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Cake day: March 24th, 2022
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11·11 months agoWhat conversations were US officials having about Congo in 1960?
[CIA Director] Dulles, Allen W. “Telegram From the Central Intelligence Agency to the Station in the Congo”, August 1960:
"we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action..."
In high quarters here it is the clear-cut conclusion that if [garble—Lumumba?] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst pave the way to Communist takeover of the Congo with disastrous consequences for the prestige of UN and for the interests of the free world generally. Consequently we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action. Hence we wish to give you wider authority along lines Leop 07723 and Leop 07854 and Dir 461155 including even more aggressive action if it can remain covert
Paper Prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency [for vice president Nixon], “Operations in the Congo”, 1960:
"CIA continued to maintain contact with the assets it had been developing and to be on the lookout for new ones for whatever contingencies might arise..."
In the period immediately preceding Congo independence, CIA efforts in the Belgian Congo concentrated on establishing direct contact with as many responsible political figures as possible and influencing their actions. […] In the immediate post-independence period, CIA continued to maintain contact with the assets it had been developing and to be on the lookout for new ones for whatever contingencies might arise. […] CIA concentrated on developing contact with [less than 1 line not declassified] assets who were in active opposition to Lumumba or appeared to have that potential. These were developed with the long-range view of possible active use against Lumumba and on a day to day basis in tactical opposition to increasing signs of Soviet Bloc influence in the Lumumba Government […] To accomplish this and to implement operations to this end, CIA has been steadily reinforcing the Leopoldville station with additional personnel and funds, and the Director of Central Intelligence has given the station authority to take decisions on the spot […] CIA has been coordinating an effort to have the Senate assemble and pass a vote of no confidence in the Lumumba Government. […] On the basis of what information we have so far received it would appear that Kasavubu’s precipitate action has at least seriously jeopardized the plan for ousting Lumumba by constitutional means.
Dulles, Allen W. “Telegram From the Central Intelligence Agency to the Station in the Congo”, September 1960:
"We wish give every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility resuming governmental position..."
We wish give every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility resuming governmental position […] At your discretion, share this message with Ambassador.
[text not declassified] reported on 23 September that Pierre Mulele, Gabriel Yumbu, and Antoine Gizenga of the PSA were mounting a coup against Mobutu and the Council of Commissioners. [Footnote in the original.] In telegram 0002 from Leopoldville to CIA, September 23, the Station reported that upon learning of a coup plot against Mobutu and the Council of Commissioners, the Chief of Station immediately informed Mobutu and had the Embassy warn Kasavubu. Kasavubu did not act upon the warning, but Mobutu had two of the plotters arrested. The Embassy and Station urged Mobutu and Kasavubu to take action against Lumumba and the other plotters, [text not declassified].
Office of the Historian editorial note:
"the Chief of Station emphasized that although selection of a mode of assassination was left to his judgment, it had been essential that it be carried out in a way that could not be traced back either to an American or the U.S. Government"
In CIA telegram 03094 to Leopoldville, September 28, Tweedy commented briefly on each of the seven possibilities and warned that where the PROP operation (i.e., elimination of Lumumba) was concerned, their primary concern must be concealment of the U.S. role, unless an outstanding opportunity emerged which made a calculated risk a first class bet. Headquarters was ready to entertain any serious proposals the Station made.
On August 21, 1975, the Chief of Station testified before the Church Committee that Scheider had told him that his instructions were to “eliminate” Lumumba, and that he had received “rubber gloves, a mask and a syringe” along with lethal biological materials from Scheider, who also instructed him in their use. […] The means of assassination had not been restricted to use of this toxic material, but the Chief of Station emphasized that although selection of a mode of assassination was left to his judgment, it had been essential that it be carried out in a way that could not be traced back either to an American or the U.S. Government.
Although not directly involved in his moment of death, the above is an example which shows much of what the CIA and US State Department do, which is set up every possible condition they can think of for coups, killings, and other “accidents” and “excesses” to happen, working on multiple possible avenues at a time, whether they themselves are directly carrying out the final act or not, or whether simply their assets and other allies are (usually with some generous funding via legal and illegal means, while the State Department uses legal avenues to remove funding from the target–i.e., via sanctions, loan denials, etc. to prepare the ground for worsening conditions).
Here is an article which is an imaginary interview of Kwame Nkrumah about the events in Congo, which uses quotes from his work “Challenge of the Congo”. Nkrumah himself had also been subjected to a CIA-backed plot in his own country of Ghana.
8·1 year agoFor a point of view from a DPRK author, this book: Modern Korea: The Socialist North, Revolutionary Perspectives in the South, and Unification.
For a ML point of view: ProleWiki page on DPRK. There are also pages on south Korea, Korea, and the Korean War.
For a Korean diaspora and activist perspective, of people who travelled to DPRK multiple times on delegation trips: KEEP: Stories from North Korea episode on The East is a Podcast. Also Nodutdol’s zine, Sanctions of Empire (there is a link to PDF on that page if you click the zine cover image).
For a south Korean leftist/left-leaning/peace point of view (try machine translation if you don’t know Korean, my apologies for not knowing an English one for this): “Understanding North Korea” article series by Tongil Times, especially their 북현대사 (“North Modern History”) series, and “North Korea through the constitution” series by Sovereignty Research Institute.
I imagine it’s because of this: Nuclear-capable US B-52 strategic bomber touches down in S. Korea for first time
The article I linked above is from south Korea’s main center-left liberal paper. It comments this:
An American B-52 strategic bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons was scheduled to land at a South Korean air base on Tuesday. This marks the first time a B-52 has ever landed at a South Korean air base, and is seen as a warning directed at North Korea in response to its growing nuclear and missile capabilities.
Considering that the B-52 is capable of dropping nuclear bombs while in flight, there’s little military utility in landing at an air base in South Korea. However, the strategic bomber does have considerable significance on a symbolic level, underlining the US’ commitment to extended deterrence against North Korea’s nuclear threat.
Considering that North Korea has warned about the potential outbreak of nuclear war each time US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers or strategic bombers are dispatched to the Korean Peninsula, it is likely to have an even more dramatic reaction to a US strategic bomber landing in South Korea for the first time.
Notable also is that under south Korea’s current conservative Yoon administration, the new appointee (since June) to Minister of Unification is a north Korea hawk who wants nukes for south Korea:
Notably, as Kim Young-ho is a hard-liner on North Korea who has argued for the overthrow of the Kim Jong-un regime and has stressed that South Korea should arm itself with its own nuclear weapons time and time again, critics point out that his appointment dulls the value and meaning of the unification ministry, which should carry out unification policies aimed at North Korea.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies, commented that Thursday’s personnel appointments “signal the launch of a ‘ministry of confrontation’ or a ‘ministry of North Korean absorption’ that aims to unify [Korea] through absorption via antagonism and confrontation rather than a unification ministry seeking peaceful unification through dialogue and cooperation.”
The atmosphere within the ministry as it welcomes outside figures for its two chief positions is uneasy. One official told Yonhap News that “it seems like the unification ministry is being demanded to completely change its organizational identity, such as what it does, its approach, and the mindset of its members.”
As things fell through under the previous president, Moon, who was a liberal but who made some peaceful cooperation efforts with DPRK, and Trump, who made talks with DPRK but then threatened them, and piled on sanctions without lifting them when DPRK made efforts toward appeasement, and now Yoon came in who is a conservative and USA stan and major anti-communist who is promoting a NATO-like alliance in Asia and having war exercises and military parades etc., DPRK basically has stepped back from appeasement efforts at this time, strengthening ties with its other neighbors, and instead not shying away from making criticism when threatened with “decapitation drills” from the US and conservative Yoon regime (whom large numbers of south Koreans have been protesting and calling to resign due to his warmongering, among other things).
Going to post some things from the ProleWiki article on Nkrumah
Nkrumah writes [in his book “Dark Days in Ghana”] that throughout 1965, the U.S. government exerted various forms of economic pressure on Ghana, such as withholding investment and credit guarantees from potential investors, put pressure on existing providers of credit to the Ghanaian economy, and negated applications for loans made by Ghana to American-dominated financial institutions such as the IMF. Nkrumah points out that this pressure ended after February 24 1966, when the U.S. State Department’s political objective had been achieved [due to the coup]. Nkrumah writes, “The price of cocoa suddenly rose on the world market, and the I.M.F. rushed to the aid of the ““N.L.C.”.” He mentions that within two weeks of the ending of legal government in Ghana, the army and police traitors received an invitation to send a mission to Washington for talks with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials, and that supplies of various foodstuffs and other consumer goods were promised to provide the necessary window dressing for the new regime.
Although not mentioned in Dark Days in Ghana, 1965 U.S. security council memorandums from several months before the coup, not released until years later, show U.S officials discussing among themselves that pro-Western coup plotters in Ghana were keeping U.S. officials “briefed”, and a U.S. security council staffer states that “we and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah’s pleas for economic aid” hoping that this would “spark” the coup. Weeks after the coup, March 12 1966 U.S. internal documents discuss that the new, “almost pathetically pro-Western” regime should be given gifts of surplus grain to “whet their appetite” for further U.S. support.
In Chapter 6, Nkrumah describes the above tactic as “standard practice” in the then-recent wave of coups in Asia, Latin America and Africa. He states that wherever progressive governments have been replaced by counter-revolutionary forces, imperialist financial organizations have rushed to bolster them up with loans and various forms of so-called “aid”. He explains that this practice “is a necessary corollary to the ‘big lie’ usually employed to justify the overthrow of ‘undesirable governments’—the lie of ‘economic chaos’ and a ‘starving’ population. But more important, it serves to tighten the stranglehold of foreign economic control over the captive people by creating more indebtedness and a deeper penetration by foreign business interests.”
Regarding your announcement–thank you OP for starting up this project, I looked forward to it each week that it went on, and appreciated seeing everyone’s reflections on the texts. I also liked the simple format and gradual pace. I hope everything works out well with your IRL needs and commitments. Take care!
My study response–As last week I found myself unable to answer the study questions quickly enough, I am going to go with a bit more of a free-form response this time so I don’t end up taking too long to participate. And since I barely participated last thread, I’m just going to make my reply this time be about the text as a whole.
If anyone sees errors in my response, please let me know. I’m not trying to write authoritatively but rather to check my understanding and see whether I can summarize a few of the major points.
Response
I think a quote from early on in this work seems to summarize one of the major points Marx is making throughout the text. He writes: “If the silk-worm’s object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker.” (Ch. 2)
In other words, it’s as if a silk-worm is spinning not to become a moth, but to just keep spinning and spinning, generating silk indefinitely to remain a caterpillar indefinitely. I believe Marx is likening this to the process of the wage-worker surrendering their value-creating labor-power to the capitalist class, whose interest it is to make this relationship become only more deeply entrenched and prolonged, and therefore uses the value generated by the worker’s surrendered labor-power to deepen and expand the system of wage-labor under bourgeois dictatorship. As the silk-worm metaphor implies, this is not the most sensible way of doing things from a worker’s perspective. Normally, the silk worm would spin its silk to then use it to eventually undergo transformation into a moth. Likewise, it’s implied that a worker would use their labor-power to create value the worker themself can actually access and benefit from, bringing a transformation in the mode of production, bringing society to a new stage.
In Chapter 8, Marx talks about the implications of the worker’s real wages versus the worker’s relative wages. Speaking of rises in real wages over time, Marx writes: “the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him”–however, even if real wages are rising with profits, when we look at relative wages, we see “a widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from the capitalist, and increase in the power of capital over labour, a greater dependence of labour upon capital.” (Ch. 8) As usual, Marx is calling our attention to the relationships between things. Rather than just look at a line representing real wages go up, we need to pay attention to the growing gap between wages and profits and the implication that this has for the relative social positions of workers and capitalists:
If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened. (Ch. 8)
Toward the end of this work, in the end of Chapter 8 and throughout Chapter 9, Marx turns his attention to explaining the overall effects that the growth of productive capital has on wages, the need for expanded markets, and on causing the competition between workers to intensify:
This war [of capitalists among themselves] has the peculiarity that the battles in it are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of workers. The generals [the capitalists] vie with one another as to who can discharge the greatest number of industrial soldiers.
[…] The more productive capital grows, the more it extends the division of labour and the application of machinery; the more the division of labour and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. […] the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow ever leaner.
…I have spent more time on this than I originally meant to, and so I need to end here. As I mentioned above, please point out any errors in my understanding, as this is just me writing to try and see whether I understood the text well or not and whether I could identify (some) of the text’s main points.
Thanks again OP, I’m glad you started this study group.
- What is the difference between “Labour” and “Labour Power”?
I believe the distinction here is that labor is the action of laboring/working itself, while labor power is what Marx explains as a commodity that the laborer sells to the capitalist, which I think is the laborer’s potential/capacity for labor. The unique quality of labor power that makes it different from other commodities is that it is able to generate more value than it possesses on its own. I still feel uncertain about how to fully describe the difference between the concepts of labor and labor power, however.
And…Once again, I’m short on time, so I will have to try answering more later!
I did the reading, but haven’t had time to type up a reply yet unfortunately. Hoping to have some time soon!
107·1 year agoYes, the US is purposely starving the world.
Yep. I doubt you’ll care to read the following but I’m putting it here for others to see.
The United States is the world leader in imposing economic sanctions and supports sanctions regimes affecting nearly 200 million people. … Targeted countries experience economic contractions and, in many cases, are unable to import sufficient essential goods, including essential medicines, medical equipment, infrastructure necessary for clean water and for health care, and food. … While on paper most sanctions have some humanitarian exemptions for food, necessary medicines and medical supplies, in practice these exemptions are not sufficient to ensure access to these goods within the targeted country. (Center for Economic and Policy Research)
It’s well known that sanctions are ineffective for pressuring governments, but very effective at waging siege warfare by starving and killing ordinary citizens by disease and infrastructural failures. Continuing to use sanctions in this way and to this extent, when this is well known, is definitely “purposely starving the world”. An independent expert appointed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in 2019 that US sanctions violate human rights and international code of conduct and can lead to starvation. Why does the US continue to be the world leader in imposing sanctions, increasing its use of sanctions by 933% over the last 20 years, when this is well known? It’s because they know the effect, and they’re doing it on purpose.
We can also look at some US internal memorandums from before it was more politically incorrect to talk about starving people in other countries. In 1960, U.S. officials wrote that creating “disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship” through denying money and supplies to Cuba would be a method they should pursue in order to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government” in Cuba.
In other countries, we see a pattern of US officials and US-backed institutions purposely denying aid and loans to governments they don’t approve of, and then suddenly approving aid and opening up loans when a coup brings a leader they’re happy with into power. When Ghana was requesting aid under an administration that the West’s bourgeoisie didn’t like, U.S. officials said this: “We and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah’s pleas for economic aid. The new OCAM (Francophone) group’s refusal to attend any OAU meeting in Accra (because of Nkrumah’s plotting) will further isolate him. All in all, looks good.” The “situation” they were helping to set up was a coup they knew was going to happen. After a US-friendly coup took place, suddenly it was time to give the “almost pathetically pro-Western” government a gift of “few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice”, knowing that giving little gifts like this “whets their appetites” for further collaboration with the US. You will find the same song and dance in numerous other countries, Chile being a well-documented example, if you simply look for it.
The US imposes starvation and depravation of other countries on purpose, using it as an economic wrecking ball, then pats itself on the back for giving “aid” to the countries which have been hollowed out by such tactics.
The loans which magically become available to countries that meet the US approval standards are not so pretty either, as a former IMF senior economist said, he may only hope “to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples”, there not being “enough soap in the world” to wash away what has been done to the global south through the calculated fraud of the IMF, whose tactics are designed to accomplish the same kind of goals as the sanctions are–to prevent the economic rise of any country but the US by wrecking its competitors economically, tearing apart their local manufacturing capacity and transforming them into mere resource extraction projects, redirecting their agricultural industries into exports to make sure they reach a level where they are more reliant on imports to feed themselves, and reliant on foreign aid which is ripped away whenever they do not do what the US approves of or make friends with who the US wants them to.
I refer to #3, why don’t they just do it then?
This is what secondary sanctions and the US’s various protection rackets have always been designed to prevent, which has definitely been a powerful tool for them, but it seems with the rise of the new non-aligned movement and de-dollarization its becoming a less successful one and we can see countries “just doing” what they want more and more while the US leadership waves around, as usual, more sanctions and military threats in response.
This is another one that I haven’t read before so I’m glad it’s the next one we’re covering. My weak point in understanding theory has also mainly been around the more detailed economic side. I often have some trouble understanding Marx’s writing style, but I think the introduction by Engels helped me better understand some of the things that I’ve felt my understanding was lacking in.
In particular I found this passage helpful:
In the present state of production, human labour-power not only produces in a day a greater value than it itself possesses and costs; but with each new scientific discovery, with each new technical invention, there also rises the surplus of its daily production over its daily cost, while as a consequence there diminishes that part of the working-day in which the labourer produces the equivalent of his day’s wages, and, on the other hand, lengthens that part of the working-day in which he must present labour gratis to the capitalist.
In the next paragraph he states: “[the portion of value] which the capitalist class retains, and which it has to share, at most, only with the landlord class, is increasing with every new discovery and invention, while the share which falls to the working class (per capita) rises but little and very slowly, or not at all, and under certain conditions it may even fall”.
Again, like one of the quotes that stuck out to me from our previous reading, I feel like it helped my understanding when the focus was put on the big picture. Sometimes the more detailed explanations about how value is generated get me thinking only about how this affects the worker in particular, and forgetting to think about how it affects the entire proletariat and bourgeoisie’s development as classes. Of course the details are necessary to understand the whole larger concept, but I think these quotes helped keep my understanding on track.
I also appreciated these lines at the end of the introduction: “This condition becomes every day more absurd and more unnecessary. It must be gotten rid of; it can be gotten rid of. A new social order is possible […] there will be the means of life, of the enjoyment of life, and of the development and activity of all bodily and mental faculties, through the systematic use and further development of the enormous productive powers of society, which exists with us even now”.
I don’t have more time today, so sorry if this post seems kind of disorganized, but those are my main thoughts. Looking forward to next week’s thread.
Thanks for your reply!
One suggestion I would make is when you make a new thread, post a link back to the previous week’s thread so people can easily click back through them like a chain. Personally I think the timing and formatting so far are good, but of course, there is no harm in experimenting to find improvements. Thanks again for hosting this study group!
The part of this section that stood out for me begins with section 17, “Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?”, where Engels basically explains that there is no instant communism button:
No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society.
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.
Very often, people ask, “What will XYZ be like under communism/‘after the revolution’?” asking about various laws, industries, work, housing, and ways of manufacturing and acquiring goods and services. I think in many cases, the answer to these questions is a lot more mundane than some people might initially imagine. We see in section 18 a series of ideas of what a proletarian-led society might democratically implement for itself at the start of proletarian leadership. And, as OP pointed out, we see many of these (or similar) measures underway in AES countries today, providing us real-life examples of the process that we can learn from as it develops.
I think it’s worth noting that Engels points out that these would basically be democratic measures undertaken by the proletarian-led society to continually reduce the prevalence of private property, using various methods to increasingly concentrate “all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade” into the hands of the proletarian state, with the basic aim of ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat, and multiplying the society’s productive forces until “production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.”
As we can see from the real-life AES examples, this is a long process, with some changes being rapid and dramatic and easily intuitive to the average person, and others taking decades of time and having many possible approaches as well as many possible pitfalls, since longer term and larger scale generational changes like that are often harder for people to perceive and carry out from their individual position without learning more in depth about it. (Actually, on that point, I am glad that Engels specifically mentions education in section 18, as I believe it’s an important part in conveying the function of these longer generational processes to individuals in the society and strengthening their self-understanding of how they participate in building and directing their society.)
I think sections 17-20 could be good to go over with people who seem unclear on how (or why) socialist construction would take place, and on the meaning of terms like socialist-oriented market economy, socialist market economy, etc., as well as going into the reasons why development of the means of production is important (and how and why imperialism purposely hinders and sabotages that development in certain places).
Those are my thoughts, if anyone notices errors in my reasoning or understanding of the text, please point them out.
Thanks for leading this study group, I’m looking forward to its continuation.
I just found out about this guy today, and after a cursory look into his work, I thought of your post because it seems he is potentially covering this kind of thing, Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett. This page lists the courses he teaches as “The Political Economy of Mass Communication”, “The Political Economy of Hollywood and the Press”, and “Media Representation and Propaganda in Times of War and Terror”. And when I looked him up he has books titled (for example) “Media Imperialism”, “Approaches to Media”, “Conflict Propaganda in Syria: Narrative Battles”, “Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis: A Study in Conflict Propaganda”.
Considering that I only just now found out about him, I can’t exactly vouch for his work, but he wrote this 2021 article about Ukraine which is how I found him.