April 22, 2022
As a way of
introducing the main content for this lesson, see this short video that
illustrates the
timing and location of all the nuclear tests that occurred between
1945 and 2009.
Main content: Follow the link below to the interview with Kate Brown discussing her book Plutopia about the places in the USSR and the USA where nuclear bombs were manufactured. You can read the transcript or watch the subtitled video at this link: Plutopia: Interview with Kate Brown on Talkingstick TV.
Prepare a short
summary and commentary about the interview. We will discuss it next
lesson. Prepare to talk about whatever you found notable or interesting
about Kate Brown's research.
April 15, 2022
You can review the video: Hiroshima: Why the Bomb was Dropped. You can read the notes about this documentary and get a transcript of it here.
We also watched an
interview with historian Peter Kuznick, co-author of The Untold
History of the United States: Imperial
Japan, the Bomb and the Pacific Powderkeg.
April 8, 2022
We discussed the
iconography and imagery of the Cold War by looking slowly at the montage
of art and photos that are packed into the opening of the television drama The Americans.
Then we viewed the images at the speed at which they are presented in
the opening. The rapid sequence of images is perhaps an example of
subliminal triggering of memories and feelings of people who lived
through the Cold War. Learn the names of the leaders you see in the
opening: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford,
Carter, Reagan.
The Larger Context of the Cold War
Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto (1848): “There is a specter haunting Europe.” It still haunts Europe. They declared that all value comes from labor. Capitalism had been a great force in human progress, they wrote, but the next stage had to involve ownership of production shifting toward those who produce the value. This would lead to class war, and it terrified the class that owned the means of production. Wars to end slavery, wars of independence, the great wars of the 20th century, and post-colonial struggles were all driven by the struggle of the owner class to hold on to what they had under the threat of this "specter haunting Europe". Anti-socialism and anti-communism were the ultimate causes of modern wars, though this is rarely stated in many history textbooks. The "Cold War" really started in 1848, not 1948.
WWI was a struggle between the European empires to hold onto their territories and gain control of the oil resources of the Middle East. WWII was a fought to reverse the Bolshevik revolution and stop the spread of socialism. The British, French and Americans delayed in joining the USSR in an alliance against Germany because the inter-imperial war was still ongoing. They had been hoping that Germany would defeat the USSR first. They believed it would then be easy to get victory over Germany after it had exhausted itself fighting communism. WWII could have been avoided if not for this strong anti-communist motivation and rivalry between the imperial powers.
It
is often said that democracy is the opposite of communism, but communism
is also democratic in its ideals. Furthermore, it is primarily an
ideology of economics, so its true opposite is capitalism. Lenin defined
fascism as the extreme end-stage form of capitalism and imperialism. In
Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, capitalism was very profitable. It was
not in danger from fascism. The fascist state structure protected
capitalism from the demands of the working class.
During WWII, the US government was divided. President Roosevelt wanted to end imperialism and live peacefully with the USSR, but segments of the military, big business interests, the State Department and the new intelligence agencies wanted to strengthen Germany and forgive Nazi officials. They were more concerned with continuing the anti-communist struggle after the war. Thus the Cold War was born out of WWII.
At the end of WWII, the pro-big business conservative wing of the Democratic Party prepared to break the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and wage a counter-revolution against Roosevelt's New Deal. These conservatives saw that President Roosevelt was very ill and likely to die during his next term as president, so they plotted to remove the Vice President Henry Wallace as the vice presidential candidate for the 1944 election. The inexperienced, conservative Senator Harry Truman became the vice presidential nominee through a very undemocratic process controlled by party bosses. After the war, when Truman was president, he was manipulated by this conservative faction to break Roosevelt's agreements with Stalin and to antagonize the Soviet Union. The creation of the nuclear arms race and the CIA had tragic consequences that are evident still today in 2022.
Further reading
Paul Cudenec, "Fascism,
Newnormalism and the Left," Winter Oak, July 26, 2020.
Max Perry, "Synthetic Left Joins Corporate Right in Getting Ukraine War Wrong," Covert Action Magazine, April 22, 2022.