Colin Powell: Savior of U.S. Capitalism?
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • Fall/Winter 1995-6 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 5, No. 1 (pp. 82-85). | ||
| • September 3, 2003 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.7) from original. | ||
Originally published by the LEAGUE for the REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION FOR the FOURTH INTERNATIONAL)
As skirmishing for the 1996 U.S. presidential election gets under way, sections of the bourgeoisie and much of the media are going gaga over retired general Colin Powell and his possible candidacy. The open willingness of political insiders to dismiss both President Clinton and his Republican challengers—in favor of a non-candidate who has not yet even declared his political affiliation—shows the depth of the ruling class's leadership crisis.
According to polls, the public is scornful of the candidates of the two
major parties. Clinton and his leading rival, Senator Dole, are both
seen as the political panderers they are and have pathetic approval
ratings. For its own reasons, the big bourgeoisie itself is unhappy with
the current choices. It needs a president with enough popular respect to
carry out its agenda. The New York Times recently
noted:
Big business now looks like a constituency in search of a
party—culturally alienated from the Democrats, perpetually
frustrated by the Republicans (Sept. 24.).
Its problem is more than alienation and frustration: behind the capitalists' political crisis is the class struggle.
The crisis of bourgeois leadership is coming to a head because U.S. capital is being forced to deepen its long-term attack on the proletariat. As we explained in PR 49, the bourgeois austerity program aims to produce a “contained depression” to qualitatively shrink the workers' share of the national income. The ruling class wants to achieve this without provoking a social eruption; it is well aware of the frustration and anger of workers and oppressed minorities raging just below the surface of everyday life. That is why decisive elements of the “establishment” ditched the bellicose Bush in 1992 in favor of Clinton's more restrained response to the Los Angeles riots. Before that Washington's careful build-up of overwhelming military force before launching the Gulf War was due in large measure to its awareness that the war's popularity would turn to popular rage if it dragged on and demanded economic sacrifices.
WHY THE BOURGEOISIE NEEDS POWELL
To carry out the bourgeoisie's classwide siege, workers have to be kept: divided. As the initial reaction to the police beating of Rodney King revealed, white workers have a deep sense of democracy and fairness intermixed with more backward consciousness. Whites have to be stirred up against Blacks, Latinos and immigrants; hence the attack on already low minority wages and government “welfare," which in reality drags down wages and conditions for all. Likewise the attacks on women's health care, welfare, and related social services, which also lower benefits for all workers.
Millions of whites, working-class and petty-bourgeois, are angry at the erosion of their living standards. Many are now attracted to the populist Republican right, whose leaders denounce big government, corruption and moral decay— their racism only slightly hidden. The bourgeoisie certainly wants the benefits of a racial backlash, but it fears the right will rashly provoke a race war by going too far too fast.
Alternatively, if the working class industrial centers explode and the proletariat unites in action, the bourgeoisie knows that radicalized labor aristocrats and even petty-bourgeois could recognize that they share basic interests with minority and poorer workers. The right-wing demagogues are whipping up a radicalism which could get out of their hands.
Enter Colin Powell. His military career proves his loyalty to world domination by corporate America, and his conservative economic views delight the establishment. On the other hand, his moderate social positions fall with the spectrum of acceptable politics and could help “bring us together." Best of all, tales of his rags-to-riches rise from the Bronx to the Pentagon fit right in with illusory hopes in social mobility, a populist myth that the capitalists encourage without fear.
Powell's independence of the two party machines, even if he ends up running as a Republican, helps make him relatively independent of mass demands. He seems to come from outside the politicians' orbit and to stand above the greedy games the masses are fed up with. Seeing no current political force that represents “the people," much of the middle strata and many workers are being led to believe that Powell would establish fair government and stop the attack on them.
Powell's candidacy would serve a deeper bourgeois need. Despite the current blather about reducing the growth of the state, in this era of decadent capitalism the state's role must inevitably expand. During an acute period of unresolved class confrontation between proletariat and bourgeoisie, capitalism traditionally turns to a Bonaparte, a Man on a White Horse, who seems to stand above the class struggle and represent the people at large. Such a “hero” attempts to reach power by popular acclaim, even voicing hostility to the “malefactors of great wealth." Then, wielding a greatly centralized state power, he uses his popularity to defend the ruling class, its property and its system.
We have not reached a point of conscious class confrontation. The capitalist attack is a largely one-sided war. A full-fledged Bonaparte isn't needed—yet. So it is no accident that a semi-Bonapartist figure like Powell comes riding onto the scene. As Leon Trotsky observed about Germany in the early 1930's, several figures reflecting aspects of Bonapartism occupied state power within the confines of bourgeois democracy as a prelude to Hitler, the “national socialist" who finally put a bloody end to the immediate class conflict.
The capitalist class at this early stage in the looming confrontation is hesitant, a good way off from its future turn to fascism as its last resort in the fight against proletarian communism. And, not by accident, Powell is also a cautious man. Should he run now? Wait and see. He only wants to grab for the brass ring if he can win it. His personal caution makes him even more delectable to the cautious capitalists.
A Powell candidacy would aim to create a new bourgeois center, reducing the influence of the populist Republican right and of Democratic liberals and bringing both parties “back to their senses." Powell is already positioning himself as a centrist: he favors both abortion rights and the death penalty, affirmative action and the free market—all in moderation. There is little chance he would be interested in a whole new party, except as a device to get on the ballot: even a bourgeois third party would risk cracking the two-party shell game that has served U.S. capitalism for so long.
The big bourgeoisie ruled the U.S. since the end of the 19th century generally through a congressional bloc between Republicans and bourgeois agrarian Southern Democrats. The conservative Democratic “Solid South” collapsed under the Black revolt and the industrialization and urbanization of the post-war prosperity. With the economic crisis and the renewed bourgeois offensive to restore profits, a renewed and solidified bourgeois bloc became vital. Reagan put it together, but it rested on a distraught petty-bourgeois base; the closeness of the NAFTA vote showed that it was not housebroken enough. Wall Street figures that a Powell administration would regain popularity for a more stable right-center bloc led by mainstream conservative Republicans, backed in Congress by moderate Democrats.
POWELL'S RACE
The fact that Powell is Black helps this center bloc strategy. His race will be used in celebratory fashion to validate America's democratic pretenses at home and abroad. A Black president would exemplify the myth that the U.S. has achieved racial equality. To many whites (and Black elitists), Powell already confirms their patronizing belief that Blacks could make it if they only worked hard.
Writing of the mass anxiety over jobs and the economy, Roger Wilkins in the Nation claims that “Powell's presence in the White House would sweep away the ugliest impediment to facing those problems honestly: racial scapegoating." On the contrary: his victory—even his serious candidacy—will fuel the racist lie that Blacks just have to drop their “attitude” and get off their asses. Powell's military aura and race make him an ideal figure, as far as the bourgeoisie is concerned, to discipline rebellious workers, Blacks above all.
It is also important that Powell is not too Black. At this stage only the most racist whites would refuse to vote for him on that ground. As he says of himself, “I was never a very threatening kind of black man. At different times, I was a good Negro to have around” (Parade, Sept. 17.). Unlike Jesse Jackson, he would not depend on an angry Black vote; Jackson tried hard to win support from moderate capitalists, but because of his militant base they mistrusted him.
Despite Powell's allegiance to Reagan and Bush, he would gain a substantial Black vote, especially since the Black middle class votes out of proportion to its numbers in comparison to workers and unemployed. Powell could attract even reluctant Blacks as a concession to race unity and pride. Tragically, a false “unity” behind servants of the bourgeoisie leads only to disaster. Many Blacks supported Clarence “Uncle” Thomas to their present regret, out of a sense of racial allegiance. Genuine Black solidarity can only be forged in a working class-led struggle against the capitalists.
Powell's race, however, is not an unmitigated blessing for his bourgeois backers. As a Black man, he is compelled to confront the razor-sharp issues that slice through U.S. society. He tried to finesse Louis Farrakhan's invitation to speak at the “Million Man March," claiming other engagements without saying whether he was for or against. But to maintain any support among Blacks, he will not be able to dodge race questions forever.
WHO IS COLIN POWELL?
Powell's real record is that of a Washington insider and bureaucrat; his “hero” image is media hype. He served imperialism loyally as Reagan's national security adviser and Bush's chairman of the chiefs of staff. In the former post, he joined in the Iran-Contra cover-up, funneling funds to counterrevolutionary rapists and killers in Nicaragua. As an officer, he had previously helped shield the army's My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
Under Bush he was the principal architect of the imperialist and racist invasion of Panama in 1989. Then he oversaw the brutal Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, when the U.S. bombed the population back to pre-industrial conditions—and ensured that the bloody dictator Saddam Hussein was left with enough arms to crush Iraqi and Kurdish rebels.
He is known for the “Powell doctrine”: the U.S. should send
troops to fight abroad only when its decisive interests are at stake;
and then should use overwhelming military force to win wars quickly and
decisively,
without risking casualties that could awaken domestic discontent. When
as president he sends U.S. soldiers into battle, as he inevitably will,
his reputation for caution will help vindicate imperialist militarism
and undercut opposition at home. Most capitalists believe that he will
be equally cautious on domestic policy. But he is also backed by a group
of sophisticated bourgeois thinkers like Peter Peterson, a cabinet
member under Richard Nixon, and financier Felix Rohatyn, who were
crucial in getting Clinton elected in 1992. In 1988 this group issued a
manifesto for bipartisan austerity. Rohatyn's remarks at the time about
“the next president" are the plans of such activist Powellites
today as well:
He won't be able in the campaign to discuss rationally the things he
will have to do.... The real options he is going to have to deal
with should be presented by, as much as possible, a depoliticized,
bipartisan group that is prestigious enough that its recommendations
right after the election will prepare the president to take action
the moment he is sworn in (PR 31).
The Rohatyn types certainly have nothing in common with the right-wing radicals; they are careful to avoid boiling the masses while stirring the pot. They hope that the military toughness exhibited by Powell, combined with their expectations of rough times for capitalism ahead, will lessen any personal cautiousness about moving decisively.
Whatever the variations in their outlook, Powell is being groomed as the capitalists' stealth candidate, hyped up and humanized to evade the masses' political radar. With few commitments to the base of the Democratic and Republican parties and utterly loyal to the bourgeoisie, he is an ideal imperialist chieftain at a time when crunching moves against the working class are needed.
WHITHER CANDIDATE POWELL?
Powell's appearance as a “non-candidate” has already sent politicians and pundits scrambling, with both liberals and conservatives seeking to position him their way. Democrats want him to run independently, hoping he would aid Clinton by siphoning off Republican votes in a three-way race—like Ross Perot in 1992. The New York Times' liberal Black columnist Bob Herbert also urged Powell to run as an independent—to “serve as a trusted bridge between the lower and middle classes” who would have a hard time backing a Republican. Such liberals only help deceive the masses. Powell's “independent” candidacy would really be that of an external caucus of the Republicans, aimed at restoring control over their party to the bourgeois mainstream.
On the other side, many Republicans want Powell on their ticket; Dole hinted he could have the vice presidential nomination. If he accepts, that might guarantee victory, but Powell's taking second place is unlikely: his purpose is not to strengthen the Republican Party but to remake it.
Other loyalist Republicans, even on the right, want Powell as their top candidate in order to guarantee victory. Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, who demanded a while ago that any Republican candidate pledge himself against abortion, now refuses to say he couldn't vote for the pro-choice Powell! Neo-conservative William Kristol goes further: he thinks Powell could win a “huge” majority that would “expand and solidify the emerging Republican majority." Thus Powell would serve as a “useful way station on the road to a lasting conservative realignment."
One trouble is that major party candidates face a long list of primaries which Powell would prefer to avoid, lest he be forced to descend from his above-the-battle pedestal. So some party leaders are looking for ways to get Powell the nomination in effect by acclamation. That would also better suit Powell's aim of re-creating a strong centrist party, while avoiding as much as possible over-antagonizing the right.
Both parties are in critical condition, making extraordinary measures necessary. That is why wide sections of the ruling class are treating Powell as a Black Man on a White Horse come to rescue bourgeois politics from the barbarians.
The Democratic Party's predicament is not that it is ditching the
bourgeoisie. The Times' report notes:
Ever since Bill Clinton came to office, he has done more for the
Fortune 500 than virtually any other President in this
century—making trade the No. 1 priority by, for example,
pressing the North American Free Trade Agreement into enactment over
the objections of labor,... beating down the doors in China and
Japan, ... and opening a “war room' that uses the power of the
United States government to win contracts for American business
around the world ....
That is why the Democrats are a capitalist party, even though the major part of the ruling class is Republican. But the bourgeoisie is a tiny minority of the population, so its parties have to enlist more numerous forces as party cadre. Their job is to convince the mass of working- and middle-class voters that the bourgeoisie deserves to rule.
CAPITALIST PARTIES IN CRISIS
Outside of the South, the Democrats have rested on an urban working-class voting base, largely white ethnic Catholics but including Black voters, since the late 1920's. The post-World War II prosperity bubble, plus the Black struggle of the 1960's, brought Blacks more of the sops the party doles out. But while “Great Society” programs temporarily gave some help to Black workers and the poor, they did far more to create a layer of professional povertycrats with a material stake in defending the system.
When the bubble burst and sops dwindled, the more aristocratic labor and petty-bourgeois elements turned away, falling for racist arguments that the Democrats would hand over their gains to Blacks and Latinos. The party is now much more dependent on Black votes; along with the slowly rising mood of union militancy in the past few years, that gives the bourgeoisie cause to fear that Democratic politicians could be pressed to concede too much.
The Republican voting base has traditionally come from the socially
conservative petty bourgeoisie even though power always rested with big
capital. The bloc reforged under Reagan was between Wall Street
(symbolized by George Bush and the newer layer of “Sun Belt”
capitalists. This group rests on capital intensive and high technology
industries (armaments, petrochemicals, energy, computers) but is
intertwined with large labor-intensive service, construction and
agribusiness interests. As we wrote in 1981:
This newly arrived, self-confident and relatively dynamic sector of
the bourgeoisie says that it achieved its new wealth by sheer
enterprise and will. If
an American works hard, and the government, Russian Communists,
terrorists and beggars leave him alone, it asserts, he can make
it. Its petty-bourgeois following listens.
It is no accident that these convenient fictions coincide with the
absence of unions in the Sun Belt regions and the decline of class
struggle during the period when the Sun Belt industries grew up:
Reagan's rugged individualists have generally not been compelled to
rule through accommodation with an aroused working
class. (PR 15.)
The petty-bourgeois base that this wing of capital appeals to dreams of prosperity without welfare and taxes. Small business owners elected the new Republican majority in Congress, and their needs diverge from those of big capital. Far less interested in foreign trade, panicked over the costs of workplace-based health care, squirming under environmental regulations, they are eager to end welfare (not just “as we know it” à la Clinton), threaten to close the government down to enact their tax schemes and risk palpitations on the bond market. For good reason, big business is more than “frustrated” with them.
Today these petty-bourgeois notions are also swallowed by many white workers who find their jobs threatened by corporate mergers and downsizing. They blame affirmative action and illegal immigration rather than capitalism; they think they can get even by ousting “pro-Black” politicians. But they are facing what Black workers went through years ago when automation wiped out millions of blue-collar jobs.
Newt Gingrich is the chief middleman between Wall .Street [sic.] and the petty-bourgeois layer he nourished and trained. If Powell runs, Gingrich will have to convince his base to accept him as the Republican candidate. As Powell's politics become clearer, the radical petty bourgeoisie may kick up its heels and refuse support. That may require more concessions (abolishing many federal agencies, say) than Powell and his backers can stomach. The various wings of capital could more easily agree on further eroding the remaining gains of labor, Blacks and Latinos; that would please much of the petty bourgeoisie too. However, here the establishment's fear of going too fast would be tested severely. So it is by no means sure that Powell could get the Republican nomination and restore it to bourgeois normalcy.
PSEUDO-INDEPENDENCE ON THE LEFT
While the profit-hungry capitalists refashion their war strategy, their liberal-left opponents play games. The working class's official leadership has not been ignoring the small upturn in class struggle triggered by the bourgeois attack. They know that sooner or later the anger will boil over.
Clinton's unpopularity has led layers of union officials to restructure their support for the Democrats by making noises about an independent party. Labor Party Advocates, the bureaucracy-controlled outfit that has been around for years but never run a single campaign, is planning a founding convention for a labor party—next June. The timing is superbly cynical: too late to get candidates on the national ballot, early enough to build support for Clinton as the “lesser evil."
In 1996, the bureaucrats will use labor party sentiment only as pressure on the Democrats. In the future, when the Democrats have discredited themselves even more and the class struggle has intensified, a labor party or a bourgeois third party might actually be created—in order to corral the workers and keep them tied to capitalist electoralism.
A grassroots working-class movement for a labor party might even break away from the bureaucrats and move in a revolutionary direction under conditions of class upheaval. Such a turn would be in direct opposition to the work of the various covert socialist “revolutionaries” who are laboring for a labor party now; theirs would be a thoroughly bureaucratic, pro-imperialist reformist party.
Black leaders face the same dilemma as the labor bureaucrats: can they get their base to support Clinton a second time, given his racist record in office? Opposing him could throw the election to the Republicans—who, Powell or no Powell, are even more racist. That is why Jesse Jackson murmured a few months back about running an independent campaign against Clinton—and lately has repeated that he is keeping his options open. But he never meant it: his role is to keep Blacks tied to the Democrats. Like the leftish labor bureaucrats, he talks of independence to get small sops in order to lure people back to the Democratic graveyard.
For some Black leaders, Colin Powell is an alternative to Jackson, both as a lever for wresting concessions from Clinton and as a realistic bourgeois candidate who appeals to Black voters. Thus Kweisi Mfume former head of the congressional Black Caucus, said on television that he would of course support Clinton's re-election—but that "things have a way of changing." On the other hand, populists like Jackson, who claims to champion working people of all colors, at this point cannot openly endorse a conservative like Powell. Jackson is presenting a plan to “reindustrialize America” and create urban jobs, hoping against hope that Clinton will jog toward the left side of bourgeois politics rather than stick to his present right-center course.
On the far left, as we have shown in recent issues of PR, the current fad is left-wing populism. “People before profits” is the slogan of middle-class elements threatened by the capitalist rampage for hiking profits. Of course, a Marxist working-class victory would dispense with profits and privilege altogether. Instead, the pseudo-socialists' populist dodge is an attempt to appear realistic in the face of the upcoming class polarization. It will go nowhere—except possibly to derail numbers of proletarian activists.
The working class desperately needs its own party independent of all wings of the bourgeoisie. That means a revolutionary party dedicated to overthrowing capitalism. Populism in its right or left manifestations is a political disease of the middle classes. It subverts the necessity for an independent revolutionary working-class alternative. Further, given that the middle strata are not really a class and have little social power of their own, such layers are prone to Bonapartism.
Today, the still moderate sectors of the middle class will be drawn to Powell. Tomorrow the inflamed petty bourgeoisie will likely be drawn to an even more Bonapartist demigod. Keeping radical politics at the level of populism ensures that coming movements will be under the domination of the petty bourgeoisie, a set up for an authoritarian Bonapartism far transcending Colin Powell.
The new wave of advancing revolutionary-minded youth are mostly Black and Latino. This layer is critical to the revival of authentic communist politics in the U.S. Given the miserable role of the white-dominated liberal-labor bureaucracy, it is no wonder that many of these fighters do not yet accept Marxism, the understanding that revolution and liberation can only come through an independent class conscious proletariat. If they are detoured into the populist dead-end road, they will inevitably serve as missionaries for a future Bonaparte. And that Man on a White Horse will spell only grief for the working class and the oppressed peoples of this country and the world. Colin Powell is dangerous enough, a Bonaparte with a human face; the future Bonaparte's face will be hidden behind a white sheet.
(Reprinted from PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION, Fall 1995, No.50.)
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