THE SOVIET UNION— Environmental Degradation: Some Historical Antecedents

From our archives (revised edition, first published in 1990)—

The ecological abuses triggered by the pressure to develop in a hurry were compounded after WW2 by the bureaucratism and careerism that had begun to creep into many operations…”

PREFATORY NOTE: I wrote this article in the Fall of 1990 at a moment of heightened propaganda against the putative ills of communism and the Soviet Union, in particular, as the Western “democracies”, with the US in the lead, and already smelling the impending disintegration of their greatest ideological foe, stoked the fires of change and rebellion.

In this epochal process, Mikhail Gorbachev (left) played a pivotal role for which he has been both praised and—in my view— justifiably damned inside the former USSR.  But while his place in history remains to be determined, the facts are clear and indisputable. After assuming the reins of power in 1985, Gorbachev’s reforms as well as summit conferences with Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War, ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For these efforts, the West, recognizing an ally, awarded Gorbachev the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and the Harvey Prize in 1992 as well as Honorary Doctorates from Durham University in 1995,[1] Trinity College in 2002[2] and University of Münster in 2005. 

Not missing an opportunity to put as many nails in the coffin of their former enemy as possible, the western media crowed frequently about the “inevitability” of the USSR’s downfall due to its inherently “inferior” political and economic system, one which, it was loudly proclaimed, was riddled with cronyism, rigidities, corruption, and total indifference to the fate of the environment.  Considering the record of the West, and especially the United States in these matters, it took some cheek to point the finger at the Soviets for such sins, but the power of the Western media is so stiflingly total that few voices deemed it possible to file a dissenting view.  

For what it’s worth, honest dissent in this case could not have denied the USSR’s political errors. The Soviet Union, after all, perennially on the defensive, somewhat paranoid after decades of encirclement and intrigues, was usually trapped in complicated  historical processes that invited mistakes.  Many such mistakes stemmed from cataclysmic events over which the Soviets exercised little control, like the Nazi assault in 1941. Still, despite such painful paucity of options the USSR probably gave a far better and honorable account of itself  than its far richer opponents.  (The professional anticommunist punditocracy would probably choke on that statement and I wish they did. The world would be rid of some very toxic layer of manure). But the purpose of this paper is not to make a comprehensive comparison between capitalist and socialist nations, for which this is hardly the place, but to look at the environmental record of the USSR, and, if possible shed some light into its historical mainsprings.  We must concede at the outset that in the area of environmental protection the USSR—the largest nation on Earth—racked up a dismal record in practically every major ecosystem to be found in its eleven timezones.  But, here, at least, I believe the historical context goes a long way to explain this failure, something near impossible in the case of the West. The reasons for this position are set forth in the facts and arguments in the article that follows. One important caveat: It must be noted that the environmental record has not improved substantively since the overthrow of communism; if anything, under a regime of runaway kleptocratic capitalism, it may have gotten dramatically worse.—Patrice Greanville

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The Historical Framework for the Ecological Degradation of the Soviet Union

Let’s begin by taking a look at a summary provided by James Ridgeway, a dependable American journalist. Ridgeway, a frequent media critic, used to be a columnist for The Village Voice:

(Moscow)- A survey of the Soviet environmental situation reveals a country in desperate straits.

The USSR in Crisis, September 1990).

The WiKipedia provides a more recent assessment:

The Soviet Union transformed, often radically, the country’s physical environment. In the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet citizens, from the highest officials to ordinary factory workers and farmers, began to examine negative aspects of this transformation and to call for more prudent use of natural resources and greater concern for environmental protection.

In spite of a series of environmental laws and regulations passed in the 1970s, authentic environmental protection in the Soviet Union did not become a major concern until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985. Without an established regulatory agency and an environmental protection infrastructure, enforcement of existing laws was largely ignored. Only occasional and isolated references appeared on such issues as air and water pollution, soil erosion, and wasteful use of natural resources in the 1970s. There were various reasons for not implementing environmental safeguards. In cases where land and industry were state owned and managed, when air and water were polluted, the state was most often the agent of this pollution. Second, and this was true especially under Joseph Stalin‘s leadership, the resource base of the country was viewed as limitless and free. Third, in the Cold War rush to modernize and to develop heavy industry, concern for damage to the environment and related damage to the health of Soviet citizens would have been viewed as detrimental to progress. Fourth, advanced means of pollution control and environmental protection can be an expensive, high-technology industry, and even in the mid-1980s many of the Soviet Union’s systems to control harmful emissions were inoperable or of foreign manufacture. (Geography of the Soviet Union)

Effects of the East-West conflict 

The 46-year-old Cold War and its older predecessor, the policy of communist containment unleashed at the end of World War I by  the victorious Western powers, cost the Soviet Union dearly. 

The Bolshevik regime that took power in 1917 found a nation in ruins as a result of Russia’s calamitous participation in World War I. Indeed, Russia at the time was an improbable candidate to launch a socialist utopia. A backward, largely agrarian nation with a tiny industrial nucleus, it hardly fitted the Marxian vision of a mature capitalist civilization capable of providing the abundance necessary to guarantee political and economic democracy. 

That simple fact was clear to most Western leaders, but their deep hostility towards the new Soviet state was not rooted in the reality of the situation, but in the new system’s promise. What if the Soviets showed the world that a worker-led revolution could assure peace and prosperity for all? What if the new state’s industrial clout surpassed the West, and, not inherently prone to recessions or depressions, continued to develop at an uninterrupted pace until it became not only a political threat by way of consumerist example but a very real military threat as well? 

To wait and do nothing was a gamble the Western rulers could ill afford: socialism had to be stifled in its cradle. But how to proceed? The most reliable option, though callous, was outright military intervention buttressed by economic strangulation. It was chosen, practically by consensus, as the best way to save the “civilized world.” (In our own time and backyard, a replay of this policy targeted Sandinista Nicaragua until the citizens of that nation, in their “assisted” wisdom, chose Violeta Chamorro, a pro-Washington candidate, as president.)

The opportunity for toppling the Bolsheviks presented itself in the inevitable fact that in most social upheavals a nation divides itself along class and property lines. In Russia after 1917 there were many powerful people who disagreed vehemently with the chief objectives and methods of the revolution. They soon found powerful external allies ready and eager to support them in a counter-revolution. These outside forces–14 countries in all–sent 180,000 troops and armed and trained 300,000 anti-Bolshevik troops within the Soviet Union in a three-year intervention that almost overthrew the new government. The U.S. participated in these pro-Czarist adventures; American troops did not leave Vladivostok until 1923. At the end of the civil war Russia was again a devastated country.  

 
Bolshevik soldiers killed by members of the Czechoslovak Legion, aided by the American Expeditionary Force in Vladivostok. Meddling in the affairs of the newly born Soviet Union began at its very inception. US, French, British, and Japanese forces intervened along with a host of minor powers to help restore the Czarist dynasty. The last American soldiers left Siberia in April, 1920.

The failure of military intervention put the West on its second strategic track: longterm economic strangulation. Since the Soviets cold not be overthrown, it was now absolutely imperative to make their economic model seem a total and permanent failure. Two methods eventually evolved to insure this goal: total economic and political isolation (the famed “cordon sanitaire” that treated Bolshevism as a dangerous contagious disease) and an all-out arms race. The latter would come into full swing right after the end of WW II as a vital part of the Cold War.

While economic strangulation made it extremely difficult for the new regime to obtain machinery and supplies needed to restart and modernize its economy, the arms race was calculated to take its toll in a more insidious way. Because of the severe disparity in economic size (the U.S. GNP has been at least 6 times larger than the USSR’s for most of the 20th century) an arms competition between the two blocs could prove highly affordable and profitable to the West but ruinous to the Soviets. In fact, having to match the U.S. dollar for dollar in the arms competition not only derailed Soviet civilian priorities, but eventually contributed to the crippling of their economy. Gorbachev’s reforms, if nothing else, were a direct response to this situation. 
 
German soldiers baffled by misplaced signs as they advance into Russia during Operation Barbarossa. 

Despite Stalin’s massive industrialization effort in the 1930s (much of it directed toward infrastructure and military goods— in keeping with the idea of “socialism in one country”, and the realization that the capitalist powers and the fascist powers would try a military “solution” to the “Communist threat” at the first propitious moment),  the resulting Soviet inability to turn out a plentiful supply of quality consumer goods had its anticipated political effects. At home, it sowed disaffection among the citizenry; abroad, as part of a huge anti-communist propaganda campaign that rarely let up since 1945, it served to “confirm” the supposed incapacity of Soviet-style socialism to “deliver the goods.” These political goals were quite desirable from a Western viewpoint, but the policy of encirclement eventually had an unintended effect: it forced the USSR to become a true military superpower. 

Confronted with an almost uniformly hostile world, and the ever-growing threat of another invasion my Western armies–especially by the rising Fascist powers–Moscow in the 1930s had no choice but to devote precious resources to heavy industry and weapons manufacturing. Starting from scratch, Soviet planners were instructed to design a complex economy to be run from the center–an extremely difficult undertaking under the best of circumstances, and a nearly impossible feat under wartime conditions.  Their solution to the demand for rapid development was simple and logical: the would try forced-march industrialization. Unfortunately, even today an experiment in forced-march industrialization cause by the threat of impending war would doom environmental concerns to irrelevancy. In the 1930s, then the Soviet infrastructure was being laid down, the very notion of ecological limits was unheard of. 

The ecological abuses triggered by the pressure to develop in a hurry were compounded by the bureaucratism and “careerism” that pervaded most operations. In a way, that too was largely inescapable in the historical climate of the ’30s and ’40s. With performance evaluation measured strictly along bureaucratic and party lines, and with planners, managers, technicians, engineers, scientists, farmers and other key economic personnel working under constant pressure to fill quotas at any cost, it would have been miraculous if someone had put ecological or humane considerations above his own interest. The ravages caused by forced-march industrialization and personal careerism were dwarfed, however, by the human, animal, and ecological losses suffered by the Soviet Union when the Nazi armies finally swept eastward in 1941.

Ecological and human devastation on an unprecedented scale

Of all combatants in World War II, the Soviet Union paid by far the highest price. The scope of the Soviet sacrifice has been well documented by MIT Professor Harold Freeman. (See, for example, Toward Socialism in America). The giant arsenal ordered by Stalin and assembled at terrible national cost–from five billion rubles and one million men in 1934 to 34 billion rubles and 7.3 million men in 1939–made it possible for Soviet military strength to defeat the Nazi armies encircling Stalingrad and Leningrad–victories that turned the tide of the war.  (As is well known, under the so-called “Lend-Lease” program the US provided assistance to its allies, including the USSR. A total of $50.1 billion— equivalent to $611 billion today—worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, and $1.6 billion to China. While these supplies were critical at some junctures, it is incorrect to say that the Soviet Union survived the Nazi onslaught chiefly as a result of American largesse.)

BELOW: Soviet soldiers attempt to set up a beachhead under heavy German bombardment  in Kiev, 1943.

The disproportionate burden borne by the Soviets during the war can be gleaned from some eloquent statistics. From 1941 to Normandy in June of 1944, Nazi Germany kept two to eight divisions on the Western front and, except for the first six months of that period, an average of 180 divisions on the Russian front. Repeated pleas from the Russians to their allies to open another front in the West to relieve pressure in the East went largely unheeded. Until the victory at Stalingrad, the Soviets alone faced the full might of the Nazi ground military machine. As a result, by conservative estimate, 14 million Soviet soldiers died in the struggle, plus 6 million civilians–fifty times the American casualty rate, which, of course, included no civilians. Visualized another way, the Soviet losses amounted to three times the population of California in the 1940s. In  Leningrad alone, during the Nazi siege, up to 850,000 people perished from bombardments, disease, starvation and cold, but neither the resistance nor the war effort could be  stopped. Hence, in one single battle, Leningrad, the Russians sustained 17 times more casualties than America did in almost 20 years of intervention in Vietnam. 

Picking up the pieces 

The end of the war found the USSR in a paradoxical situation. The Red Army controlled most of Eastern and Central Europe, but the homeland was again at a point in which forced-march industrialization was necessary. To make matters worse, the 1946 harvest failed, and 1947 brought starvation to many. The extent of the destruction was impressive even by modern standards. The war had completely or partially destroyed 15 large cities. 1,710 towns, 70,000 villages, 32,000 enterprises, 6,000,000 buildings, 65.000 kilometers of railroad track, 3,000 tractor stations, 13,000 railroad bridges, 10,000 power stations. Animal losses were not reliably recorded, but various archivists put the number conservatively between 25 and 45 million wild and domestic creatures. 

In a nutshell, this is the historical backdrop for Russia’s drive toward economic and military parity with the West at any cost in the years following the “Great Patriotic War” and it is within this framework that we must judge current Soviet environmental degradation and the nation’s efforts to rectify it. For, with the advent of the Cold War, and suggestion by Western leaders that a nation so severely crippled actually represented an imminent danger to the security of the “free world,” wartime production and its attendant paranoid psychology again took hold of the Soviet economy. Unfortunately, Cold War “pragmatism” did more than simply deform the economy; it buried for decades the possibility of bringing to the forefront more humane and ecologically enlightened policies. For much of that dislocation, not to mention the incalculable human, ecological, and animal suffering involved in long years of conflict, Western [bourgeois] leaders must bear a heavy responsibility. 
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Patrice Greanville is The Greanville Post‘s editor in chief.  
This article first appeared  in the magazine The Animals’ Agenda (Sept. 1990). At the time, the author served as Editor at Large for that publication. The article was prompted by the continuous vilification of the USSR by the American press in particular, a campaign of malicious propaganda that continued right up to the moment the USSR imploded in 1991. This is a slightly revised version.

With special thanks to my editorial associate, B. Havlena, for invaluable support. 

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The death of Kim Jong-il

By Peter Symonds, WSWS.ORG

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, formally announced yesterday, has produced a mind-numbing deluge of articles in the international press presenting the regime in Pyongyang as irrational and crazed—a dangerous threat to stability in North East Asia, requiring the US and its allies to put their militaries on alert.

Kim Jong-il headed an oppressive Stalinist regime that represented the interests not of the North Korean working class and peasantry, but those of a privileged bureaucratic elite. However, the chief responsibility for the perennial regional tensions lies with the aggressive policies of the US, which has repeatedly sought to destabilise North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The Korean War itself was a monumental imperialist crime waged by the US and its allies, including Washington’s fascistic puppet regime in the South, directed not only against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in North Korea, but above all against the 1949 Chinese revolution and the Maoist regime in Beijing. The war left the country scarred and mutilated, with three million dead and many more maimed, and perpetuated Washington’s artificial post-war division of the peninsula.

Kim Jong-il was installed as North Korea’s top leader after the death of his father Kim Il-sung in 1994 in the midst of a confrontation with the US that again brought the peninsula to the brink of war. US President George H. W. Bush and his successor, Bill Clinton, had seized on North Korea’s nuclear programs as a means of intensifying pressure on Pyongyang with a view to precipitating the disintegration of the regime.

The North Korean state confronted a worsening crisis following the collapse of its chief benefactor, the Soviet Union, in 1991. It agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), expecting in return that the US and its allies would ease crippling economic sanctions and move toward diplomatic recognition. In what has become a recurring pattern over the past two decades, the US bullied and pressured North Korea into agreements, but refused to make any substantive moves to end Pyongyang’s isolation.

Matters came to a head in 1994 over the defuelling of North Korea’s small experimental reactor at Yongbyon, which the Clinton administration alleged would provide plutonium for the production of nuclear weapons. Military conflict was avoided only when Clinton, after being warned by his military chiefs of the catastrophic consequences, backed off and dispatched former President Jimmy Carter to cut a deal with Pyongyang.
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Pigs, cows, and chickens are (also) the 99 percent, says animal rights activist

December 17, 2011
 By Tom Over

Though the products of their bodies seem to be just about every place where we expect to find food, these members of the 99 percent suffer mostly out of sight and out of mind to the omnivore general public. These animals don’t get pepper-sprayed or arrested at protests but spend their entire lives in jail or— as some animal liberationists say— in concentration camps. They need humans to speak up for their rights.

Sarah Von Alt, an animal rights activist working with Mercy For Animals supports the Occupy Movement.  

“MFA stands in solidarity with anyone who works to help animals, and I appreciate that the Occupy movement has included animals in its Official Declaration of the Occupation of New York City — specifically that corporate interests have ‘profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.'” 

Von Alt said as the Occupy movement continues to gain momentum, it is becoming more obvious that Americans have grown weary of corporate power in politics and the resulting abuses of humans and nonhuman animals. 

“While taking to the streets and participating in peaceful protests is one way to raise awareness about these important issues, each of us can start to remove our financial support from Big Ag by transitioning to a healthier, more sustainable plant-based diet. Since cows, pigs and chickens make up 99 out of every 100 animals exploited and killed in this country, in a very real way, they are the 99%,” Von Alt said.

You can find plenty of info about Mercy for Animals online, but here is Von Alt’s overview of the organization. 

“Mercy For Animals is a national non-profit organization dedicated to preventing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting compassionate food choices and policies. We encourage consumers to open their hearts and minds, and widen their circle of compassion beyond family, friends and their beloved companion animals to include all animals,” Von Alt said. 

She said more than 99 percent of animal exploitation and abuse in this country is at the hands of the meat, dairy and egg industries. 

“Farmed animals may not be as cute or fluffy as our dogs and cats at home, but they have the same capacity to feel love, joy, and happiness, as well as sorrow, fear and pain. The best way to help end the needless suffering of cows, pigs, chickens and other farmed animals is simply to not eat them,” Von Alt said.  

She said while MFA’s primary focus is on the animals themselves, transitioning to a plant based diet has shown benefits to human health, as well as our environment. 

“Currently, the leading causes of death in the United States, including heart disease, some forms of cancer, stroke and diabetes have been conclusively linked to diets high in meat, dairy, eggs and other animal products,” Von Alt said.  

The United Nations, Pew Charitable Trusts and other organizations have concluded that animal agriculture is a leading cause of every environmental problem we face — from global greenhouse gas emissions to deforestation to air and water pollution. 

“By transitioning to a healthy and humane vegetarian lifestyle, we can spare animals lives of immeasurable suffering and protect human health and the health of the planet,” Von Alt said.  

In light of this, boycotts of factory farmed meat, dairy and eggs—if not a boycott of them altogether would seem to make sense.

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“Choosing cruelty-free, plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy and eggs is a powerful way to put your ethics on the table and vote for a kinder world every time you sit down to eat. If you don’t like that animals are made to suffer and die for your dinner — good news! You have options. Leave the meat at the supermarket. You don’t have to continue to financially support an industry that hurts animals, the planet and your health. You can now find vegan versions of almost all your favorite foods– including veggie burgers, soy milk, and dairy-free ice cream — at nearly every grocery store and restaurant. It’s never been easier to adopt a healthy and compassionate vegan diet,” Von Alt said. 

I asked her about using marches as part of a movement for animal rights.  

“MFA volunteers around the country routinely take part in parades, street fairs and festivals to raise awareness about the plights of farmed animals. This was MFA’s sixth year marching in Pride Parades around the country, and as in years past, the crowd response has been amazing.  In fact, since MFA’s inception more than a decade ago, the parallels between the gay rights, animal rights and other social justice movements has been an important theme in our philosophy and message.  As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘No one is free when others are oppressed.'” 

She said in addition to marching in Pride Parades, MFA seeks to create positive social change by raising awareness about the plights of farmed animals and talking to consumers about the power of their food choices. “In 2011, MFA conducted more than 1,500 public outreach events including vegan feed-ins, tabling events, leafletings and Paid-Per-View screenings. At Paid-Per-View screenings we pay people a dollar to watch a 4-minute clip from Farm to Fridge, an eye-opening exploration behind the closed doors of the nation’s largest industrial poultry, pig, dairy and fish farms, hatcheries, and slaughter plants. Exposing consumers to the realities of modern animal agriculture is a powerful way to inspire change.

BELOW: Remains of a blue hare.  Rather ghastly, isn’t it? While animals in the wild have no choice and predators are wired to kill other animals, we do. Our “violent table” is a question of choice. Plus a vegetable-based diet is enormously more healthful to humans and the planet, not to mention consistent with social justice, considering the hunger problem that still haunts the world.—Eds.

She added, “After learning about the cruelty involved in factory-farmed products, many people think ‘free-range,’ ‘cage-free’ or ‘organic’ meat, eggs and dairy products are the solution. While these products may be less cruel than the typical factory farm products, they still involve needless violence, suffering and death and should not be mistaken for cruelty-free,”  

She said any time an animal, even a free-range animal, is used as a commodity to be consumed — or treated as a piece of property — corners are cut and the animals lose. 

“Animals on ‘free range’ farms are still often forced to live in overcrowded conditions, are mutilated without painkillers (castration, tail docking, debeaking etc.), denied veterinary care and ultimately shipped to slaughter to have their throats cut open, ” said Von Alt. 

This may indicate the challenge of forming alliances between animal liberationists and advocates of so-called humane animal husbandry. This also calls to mind how animal liberation gets relatively little attention in both mainstream and non-mainstream progressive media outlets, not to mention non-progressive media outlets. At the time of posting this content, I’m waiting on a reply from Mercy for Animals regarding the points in this paragraph. 

Von Alt continued, “At Mercy For Animals, we encourage people to remember that the only meaningful difference between a dog or a cat and a cow, pig or chicken is the way that we treat them. If you wouldn’t eat your free-range dog or cat, why would you eat any other animal who has the same passion for life?”  

Von Alt said if a person feels they are not quite willing or able to stop eating animals yet, it is more productive to begin by reducing the amount of meat, diary and eggs one consumes instead of falling for clever marketing schemes designed to make people feel better about paying more for some of the same types of cruelties.  

I’m currently looking for more details about such clever marketing schemes.  I asked Von Alt about the possible role of civil disobedience in the animal liberation movement. 

“Once people become aware of the scale of violence and suffering being routinely inflicted on animals in name of commerce and greed, some understandably turn to civil disobedience to express their outrage and to garner attention on the issue — particularly when the mainstream media seems unwilling to cover these issues otherwise. While we neither condone nor condemn non-violent actions to help animals, MFA continues to work within the law to bring its message of compassion to the masses,” Von Alt said. 

I asked Von Alt to offer ideas about engaging with government so as to save or improve farm animals’ lives. Though removing our financial support from the meat, dairy and egg industries is an easy and powerful way for individual consumers to put their ethics on the table, we shouldn’t stop there, said Von Alt. 

“Concerned citizens can also push their local, state and federal representatives to ban some of the cruelest factory farming practices. For example, MFA volunteers were instrumental in getting California Proposition 2 passed a couple years ago to outlaw veal crates for baby calves, gestation crates for mother pigs and battery cages for egg-laying hens. These types of intensive confinement systems, which don’t even allow the animals to freely move or lie down comfortably for nearly their entire lives, are perhaps the cruelest forms of institutionalized animal abuse in existence. But by raising awareness among the voting public, Prop 2 passed by a landslide and became the most popular ballot initiative in California history,” Von Alt said. 

She said MFA also worked with concerned citizens in Ohio to collect signatures to outlaw similarly cruel practices here.  

“When it became obvious to the industry that the measure may be as popular as the one in California, they decided to come to the table and negotiated a deal with the governor and the animal protection movement to phase out veal crates and gestation crates, place a moratorium on building new battery cage egg facilities and outlawed strangulation as a form of euthanasia,” Von Alt said.

These issues are related to  Ohio’s Livestock Care Standards Board, which was created in early 2010 after the Issue 2 ballot initiative passed in autumn of 2009. Von Alt said while it is important to remember  outlawing some cruel practices does not make these industries cruelty-free, it does help to alleviate the suffering of literally hundreds of millions of animals each year. 

“It is because of citizens who care enough to lobby their elected representatives, to write letters and make phone calls and collect signatures, that these types of initiatives have been so successful,” Von Alt said.  

On the distinction between groups that work for animal rights and those that work for animal welfare, Von Alt said those perspectives are not mutually exclusive. 

“MFA believes non-human animals are irreplaceable individuals with morally significant interests and hence rights. This includes the right to live free from unnecessary suffering and exploitation. We can work toward improving the lives of animals and alleviating their suffering while at the same time being clear that animals should not be exploited at all.”   

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How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped Make the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation

By Bruce E. Levine

Thanks in part to Rand, the United States is one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world.

Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961

Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.  

Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. At the iceberg’s visible tip is the influence she’s had over major political figures who have shaped American society. In the 1950s, Ayn Rand read aloud drafts of what was later to become Atlas Shrugged to her “Collective,” Rand’s ironic nickname for her inner circle of young individualists, which included Alan Greenspan, who would serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006.

In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) credits Rand for inspiring him to go into politics, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Atlas Shrugged his “foundation book.” Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says Ayn Rand had a major influence on him, and his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an even bigger fan. A short list of other Rand fans includes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Christopher Cox, chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission in George W. Bush’s second administration; and former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford.

But Rand’s impact on U.S. society and culture goes even deeper.

The Seduction of Nathan Blumenthal

Ayn Rand’s books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and her philosophy that celebrates self-interest and disdains altruism may well be, as Vidal assessed, “nearly perfect in its immorality.” But is Vidal right about evil? Charles Manson, who himself did not kill anyone, is the personification of evil for many of us because of his psychological success at exploiting the vulnerabilities of young people and seducing them to murder. What should we call Ayn Rand’s psychological ability to exploit the vulnerabilities of millions of young people so as to influence them not to care about anyone besides themselves?

While Greenspan (tagged “A.G.” by Rand) was the most famous name that would emerge from Rand’s Collective, the second most well-known name to emerge from the Collective was Nathaniel Branden, psychotherapist, author and “self-esteem” advocate. Before he was Nathaniel Branden, he was Nathan Blumenthal, a 14-year-old who read Rand’s The Fountainhead again and again. He later would say, “I felt hypnotized.” He describes how Rand gave him a sense that he could be powerful, that he could be a hero. He wrote one letter to his idol Rand, then a second. To his amazement, she telephoned him, and at age 20, Nathan received an invitation to Ayn Rand’s home. Shortly after, Nathan Blumenthal announced to the world that he was incorporating Rand in his new name: Nathaniel Branden. And in 1955, with Rand approaching her 50th birthday and Branden his 25th, and both in dissatisfying marriages, Ayn bedded Nathaniel.

What followed sounds straight out of Hollywood, but Rand was straight out of Hollywood, having worked for Cecil B. DeMille. Rand convened a meeting with Nathaniel, his wife Barbara (also a Collective member), and Rand’s own husband Frank. To Branden’s astonishment, Rand convinced both spouses that a time-structured affair—she and Branden were to have one afternoon and one evening a week together—was “reasonable.” Within the Collective, Rand is purported to have never lost an argument. On his trysts at Rand’s New York City apartment, Branden would sometimes shake hands with Frank before he exited. Later, all discovered that Rand’s sweet but passive husband would leave for a bar, where he began his self-destructive affair with alcohol.

By 1964, the 34-year-old Nathaniel Branden had grown tired of the now 59-year-old Ayn Rand. Still sexually dissatisfied in his marriage to Barbara and afraid to end his affair with Rand, Branden began sleeping with a married 24-year-old model, Patrecia Scott. Rand, now “the woman scorned,” called Branden to appear before the Collective, whose nickname had by now lost its irony for both Barbara and Branden. Rand’s justice was swift. She humiliated Branden and then put a curse on him: “If you have one ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health—you’ll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve potency sooner, you’ll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!”

Rand completed the evening with two welt-producing slaps across Branden’s face. Finally, in a move that Stalin and Hitler would have admired, Rand also expelled poor Barbara from the Collective, declaring her treasonous because Barbara, preoccupied by her own extramarital affair, had neglected to fill Rand in soon enough on Branden’s extra-extra-marital betrayal. (If anyone doubts Alan Greenspan’s political savvy, keep in mind that he somehow stayed in Rand’s good graces even though he, fixed up by Branden with Patrecia’s twin sister, had double-dated with the outlaws.)

After being banished by Rand, Nathaniel Branden was worried that he might be assassinated by other members of the Collective, so he moved from New York to Los Angeles, where Rand fans were less fanatical. Branden established a lucrative psychotherapy practice and authored approximately 20 books, 10 of them with either “Self” or “Self-Esteem” in the title. Rand and Branden never reconciled, but he remains an admirer of her philosophy of self-interest.

Ayn Rand’s personal life was consistent with her philosophy of not giving a shit about anybody but herself. Rand was an ardent two-pack-a-day smoker, and when questioned about the dangers of smoking, she loved to light up with a defiant flourish and then scold her young questioners on the “unscientific and irrational nature of the statistical evidence.” After an x-ray showed that she had lung cancer, Rand quit smoking and had surgery for her cancer. Collective members explained to her that many people still smoked because they respected her and her assessment of the evidence; and that since she no longer smoked, she ought to tell them. They told her that she needn’t mention her lung cancer, that she could simply say she had reconsidered the evidence. Rand refused.

How Rand’s Philosophy Seduced Young Minds

When I was a kid, my reading included comic books and Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. There wasn’t much difference between the comic books and Rand’s novels in terms of the simplicity of the heroes. What was different was that unlike Superman or Batman, Rand made selfishness heroic, and she made caring about others weakness.

Rand said, “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible….The choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” For many young people, hearing that it is “moral” to care only about oneself can be intoxicating, and some get addicted to this idea for life.

I have known several people, professionally and socially, whose lives have been changed by those close to them who became infatuated with Ayn Rand. A common theme is something like this: “My ex-husband wasn’t a bad guy until he started reading Ayn Rand. Then he became a completely selfish jerk who destroyed our family, and our children no longer even talk to him.”

To wow her young admirers, Rand would often tell a story of how a smart-aleck book salesman had once challenged her to explain her philosophy while standing on one leg. She replied: “Metaphysics—objective reality. Epistemology—reason. Ethics—self-interest. Politics—capitalism.” How did that philosophy capture young minds?

Metaphysics—objective reality. Rand offered a narcotic for confused young people: complete certainty and a relief from their anxiety. Rand believed that an “objective reality” existed, and she knew exactly what that objective reality was. It included skyscrapers, industries, railroads, and ideas—at least her ideas. Rand’s objective reality did not include anxiety or sadness. Nor did it include much humor, at least the kind where one pokes fun at oneself. Rand assured her Collective that objective reality did not include Beethoven’s, Rembrandt’s, and Shakespeare’s realities—they were too gloomy and too tragic, basically buzzkillers. Rand preferred Mickey Spillane and, towards the end of her life, “Charlie’s Angels.”

Epistemology—reason. Rand’s kind of reason was a “cool-tool” to control the universe. Rand demonized Plato, and her youthful Collective members were taught to despise him. If Rand really believed that the Socratic Method described by Plato of discovering accurate definitions and clear thinking did not qualify as “reason,” why then did she regularly attempt it with her Collective? Also oddly, while Rand mocked dark moods and despair, her “reasoning” directed that Collective members should admire Dostoyevsky, whose novels are filled with dark moods and despair. A demagogue, in addition to hypnotic glibness, must also be intellectually inconsistent, sometimes boldly so. This eliminates challenges to authority by weeding out clear-thinking young people from the flock.

Ethics—self-interest. For Rand, all altruists were manipulators. What could be more seductive to kids who discerned the motives of martyr parents, Christian missionaries and U.S. foreign aiders? Her champions, Nathaniel Branden still among them, feel that Rand’s view of “self-interest” has been horribly misrepresented. For them, self-interest is her hero architect Howard Roark turning down a commission because he couldn’t do it exactly his way. Some of Rand’s novel heroes did have integrity, however, for Rand there is no struggle to discover the distinction between true integrity and childish vanity. Rand’s integrity was her vanity, and it consisted of getting as much money and control as possible, copulating with whomever she wanted regardless of who would get hurt, and her always being right. To equate one’s selfishness, vanity, and egotism with one’s integrity liberates young people from the struggle to distinguish integrity from selfishness, vanity, and egotism.

Politics—capitalism. While Rand often disparaged Soviet totalitarian collectivism, she had little to say about corporate totalitarian collectivism, as she conveniently neglected the reality that giant U.S. corporations, like the Soviet Union, do not exactly celebrate individualism, freedom, or courage. Rand was clever and hypocritical enough to know that you don’t get rich in the United States talking about compliance and conformity within corporate America. Rather, Rand gave lectures titled: “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” So, young careerist corporatists could embrace Rand’s self-styled “radical capitalism” and feel radical — radical without risk.

Rand’s Legacy

In recent years, we have entered a phase where it is apparently okay for major political figures to publicly embrace Rand despite her contempt for Christianity. In contrast, during Ayn Rand’s life, her philosophy that celebrated self-interest was a private pleasure for the 1 percent but she was a public embarrassment for them. They used her books to congratulate themselves on the morality of their selfishness, but they publicly steered clear of Rand because of her views on religion and God. Rand, for example, had stated on national television, “I am against God. I don’t approve of religion. It is a sign of a psychological weakness. I regard it as an evil.”

Actually, again inconsistent, Rand did have a God. It was herself. She said:

I am done with the monster of “we,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: “I.”

While Harriet Beecher Stowe shamed Americans about the United State’s dehumanization of African Americans and slavery, Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it “moral” for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she “liberated” millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children.

The good news is that I’ve seen ex-Rand fans grasp the damage that Rand’s philosophy has done to their lives and to then exorcize it from their psyche. Can the United States as a nation do the same thing?

>Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite  (Chelsea Green, 2011). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net.

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Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur is a work in progress

PATRICE GREANVILLE

Cenk Uygur has often provided a desperately needed antidote to the lies of mainstream media, but his own limitations —and those inherent in a commercial medium—may eventually flatten his promise.  

 
MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur interviews Julian Assange (VIDEO)  ]
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PLEASE ALSO SEE THE ADDENDUM AT BOTTOM OF THE ARTICLE 

Cenk Uygur, the key figure in the The Young Turks media collective, and at present the latest controversial host to migrate to Current TV from MSNBC  (the first was Keith Olbermann), seems to be a work in progress.  His still evolving persona in terms of political positions ranges all the way from conventional left-liberal Democratic party endorser to muddled anti-status quo leftist. His confusion may stem from the simple fact that, like so many intelligent and decent people who see the crimes and crookedness of the system and wish to oppose it, he lacks (or shuns) a class analysis approach to make sense of the actual forces shaping reality.
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FAUSTIAN PACT?

progressive Internet news and political commentary program distributed via live web stream and YouTube.  The Young Turks is reputed to be the first Internet TV news show[2] and the world’s largest online news show. Video of the show is streamed daily on their website and available as a podcast.[3][4]  While I have not watched the TYT often enough to establish whether the web-borne edition is (or was) more outspoken than the new-fangled mainstream TV edition, I remain dubious that Cenk will be able to comfortably transfer any type of radicalism  to his new venue. 

  That alone should set off some alarms.

In fairness, Al Gore’s political persona has undergone something of an “ascetic/enviromental crusader” makeover, underscored by what some have interpreted as a low-key  renunciation (and denunciation) of conventional politics. This may bode well for those who want to expose the more corrupt aspects of the current set up, but his backing so far seems amorphous. 

Indeed, Gore and Cenk may share a commonality and that is that they both appear to be people in transition.  Gore’s commitment, visibility, connections and media access have definitely put the topic of climate change and massive species extinction on the front-burner of public policy (where it remains royally ignored by the powers that be, starting with the disgraceful betrayals and foot-dragging of the Obama administration), but his thinking is obviously still very much that of an establishmentarian.  This, and Joel Hyatt’s even more conventional business-oriented thinking, and his own budding political ambition, can only cripple a would-be radical’s style.  Which Cenk apparently isn’t, at least not yet, despite, as I signaled earlier, Cenk’s evolving political persona toward what I hope will be a welcome awakening.

Still, on the hopeful side, whatever the limitations of Gore’s message (his famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is notoriously weak in the solutions it offers, chiefly non-systemic superficialities like switching to more efficient bulbs, hybrids, etc.), he has done valuable work alerting the world to the impending ecocide and he may have some inclination to permit a wider range of opinions on Current TV.  Olbermann’s tenure at Current has shown some promising signs, especially his frequent featuring of OWS spokespeople, and he has occasionally sharply criticized Obama, but, as Uygur himself has done, this is often cancelled by overt or implicit (however reluctant) endorsement of the Lesser Evil on presidential elections.

Meanwhile, several things tips us off about the chains of mainstream consciousness still afflicting Cenk Uygur:
>>
• Cenk voted for Obama in 2008. He had previously been a moderate Republican. (In that he’s hardly alone; many voted for Obama—including notables like Cornell West, who should have known better—and have since recuperated from the error of their ways).
• While opposing the Afghan/Iraq wars, Cenk—probably a victim of the subtler propaganda enveloping this cynical neocolonialist grab— supported  Obama on Libya and he still says so unrepentantly.
• He thinks Howard Dean—as clear a Democratic party apparatchik and DLC operative as any— is a man who promises real change. This despite the fact that Dean, himself a physician, did not even support universal healthcare in his own state, Vermont, and remains prominent as an ubiquitous Democrat apologist.
• Cenk remains a captive of Lesser Evilism, arguing that bad as the Democrats may be, they’re substantively better than the Republicans, “a fully-owned subsidiary of corporate America and the plutocracy.”   

Perhaps Cenk (along with other left-liberals like Dylan Ratigan, Rachel Maddow, and Olbermann) represents at this point the outer boundary of what we can expect capitalist-dominated media to deliver in terms of covering the ills of the system. However, as tensions mount, and events turn to more dramatic forms of confrontation between the plutocracy and the “99%”, including many more instances of clear and indisputable Democrat betrayal, these television hosts will be increasingly put in an impossible situation forcing them to choose between their careers and their conscience—indeed, the classical bourgeois journalist’s dilemma.

Choosing for the latter, of course, may condemn them to swift oblivion, but then again, the OWS phenomenon points to a revival of creativity among those who wish to resist the global imperium, and in those trenches, which should eventually include most of humanity,  there will always be room for people committed to creating truly democratic communications.  
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 ADDENDUM

Current TV’s Cenk Uygur: Ronald Reagan Would Be a ‘Huge Liberal’ Now
 

Mon, Dec 5 2011 | Cenk Uygur interviewed by Reuters 

The former MSNBC host told TheWrap that he planned to make use of the new platform for the online show with panel discussions and guests. He said that the show will easily stand out from other cable news shows populated with “plastic robot anchors.”

“We’ll be much more irreverent, in your face and genuine,” he promised.

Uygur discussed his plans for the show, which candidate he’ll vote for 2012 and the future of the Occupy movement in his interview with TheWrap.

How will this show differ from “The Young Turks” people see online?

First of all, we’ve got a production that will be really stepped up – the graphics, the intros — even being able to talk to everyone on the set. I am also looking forward to the panel conversation at the bottom of the hour — bringing in the smartest progressives from across the country, and sometimes non-progressives to have a great conversation and an honest conversation. Bringing in guests was hard, technically, on the online show.

So are the cable news networks your competition? And, if so, how do you make Current distinct?

I don’t think anybody will be confused as to whether we’re different from the rest of cable news. That’s easy. Look, unfortunately for the rest of cable news there are a lot of plastic robot anchors out there who regurgitate what producers put in the prompter. I don’t even have a prompter; the show is unscripted. We’ll be much more irreverent, in your face and genuine.

Right now you’ve got the GOP primary and Occupy Wall Street. What are you most excited to talk about?

The GOP primary race is a lot of fun because there are a bunch of goofballs over there and they provide a ton of entertainment, but I’m probably more excited by the progressive policy points we’re looking at.

People often talk about OWS but don’t give it the right context. It drives me crazy when Fox and other cable outlets play along – “No one knows what they are doing out there. Why don’t they get a job?” They know exactly what they’re asking for.

They are tired of institutional corruption.

As winter sets in and various protesters are shut down, do you see the movement dying out or do you think it will come back stronger in the spring as the protesters are claiming?

The occupy movement is not about a couple of tents in L.A. or Zuccotti Park. It’s about the majority of the country that are sick of their politicians not representing them, giving every unfair advantage to the richest people in the country. As great a job as they have done to bring the issue to the forefront of the conversation, it’s not just about guys in a park but who they represent. They represent the majority of Americans that say, “Enough is enough, how do we get democracy back?”

Like the Occupy protesters, you’ve been very critical of Barack Obama. Would you vote for another candidate in 2012?

Well if by someone else you mean a Republican the answer to that is a, “Hell, no.” They are all cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Would there be an independent I’d consider? I guess. I think a third party run is generally a very bad idea. It gives the other side an advantage, but I’m open to anything because of the incredible frustration that the Democrats never do anything progressive.

Now you used to be a moderate Republican, no? How do you explain that shift?

It’s not a drastic shift at all. I was a liberal Republican from New Jersey. No such beast exists anymore. It wasn’t that I changed. I changed almost none of my positions. The Republican party has changed where they went from liberal Republicans to despising them. What does it mean to be a liberal Republican? To be liberal on social issues, which I am, and fiscally conservative, which I am.

The Republican party isn’t. They haven’t been fiscally conservative since Dwight Eisenhower.

Even Ronald Reagan would be a huge liberal right now. He would be kicked out of the Democratic party for being too liberal. He negotiated with Iran and sold weapons to terrorists. Obama would be scared out of his mind to have any position remotely as progressive as Ronald Reagan. The Democratic party is far to the right of Ronald Reagan.

So if the Republican party has shifted so far to the right, and the Democrats have shifted to adjust, doesn’t that mean the populace has as well?

Those changes are not at all reflective of what the population believes. In nearly every single poll, the country is massively progressive. Cut social security under any circumstances? Eighty-four percent say no. Cost of living? The public option tested in the 70s. In some polls the majority of Republicans were in favor. Should we tax the rich, the top one percent more? Should we get out of the wars? A huge majority is in favor.

So if the country is massively progressive, why is this not showing up in the political results?

We’ve lost our democracy. Votes don’t matter any more. Ninety-seven percent of people who had more money in elections won. Politicians work for the  guys who sign their checks. The fact that the rest of media doesn’t cover it as an absolute fact makes a mockery of rest of the media. It’s basically the only issue that matters. It’s why we’ve had this dramatic shift to the right of Washington.

© Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved.

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