       D.9 Why does political power become concentrated under capitalism?

   Under capitalism, political power tends to become concentrated in the
   executive branch of government, along with a corresponding decline in
   the effectiveness of parliamentary institutions. As Kropotkin discussed
   in his account of "Representative Government," parliaments grew out of
   the struggle of capitalists against the power of centralised monarchies
   during the early modern period. This meant that the function of
   parliaments was to check and control the exercise of executive power
   when it was controlled by another class (namely the aristocracy and
   landlords). The role of Parliaments flourished and reached the peak of
   their prestige in the struggle against the monarchy and immediately
   afterwards.

   With the end of absolute monarchy, legislatures become battlegrounds of
   contending parties, divided by divergent class and group interests.
   This reduces their capacity for positive action, particularly when
   struggle outside parliament is pressurising representatives to take
   some interest in public concerns. The ruling class also needs a strong
   centralised state that can protect its interests internally and
   externally and which can ignore both popular demands and the vested
   interests of specific sections of the dominant economic and social
   elites in order to pursue policies required to keep the system as a
   whole going. This means that there will be a tendency for Parliaments
   to give up its prerogatives, building up a centralised and uncontrolled
   authority in the form of an empowered executive against which,
   ironically, it had fought against at its birth.

   This process can be seen clearly in the history of the United States.
   Since World War II, power has become centralised in the hands of the
   president to such an extent that some scholars now refer to an
   "imperial presidency," following Arthur Schlesinger's 1973 book of that
   title. In the UK, Prime Minister Tony Blair has been repeatedly
   criticised for his "presidential" form of government, while Parliament
   has been repeatedly side-tracked. This builds on tendencies which flow
   back to, at least, the Thatcher government which started the
   neo-liberal transformation of the UK with its associated rise in
   inequality, social polarisation and increases in state centralisation
   and authority.

   Contemporary US presidents' appropriation of congressional authority,
   especially in matters relating to national security, has paralleled the
   rise of the United States as the world's strongest and most
   imperialistic military power. In the increasingly dangerous and
   interdependent world of the 20th century, the perceived need for a
   leader who can act quickly and decisively, without possibly disastrous
   obstruction by Congress, has provided an impetus for ever greater
   concentration of power in the White House. This concentration has taken
   place in both foreign and domestic policy, but it has been catalysed
   above all by a series of foreign policy decisions in which modern US
   presidents have seized the most vital of all government powers, the
   power to make war. For example, President Truman decided to commit
   troops in Korea without prior congressional approval while the
   Eisenhower Administration established a system of pacts and treaties
   with nations all over the globe, making it difficult for Congress to
   limit the President's deployment of troops according to the
   requirements of treaty obligations and national security, both of which
   were left to presidential judgement. The CIA, a secretive agency
   accountable to Congress only after the fact, was made the primary
   instrument of US intervention in the internal affairs of other nations
   for national security reasons. This process of executive control over
   war reached a peak post-911, with Bush's nonsense of a "pre-emptive"
   war and public acknowledgement of a long standing US policy that the
   Commander-in-Chief was authorised to take "defensive" war measures
   without congressional approval or UN authorisation.

   And as they have continued to commit troops to war without
   congressional authorisation or genuine public debate, the President's
   unilateral policy-making has spilled over into domestic affairs as
   well. Most obviously, thanks to Bush I and Clinton, important economic
   treaties (like GATT and NAFTA) can be rammed through Congress as
   "fast-track" legislation, which limits the time allowed for debate and
   forbids amendments. Thanks to Jimmy Carter, who reformed the Senior
   Executive Service to give the White House more control over career
   bureaucrats, and Ronald Reagan, who politicised the upper levels of the
   executive branch to an unprecedented degree, presidents can now pack
   government with their spoilsmen and reward partisan bureaucrats (the
   lack of response by FEMA during the Katrina hurricane is an example of
   this). Thanks to the first Bush, presidents now have a powerful new
   technique to enhance presidential prerogatives and erode the intent of
   Congress even further -- namely, signing laws while announcing that
   they will not obey them. Fifth, thanks also to Bush, yet another new
   instrument of arbitrary presidential power has been created: the
   "tsar," a presidential appointee with vague, sweeping charges that
   overlap with or supersede the powers of department heads. [Michael
   Lind, "The Case for Congressional Power: the Out-of-Control
   Presidency," The New Republic, Aug. 14, 1995]

   Thus we find administrations bypassing or weakening official government
   agencies or institutions to implement policies that are not officially
   permitted. In the US, the Reagan Administration's Iran-Contra affair is
   an example. During that episode the National Security Council, an arm
   of the executive branch, secretly funded the Contras, a mercenary
   counter-revolutionary force in Central America, in direct violation of
   the Boland Amendment which Congress had passed for the specific purpose
   of prohibiting such funding. Then there is the weakening of government
   agencies to the point where they can no longer effectively carry out
   their mandate. Reagan's tenure in the White House again provides a
   number of examples. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance,
   was for all practical purposes neutralised when employees dedicated to
   genuine environmental protection were removed and replaced with people
   loyal to corporate polluters. Such detours around the law are
   deliberate policy tools that allow presidents to exercise much more
   actual power than they appear to have on paper. Finally, the
   President's authority to determine foreign and domestic policy through
   National Security Directives that are kept secret from Congress and the
   American people. Such NSDs cover a virtually unlimited field of
   actions, shaping policy that may be radically different from what is
   stated publicly by the White House and involving such matters as
   interference with First Amendment rights, initiation of activities that
   could lead to war, escalation of military conflicts, and even the
   commitment of billions of dollars in loan guarantees -- all without
   congressional approval or even knowledge.

   President Clinton's use of an Executive Order to bail out Mexico from
   its debt crisis after Congress failed to appropriate the money falls
   right into the authoritarian tradition of running the country by fiat,
   a process which accelerated with his successor George Bush (in keeping
   with the general tendencies of Republican administrations in
   particular). The second Bush took this disdain for democracy and the
   law even further. His administration has tried to roll back numerous
   basic liberties and rights as well. He has sought to strip people
   accused of crimes of rights that date as far back as the Magna Carta in
   Anglo-American jurisprudence: elimination of presumption of innocence,
   keeping suspects in indefinite imprisonment, ending trial by impartial
   jury, restricting access to lawyers and knowledge of evidence and
   charges against the accused. He has regularly stated when signing
   legislation that he will assert the right to ignore those parts of laws
   with which he disagrees. His administration has adopted policies which
   have ignored the Geneva Convention (labelled as "quaint") and publicly
   tolerated torture of suspects and prisoners of war. That this
   underlying authoritarianism of politicians is often belied by their
   words should go without saying (an obvious fact, somehow missed by the
   mainstream media, which made satire redundant in the case the second
   Bush).

   Not that this centralisation of powers has bothered the representatives
   whom are being disempowered by it. Quite the reverse. This is
   unsurprising, for under a leader which "guarantees 'order' -- that is
   to say internal exploitation and external expansion -- than the
   parliament submits to all his caprices and arms him with ever new
   powers . . . That is understandable: all government has tendency to
   become personal since that is its origin and its essence . . . it will
   always search for the man on whom it can unload the cares of government
   and to whom in turn it will submit. As long as we confide to a small
   group all the economic, political, military, financial and industrial
   prerogatives with which we arm them today, this small group will
   necessarily be inclined . . . to submit to a single chief." [Kropotkin,
   Op. Cit., p. 128] As such, there are institutional forces at work
   within the government organisational structure which encourage these
   tendencies and as long as they find favour with business interests they
   will not be challenged.

   This is a key factor, of course. If increased authoritarianism and
   concentration of decision making were actually harming the interests of
   the economically dominant elite then more concern would be expressed
   about them in what passes for public discourse. However, the reduction
   of democratic processes fits in well with the neo-liberal agenda (and,
   indeed, this agenda dependent on it). As Chomsky notes, "democracy
   reduces to empty form" when the votes of the general public votes no
   impact or role in determining economic and social development. In other
   words, "neoliberal reforms are antithetical to promotion of democracy.
   They are not designed to shrink the state, as often asserted, but to
   strengthen state institutions to serve even more than before the needs
   of the substantial people." This has seen "extensive gerrymandering to
   prevent competition for seats in the House, the most democratic of
   government institutions and therefore the most worrisome," while
   congress has been "geared to implementing the pro-business policies"
   and the White House has been reconstructed into top-down systems, in a
   similar way to that of a corporation ("In structure, the political
   counterpart to a corporation is a totalitarian state.") [Op. Cit., p.
   218, p. 237 and p. 238]

   The aim is to exclude the general politic from civil society, creating
   Locke's system of rule by property owners only. As one expert (and
   critic) on Locke argues in his scheme, the "labouring class, being
   without estate, are subject to, but not full members of civil society"
   and the "right to rule (more accurately, the right to control any
   government) is given to men of estate only." The working class will be
   in but not part of civil society in the same way that they are in but
   not part of a company. The labouring class may do the actual work in a
   capitalist firm, but they "cannot take part in the operation of the
   company at the same level as the owners." Thus the ideal (classical)
   "liberal" state is a "joint-stock company of owners whose majority
   decision binds not only themselves but also their employees." [C. B.
   MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, p. 248,
   p. 249 and p. 251] The aim of significant sections of the right and the
   ruling class is to achieve this goal within the context of a nominally
   democratic state which, on paper, allows significant civil liberties
   but which, in practice, operates like a corporation. Liberty for the
   many will be reduced to market forms, the ability to buy and sell,
   within the rules designed by and for the property owners. Centralised
   state power within an overall authoritarian social culture is the best
   way to achieve this aim.

   It should be stressed that the rise of inequality and centralised state
   power has came about by design, not by accident. Both trends delight
   the rich and the right, whose aim has always been to exclude the
   general population from the public sphere, eliminate taxation on wealth
   and income derived from owning it and roll back the limited reforms the
   general population have won over the years. In his book
   Post-Conservative America Kevin Phillips, one of the most knowledgeable
   and serious conservative ideologues, discusses the possibility of
   fundamental alterations that he regards as desirable in the US
   government. His proposals leave no doubt about the direction in which
   the Right wishes to proceed. "Governmental power is too diffused to
   make difficult and necessary economic and technical decisions,"
   Phillips maintains. "[A]ccordingly, the nature of that power must be
   re-thought. Power at the federal level must be augmented, and lodged
   for the most part in the executive branch." [p. 218] He assures us that
   all the changes he envisions can be accomplished without altering the
   Constitution.

   As one moderate British Conservative MP has documented, the
   "free-market" Conservative Thatcher government of the 1980s increased
   centralisation of power and led a sustained "assault on local
   government." One key reason was "dislike of opposition" which applied
   to "intermediate institutions" between the individual and the state.
   These "were despised and disliked because they got in the way of
   'free-market forces' . . . and were liable to disagree with Thatcherite
   policies." Indeed, they simply abolished elected local governments
   (like the Greater London Council) which were opposed to the policies of
   the central government. They controlled the rest by removing their
   power to raise their own funds, which destroyed their local autonomy.
   The net effect of neo-liberal reforms was that Britain became "ever
   more centralised" and local government was "fragmenting and weakening."
   [Dancing with Dogma, p. 261, p. 262 and p. 269]

   This reversal of what, traditionally, conservatives and even liberals
   had argued had its roots in the "free market" capitalist ideology. For
   "[n]othing is to stand in the way of the free market, and no such
   fripperies as democratic votes are to be allowed to upset it. The
   unadulterated free market is unalterable, and those who dislike it or
   suffer from it must learn to put up with it. In Rousseau's language,
   they must be forced to be free." as such there was "no paradox" to the
   "Thatcherite devotion to both the free market and a strong state" as
   the "establishment of individualism and a free-market state is an
   unbending if not dictatorial venture which demands the prevention of
   collective action and the submission of dissenting institutions and
   individuals." Thus rhetoric about "liberty" and rolling back the state
   can easily be "combined in practice with centralisation and the
   expansion of the state's frontiers." [Op. Cit., pp. 273-4 and p. 273] A
   similar process occurred under Reagan in America.

   As Chomsky stresses, the "antidemocratic thrust has precedents, of
   course, but is reaching new heights" under the current set of
   "reactionary statists" who "are dedicated warriors. With consistency
   and passion that approach caricature, their policies serve the serve
   the substantial people -- in fact, an unusually narrow sector of them
   -- and disregard or harm the underlying population and future
   generations. They are also seeking to use their current opportunities
   to institutionalise these arrangements, so that it will be no small
   task to reconstruct a more humane and democratic society." [Op. Cit.,
   p. 238 and p. 236] As we noted in [1]section D.1, the likes of Reagan,
   Thatcher and Bush do not appear by accident. They and the policies they
   implement reflect the interests of significant sectors of the ruling
   elite and their desires. These will not disappear if different, more
   progressive sounding, politicians are elected. Nor will the nature of
   the state machine and its bureaucracy, nor will the workings and needs
   of the capitalist economy.

   This helps explains why the distinctions between the two major parties
   in the US have been, to a large extent, virtually obliterated. Each is
   controlled by the corporate elite, albeit by different factions within
   it. Despite many tactical and verbal disagreements, virtually all
   members of this elite share a basic set of principles, attitudes,
   ideals, and values. Whether Democrat or Republican, most of them have
   graduated from the same Ivy League schools, belong to the same
   exclusive social clubs, serve on the same interlocking boards of
   directors of the same major corporations, and send their children to
   the same private boarding schools (see G. William Domhoff, Who Rules
   America Now? and C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite). Perhaps most
   importantly, they share the same psychology, which means that they have
   the same priorities and interests: namely, those of corporate America.
   That the Democrats are somewhat more dependent and responsive to
   progressive working class people while the Republicans are beholden to
   the rich and sections of the religious right come election time should
   not make us confuse rhetoric with the reality of policies pursued and
   underlying common assumptions and interests.

   This means that in the USA there is really only one party -- the
   Business Party -- which wears two different masks to hide its real face
   from the public. Similar remarks apply to the liberal democratic
   regimes in the rest of the advanced capitalist states. In the UK,
   Blair's "New Labour" has taken over the mantle of Thatcherism and have
   implemented policies based on its assumptions. Unsurprisingly, it
   received the backing of numerous right-wing newspapers as well as
   funding from wealthy individuals. In other words, the UK system has
   mutated into a more US style one of two Business parties one of which
   gets more trade union support than the other (needless to say, it is
   unlikely that Labour will be changing its name to "Capital" unless
   forced to by the trading standards office nor does it look likely that
   the trade union bureaucracy will reconsider their funding in spite of
   the fact New Labour simply ignored them when not actually attacking
   them!). The absence of a true opposition party, which itself is a main
   characteristic of authoritarian regimes, is thus an accomplished fact
   already, and has been so for many years.

   Besides the reasons noted above, another cause of increasing political
   centralisation under capitalism is that industrialisation forces masses
   of people into alienated wage slavery, breaking their bonds to other
   people, to the land, and to tradition, which in turn encourages strong
   central governments to assume the role of surrogate parent and to
   provide direction for their citizens in political, intellectual, moral,
   and even spiritual matters. (see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of
   Totalitarianism). And as Marilyn French emphasises in Beyond Power, the
   growing concentration of political power in the capitalist state can
   also be attributed to the form of the corporation, which is a microcosm
   of the authoritarian state, since it is based on centralised authority,
   bureaucratic hierarchy, antidemocratic controls, and lack of individual
   initiative and autonomy. Thus the millions of people who work for large
   corporations tend automatically to develop the psychological traits
   needed to survive and "succeed" under authoritarian rule: notably,
   obedience, conformity, efficiency, subservience, and fear of
   responsibility. The political system naturally tends to reflect the
   psychological conditions created at the workplace, where most people
   spend about half their time.

   Reviewing such trends, Marxist Ralph Miliband concludes that "it points
   in the direction of a regime in which democratic forms have ceased to
   provide effective constraints upon state power." The "distribution of
   power" will become "more unequal" and so "[h]owever strident the
   rhetoric of democracy and popular sovereignty may be, and despite the
   'populist' overtones which politics must now incorporate, the trend is
   toward the ever-greater appropriation of power at the top." [Divided
   Societies, p. 166 and p. 204] As such, this reduction in genuine
   liberty, democracy and growth in executive power does not flow simply
   from the intentions of a few bad apples. Rather, they reflect economic
   developments, the needs of the system as a whole plus the pressures
   associated with the way specific institutions are structured and
   operate as well as the need to exclude, control and marginalise the
   general population. Thus while we can struggle and resist specific
   manifestations of this process, we need to fight and eliminate their
   root causes within capitalism and statism themselves if we want to turn
   them back and, eventually, end them.

   This increase in centralised and authoritarian rule may not result in
   obvious elimination of such basic rights as freedom of speech. However,
   this is due to the success of the project to reduce genuine freedom and
   democracy rather than its failure. If the general population are
   successfully marginalised and excluded from the public sphere (i.e.
   turned into Locke's system of being within but not part of a society)
   then a legal framework which recognises civil liberties would still be
   maintained. That most basic liberties would remain relatively intact
   and that most radicals will remain unmolested would be a testimony to
   the lack of power possessed by the public at large in the existing
   system. That is, countercultural movements need not be a concern to the
   government until they become broader-based and capable of challenging
   the existing socio-economic order -- only then is it "necessary" for
   the repressive, authoritarian forces to work on undermining the
   movement. So long as there is no effective organising and no threat to
   the interests of the ruling elite, people are permitted to say whatever
   they want. This creates the illusion that the system is open to all
   ideas, when, in fact, it is not. But, as the decimation of the Wobblies
   and anarchist movement after the First World War first illustrated, the
   government will seek to eradicate any movement that poses a significant
   threat.

D.9.1 What is the relationship between wealth polarisation and authoritarian
government?

   We have previously noted the recent increase in the rate of wealth
   polarisation, with its erosion of working-class living standards (see
   [2]section B.7). This process has been referred to by Noam Chomsky as
   "Third-Worldisation." It is appearing in a particularly acute form in
   the US -- the "richest" industrialised nation which also has the
   highest level of poverty, since it is the most polarised -- but the
   process can be seen in other "advanced" industrial nations as well,
   particularly in the UK. As neo-liberalism has spread, so has inequality
   soared.

   Third World governments are typically authoritarian, since harsh
   measures are required to suppress rebellions among their impoverished
   and discontented masses. Hence "Third-Worldisation" implies not only
   economic polarisation but also increasingly authoritarian governments.
   As Philip Slater puts it, a large, educated, and alert "middle class"
   (i.e. average income earners) has always been the backbone of
   democracy, and anything that concentrates wealth tends to weaken
   democratic institutions. [A Dream Deferred, p. 68] This analysis is
   echoed by left-liberal economist James K. Galbraith:

     "As polarisation of wages, incomes and wealth develops, the common
     interests and common social programs of society fall into decline.
     We have seen this too, in this country over thirty years, beginning
     with the erosion of public services and public investments,
     particularly in the cities, with the assault on the poor and on
     immigrants and the disabled that led to the welfare bill of 1996,
     and continuing now manufactured crises of Medicare and the social
     security system. The haves are on the march. With growing
     inequality, so grows their power. And so also diminish the voices of
     solidarity and mutual reinforcement, the voices of civil society,
     the voices of a democratic and egalitarian middle class." [Created
     Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, p. 265]

   If this is true, then along with increasing wealth polarisation in the
   US we should expect to see signs of growing authoritarianism. This
   hypothesis is confirmed by numerous facts, including the following:
   continuing growth of an "imperial presidency" (concentration of
   political power); extralegal operations by the executive branch (e.g.
   the Iran-Contra scandal, the Grenada and Panama invasions);
   skyrocketing incarceration rates; more official secrecy and censorship;
   the rise of the Far Right; more police and prisons; FBI requests for
   massive wiretapping capability; and so on. Public support for draconian
   measures to deal with crime reflect the increasingly authoritarian mood
   of citizens beginning to panic in the face of an ongoing social
   breakdown, which has been brought about, quite simply, by ruling-class
   greed that has gotten out of hand -- a fact that is carefully obscured
   by the media. The 911 attacks have been used to bolster these
   authoritarian trends, as would be expected.

   One might think that representative democracy and constitutionally
   guaranteed freedoms would make an authoritarian government impossible
   in the United States and other liberal democratic nations with similar
   constitutional "protections" for civil rights. In reality, however, the
   declaration of a "national emergency" would allow the central
   government to ignore constitutional guarantees with impunity and set up
   what Hannah Arendt calls "invisible government" -- mechanisms allowing
   an administration to circumvent constitutional structures while leaving
   them nominally in place. The erosion of civil liberties and increase in
   state powers post-911 in both the US and UK should show that such
   concerns are extremely valid.

   In response to social breakdown or "terrorism," voters may turn to
   martial-style leaders (aided by the media). Once elected, and with the
   support of willing legislatures and courts, administrations could
   easily create much more extensive mechanisms of authoritarian
   government than already exist, giving the executive branch virtually
   dictatorial powers. Such administrations could escalate foreign
   militarism, further expand the funding and scope of the police,
   national guard units, secret police and foreign intelligence agencies,
   and authorise more widespread surveillance of citizens as well as the
   infiltration of dissident political groups (all of which happened in
   post-911 America). There would be a corresponding rise of government
   secrecy (as "popular understanding of the workings of government is not
   conducive to instilling proper reverence for powerful leaders and their
   nobility." [Chomsky, Failed States, p.238]). These developments would
   not occur all at once, but so gradually, imperceptibly, and logically
   -- given the need to maintain "law and order" -- that most people would
   not even be aware that an authoritarian take-over was underway. Indeed,
   there is substantial evidence that this is already underway in the US
   (see Friendly Fascism by Bertram Gross for details).

   We will examine some of the symptoms of growing authoritarianism listed
   above, again referring primarily to the example of the United States.
   The general trend has been a hollowing out of even the limited
   democratic structures associated with representative states in favour
   of a purely formal appearance of elections which are used to justify
   ignoring the popular will, authoritarianism and "top-down" rule by the
   executive. While these have always been a feature of the state (and
   must be, if it is to do its function as we discussed in [3]section B.2)
   the tendencies are increasing and should be of concern for all those
   who seek to protect, never mind, expand what human rights and civil
   liberties we have. While anarchists have no illusions about the nature
   of even so-called democratic states, we are not indifferent to the form
   of state we have to endure and how it changes. As Malatesta put it:

     "there is no doubt that the worst of democracies is always
     preferable, if only from an educational point of view, than the best
     of dictatorships. Of course democracy, so-called government of the
     people, is a lie; but the lie always slightly binds the liar and
     limits the extent of his arbitrary power . . . Democracy is a lie,
     it is oppression and is in reality, oligarchy; that is, government
     by the few to the advantage of a privileged class. But we can still
     fight it in the name of freedom and equality, unlike those who have
     replaced it or want to replace it with something worse." [The
     Anarchist Revolution, p. 77]

   We must stress that as long as governments exist, then this struggle
   against authoritarianism will continue. As Kropotkin argued, these
   tendencies "do not depend on individuals; they are inherent in the
   institution." We must always remember that "[o]f its own accord,
   representative government does not offer real liberties, and it can
   accommodate itself remarkably well to despotism. Freedoms have to be
   seized from it, as much as they do from absolute kings; and once they
   have been gained they must be defended against parliament as much as
   they were against a king." [Words of a Rebel, p. 137 and p. 123]

   So we cannot assume that legal rights against and restrictions on state
   or economic power are enough in themselves. Liberty needs to be
   continually defended by the mass of the population who cannot leave it
   to others to act for them. "If we want . . . to leave the gates wide
   open to reaction," Kropotkin put it, "we have only to confide our
   affairs to a representative government." Only "extra-parliamentary
   agitation" will stop the state "imping[ing] continually on the
   country's political rights" or "suppress[ing] them with a strike of the
   pen." The state must always "find itself faced by a mass of people
   ready to rebel." [Op. Cit. p. 129 and p. 124]

D.9.2 Why is government surveillance of citizens on the increase?

   Authoritarian governments are characterised by fully developed secret
   police forces, extensive government surveillance of civilians, a high
   level of official secrecy and censorship, and an elaborate system of
   state coercion to intimidate and silence dissenters. All of these
   phenomena have existed in the US since suppression of the anarchist
   inspired No-Conscription League and the IWW for its unionising and
   anti-war activity. The post-World War I Red Scare and Palmer raids
   continued this process of wartime jailings and intimidation, combined
   with the deportation of aliens (the arrest, trial and subsequent
   deportation of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman is but one example of
   this war on radicals). [Howard Zinn, A People's History of America, pp.
   363-7]

   However, since World War II these systems have taken more extreme
   forms, especially during the 1980s and 2000s. Indeed, one of the most
   disturbing revelations to emerge from the Iran-Contra affair was the
   Reagan administration's contingency plan for imposing martial law.
   Alfonso Chardy, a reporter for the Miami Herald, revealed in July 1987
   that Lt. Col. Oliver North, while serving on the National Security
   Council's staff, had worked with the Federal Emergency Management
   Agency on a plan to suspend the Bill of Rights by imposing martial law
   in the event of "national opposition to a US military invasion abroad."
   [Richard O. Curry (ed.), Freedom at Risk: Secrecy, Censorship, and
   Repression in the 1980s] However, this rise in authoritarian-style
   government policies is not limited to just possibilities and so in this
   section we will examine the operations of the secret police in the USA
   since the 1950s. First, however, we must stress that these tendencies
   are hardly US specific. For example, the secret services in the UK have
   regularly spied on left-wing groups as well as being heavily involved
   in undermining the 1984-5 Miners strike. [S. Milne, The Enemy Within]

   The creation of an elaborate US "national security" apparatus has come
   about gradually since 1945 through congressional enactments, numerous
   executive orders and national security directives, and a series of
   Supreme Court decisions that have eroded First Amendment rights. The
   policies of the Reagan administration, however, reflected radical
   departures from the past, as revealed not only by their comprehensive
   scope but by their institutionalisation of secrecy, censorship, and
   repression in ways that will be difficult, if not impossible, to
   eradicate. As Richard Curry points out, the Reagan administration's
   success stems "from major structural and technological changes that
   have occurred in American society during the twentieth century --
   especially the emergence of the modern bureaucratic State and the
   invention of sophisticated electronic devices that make surveillance
   possible in new and insidious ways." [Op. Cit., p. 4]

   The FBI has used "countersubversive" surveillance techniques and kept
   lists of people and groups judged to be potential national security
   threats since the days of the Red Scare in the 1920s. Such activities
   were expanded in the late 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt instructed the
   FBI to gather information about Fascist and Communist activities in the
   US and to conduct investigations into possible espionage and sabotage
   (although for most of the 1920s and 1930s, fascists and fascist
   sympathisers were, at best, ignored and, at worse, publicly praised
   while anti-fascists like anarchist Carol Tresca were spied on and
   harassed by the authorities. [Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca]). FBI
   chief J. Edgar Hoover interpreted these directives as authorising
   open-ended inquiries into a very broad category of potential
   "subversives"; and by repeatedly misinforming a succession of careless
   or indifferent presidents and attorneys general about the precise scope
   of Roosevelt's directives, Hoover managed for more than 30 years to
   elicit tacit executive approval for continuous FBI investigations into
   an ever-expanding class of political dissidents. [Geoffrey R. Stone,
   "The Reagan Administration, the First Amendment, and FBI Domestic
   Security Investigations," Curry (ed.), Op. Cit.]

   The advent of the Cold War, ongoing conflicts with the Soviet Union,
   and fears of the "international Communist conspiracy" provided
   justification not only for covert CIA operations and American military
   intervention in countries all over the globe, but also contributed to
   the FBI's rationale for expanding its domestic surveillance activities.
   Thus in 1957, without authorisation from Congress or any president,
   Hoover launched a highly secret operation called COINTELPRO:

     "From 1957 to 1974, the bureau opened investigative files on more
     than half a million 'subversive' Americans. In the course of these
     investigations, the bureau, in the name of 'national security,'
     engaged in widespread wire-tapping, bugging, mail-openings, and
     break-ins. Even more insidious was the bureau's extensive use of
     informers and undercover operative to infiltrate and report on the
     activities and membership of 'subversive' political associations
     ranging from the Socialist Workers Party to the NAACP to the Medical
     Committee for Human Rights to a Milwaukee Boy Scout troop." [Stone,
     Op. Cit., p. 274]

   But COINTELPRO involved much more than just investigation and
   surveillance. As Chomsky notes, it was "one of its major programs of
   repression" and was used to discredit, weaken, and ultimately destroy
   the New Left and Black radical movements of the sixties and early
   seventies, i.e. to silence the major sources of political dissent and
   opposition. It's aim was to "disrupt" a wide range of popular movements
   "by instigating violence in the ghetto, direct participation in police
   assassination of a Black Panther organiser, burglaries and harassment
   of the Socialist Workers Party over many years, and other methods of
   defamation and disruption." [Necessary Illusions, p. 189]

   The FBI fomented violence through the use of agents provocateurs and
   destroyed the credibility of movement leaders by framing them, bringing
   false charges against them, distributing offensive materials published
   in their name, spreading false rumours, sabotaging equipment, stealing
   money, and other dirty tricks. By such means the Bureau exacerbated
   internal frictions within movements, turning members against each other
   as well as other groups. For example, during the civil rights movement,
   while the government was making concessions and verbally supporting the
   movement, the FBI was harassing and breaking up black groups. Between
   1956 and 1971, the FBI took 295 actions against black groups as part of
   COLINTELPRO. [Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 455]

   Government documents show the FBI and police involved in creating
   acrimonious disputes which ultimately led to the break-up of such
   groups as Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party,
   and the Liberation News Service. The Bureau also played a part in the
   failure of such groups to form alliances across racial, class, and
   regional lines. The FBI is implicated in the assassination of Malcolm
   X, who was killed in a "factional dispute" that the Bureau bragged of
   having "developed" in the Nation of Islam. Martin Luther King, Jr., was
   the target of an elaborate FBI plot to drive him to suicide before he
   was conveniently killed by a lone sniper. Other radicals were portrayed
   as "Communists", criminals, adulterers, or government agents, while
   still others were murdered in phoney "shoot-outs" where the only
   shooting was done by the police.

   These activities finally came to public attention because of the
   Watergate investigations, congressional hearings, and information
   obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In response to
   the revelations of FBI abuse, Attorney General Edward Levi in 1976 set
   forth a set of public guidelines governing the initiation and scope of
   the bureau's domestic security investigations, severely restricting its
   ability to investigate political dissidents.

   The Levi guidelines, however, proved to be only a temporary reversal of
   the trend. Although throughout his presidency Ronald Reagan professed
   to be against the increase of state power in regard to domestic policy,
   he in fact expanded the power of the national bureaucracy for "national
   security" purposes in systematic and unprecedented ways. One of the
   most significant of these was his immediate elimination of the
   safeguards against FBI abuse that the Levi guidelines had been designed
   to prevent. This was accomplished through two interrelated executive
   branch initiatives: Executive Order 12333, issued in 1981, and Attorney
   General William French Smith's guidelines, which replaced Levi's in
   1983. The Smith guidelines permitted the FBI to launch domestic
   security investigations if the facts "reasonably indicated" that groups
   or individuals were involved in criminal activity. More importantly,
   however, the new guidelines also authorised the FBI to "anticipate or
   prevent crime." As a result, the FBI could now investigate groups or
   individuals whose statements "advocated" criminal activity or indicated
   an apparent intent to engage in crime, particularly crimes of violence.

   As Curry notes, the language of the Smith guidelines provided FBI
   officials with sufficient interpretative latitude to investigate
   virtually any group or individual it chose to target, including
   political activists who opposed the administration's foreign policy.
   Not surprisingly, under the new guidelines the Bureau immediately began
   investigating a wide variety of political dissidents, quickly making up
   for the time it had lost since 1976. Congressional sources show that in
   1985 alone the FBI conducted 96 investigations of groups and
   individuals opposed to the Reagan Administration's Central American
   policies, including religious organisations who expressed solidarity
   with Central American refugees.

   Since the 1980s, the state has used the threat of "terrorism" (both
   domestic and international) to bolster its means of repression. The aim
   has been to allow the President, on his own initiative and by his own
   definition, to declare any person or organisation "terrorist" and so
   eliminate any rights they may, in theory, have. The 911 attacks were
   used to pass in effect a "wish-list" (in the form of the PATRIOT act)
   of measures long sought by both the secret state and the right but
   which they had difficulty in passing previously due to public scrutiny.
   Post-911, as after the Oklahoma bombing, much opposition was muted
   while those that did raise their voices were dismissed as, at best,
   naive or, at worse, pro-terrorist.

   Post-911, presidential rulings are considered as conclusive while the
   Attorney General was handed new enforcement powers, e.g. suspects would
   be considered guilty unless proven innocent, and the source or nature
   of the evidence brought against suspects would not have to be revealed
   if the Justice Department claimed a "national security" interest in
   suppressing such facts, as of course it would. Security agencies were
   given massive new powers to gather information on and act against
   suspected "terrorists" (i.e., any enemy of the state, dissident or
   critic of capitalism). As intended, the ability to abuse these powers
   is staggering. They greatly increased the size and funding of the FBI
   and gave it the power to engage in "anti-terrorist" activities all over
   the country, without judicial oversight. Unsurprisingly, during the
   run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, the anti-war movement was targeted
   with these new powers of surveillance. That the secret state, for
   example, seriously argued that potential "terrorists" could exist
   within Quaker peace groups says it all. Unsurprisingly, given the
   history of the secret state the new measures were turned against the
   Left, as COINTELPRO and similar laws were in the past.

   If, as the Bush Administration continually asserted, the terrorists
   hate the west for our freedoms (rather than their self-proclaimed
   hatred of US foreign policy) then that government is the greatest
   appeaser the world has ever seen (not to mention the greatest
   recruiting agent they ever had). It has done more to undermine freedom
   and increase state power (along with the threat of terrorism) that the
   terrorists ever dreamed. However, it would be a mistake to draw the
   conclusion that it is simply incompetence, arrogance and ignorance
   which was at work (tempting as that may be). Rather, there are
   institutional factors at work as well (a fact that becomes obvious when
   looking at the history of the secret state and its activities). The
   fact that such draconian measures were even considered says volumes
   about the direction in which the US -- and by implication the other
   "advanced" capitalist states -- are headed.

D.9.3 What causes justifications for racism to appear?

   The tendency toward social breakdown which is inherent in the growth of
   wealth polarisation, as discussed above, is also producing a growth in
   racism in the countries affected. As we have seen, social breakdown
   leads to the increasingly authoritarian government prompted by the need
   of the ruling class to contain protest and civil unrest among those at
   the bottom of the wealth pyramid. In the US those in the lowest
   economic strata belong mostly to racial minorities, while in several
   European countries there are growing populations of impoverished
   minorities from the Third World, often from former colonies. The desire
   of the more affluent strata to justify their superior economic
   positions is, as one would expect, causing racially based theories of
   privilege to become more popular.

   That racist feelings are gaining strength in America is evidenced by
   the increasing political influence of the right, whose thinly disguised
   racism reflects the darkening vision of a growing segment of the
   conservative community. Further evidence can be seen in the growth of
   ultraconservative extremist groups preaching avowedly racist
   philosophies, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, the White
   Aryan Resistance, and others (see James Ridgeway's Blood in the Face:
   The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New
   White Culture). Much the same can be said of Europe, with the growth of
   parties like the BNP in Britain, the FN in France and similar
   organisations elsewhere.

   Most conservative politicians have taken pains to distance themselves
   officially from the extreme right. Yet they are dependent on getting
   votes of those influenced by the right-wing media personalities and the
   extreme right. This means that this racism cannot help seep into their
   election campaigns and, unsurprisingly, mainstream conservative
   politicians have used, and continue to use, code words and innuendo
   ("welfare queens," "quotas," etc.) to convey a thinly veiled racist
   message. This allows mainstream right-wingers to exploit the budding
   racism of lower- and middle-class white youths, who must compete for
   increasingly scarce jobs with desperate minorities who are willing to
   work at very low wages. As Lorenzo Lom'boa Ervin notes:

     "Basing themselves on alienated white social forces, the Nazis and
     Klan are trying to build a mass movement which can hire itself out
     to the Capitalists at the proper moment and assume state power . . .
     Fascism is the ultimate authoritarian society when in power, even
     though it has changed its face to a mixture of crude racism and
     smoother racism in the modern democratic state.

     "So in addition to the Nazis and the Klan, there are other
     Right-Wing forces that have been on the rise . . . They include
     ultra-conservative rightist politicians and Christian fundamentalist
     preachers, along with the extreme right section of the Capitalist
     ruling class itself, small business owners, talk show hosts . . .
     along with the professors, economists, philosophers and others in
     academia who are providing the ideological weapons for the
     Capitalist offensive against the workers and oppresses people. So
     not all racists wear sheets. These are the 'respectable' racists,
     the New Right conservatives . . . The Capitalist class has already
     shown their willingness to use this conservative movement as a smoke
     screen for an attack on the Labor movement, Black struggle, and the
     entire working class."
     [Anarchism and the Black Revolution, p. 18]

   The expanding popularity of such racist groups in the US is matched by
   a similar phenomenon in Europe, where xenophobia and a weak economy
   have propelled extreme right-wing politicians into the limelight on
   promises to deport foreigners. This poisons the whole mainstream
   political spectrum, with centre and centre-left politicians pandering
   to racism and introducing aspects of the right's agenda under the
   rhetoric of "addressing concerns" and raising the prospect that by not
   doing what the right wants, the right will expand in influence. How
   legitimising the right by implementing its ideas is meant to undercut
   their support is never explained, but the "greater evil" argument does
   have its utility for every opportunistic politician (particularly one
   under pressure from the right-wing media whipping up scare stories
   about immigration and such like to advance the interests of their
   wealthy backers).

   What easier way is there to divert people's anger than onto scapegoats?
   Anger about bad housing, no housing, boring work, no work, bad wages
   and conditions, job insecurity, no future, and so on. Instead of
   attacking the real causes of these (and other) problems, people are
   encouraged to direct their anger against people who face the same
   problems just because they have a different skin colour or come from a
   different part of the world! Little wonder politicians and their rich
   backers like to play the racist card -- it diverts attention away from
   them and the system they run (i.e. the real causes of our problems).

   Racism, in other words, tries to turn class issues into "race" issues.
   Little wonder that sections of the ruling elite will turn to it, as and
   when required. Their class interests (and, often, their personal
   bigotry) requires them to do so -- a divided working class will never
   challenge their position in society. This means that justifications for
   racism appear for two reasons. Firstly, to try and justify the existing
   inequalities within society (for example, the infamous -- and highly
   inaccurate -- "Bell Curve" and related works). Secondly, to divide the
   working class and divert anger about living conditions and social
   problems away from the ruling elite and their system onto scapegoats in
   our own class. After all, "for the past fifty years American business
   has been organising a major class war, and they needed troops -- there
   are votes after all, and you can't just come before the electorate and
   say, 'Vote for me, I'm trying to screw you.' So what they've had to do
   is appeal to the population on some other grounds. Well, there aren't a
   lot of other grounds, and everybody picks the same ones . . . --
   jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: These are ways of
   appealing to people if you're trying to organise a mass base of support
   for policies that are really intended to crush them." [Chomsky,
   Understanding Power, pp. 294-5]

   Part of the right-wing resurgence in the US and elsewhere has been the
   institutionalisation of the Reagan-Bush brand of conservatism, whose
   hallmark was the reinstatement, to some degree, of laissez-faire
   economic policies (and, to an even larger degree, of laissez-faire
   rhetoric). A "free market," Reagan's economic "experts" argued,
   necessarily produced inequality; but by allowing unhindered market
   forces to select the economically fittest and to weed out the unfit,
   the economy would become healthy again. The wealth of those who
   survived and prospered in the harsh new climate would ultimately
   benefit the less fortunate, through a "trickle-down" effect which was
   supposed to create millions of new high-paying jobs.

   All this would be accomplished by deregulating business, reducing taxes
   on the wealthy, and dismantling or drastically cutting back federal
   programmes designed to promote social equality, fairness, and
   compassion. The aptly named Laffer Curve (although invented without the
   burden of any empirical research or evidence) alleged to illustrate how
   cutting taxes actually raises government revenue. When this program of
   pro-business policies was applied the results were, unsurprisingly, the
   opposite of that proclaimed, with wealth flooding upwards and the
   creation of low-paying, dead-end jobs (the biggest "Laffers" in this
   scenario were the ruling class, who saw unprecedented gains in wealth
   at the expense of the rest of us).

   The Reaganites' doctrine of inequality gave the official seal of
   approval to ideas of racial superiority that right-wing extremists had
   used for years to rationalise the exploitation of minorities. If, on
   average, blacks and Hispanics earn only about half as much as whites;
   if more than a third of all blacks and a quarter of all Hispanics lived
   below the poverty line; if the economic gap between whites and
   non-whites was growing -- well, that just proved that there was a
   racial component in the Social-Darwinian selection process, showing
   that minorities "deserved" their poverty and lower social status
   because they were "less fit." By focusing on individuals, laissez-faire
   economics hides the social roots of inequality and the effect that
   economic institutions and social attitudes have on inequality. In the
   words of left-liberal economist James K. Galbraith:

     "What the economists did, in effect, was to reason backward, from
     the troublesome effect to a cause that would rationalise and justify
     it . . . [I]t is the work of the efficient market [they argued], and
     the fundamental legitimacy of the outcome is not supposed to be
     questioned.

     "The apologia is a dreadful thing. It has distorted our
     understanding, twisted our perspective, and crabbed our politics. On
     the right, as one might expect, the winners on the expanded scale of
     wealth and incomes are given a reason for self-satisfaction and an
     excuse for gloating. Their gains are due to personal merit, the
     application of high intelligence, and the smiles of fortune. Those
     on the loosing side are guilty of sloth, self-indulgence, and
     whining. Perhaps they have bad culture. Or perhaps they have bad
     genes. While no serious economist would make that last leap into
     racist fantasy, the underlying structure of the economists' argument
     has undoubtedly helped to legitimise, before a larger public, those
     who promote such ideas."
     [Op. Cit., p. 264]

   The logical corollary of this social Darwinism is that whites who are
   "less fit" (i.e., poor) also deserve their poverty. But philosophies of
   racial hatred are not necessarily consistent. Thus the ranks of white
   supremacist organisations have been swollen in recent years by
   undereducated and underemployed white youths frustrated by a declining
   industrial labour market and a noticeably eroding social status.
   [Ridgeway, Op. Cit., p.186] Rather than drawing the logical
   Social-Darwinian conclusion -- that they, too, are "inferior" -- they
   have instead blamed blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews for "unfairly"
   taking their jobs. Thus the neo-Nazi skinheads, for example, have been
   mostly recruited from disgruntled working-class whites below the age of
   30. This has provided leaders of right-wing extremist groups with a
   growing base of potential storm troopers.

   Therefore, laissez-faire ideology helps create a social environment in
   which racist tendencies can increase. Firstly, it does so by increasing
   poverty, job insecurity, inequality and so on which right-wing groups
   can use to gather support by creating scapegoats in our own class to
   blame (for example, by blaming poverty on blacks "taking our jobs"
   rather than capitalists moving their capital to other, more profitable,
   countries or them cutting wages and conditions for all workers -- and
   as we point out in [4]section B.1.4, racism, by dividing the working
   class, makes poverty and inequality worse and so is self-defeating).
   Secondly, it abets racists by legitimising the notions that
   inequalities in pay and wealth are due to racial differences rather
   than a hierarchical system which harms all working class people (and
   uses racism to divide, and so weaken, the oppressed). By pointing to
   individuals rather than to institutions, organisations, customs,
   history and above all power -- the relative power between workers and
   capitalists, citizens and the state, the market power of big business,
   etc. -- laissez-faire ideology points analysis into a dead-end as well
   as apologetics for the wealthy, apologetics which can be, and are,
   utilised by racists to justify their evil politics.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD1.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB7.html
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB1.html#secb14
