escaping

Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 15:29:39 -0800
To: \"campaign [at] votenader.org\"
Subject: A must read: The Matrix

A must read.

Title: ESCAPING THE MATRIX.
Subject(s): RIGHT & left (Political science); IDEOLOGY; MATRIX, The
(Motion picture); IMPERIALISM
Source: Whole Earth, Summer2000 Issue 101, p50, 10p
Author(s): Moore, Richard K.
Abstract: Examines the consensus political reality in the right and
left ideologies using a metaphor from the motion picture `The Matrix.\'
Driving force behind Western imperialism; Domination of the United
States over world capitalism; Opposition to American imperialism.
AN: 3263528
ISSN: 0749-5056
Note: SFSU subscribes to this journal.
Database: Academic Search Elite

ESCAPING THE MATRIX

What if consensus reality is a fabricated Illusion? Are you ready for
the red pill?

The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix [Warner Bros.,
1999] occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red
pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises \"the truth, nothing more.\"
Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality--something utterly
different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected.
What Neo had assumed to be reality turns out to be only a collective
illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and .fed to a population that is
asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In Plato\'s famous
parable about the shadows on the walls of the cave, true reality is at
least reflected in perceived reality. In the Matrix world, true
reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes.

The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my
attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a
particular perspective on what\'s going on in the world--and how things
got to be that way--in this era of globalization. From that red-pill
perspective, everyday media-consensus reality--like the Matrix in the
film--is seen to be a fabricated collective illusion. Like Neo, I
didn\'t know what I was looking for when my investigation began, but I
knew that what I was being told didn\'t make sense. I read scores of
histories and biographies, observing connections between them, and
began to develop my own theories about roots of various historical
events. I found myself largely in agreement with writers like Noam
Chomsky and Michael Parenti, but I also perceived important patterns
that others seemed to have missed.

When I started tracing historical forces, and began to interpret
present-day events from a historical perspective, I could see the same
old dynamics at work and found a meaning in unfolding events far
different from what official pronouncements proclaimed. Such
pronouncements are, after all, public relations fare, given out by
politicians who want to look good to the voters. Most of us expect
rhetoric from politicians, and take what they say with a grain of
salt. But as my own picture of present reality came into focus, \"grain
of salt\" no longer worked as a metaphor. I began to see that consensus
reality--as generated by official rhetoric and amplified by mass
media--bears very little relationship to actual reality. \"The matrix\"
was a metaphor I was ready for.

In consensus reality (the blue-pill perspective) \"left\" and \"right\"
are the two ends of the political spectrum. Politics is a tug-of-war
between competing fictions, carried out by political parties and
elected representatives. Society gets pulled this way and that within
the political spectrum, reflecting the interests of whichever party
won the last election. The left and right are therefore political
enemies. Each side is convinced that it knows how to make society
better; each believes the other enjoys undue influence; and each
blames the other for the political stalemate that apparently prevents
society from dealing effectively with its problems.

This perspective on the political process, and on the roles of left
and right, is very far from reality. It is a fabricated collective
illusion. Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is \"the world that was
pulled over your eyes to hide you from the truth.... As long as the
Matrix exists, humanity cannot be free.\" Consensus political reality
is precisely such a matrix. Later we will take a fresh look at the
role of left and right, and at national politics. But first we must
develop our red-pill historical perspective. I\'ve had to condense the
arguments to bare essentials; please see the annotated sources at the
end for more thorough treatments of particular topics.

IMPERIALISM AND THE MATRIX

From the time of Columbus to 1945, world affairs were largely
dominated by competition among Western nations (primarily western
Europe, later joined by the United States) seeking to stake out
spheres of influence, control sea lanes, and exploit colonial empires.
Each Western power became the core of an imperialist economy whose
periphery was managed for the benefit of the core nation. Military
might determined the scope of an empire; wars were initiated when a
core nation felt it had sufficient power to expand its periphery at
the expense of a competitor. Economies and societies in the periphery
were kept backward--to keep their populations under control, to
provide cheap labor, and to guarantee markets for goods manufactured
in the core. Imperialism robbed the periphery not only of wealth but
also of its ability to develop its own societies, cultures, and
economies in a natural way for local benefit.

The driving force behind Western imperialism has always been the
pursuit of economic gain, ever since Isabella commissioned Columbus on
his first entrepreneurial voyage. The rhetoric of empire concerning
wars, however, has typically been about other things--the White Man\'s
Burden, bringing true religion to the heathens, Manifest Destiny,
defeating the Yellow Peril or the Hun, seeking lebensraum, or making
the world safe for democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or
empire would do, as long as it appealed to the collective
consciousness of the population at the time. The propaganda lies of
yesterday were recorded and became consensus history--the fabric of
the matrix.

While the costs of territorial empire (fleets, colonial
administrations, etc.) were borne by Western taxpayers generally, the
profits of imperialism were enjoyed primarily by private corporations
and investors. Government and corporate elites were partners in the
business of imperialism: Empires gave government leaders power and
prestige, and gave corporate leaders power and wealth. Corporations
ran the real business of empire while government leaders fabricated
noble excuses for the wars that were required to keep that business
going. Matrix reality was about patriotism, national honor, and heroic
causes; true reality was on another plane altogether: that of
economics.

Industrialization, beginning in the late 1700s, created a demand for
new markets and increased raw materials. Both demands spurred
accelerated expansion of empire. Wealthy investors amassed fortunes by
setting up large-scale industrial and trading operations, leading to
the emergence of an influential capitalist elite. Like any other
elite, capitalists used their wealth and influence to further their
own interests however they could. And the interests of capitalism
always come down to economic growth; investors must reap more than
they sow or the whole system comes to a grinding halt.

Thus capitalism, industrialization, nationalism, warfare,
imperialism--and the matrix--coevolved. Industrialized weapon
production provided the muscle of modern warfare, and capitalism
provided the appetite to use that muscle. Government leaders pursued
the policies necessary to expand empire while creating a rhetorical
matrix, around nationalism, to justify those policies. Capitalist
growth depended on empire, which in turn depended on a strong and
stable core nation to defend it. National interests and capitalist
interests were inextricably linked--or so it seemed for more than two
centuries.

WORLD WAR II AND THE PAX AMERICANA

1945 will be remembered as the year World War H ended and the bond of
the atomic nucleus was broken. But 1945 also marked another momentous
fission--breaking of the bond between national and capitalist
interests. After every previous war, and in many cases after severe
devastation, European nations had always picked themselves back up and
resumed their competition over empire. But after World War II, a Pax
Americana was established. The US began to manage all the Western
peripheries on behalf of capitalism generally, while preventing the
communist powers from interfering in the game. Capitalist powers no
longer needed to fight over investment realms, and competitive
imperialism was replaced by collective imperialism (see sidebar).
Opportunities for capital growth were no longer linked to the military
power of nations, apart from the power of America. In his Killing
Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (see
access, page 55), William Blum chronicles hundreds of significant
covert and overt interventions, showing exactly how the US carried out
its imperial management role.

In the postwar years, matrix reality diverged ever further from actual
reality. In the postwar matrix world, imperialism had been abandoned
and the world was being \"democratized\"; in the real world, imperialism
had become better organized and more efficient. In the matrix world,
the US \"restored order,\" or \"came to the assistance\" of nations that
were being \"undermined by Soviet influence\"; in the real world, the
periphery was being systematically suppressed and exploited. In the
matrix world, the benefit was going to the periphery in the form of
countless aid programs; in the real world, immense wealth was being
extracted from the periphery.

GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX, POPULAR REBELLION, AND NEOLIBERALISM

Growing glitches in the matrix weren\'t noticed by most people in the
West, because the postwar years brought unprecedented levels of
Western prosperity and social progress. The rhetoric claimed progress
would come to all, and Westerners could see it being realized in their
own towns and cities. The West became the collective core of a global
empire, and exploitative development led to prosperity for Western
populations, while generating immense riches for corporations, banks,
and wealthy capital investors.

The parallel agenda of Third World exploitation and Western prosperity
worked effectively for the first two postwar decades. But in the
1960s, large numbers of Westerners, particularly the young and well
educated, began to notice glitches in the matrix. In Vietnam,
imperialism was too naked to be successfully masked as something else.
A major split in American public consciousness occurred as millions of
antiwar protestors and civil rights activists punctured the fabricated
consensus of the 1950s and declared the reality of exploitation and
suppression both at home and abroad. The environmental movement arose,
challenging even the exploitation of the natural world. In Europe,
1968 joined 1848 as a landmark year of popular protest.

These developments disturbed elite planners. The postwar regime\'s
stability was being challenged from within the core--and the formula
of Western prosperity no longer guaranteed public passivity. A report
published in 1975, the Report of the Trilateral Task Force on
Governability of Democracies, provides a glimpse into the thinking of
elite circles. Alan Wolfe discusses this report in Holly Sklar\'s
eye-opening Trilateralism. Wolfe focuses especially on the analysis
Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington presented in a section of the
report entitled \"The Crisis of Democracy.\" Huntington is an articulate
promoter of elite policy shifts, and contributes pivotal articles to
publications such as the Council on Foreign Relations\'s Foreign
Affairs (access, page 55).

Huntington tells us that democratic societies \"cannot work\" unless the
citizenry is \"passive.\" The \"democratic surge of the 1960s\"
represented an\" excess of democracy,\" which must be reduced if
governments are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign
policies. Huntington\'s notion of \"traditional policies\" is expressed
in a passage from the report:

To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the
decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting
with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the
executive office, the federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more
important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations, and media, which
constitute the private sector\'s \"Establishment.\"

In these few words, Huntington spells out the reality that electoral
democracy has little to do with how America is run, and summarizes the
kind of people who are included within the elite planning community.
Who needs conspiracy theories when elite machinations are clearly
described in public documents like these?

Besides failing to deliver popular passivity, the policy of prosperity
for Western populations had another downside, having to do with
Japan\'s economic success. Under the Pax Americana umbrella, Japan had
been able to industrialize and become an imperial player--the
prohibition on Japanese rearmament had become irrelevant. With Japan\'s
lower postwar living standards, Japanese producers could undercut
prevailing prices and steal market share from Western producers.
Western capital needed to find a way to become more competitive on
world markets, and Western prosperity was standing in the way. Elite
strategists, as Huntington showed, were fully capable of understanding
these considerations, and the requirements of corporate growth created
a strong motivation to make the needed adjustments--in both reality
and rhetoric.

If popular prosperity could be sacrificed, there were many obvious
ways Western capital could be made more competitive. Production could
be moved overseas to low-wage areas, allowing domestic unemployment to
rise. Unions could be attacked and wages forced down, and people could
be pushed into temporary and part-time jobs without benefits.
Regulations governing corporate behavior could be removed, corporate
and capital-gains taxes could be reduced, and the revenue losses could
be taken out of public-service budgets. Public infrastructures could
be privatized, the services reduced to cut costs, and then they could
be milked for easy profits while they deteriorated from neglect.

These are the very policies and programs launched during the
Reagan-Thatcher years in the US and Britain. They represent a
systematic project of increasing corporate growth at the expense of
popular prosperity and welfare. Such a real agenda would have been
unpopular, and a corresponding matrix reality was fabricated for
public consumption. The matrix reality used real terms like
\"deregulation,\" \"reduced taxes,\" and \"privatization,\" but around them
was woven an economic mythology. The old, failed laissez-faire
doctrine of the 1800s was reintroduced with the help of Milton
Friedman\'s Chicago School of economies, and \"less government\" became
the proud \"modern\" theme in America and Britain. Sensible regulations
had restored financial stability after the Great Depression, and had
broken up anti-competitive monopolies such as the Rockefeller trust
and AT&T. But in the new matrix reality, all regulations were
considered bureaucratic interference. Reagan and Thatcher preached the
virtues of individualism, and promised to \"get government off people\'s
backs.\" The implication was that everyday individuals were to get more
money and freedom, but in reality the primary benefits would go to
corporations and wealthy investors.

The academic term for laissez-faire economics is \"economic
liberalism,\" and hence the Reagan-Thatcher revolution has come to be
known as the \"neoliberal revolution.\" It brought a radical change in
actual reality by returning to the economic philosophy that led to
sweatshops, corruption, and robber-baron monopolies in the nineteenth
century. It brought an equally radical change in matrix reality--a
complete reversal in the attitude that was projected regarding
government. Government policies had always been criticized in the
media, but the institution of government had always been respected
reflecting the traditional bond between capitalism and nationalism.
With Reagan, we had a sitting president telling us that government
itself was a bad thing. Many of us may have agreed with him, but such
a sentiment had never before found official favor. Soon, British and
American populations were beginning to applaud the destruction of the
very democratic institutions that provided their only hope of
participation in the political process.

GLOBALIZATION AND WORLD GOVERNMENT

The essential bond between capitalism and nationalism was broken in
1945, but it took some time for elite planners to recognize this new
condition and to begin bringing the world system into alignment with
it. The strong Western nation-state had been the bulwark of capitalism
for centuries, and initial postwar policies were based on the
assumption that this would continue indefinitely. The Bretton Woods
financial system (the IMF, the World Bank, and a system of fixed
exchange rates among major currencies) was set up to stabilize
national economies, and popular prosperity was encouraged to provide
political stability. Neoliberalism in the US and Britain represented
the first serious break with this policy framework and brought the
first visible signs of the fission of the nation-capital bond.

The neoliberal project was economically profitable in the US and
Britain, and the public accepted the matrix economic mythology.
Meanwhile, the integrated global economy gave rise to a new generation
of transnational corporations, and corporate leadears began to realize
that corporate growth was not dependent on strong core nation-states.
Indeed, Western nations-with their environmental laws,
consumer-protection measures, and other forms of regulatory
\"interference\"--were a burden on corporate growth. Having been
successfully field-tested in the two oldest \"democracies,\" the
neoliberal project moved onto the global stage. The Bretton Woods
system of fixed rates of currency exchange was weakened, and the
international financial system became destabilizing, instead of
stabilizing, for national economies. The radical free-trade project
was launched, leading eventually to the World Trade Organization. The
fission that had begun in 1945 was finally manifesting as an explosive
change in the world system.

The objective of neoliberal free-trade treaties is to remove all
political controls over domestic and international trade and commerce.
Corporations have free rein to maximize profits, heedless of
environmental consequences and safety risks. Instead of governments
regulating corporations, the WTO now sets rules for governments,
telling them what kind of beef they must import, whether or not they
can ban asbestos, and what additives they must permit in petroleum
products. So far, in every case where the WTO has been asked to review
a health, safety, or environmental regulation, the regulation has been
overturned.

Most of the world has been turned into a periphery; the imperial core
has been boiled down to the capitalist elite themselves, represented
by their bureaucratic, unrepresentative, WTO world government. The
burden of accelerated imperialism falls hardest outside the West,
where loans are used as a lever by the IMF to compel debtor nations
such as Rwanda and South Korea to accept suicidal \"reform\" packages.
In the 1800s, genocide was employed to clear North America and
Australia of their native populations, creating room for growth.
Today, a similar program of genocide has apparently been unleashed
against sub-Saharan Africa. The IMF destroys the economies, the CIA
trains militias and stirs up tribal conflicts, and the West sells
weapons to all sides. Famine and genocidal civil wars are the
predictable and inevitable result. Meanwhile, AIDS runs rampant while
the WTO and the US government use trade laws to prevent medicines from
reaching the victims.

As in the past, Western military force will be required to control the
non-Western periphery and make adjustments to local political
arrangements when considered necessary by elite planners. The Pentagon
continues to provide the primary policing power, with NATO playing an
ever-increasing role. Resentment against the West and against
neoliberalism is growing in the Third World, and the frequency of
military interventions is bound to increase. All of this needs to be
made acceptable to Western minds, adding a new dimension to the
matrix.

In the latest matrix reality, the West is called the \"international
community.\" whose goal is to serve \"humanitarian\" causes. Bill Clinton
made it explicit with his \"Clinton Doctrine,\" in which (as quoted in
the Washington Post) he solemnly promised, \"If somebody comes after
innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their
race, their ethnic background or their religion and it is within our
power stop it, we will stop it.\" This matrix fabrication is very
effective indeed; who opposes prevention of genocide? Only outside the
matrix does one see that genocide is caused by the West in the first
place, that the worst cases of genocide are continuing, that
\"assistance\" usually makes things worse (as in the Balkans), and that
Clinton\'s handy doctrine enables him to intervene when and where he
chooses. Since dictators and the stirring of ethnic rivalries are
standard tools used in managing the periphery, a US president can
always find \"innocent civilians\" wherever elite plans call for an
intervention.

In matrix reality, globalization is not a project but rather the
inevitable result of beneficial market forces; genocide in Africa is
no fault of the West\'s, but is due to ancient tribal rivalries; every
measure demanded by globalization is referred to as \"reform\" (the word
is never used with irony). \"Democracy\" and \"reform\" are frequently
used together, always leaving the subtle impression that one has
something to do with the other. The illusion is presented that all
economic boats are rising, and if yours isn\'t, it must be your own
fault: you aren\'t \"competitive\" enough. Economic failures are
explained away as \"temporary adjustments,\" or else the victim (as in
South Korea or Russia) is blamed for not being sufficiently
neoliberal. \"Investor confidence\" is referred to with the same awe and
reverence that earlier societies might have expressed toward the \"will
of the gods.\"

Western quality of life continues to decline, while the WTO
establishes legal precedents ensuring that its authority will not be
challenged when its decisions become more draconian. Things will get
much worse in the West; this was anticipated in elite circles when the
neoliberal project was still on the drawing board, as is illustrated
in Samuel Huntington\'s \"The Crisis of Democracy\" report discussed
earlier.

THE MANAGEMENT OF DISCONTENTED SOCIETIES

The postwar years, especially in the United States, were characterized
by consensus politics. Most people shared a common understanding of
how society worked, and generally approved of how things were going.
Prosperity was real and the matrix version of reality was reassuring.
Most people believed in it. Those beliefs became a shared consensus,
and the government could then carry out its plans as it intended,
\"responding\" to the programmed public will.

The \"excess democracy\" of the 1960s and 1970s attacked this consensus
from below, and neoliberal planners decided from above that ongoing
consensus wasn\'t worth paying for. They accepted that segments of
society would persist in disbelieving various parts of the matrix.
Activism and protest were to be expected. New means of social control
would be needed to deal with activist movements and with growing
discontent, as neoliberalism gradually tightened the economic screws.
Such means of control were identified and have since been largely
implemented, particularly in the United States. In many ways, America
sets the pace of globalization; innovations can often be observed
there before they occur elsewhere. This is particularly true in the
case of social-control techniques.

The most obvious means of social control, in a discontented society,
is a strong, semi-militarized police force. Most of the periphery has
been managed by such means for centuries. This was obvious to elite
planners in the West, was adopted as policy, and has now been largely
implemented. Urban and suburban ghettos where the adverse consequences
of neoliberalism are currently most concentrated--have literally
become occupied territories, where police beatings and unjustified
shootings are commonplace.

So that the beefed-up police force could maintain control in
conditions of mass unrest, elite planners also realized that much of
the Bill of Rights would need to be neutralized. (This is not
surprising, given that the Bill\'s authors had just lived through a
revolution and were seeking to ensure that future generations would
have the means to organize and overthrow any oppressive future
government.) The rights-neutralization project has been largely
implemented, as exemplified by armed midnight raids, outrageous
search-and-seizure practices, overly broad conspiracy laws, wholesale
invasion of privacy, massive incarceration, and the rise of prison
slave labor.(n1) The Rubicon has been crossed--the techniques of
oppression long common in the empire\'s periphery are being imported to
the core.

In the matrix, the genre of the TV or movie police drama has served to
create a reality in which \"rights\" are a joke, the accused are
despicable sociopaths, and no criminal is ever brought to justice
until some noble cop or prosecutor bends the rules a bit. Government
officials bolster the construct by &daring \"wars\" on crime and drugs;
the noble cops are fighting a war out there in the streets--and you
can\'t win a war without using your enemy\'s dirty tricks. The CIA plays
its role by managing the international drug trade and making sure that
ghetto drug dealers are well supplied. In this way, the American
public has been led to accept the means of its own suppression.

The mechanisms of the police state are in place. They will be used
when necessary--as we see in ghettos and skyrocketing prison
populations, as we saw on the streets of Seattle and Washington, D.C.
during recent demonstrations against the WTO, IMF, and Word Bank, and
as is suggested by executive orders that enable the president to
suspend the Constitution and declare martial law whenever he deems it
necessary. But raw force is only the last line of defense for the
elite regime. Neoliberal planners introduced more subtle defenses into
the matrix; looking at these will bring us back to our discussion of
the left and right.

Divide and rule is one of the oldest means of mass control--standard
practice since at least the Roman Empire. This is applied at the level
of modern imperialism, where each small nation competes with others
for capital investments. Within societies it works this way: If each
social group can be convinced that some other group is the source of
its discontent, then the population\'s energy will be spent in
intergroup struggles. The regime can sit on the sidelines, intervening
covertly to stir things up or to guide them in desired directions. In
this way, most discontent can be neutralized, and force can be
reserved for exceptional cases. In the prosperous postwar years,
consensus politics served to manage the population. Under
neoliberalism, programmed factionalism has become the front-line
defense--the matrix version of divide and rule.

The covert guiding of various social movements has proven to be one of
the most effective means of programming factions and stirring them
against one another. Fundamentalist religious movements have been
particularly useful. They have been used not only within the US, but
also to maximize divisiveness in the Middle East and for other
purposes throughout the empire. The collective energy and dedication
of \"true believers\" makes them a potent political weapon that movement
leaders can readily aim where needed. In the US that weapon has been
used to promote censorship on the Internet, to attack the women\'s
movement, to support repressive legislation, and generally to bolster
the ranks of what is called in the matrix the \"right wing.\"

In the matrix, the various factions believe that their competition
with each other is the process that determines society\'s political
agenda. Politicians want votes, and hence the biggest and
best-organized factions should have the most influence, and their
agendas should get the most political attention. In reality there is
only one significant political agenda these days: the maximization of
capital growth through the dismantling of society, the continuing
implementation of neoliberalism, and the management of empire.
Clinton\'s liberal rhetoric and his playing around with health care and
gay rights are not the result of liberal pressure. They are rather the
means by which Clinton is sold to liberal voters, so that he can
proceed with real business: getting NAFTA through Congress, promoting
the WTO, giving away the public air-waves, justifying military
interventions, and so forth. Issues of genuine importance are never
raised in campaign politics-this is a major glitch in the matrix for
those who have eyes to see it.

ESCAPING THE MATRIX

The matrix cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Under the
onslaught of globalization, the glitches are becoming ever more
difficult to conceal--as earlier, with the Vietnam War. November\'s
anti-establishment demonstrations in Seattle, the largest in decades,
were aimed directly at globalization and the WTO. Even more important,
Seattle saw the coming together of factions that the matrix had
programmed to fight one another, such as left-leaning
environmentalists and socially conservative union members.

Seattle represented the tip of an iceberg. A mass movement against
globalization and elite rule is ready to ignite, like a brush fire on
a dry, scorching day. The establishment has been expecting such a
movement and has a variety of defenses at its command, including those
used effectively against the movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In
order to prevail against what seem like overwhelming odds, the
movement must escape entirely from the matrix, and it must bring the
rest of society with it. As long as the matrix exists, humanity cannot
be free. The whole truth must be faced: Globalization is centralized
tyranny; capitalism has outlasted its sell-by date; matrix \"democracy\"
is elite rule; and \"market forces\" are imperialism. Left and right are
enemies only in the matrix. In reality we are all in this together,
and each of us has a contribution to make toward a better world.

Marx may have failed as a social visionary, but he had capitalism
figured out. It is based not on productivity or social benefit, but on
the pursuit of capital growth through exploiting everything in its
path. The job of elite planners is to create new spaces for capital to
grow in. Competitive imperialism provided growth for centuries;
collective imperialism was invented when still more growth was needed;
and then neoliberalism took over. Like a cancer, capitalism consumes
its host and is never satisfied. The capital pool must always grow,
more and more, forever--until the host dies or capitalism is replaced.

The matrix equates capitalism with free enterprise, and defines
centralized-state-planning socialism as the only alternative to
capitalism. In reality, capitalism didn\'t amount to much of a force
until the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution of the late
1700s--and we certainly cannot characterize all prior societies as
socialist. Free enterprise, private property, commerce, banking,
international trade, economic specialization--all of these had existed
for millennia before capitalism. Capitalism claims credit for modern
prosperity, but credit would be better given to developments in
science and technology.

Before capitalism, Western nations were generally run by aristocratic
classes. The aristocratic attitude toward wealth focused on management
and maintenance. With capitalism, the focus is always on growth and
development; whatever one has is but the prelude to building a still
greater fortune. In fact, there are infinite alternatives to
capitalism, and different societies can choose different systems, once
they are free to do so. As Morpheus put it: \"Outside the Matrix
everything is possible, and there are no limits.\"

The matrix defines \"democracy\" as competitive party politics, because
that is a game wealthy elites have long since learned to corrupt and
manipulate. Even in the days of the Roman Republic, the techniques
were well understood. Real-world democracy is possible only if the
people themselves participate in setting society\"s direction. An
elected official can truly represent a constituency only after that
constituency has worked out its positions--from the local to the
global--on the issues of the day. For that to happen, the interests of
different societal factions must be harmonized through interaction and
discussion. Collaboration, not competition, is what leads to effective
harmonization.

The movement to end elite rule and establish livable societies, if it
is to succeed, will need to evolve a democratic process, and to use
that process to develop a program of consensus reform that harmonizes
the interests of its constituencies. In order to be politically
victorious, it will need to reach out to all segments of society and
become a majority movement. By such means, the democratic process of
the movement can become the democratic process of a newly empowered
civil society. There is no adequate theory of democracy at present,
although there is much to be learned from history and from theory. The
movement will need to develop a democratic process as it goes along,
and that objective must be pursued as diligently as victory itself.
Otherwise, some new tyranny will eventually replace the old.

It ain\'t left or right. It\'s up and down. Here we all are down here
struggling while the Corporate Elite are all up there having a nice
day!--Carolyn Chute, anti-corporate activist and author of The Beans
of Egypt Maine.

ELITE PLANNING FOR POSTWAR NEO-IMPERIALISM...

Laurence Shoup and William Minter, in Holly Sklar\'s Trilateralism (see
access, page 56), write about strategic recommendations developed
during World War II by the Council on Foreign Relations:

Recommendation P-B23 (July, 1941) stated that worldwide financial
institutions were necessary for the purpose of \"stabilizing currencies
and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive
undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions.\" During the last
half of 1941 and in the first months of 1942, the Council developed
this idea for the integration of the world....Isaiah Bowman first
suggested a way to solve the problem of maintaining effective control
over weaker territories while avoiding overt imperial conquest. At a
Council meeting in May, t942 he stated that the United States had to
exercise the strength needed to assure \"security,\" and at the same
time \"avoid conventional forms of imperialism.\" The way to do this, he
argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in
character through a United Nations body.

RECOMMENDED READING

THE GLOBALIZATION OF POVERTY: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms

Michel Chossudovsky. 1997; $25. Zed Books.

This detailed study by an economics insider shows the consequences of
\"reforms\" in various parts of the world, revealing a clear pattern of
callous neocolonialism. Definitely red-pill material. For more by
Chossudovsky, see http://www.ased.org/resources/global/articles/chossu.htm.

THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: And for a Turn Toward the Local

Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, eds. 1997; 560 pp. $25. Sierra Club
Books.

This fine collection of forty-three chapters by knowledgeable
contributors analyzes the broad structure of globalization, and
explores locally based and sustainable economic alternatives. An
excellent introduction, textbook, and reference work.

GROWTH ILLUSION: How Economic Growth Has Enriched the Few,
Impoverished the Many, and Endangered the Planet

Richard Douthwaite. 1999; 40o pp. $20.95. New Society Publishers.

A fascinating and wide-ranging look at growth and capitalism, their
historical roots, and their consequences. Offers a healthy dose of
common sense, and a vision of stability and sustainability.

WORLD HUNGER: Twelve Myths

Frances Moore Lappe, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset. 1998 (2nd ed.);
224 pp. $13. Grove Press.

Another red pill. Debunks Malthusian thinking, among other things.
Here\'s a sample: \"During the past twenty-five years food production
has outstripped population growth by 16 percent. India--which for many
of us symbolizes over-population and poverty--is one of the top
third-world food exporters. If a mere 5.6 percent of India\'s food
production were re-allocated, hunger would be wiped out in India.\"

THE GLOBAL TRAP: Globalization and the Assault on Prosperity and
Democracy

Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann. (Translated by Patrick
Camiller). 1997; 288 pp. $19.95. Zed Books.

A best-selling European perspective on globalization. Recommended for
American audiences wanting to understand more about the European
context.

WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE?: The Betrayal of American Democracy

William Greider 1993; 448 PP. $14. Touchstone.

This best-seller shows in detail how the American democratic process
is subverted at every stage by corporate interests. Greider was a
highly respected journalist for many years at The Washington Post, and
his high-level contacts permit him to present an insider\'s view of the
influence-peddling system\'s operations. A chilling eye-opener.

ONE WORLD, READY OR NOT: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism

William Greider. 1998; $15. Touchstone Books.

A tour by a superb journalist, showing how the global economy operates
in various parts of the world. Not much emphasis on political issues
or economic alternatives.

THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE

$30/year (12 issues). Third World Network, Southside, 228 Macalister
Road, 10400 Penang, Malaysia. http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr-cn.htm.

This magazine deserves widespread circulation. It covers a wide range
of global issues, presents a strong and sensible Third World
perspective, and is a very good source of real-world news. Martin Kohr
is managing editor and a frequent contributor.

THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST