey â using the
President as their mouthpiece â only this time packaged as 100 percent
Americanism.
That may be the biggest of the many lies we've been told lately. Nothing
could be more anti-American than a policy of perpetual war in the name of
"peace." What emboldens â and creates â terrorists is the neocon conceit
that we can stage manage the development of Iraqi society â or any
society. Such a policy subverts our constitutional form of democracy at
home, and undermines our interests abroad.
The great error of Marxism was the idea that liberal ends (the withering
away of the state) could be achieved by coercive means (the "dictatorship
of the proletariat"). There was to be a "transition period" of indeterminate
length before the workers paradise could be achieved, and Soviet workers
were continually exhorted to "sacrifice" so that they might "liberate" the
"oppressed peoples" abroad and usher in a new world order. If any of this
sounds familiar, it is because a Marxism of the Right has won the day in
Washington.
The conservative economist and columnist Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant
secretary of the treasury in the early years of the Reagan administration,
calls our neocon policymakers "neo-Jacobins," and he is entirely right to
compare the neocons to that ruthless and notoriously bloodthirsty faction
of the French Revolution. The name has become a synonym for
revolutionary tyranny, a dangerous perversion of the libertarian ideal into
its complete opposite. That is precisely the nature of the enemy we now
face.
In the case of the original Jacobins, their policies quickly led to their own
undoing. Whether we can hope the same fate will befall the neos, at least
any time soon, is a matter of some speculation that, lately, seems almost
likely. At any rate, we can always hope.
âJustin Raimondo
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