America As Overlord, From WWII to the Vietnam War
Hal Draper, 2011 Center for Socialist History, 2023 Haymarket Books
“Neither Washington nor Moscow !”
This is a collection of essays by Hal Draper, prolific Marxist author and activist during the 20th century. Draper is the author of the magisterial multi-volume “Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution”( Monthly Review) , “ The Two Souls of Socialism” and numerous other works. He was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, Workers Party, Independent Socialist League, and the International Socialists. These essays are mainly from his period in the latter two organizations. Sam Farber’s introduction situates Draper in Marxist history in the U.S. and especially in the Third Camp tendency which opposed both the Western and Eastern imperialist blocs. Draper has a unique style, very detailed and logical, which takes a bit to get used to. It is in its own way accessible and allows for reflection and consideration of his arguments.
Many of the points Draper makes are very useful, provocative, and interesting. They are somewhat weakened by fundamental limitations of the tradition he comes from. For example, his Bureaucratic Collectivist analysis of Russia leads him to see it as basically different from Western capitalists, though he sees Russia as imperialist. For Draper, Bureaucratic Collectivism meant that the USSR was a class society where the ruling class exploited the working class. It was a new form of class society driven by the luxury needs of the bureaucracy, not driven by the drive for profit as capitalism is.
Another weakness is his promotion of a “democratic foreign policy” for the U.S. It is unclear from these essays what this term means. It is a problematic concept. No capitalist government, least of all U.S. imperialism, can have a democratic foreign policy. Calling for a democratic foreign policy under capitalism risks building illusions about the possible peacefulness of capitalist governments. Even as a transitional demand it is a non-starter. Transitional demands are demands that large numbers want and are willing to fight for but cannot be achieved under capitalism. A democratic foreign policy is not achievable under capitalism and would be inappropriate in a workers’ state. A workers state would not seek to have long term peaceful democratic relations with capitalist states. Instead, a worker’s state would have a policy of promoting workers revolution internationally. The demand for a democratic foreign policy seems to fall between two stools, not possible by a capitalist state and not desirable by a workers’ state.
The revolutionary attitude to imperialism and capitalist foreign policy needs to be more forthright. Marxists need to expose the goals and effects of government policy and build no illusions in a benign capitalist foreign policy. The main demands of revolutionaries should be negative. If the capitalists are in charge, we oppose what they are doing. We demand U.S. Out! This includes the dismantling of all 800 U.S. military bases abroad. We do not call for better, kinder, gentler U.S. intervention. Instead we demand no intervention!
A further weakness of Draper’s essays is an underlying appeal to anti-Communism. He implies that one reason to oppose U.S. aggression against Cuba etc. is to undercut the appeal of “Communism” (Stalinism). In the Marxist view, the world is run by exploitive ruling classes. Marxists need to be in solidarity with workers everywhere, opposing exploitation and oppression no matter what government imposes it. Draper seems to be trying to appeal to liberal anti-communists who support the West against the East. Draper takes the Third Camp position and argues for opposition to both imperialist blocs. Unfortunately, his appeal to liberal illusions in the U.S. system undercuts this.
Aside from these weaknesses, his essays provide many insights. “Beyond Yalta: The Truth About the Second World War” is fascinating. Right wingers attacked Roosevelt for giving away too much to Stalin after World War Two at the Yalta conference. Draper argues that FDR was more concerned about the British Empire than he was about the USSR.
“One of the big facts that explains Yalta is that the most intense antagonism was not between U.S.-Britain versus their Russian ally, but between the U.S. and Britain themselves!” (4)
Britain was trying to consolidate Europe under its hegemony. Churchill wanted the second front against the Nazis to invade Europe further east to prevent the Russians from taking over Eastern Europe. The best he could do was secure Greece under British hegemony with Stalin’s acquiescence. Stalin obliged Churchill by holding back the Communist Party partisans in Greece. The military reality favored Russian domination of Eastern Europe. It would have taken another major war to change that. Churchill reported:
“Stalin. adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement of October, and during all the long weeks of fighting the Communists in the streets of Athens not one word of reproach came from Pravda or Izvestia.” (44)
Draper’s extensive detailed discussions on Yalta and the background to the Cold War are very important. They show that these talks were about imperialist division of the world. Focusing on the end of WWII and the aftermath clearly shows the imperialist nature of the war itself.
“The Second World War was supposed to be a war against Nazism, against barbaristic enemies of humanity and civilization. It was nothing of the sort. It was a war against an imperialist rival by a hostile coalition of imperialist rivals, who in turn were torn by internal imperialist rivalries. The official war aims were belied by Yalta” (21)
This essay exposes Roosevelt and Stalin as great power manipulators with no compassion or concern for the well being of the millions they were dominating. This is important to bust the illusions in FDR among liberals and to bust the illusions in Stalin among would be “Marxist-Leninists”.
“ . Stalin consciously presented himself as the continuator of tsarist Russian-imperialism — -the imperialism for whose defeat Lenin had agitated in the war of 1904.”(20)
This essay is a timely reminder that it is a distortion of reality to view a conflict through the lens of a later conflict that did not exist at the time.
In other essays as well, Draper takes a firm stand against imperialism West or East:
“ ..the test of a genuine democrat is that he fights for freedom for peoples oppressed by his own government without compromising his denunciation of oppression anywhere.”(85)
In other essays in this book, Draper explores several issues: The role of U.S. as arbiter among the Western powers, with a special focus on the Suez Crisis of 1956; The CIA organized and backed military coup in Guatemala in 1954; The U.S occupations of Okinawa, Guam, and Samoa; the Cuban Missile Crisis; and the changing politics on the U.S War on Vietnam.
Finally, his essay “The ABCs of National Liberation Movements: A Political Guide” articulates important principles that are still applicable today. In this essay, Draper explains the concept of “military but not political support.” He explains that if the military victory of a particular force would be positive in world politics, it is correct to support it even if disagreeing with the politics of that force. He applied that to the National Liberation Front in Vietnam. Draper opposed Ho Chi Minh’s Stalinist politics but understood that the Vietnamese victory would be a step toward self-determination and for weakening imperialism. He argued for his political organization, the International Socialists to support the military victory of Vietnam against the U.S..
This concept, a form of unconditional but critical support, is applicable in situations across the world today. Unfortunately, Draper’s explanation of it is contradictory. Paraphrasing Von Clausewitz, he says “A war is politics continued by other, that is forcible means. Our attitude toward a war must be congruent with our attitude toward the politics of which it is a continuation.” (144) . Since he opposed Ho Chi Minh’s politics, this would seem to preclude military support to the North Vietnamese against the U.S.
Contradicting this, he says that our attitude to a war should not be determined by “our opinion of the men, the government or the class leading the war, not our opinion of their past or present crimes” (144)
Despite his contradictory explanation, his articulation of the principle is very important.
Overall, this book is interesting and provocative. It explains examples of U.S. imperialism that are not well-known today even among leftists. Despite some theoretical weaknesses, it will stimulate thought on issues that are still relevant today.
