for my generation, our parents lived through World War II;
out governments still wage wars;
I have not posted until now this evening because I attended a Duke's Playhouse showing of Nae Pasaran, a documentary film about Scottish workers boycotting Chilean fighter jet engines. (I was a student in Ireland then but, if I had been working and in a British trade union, I would have been asked to support those workers.)
Thus, fictional wars should remind us that wars are our present realities whether or not we are combatants.
25 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And Poul Anderson would not have automatically supported this boycott of manufacturing engines for the Chilean Air Force. He would have investigated the Chilean problem in depth, asking, among other questions, what was the most likely outcome to rule by the generals. I'm reasonably sure that if Anderson had concluded, absent the Pinochet coup, Chile would have become a client state dominated by the USSR, then he would not have supported the boycott.
Military dictatorship, as the UK found out itself during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, is always a bad way of settling internal quarrels by a nation. But sometimes the alternative to military rule is far worse. E.g., if the generals fall from power in Egypt, the most likey successor regime would be a fanatical Muslim Brotherhood theocracy. Vastly worse than rule by generals!
Sean
Sean,
Those planes bombed the Presidential Palace to overturn an election result. South Africa and Israel supported the Junta but a lot of liberals, leftists, Christians and other concerned people came together to oppose the massing killings and torture under the generals. An English Catholic woman, Sheila Cassidy, was tortured with electricity. A condition of her release was that she sign a statement that she had not been tortured. When she repudiated the statement, the Junta's Ambassador to Britain, a very undiplomatic military gentleman, called her "a moral coward." International pressure made the Junta exile, instead of executing, many Chileans. The British bureaucracy delayed some exiles' entry applications for months while checking on the exiles' political backgrounds with the Junta and the CIA. I would have backed the Scottish boycott while arguing for a democratic Chile free from all foreign interventions.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course I agree the pointless brutalities of the Junta was bad and discredited its rule. And my argument remains, what of the ALTERNATIVE if a Soviet dominated client state had emerged in Chile? You know very well ALL Communist regimes have been brutal. To say nothing of how a Soviet dominated Chile would have been used as a means of weakening the US (and, indirectly, the UK as well). Sometimes all you can do is accept a bad alternative because the other is even worse.
Sean
Sean,
What is the evidence that Chile would have become Russian-dominated?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I don't know. I would need to investigate that history myself. But the examples of Cuba and Soviet intrigues in Nicaragua and Grenada comes to mind. Rightly or wrongly, the US gov't had to ACT. The real world is never going to be as simple and clear cut as we would like. Sometimes leaders have to make unpleasant choices.
Sean
Sean,
The US might have either helped the Chilean economy or backed off from it instead of deliberately destabilizing it, paving the way for a coup? The US then recognized the Junta although that Junta had come to power by violently overthrowing a democracy, bombing the Presidential Palace. To say that brutalities discredited the Junta's rule implies that that rule would otherwise have been legitimate but it could not have been in the circumstances.
By enabling a coup, then recognizing the regime that enforced its rule by widespread torture and killings, how did the US behave any better than the Russians might have done? The Chileans could hardly have been told, "The generals, however bad, are protecting you from something worse."
Many people throughout the world want national independence from any foreign domination, whether military, political or economic. I support that campaign for independence - not one of the interfering superpowers as against its opponent.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Except super powers are a fact of human life and politics. And it's also a fact that some are better than others. The USSR is mercifully gone and its successor, the Russian Federation, is too weak to be a danger to more than it's unlucky near neighbors. But China is a very different matter and the regime in Peking is not only thuggishly brutal, but also has ambitions which will inevitably clash with the interests of the Us (and of India, for that matter!). So I expect the pattern to repeat itself: Peking will try to take over Country A, the US will respond by trying to thwart Chinese intrigues, up to and including sponsoring a coup. I don't see what else is possible, if you don't want China to become the global hegemon.
Sean
Sean,
The US's problem in Chile was that Allende nationalized copper.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that brings up another matter, nationalization (so called) is a stupid and counter productive idea which has never worked. Besides the injustice of the state confiscating other people's property, it brings in the absurd idea that politicians and bureaucrats know how to run mines, farms, fisheries, oil wells, shops, etc.
Sean
Sean,
Arguably so. I would want not bureaucratic nationalization but workers' control and cooperation with international solidarity to address human needs - as democratically defined by the people themselves, not by any controlling elite. However, the correct response to nationalization of an American-run industry in another country is surely not to facilitate a violent coup, then to recognize and support a murderous dictatorship? Maybe capitalists can find some way to respect and trade with socialized economies in other countries - rather than to persecute them and thus MAYBE drive them into the sphere of influence of a rival superpower? Meanwhile, the country in question should do its best to resist being dominated, whether economically or ideologically, by any superpower.
Paul.
Investors take risks. One such risk is that their holdings in another country will be expropriated, with or without compensation, when the government and/or people of that country decide on different priorities for production.
If the world divides into countries with market economies, others with command economies and a third group with democratic communal economies, will the three kinds of countries coexist peacefully? Almost certainly not for all sorts of reasons: conflicts of material interests compounded by philosophical disagreements and misunderstandings.
An additional argument against my view is the contention that democratic communal economies are unworkable and must collapse into command economies with some historical examples cited in support of this view but this is an issue that can be proved or disproved only in practice and the future of mankind still lies ahead of us - I hope.
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks for your two comments. But many caveats comes to mind. What exactly is meant by "workers control and cooperation" when it comes to running many different kinds of operations? How, concretely would this take form, legally? I have tried to point out the implausibility of workers who, after a long day on the factory floor, retail shop, fishing trawler, farm work, etc., etc., also spending similar amounts of time studying financial reports, market analyses, applications for job openings, etc. You are asking people to do different kinds of full time work, and it simply not going to happen that way.
Where will you get the CAPITAL needed for new businesses if the people who pony up the funds and take the risk of the investment failing don't own those businesses, either singly or as large numbers of stock owners?
As for Country A not being dominated by Superpowers B or C, that depends largely on how determined either superpower will be at getting A under its de facto control. To say nothing of how internal factions also plays a role.
Command economies have been tried over and over and they have never worked. As for partly "socialized" economies, they work on as long as the remnants of a free enterprise economy within its borders are allowed to function. As you may know, Sweden has been trying to roll this kind of system because of being more and more inefficient.
And what exactly is a "democratic communal economy"? I can't think of a single country which has or had such a thing.
Sean
Sean,
As I did once before, I made the mistake of replying by email to the email notification of your comment so that my reply did not appear here. I will first reproduce the reply that went by email, then add more in another comment. First:
No country has it yet although, as you say, there have been partial attempts. I don't know how a different system will work, certainly not in detail, only that the present world system is in transition and will change either for the better or the worse. What exists now is the wrong criterion for discussing what might be, as we know from sf. I hope you agree that US intervention in Chile was unfortunate.
Paul.
Sean,
A "democratic communal" system: workers elect committees to run workplaces and send delegates to local and regional councils and a national congress which is a large single-chamber legislature electing its own executive committee. The congress sets the priorities for production, including that no one is hungry or homeless. Details of production are managed by elected officials fully accountable and recallable. We call this "socialism" but you have insisted before that that word means only bureaucratic control and I wanted to avoid a merely terminological discussion so I invented another phrase. All these words have been used in different ways and become meaningless in the abstract.
But, whatever Allende intended, facilitating a coup, then supporting the Junta, was not a solution and not in the interests of Chileans.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I do say socialism is INEVITABLY bureaucratic because, in the scheme you outlined above, how can the politicians of the Congress even be able to set the "priorities" of the economy without INFORMATION? And that, just as inevitably, means depending on bureaucrats trying to collect the necessary data. And those bureaucrats will necessarily have to interpret and enforce the decrees of the Congress.
I simply don't believe any kind of political system can accurately determine by fiat how much wheat to grow or pairs of shoes to make. Nor can I see "workers" running businesses like a car factory or even a small bakery without a confusion of functions and purposes.
And I can agree that the anti-Allende coup in Chile was unfortunate, if Allende was not going to be eventually displaced by men taking their orders from Moscow.
Sean
Sean,
I agree that these ideas will seem unrealistic until, if ever, they are implemented.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Not merely implemented, SUCCEEDING. And I'm extremely skeptical, to say the least, that any economy which is not free enterprise oriented can succeed.
More than skeptical, in truth!
Sean
Sean,
I accept the amendment to "SUCCEEDING."
And now back to the other point. If the problem to be solved was how to safeguard American investment in Chilean copper, then facilitating a coup, then recognizing and supporting the Junta, was indeed the solution. It is possible to talk all around the issue without ever focusing on this to my mind crucial factor.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But, to me, the crucial point was whether or not Soviet agents or their catspaws were trying to use Allende as a useful front man for turning Chile into a Soviet client. If not, then I agree any US support for the Pinochet coup was unjustified. Any disputes about the copper industry should have been left to the courts, the diplomats, and the ordinary means used by nations for settling disputes.
Sean
Sean,
Should have been but weren't. How much of US foreign policy consists of maintaining US economic hegemony by force?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Not as often as some would say was the case! For a great power, the US has been more restrained than it might have been.
Sean
Sean,
But sometimes. And more often in some people's opinions than in yours. I think we can have a better world system but it can only be won through struggle. And reforming governments trying to improve the conditions of their own populations should not be suspected of acting as agents for Russia, China or whoever is the current rival superpower.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I do not expect anything better to arise any time soon. And, most likely, will result as a kind of frustrated compromise by contending powers who resign themselves to having to live with one another.
And any "reforms" will have to be REALISTIC about human beings to have any chance of succeeding. Yet another attempt at setting up "socialism" will fail and become either a stagnant dictatorship (as we see in Cuba) or collapse into chaos (as is happening now in Venezuela).
Sean
Sean,
If socialism is bound to collapse, then it should not, and need not, be helped to collapse by deliberate destabilization from outside.
Cuba needs to develop internal freedom without returning to pre-Castro corruption.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that is the basic policy of the US with Venezuela, no forceful intervention. No major powers has been intervening in the struggle between the Chavista regime and its opponents.
And corruption WILL happen in any political system, because that is simply how some human beings will behave. MY view is that a stable free enterprise economy and a limited state accepting restraints on its powers lessens the harm from such corruption.
Sean
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