Multiculturalism as a process of globalisation
by K R Bolton
Academy of Social and Political Research
Multicultural politics, including that concerned with immigration, is a method of social engineering. Whoever raises a voice in public in opposition or even merely of caution is pilloried as a “racist” and a “reactionary”. Conversely, those who champion multiculturalism are upheld as the paragons of ‘progress’ and humanitarianism. Yet behind the moral façade multiculturalism is a cynical stratagem, an important part of the process of globalisation in the interests of a small, self-appointed plutocratic elite. This essay examines how multiculturalism is an aspect of globalisation.
“See, capitalism is not fundamentally racist—it can exploit racism for its purposes, but racism isn’t built into it. Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangeable cogs, and differences among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional. I mean, they may be functional for a period, like if you want a super-exploited workforce or something, but those situations are kind of anomalous. Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist - just because it’s anti-human. And race is, in fact, a human characteristic - there’s no reason why it should be a negative characteristic, but it is a human characteristic. So therefore identifications based on race interfere with the basic ideal that people should be available just as consumers and producers, interchangeable cogs who will purchase all the junk that’s produced - that’s their ultimate function, and any other properties they might have are kind of irrelevant, and usually a nuisance.”
Noam Chomsky
It is ironic that an intellectual championed in particular by the anarchist-Left has given such a cogent definition of the motivating force behind multiculturalism. Among the numerous references to Chomsky made by the Left his diagnosis of capitalism as being “anti-racist” because it aims to create a society of humans as nothing more than “interchangeable cogs”, does not receive the same attention as his other views. As Chomsky states, individuals cannot function at an optimum level as producers and consumers if there are racial or what we might further categorise as cultural and national, divisions.
Chomsky is outside the mainstream of Leftist ideology, which sees humanity and the individual in precisely the same terms as capitalism sees humanity as defined by Chomsky in the above passage. Both capitalism and Marxism are globalist, and both are reductionist in seeing economic factors as the primary determinants of human behaviour and history. Marx himself was not adverse to Free Trade capitalism. He supported Free Trade insofar as he saw it as a dialectical catalyst for the destruction of national boundaries, which would internationalise “the proletariat” and eventually lead to a global system. Global capitalists maintain the same outlook today. Marx’s analysis in regard to Free Trade was correct, although his alternative is nothing more than to change the ownership of production and distribution. Marx said of Free Trade:
“National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the modern of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish faster.”
Today’s global corporate executives and planners concur with Marx. Marx further identified “protectionism” as the conservative position, Free Trade as subversive and revolutionary. Those – mainly political scientists and journalists, especially in the English-speaking world – who insist on defining “conservatism” (sic) as Free Trade liberalism, should return to an actual source; in this instance Marx, to re-evaluate their definitions:
“Generally speaking, the protectionist system today is conservative, whereas the Free Trade system has a destructive effect. It destroys the former nationalities, and renders the contrasts between workers and middle class more acute. In a word, the Free Trade system is precipitating the social revolution. And only in this revolutionary sense to I vote for Free Trade.”
South Africa Succumbed to Plutocracy – Not Communism
A classic example of the way by which multiculturalism is sold behind the moral guise of ‘anti-racism’, ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’ in the interests of plutocratic exploitation is that of South Africa. Without arguing the merits or otherwise of apartheid, the salient factor in considering multiculturalism as part of the globalisation process is that the fall of the Nationalist Government was the outcome of a nexus between Black communist-inspired terrorists from below and plutocracy headed up by the Oppenheimer interests working from above. Here communism and Big Business served as pincer movements with the ‘Boer’ in between. In eulogising Harry F Oppenheimer on his death in 2000 Mandela stated:
“His contribution to building partnership between big business and the new democratic government in that first period of democratic rule can never be appreciated too much.”
The result has not been a regime that would deliver South African wealth to the Blacks in a new utopia of peace and plenty. Rather the African National Congress (ANC)/Communist Party regime has opened South Africa up to globalisation and destroyed the remnants of the economic nationalism of the Afrikaner nationalist governments. It was the Afrikaner nationalists who stood for State economic intervention and who stood up to monopoly capitalism, since the days of the old Boer Republics. The Black regime has reversed this economic nationalism in favour of globalisation and privatisation.
In 1996, according to a Reuters report, Nelson Mandela, heralded as a saint by the capitalist press and the Left alike, stated that: “Privatisation is the fundamental policy of the ANC and will remain so.” Now the ANC Government is busy dismantling the state economic structure erected by the Afrikaner nationalists to safeguard their nation from the incursions of international finance capitalism. The ANC/CP Government is turning State run utilities over to global corporations, just as ‘privatisation’ and globalisation in New Zealand was originally enacted under a so-called “Labour” Government. For e.g. the State has divested itself of its 40% share in South African Airways, once the most profitable airline in Africa. The Johannesburg municipal water supply has been privatised and is now under the French corporation Suez Lyonnaise Eaux. Eskom the state electricity producer, was made into a public corporation to pave the way for privatisation. The ANC stated that: “Eskom is one of a host of government owned “parastatals” created during the apartheid era which the democratically elected government has set out to privatise in a bid to raise money.”
This good comrade, Mandela, nurtured by the Communist apparatus in South Africa, lauded by the Western media as a saint, paved the way for the privatisation and globalisation of the South African economy. He has followed the example of the rest of de-colonised Africa, where the global corporations moved in once the colonial administrations had pulled out. Global Capitalism and Cultural Identity
It is with the view to destroying national, cultural and ethnic boundaries that global capitalism promotes open immigration.
In their study of global corporations based on interviews with the corporate elite, Barnet and Muller state that both Adam Smith, theorist of Free Trade, and Marx, predicted that capitalism would become international, which has been pointed out in the opening passages of this essay. Barnet and Muller write that, “The world managers are the most active promoters of this Marxist prediction” of globalisation , of which we have previously quoted from The Communist Manifesto.
Barnet and Muller state that Jacques Maisonrouge, president of the IBM World Trade Corporation “likes to point out that; Down with borders, a revolutionary student slogan of the 1968 Paris university uprising – in which some of his children were involved – is also a welcome slogan at IBM.” Maisonrouge states that the “World Managers” (as Barnett and Muller call the corporate executives) believe they are making the world ‘smaller and more homogeneous”; that the “global corporation is “the great leveller’”, or as Chomsky puts it, everyone is being levelled down as an “interchangeable cog” in a world economy. Maisonrouge approvingly describes the global corporate executive as “the detribalised, international career men.” It is this “detribalisation” that is the basis of a “world consumer culture” required to more efficiently create a world economy.
These “detribalised, international career men” were more recently described by G Pascal Zachary, financial journalist, as being an “informal global aristocracy”, recruited over the world by the corporations, depending totally on their companies and “little upon the larger public”, a new class unhindered by national, cultural or ethnic bonds. They are without nationality, and are quite literally ‘interchangeable cogs’.
Creating The World Consumer
National, cultural and ethnic boundaries hinder global marketing. Barnett and Muller quote Pfizer’s John J Powers as stating that global corporations are “agents for change, socially, economically and culturally.” Barnett and Muller state that global executives see “irrational nationalism” as inhibiting “the free flow of finance capital, technology and goods on a global scale.” A crucial aspect of nationalism is “differences in psychological and cultural attitudes, that complicate the task of homogenising the earth into an integrated unit ... Cultural nationalism is also a serious problem because it threatens the concept of the Global Shopping Center.”
Barnet and Muller cite A W Clausen of the Bank of America as stating that national, cultural and racial differences create “marketing problems”, lamenting that there is “no such thing as a uniform, global market.” Harry Heltzer, Chief Executive Officer of 3M stated that global corporations are a “powerful voice for world peace because their allegiance is not to any nation, tongue, race or creed but to one of the finer aspirations of mankind, that the people of the world may be united in common economic purpose.”
Global Cities
Since Barnet and Muller wrote their book, the internationalising and levelling tendency of global capitalism has become evident in New Zealand with our malls and the way our towns and cities now look much the same in whatever part of the country one may visit. Of course, the trends towards globalisation and the “global consumer culture” including the “global shopping mall” are even more evident throughout the Western world, with increasing encroachment on the former Eastern bloc and the Third World by global corporations.
In the 1970s Howard Perlmutter and Hasan Ozekhan of the Wharton School of Finance Worldwide Institutions Programme prepared a plan for a “global city”. Prof. Perlmutter is a consultant to global corporations. His plan was commissioned by the French Government planning agency on how best to make Paris a “global city.” Perlmutter predicted that cities would become “global cities” during the 1980s. For Paris this required “becoming less French” and undergoing “denationalisation.” This, he said, requires a “psycho-cultural change of image with respect to the traditional impression of ‘xenophobia’ that the French seem to exclude.” Perlmutter suggested that the best way of ridding France of its nationalism was to introduce multiculturalism. He advocated “the globalisation of cultural events” such as international rock festivals, as an antidote to “overly national and sometimes nationalistic culture.” Of course such modernist music has from the start been a means by which a ‘global culture’ can be imposed from above, whilst simultaneously making large profits, and breaking down cultural and ethnic barriers among the generations of youth, until everyone has become “detribalised”. In more recent years we have witnessed the phenomenon of the young, right down to toddlers, being targeted by corporate advertising as consumers in their own right.
This “global city” concept being discussed three decades ago is interesting for New Zealanders at the moment considering the current Government enactment that made Auckland a “super city” by centralising the various district council’s into a single entity. Such super-cities are panned for Wellington and elsewhere. A World Bank report for ‘reshaping geography’ according to global economic requirements has recently been issued which would appear to be a globalist blueprint for the increasing absorption of townships into the type of “super city” now being proposed for New Zealand, being undertaken under the demand for ‘economic efficiency’ and condemning any opposition as ‘parochial’.
Funding the Multicultural Revolutions Multicultural agendas throughout the world are the recipients of much largesse from the global corporations channelled through tax-empts foundations such as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
The currency speculator George Soros, whose foundations and networks have been particularly active in fomenting ‘colour revolutions’ around the world under the auspices of his Open Society Institute, specialise in the subverting of traditional institutions and customs especially in the Middle Eastern and former Eastern bloc countries. Feminist issues are particularly high on the agenda. In the area of multiculturalism Soros set up the Emma Lazarus Fund to dispense funds for immigration lobbying.
Emma Lazarus was the 19th Century poet, novelist and critic, and an early proponent of Zionist colonisation of Palestine, whose words from her poetic tribute to the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus, adorn the statue: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” The Fund was set up by the Open Society Institute spanning 1996-1997 for the sole purpose of dispensing grants totalling $50,000,000 to pro-immigration lobbies and projects.
La Raza: How the Ford Foundation Created a New Ethnic Group.
Until the 1960s the problem of Mexican migration was economically based, and involved the demand for cheap labour by the giant agricultural combines in the USA. However, during the 1960s, with the rise of “identity politics”, “black power” and the well-funded “civil rights” movement, the Ford Foundation expanded its ethnic outreach to Mexican migrants. The aim was to begin a process of forming previously diverse nationalities into a unified “Hispanic” ethnic movement intended to further erode any vestiges of an American nationality, identity or culture. The Ford Foundation, through its grant-making strategies, formed a new “race” (La Raza) that threatens to secede parts of the USA to Mexico or at least declare a separatist Hispanic nation.
Until the creation of MALDEF (Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund) by the Ford Foundation, Mexican Americans regarded themselves as “whites” who aimed to completely assimilate into White America. Joseph Fallon , writes:
“The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation’s oldest and largest ‘’Hispanic’’ organization, was established on February 17, 1929 ... “From 1929 through the 1950s, LULAC was a middle-class, patriotic organization of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent whose activities centered primarily on education. Its agenda was traditional ‘’Americanism’’ — Mexican-Americans must assimilate to the ‘’Anglo’’ culture of the United States and acquire proficiency in the English language. It stressed ‘’Mexican-Americans’’ were ‘’Americans,’’ not ‘’Mexicans.’’ An integral part of its activities was the promotion of U.S. citizenship and loyalty to the United States. LULAC rejected the idea the U.S. Southwest should be returned to Mexico and opposed establishment of Spanish-language enclaves in the United States. Because illegal aliens from Mexico were violating U.S. laws and posing an economic burden on Mexican-Americans by lowering wages, LULAC endorsed immigration control and supported President Eisenhower’s ‘’Operation Wetback’’ which deported a million illegal aliens back to Mexico.”
This orientation among Mexican –Americans changed when the Ford Foundation promoted the formation of MALDEF, whose founder Peter Tijerina, had been an official of LULAC.
“MALDEF was a creation of the Ford Foundation in more ways than just funding. The Ford Foundation soon took control of virtually all important matters from where the headquarters should be located, to the appointment of its executive director, and the type of legal cases it should pursue.”
MALDEF was created to establish a separate identity for Latin American immigrants, which would undermine the cohesion of the USA by, of example, demanding legal status for the Spanish language on par with English.
In addition to largesse from the Foundations, MALDEF also receives funds from globalist corporations including AT&T;and IBM. Joseph Fallon writes:
“MALDEF obtains the funding to support its activities primarily from corporations in particular AT&T;and IBM, and philanthropic foundations. For the period 1991-1995, the total amount of ‘’gifts, grants and contributions’’ to MALDEF was over $17 million. Between 1996 and 1998, MALDEF received over nine million dollars from just three foundations the vast majority, over six million dollars from the Ford Foundation, $1,200,000 from Carnegie Corporation, and another $1,525,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. The National Council of La Raza was established in 1968 with support from the Ford Foundation and was originally called the Southwest Council of La Raza.”
Hence a new ethnicity was formed in the USA through the largesse of Ford, Rockefeller AT&T;and IBM, a new ethnicity which moreover has become a significant factor in the breaking down of an American national identity. It is relevant to conjecture as to what extent the creation of this Hispanic ethnicity will serve as a leeway for pushing the American Free Trade Agreement that includes Mexico, as one of many such regional economic groupings that, like the EU, and the projected Trilateralist Asia bloc, serve as a further step towards a global economic system where there is a free flow of labour, resources, money and goods unhindered by national, cultural and ethnic boundaries and traditions. The end product will not be the individual living in peace and harmony with everybody else across the world, but a rootless serf: Homo Economicus, the ‘interchangeable cog’ referred to by Chomsky.
K R Bolton, is a Fellow of the Academy of Social & Political Research
(http://www.academy-of-social-and-political-research.com). Published works include: Thinkers of the Right, England, 2003; “Russia and China: An Approaching Conflict?”, Washington: The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer 2009; “Trotskyism and the anti-family agenda”, CKR, Sociology Dept., Moscow State University, October 2009, and Geopolitika, Moscow, November 2009. This article “Multiculturalism as a Process of Globalisation” originally appeared, footnoted and fully referenced, in the peer reviewed quarterly journal of the Academy of Social and Political Research, Ab Aeterno, No. 1, November 2009.
