Developing Alternatives INRM’s and the Globe

Developing AlternativesINRM’s and the Globe Instructor Pacas

What political and economic system does Malcolm X want? • “I don’t know. But I’m flexible…all the countries that are emerging today from under the shackles of colonialism are turning toward socialism. I don’t think it’s an accident. Most of the countries that were colonial powers were capitalist countries, and the last bulwark of capitalism today is America. It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism. And if you find one and you happen to get that person into a conversation and they have a philosophy that makes you sure they don’t have this racism in their outlook, usually they’re socialists or their political philosophy is socialism.” Malcolm X invited to talk about the Hate-Gang Scare May 1964

Martin Luther King Jr. Beyond Vietnam April 4,1967 • “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit…I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered…A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.”

William A. Williams Empire As a Way of Life…pg. 58 • The first involves the extreme difficulty, even in the abstract, of devising and creating an alternative to empire as a way of life. For once people begin to acquire and enjoy and take for granted and waste surplus resources and space as a routine part of their lives, and to view them as a sign of God’s favor, then it requires a genius to make a career-let alone create a culture-on the basis of agreeing upon limits. Especially when several continents lie largely naked off your shores…

But, even so, it just might be done if your countrymen did not consider themselves unique, if they were not well along to paranoid conceptions of security, and if they did not believe empire was the key to freedom. Or if, despite all that, there was in your way of life a strong commitment to community-to an acceptance of limits upon the individual in the name of common welfare. But in a capitalist marketplace society, the ideas and ideals of community and the common welfare pose fundamental challenges to the principles of private property. Hence community can only be realized through empire that provides a surplus property.

The intellectuals quoted above share a similar conclusion that exploitation, oppression and racism are directly linked to unbridled capitalism. • How did this argument develop post WWII in nations challenging the dominance of the northern powers but more specifically CIC nations?

The Road to Bandung Conference 1955 • On August 1941 the U.S. and Britain held a meeting known as the Atlantic Charter. • One of the points in the charter agreed to return former colonies that had been wrested away by the Axis powers back to the original European colonizers. • In 1946 Java recently independent from Japanese occupation was now threatened by the British to be returned as a colony to their former Dutch masters. • The city of Bandung erupted in grass roots movements to challenge the reinstatement of colonialism. 500,000 residents took to the streets and burned warehouses, homes and government offices.

Independence for Indonesia • On August 17, 1945 two days after the Japanese surrender, Sukarno declared independence for Indonesia. • The Indonesian people backed him against the British that had occupied Indonesia with the intention of returning it is to the Dutch. • This action would prove the kindling for the rest of the southern hemisphere to change their perceptions of themselves on a world stage as well as influence INRM movements domestically and internationally.

Spirit of INRM to End Colonialism • The post WWII world erupted in social movements by territories in the southern hemisphere to attempt independence movements. • Indonesia 1945 • Vietnam 1945 • Philippines 1946 • India and Pakistan 1947 • Burma, Korea and Malaysia 1948 • China 1949 • Ghana 1951

Intellectuals and World Leaders of the South Challenge the Two Camp Division or NSC 68 Interpretation • Most of the nations that attended Bandung were engaging in complex social movements in that they not only sought to gain independence, end intrinsic inequality and racism rampant in traditional colonial relations but genuinely tried to remain neutral because they understood that allegiance to the Soviets or U.S. would mean reincorporation to a new form of colonization.

Sukarno, Nehru, U Nu and Nasser • Spoke against pacts and allegiances that divided the world into the toxic Cold War. • Nehru asked, “Why are Britain and the U.S. part of the ‘defensive area’ of Southeast Asia…It is not because they are part of the region but because they want to use SEATO [South East Asia Treaty Organization] to exercise their influence on the domestic and international relations of the pact countries.” (Prashad, 40)

Global Influence of Bandung • Even though some nations that participated at Bandung were allied to the U.S., the major influential participants of the conference criticized alignmentand focused their efforts in securing economic sovereignty for the southern hemisphere. • This would eventually have huge implications in global Cold War politics.

At Bandung the participating states attempted to stave off the imperialist pressure brought on them not so much by direct colonialism but by finance capital and the comparative advantages given to the First World by the legacy of colonialism. • It called for the U.N. and an International Finance Corporation to ensure regulation of predatory capital flows.

Cont’d • It encouraged participants to diversify their export trade. Under colonial conditions, the darker nations had been reduced to being providers of raw materials and consumers of manufactured goods produced in Europe and the U.S. The Bandung proposals called for the formerly colonized states to diversify their economic base, develop indigenous manufacturing capacity and thereby break the colonial chains. (Prashad, 44)

Analyzing the Argument • The Bandung nations championed the idea that the only way the southern hemisphere could secure its autonomy was through economic sovereignty. • This could only be achieved by being self sufficient. • Engaging in their own industrial production and using their own natural resources to fuel their economy.

Bandung Challenging Racism • At Bandung, the twenty nine new states condemned “racialism as a means of cultural suppression…Empires generally attempted to direct the cultural history of a people-to set one community against another (divide and rule), adopt one group as the leader above the rest, or else disdain the cultural traditions of a region and propose its substitution by the empire’s own cultural traditions.” (Prashad, 45)

Analyzing the Argument • Racial difference as a tool of social control incorporated to divide and conquer a population and subjugate them to a direct colonial power or an economic colonial power. • Create competing interests groups in a society with a powerful group [wealthy minority/aristocracy/military dictatorship] whose interests secured by allying themselves to a northern industrial super power. • Have a people indoctrinated to deride their traditions and culture.

The Challenge to Doctrine • The Bandung Conference’s challenge to what had been the traditional oppression, racism and economic exploitation suffered by the participating nations forced a reevaluation of global politics for both post WWII camps- U.S. and the USSR.

The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1956 • The CPSU rejected its earlier two-camp theory [NSC 68] of the world. The congress reiterated the position taken by Nehru and U Nu at Bandung, and by Nasser in Cairo. It noted that the camp theory provided a vision of the world that suggested that war was the only solution to the division, that across the abyss of the divide there could be no conversation and dialogue toward peace…The congress included in the zone of peace the socialist Second World and what it called ‘uncommitted states’-that is, the non-aligned Third World [Bandung Nations].” (Prashad, 46)

U.S. Reaction to Bandung • After Bandung, The U.S. foreign policy establishment took a strong position against what it called ‘neutralism.’ If a state decided to reject the two-camp approach of the U.S. and USSR, then it was considered not to have a position of its own but to be neutral. In [by] 1952, the U.S. planners had declared that neutralism was, according to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, ‘a shortcut to suicide,’ and as conflict broke out in the neutral world, the USSR might ‘force the maximum number of non-Communist countries to pursue a neutral policy and to deny their resources to the principle Western powers. (Prashad, 48)

U.S. Protection at a Cost • The blocs [SEATO, CEATO, NATO, etc.] had much more than a military function because they worked to transform the social and political system of the states that yoked their destiny to the U.S. The ‘security zone’ created by the U.S. gave many of these states security guarantee from Washington D.C., for a price: the creation of U.S. military bases in these countries, and the opening up of their markets to U.S. firms. (Prashad, 39)

Bandung Leaders • After the reception of the world powers to Bandung, although advocating non-alignment still, Sukarno was influenced to try to synthesize Marxism and nationalism with Islam. • A similar shift in political philosophy occurred in U Nu of Burma as he tried to synthesize Buddhism, communism and nationalism. • Their rhetoric would prove influential not only in their respective nations but globally as well.

Developing Alternatives INRM’s and the Globe