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the precarious character
of american ‘democracy’
The democratic rights we have in this country were won only through struggle. Since the time of the American Civil War, however, the enormous increase of wealth of the capitalists more and more made the United States a society democratic only in form.
Through their control of the two major political parties and their monopoly of the mass media, a few rich families continue to dominate this country’s politics. The foreign and domestic policies of the U.S. government are completely subservient to the interests of the capitalist class.
At times, the capitalists are able to grant a relative tolerance toward movements of the working class and oppressed people in this country. During these periods of tolerance, the ordinary mechanisms of achieving social stability are sufficient.
At other times, however, the capitalist class and its agents in the government must resort to a heightened repression. These repressive periods occur when the rising working-class movement must be beaten back (1877, 1886, 1894, 1919) or when foreign-policy crises make necessary a national mobilization and a suppression of dissent (1917-18, 1940-45, 1950-53, 1968-71).
Police Repression in the 1960s
The repressiveness of the late 1960s, when Black and radical organizations were systematically harassed and disrupted by agent provocateurs, was, therefore, not merely the result of an abuse of power by J. Edgar Hoover – as many liberals think. Hoover had the aid of “Red Squads” in some 500 cities and of a compliant establishment.
Between 1968 and 1971, 40 members of the Black Panther Party were killed by local police in raids instigated by the FBI. The FBI secretly reported in 1970 that the Black Panthers commanded “great respect” among 25 percent of all Blacks and 43 percent of Black youth.
Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was shot while sleeping in bed. Malcolm X was likewise spied on, harried, vilified – and ultimately assassinated.
The so-called New Left of the 1960s and 70s was also attacked at the behest of the FBI. Approximately 40 percent of “Cointelpro [FBI anti-radical] activity directed against the New Left was devoted to keeping left leaders from speaking, teaching, writing, or publishing.
With the end of the Black uprisings and of the Vietnam War, the period of harsh repression came to a close. The repressive machinery remains intact, however. Visitors to Nicaragua and Central American solidarity organizations are being subject to intimidation and spying by the FBI and other governmental agencies.
CIA Overthrows Governments
American capitalism’s use of repression has been most notable abroad. It has directly installed and propped up murderously brutal governments throughout the world. The process has gone on through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Among the democratically elected governments overthrown by the CIA with the aid of native agents were the governments of Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Brazil in 1964.
Among the bloody tyrants of the U.S. government supported with economic, military, and diplomatic aid have been the Somozas in Nicaragua, Chiang Kai-shek in China, the Shah in Iran, Park in South Korea, Suharto in Indonesia, Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile and Botha in South Africa.
In striving to avert revolution abroad by its interventions and support of repression, the U.S. government has betrayed the revolutionary principles of the country’s origin.
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness],” says the Declaration of Independence, “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles . . . as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
This statement affirms that revolution is an inherent right of all peoples, who may choose as they see fit the principles that are to be the foundations for their new government.
The right is “unalienable,” not to be denied by a superior power that claims it knows better what is good for the people exercising this right or that its own interests are being affected by their exercise of it. But it is not observed by U.S. governments of our time, whether in the case of a people that seeks to “alter” its government, as in Allende’s Chile, or to “abolish” it, as in revolutionary China.
“A Favorable Investment Climate”
Liberals have deplored U.S. support for repressive, corrupt regimes fighting against revolution. But why does the United States so consistently support them? It occurs too regularly to be just a series of mistakes, as liberals maintain. The answer is that the U.S. government wants a “favorable investment climate” and “stability” for U.S. business interests.
It is for this reason that, as Amnesty International has said, torture, primarily in the American client states, “has suddenly developed a life of its own and become a social cancer.” It is part of a system of repression that a native elite allied with foreign capitalism needs to maintain itself.
We may say that the freedoms in the United States today, limited as they are, are based on the lack of freedoms in the neo-colonial countries – just as ancient Greek democracy was based on the slaves it captured from neighboring countries. But these limited freedoms must contract as more neo-colonial countries free themselves.
Fascism and Big Business
Extreme repression has not been confined to the dependent capitalist countries but has occurred in some of the developed capitalist societies as well. Fascism, which bound German and Italian society in a totalitarian straightjacket, is the most brutally repressive of all forms of government in its systematic crushing of any independent forces.
Fascism is assumed when advanced capitalism is in a state of extreme crisis that makes impossible the usual forms of rule.
The Nuremberg trial record shows that the Nazis were financed by German big business – among others by the coal barons, the steel trust, the great chemical combine of I.G. Farben, the potash and rubber industries, and a number of leading banks.
The minutes of a secret meeting between the Nazi leaders and a score of leading business magnates have been preserved. Hitler told them that “private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy.”
On coming to power, the Nazis smashed the trade unions, giving these business empires unrestricted authority in the factories. The Nazis adopted a giant armaments program that contributed to their profits. Great numbers of trade unionists, Social Democrats, and Communists – the first victims of the Nazi state – were sent to Dachau, which was built for them.
German capitalism adopted fascism in desperation. It was threatened by working-class revolution. The capitalist class was in the position of a business firm that pays gangsters through the nose to break up a union and to menace its rivals.
Although the Third Reich did not endure for anything like the thousand years that Hitler rantingly predicted, the business empires of Krupp and I.G. Farben – which were shown in the Nuremberg trials to have worked captured slave laborers to death – have remained dominant in German society.
American capitalism did not turn to fascism, as German capitalism did. The United States had reserves upon which it could draw to ameliorate the situation during the Great Depression.
But there is no reason to expect that in a time of sharpened crisis the leaders of American capitalism will not choose fascism to preserve private enterprise.
In the meantime – even without the aid of fascist gangsters – they are tightening up restrictions on civil liberties.
A Socialist United States
True democracy can only be attained in this country by the United States becoming a socialist country in a socialist world.
A revolution in the United States will release its enormous productive capacity from the bonds of private ownership by giant corporations. Vital decisions affecting peoples lives will no longer be made by a small number of unelected and unaccountable persons who are concerned only with their own profits and not the common good.
A socialist United States will do away with the structural crises that characterize capitalism, when the capitalists attempt to restore profitability by throwing millions out of work. It will instead operate by a plan – democratically arrived at and democratically administered through direct participation of the workers – answering to the needs of society.
To carry out such planning, the key industries, banks, transportation, and communication media will be nationalized. The small farmers, merchants, and businessmen will be left free to determine whether they wish to remain as individual entrepreneurs or to join the socialist economy as participants rather than as auxiliaries.
The monopoly of the capitalists will not be replaced by a monopoly of a bureaucracy through a single-party state. Instead, organizations and parties will receive access to the different means of communication in accordance with an equitable arrangement democratically determined.
Debate and controversy will not end; indeed, they will be more intense and will draw every one into them. For socialism is not the negation of democracy but its fullest expression.
The above essay was written by Paul Siegel as part of a larger pamphlet, “Democracy in America: Fact and Fiction.” This pamphlet is available from Walnut Publishing and Socialist Action.
