June 14, 2013

A Marxist view of U.S. foundations

Here are extracts from a synopsis of Joan Roelof's book Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism:
On occasion, the most striking evidence of power and influence is the invisibility of its source. Since the early twentieth century, a number of foundations have been set up in the United States by the wealthy — the Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Bill Gates foundations are prominent examples. A new study by American political scientist Joan Roelofs (Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, State University of New York Press, 2003) provides an outline of the US foundations' activities, and an analysis of their role. 
This process is attempted not only at the national level but at the international level as well. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security Adviser and still a preeminent figure in the US national security establishment, has himself claimed the following: 
"Cultural domination has been an underappreciated facet of American global power.... As the imitation of American ways gradually pervades the world, it creates a more congenial setting for the exercise of the indirect and seemingly consensual American hegemony. And as in the case of the domestic American system, that hegemony involves a complex structure of interlocking institutions and procedures, designed to generate consensus and obscure asymmetries in power and influence." (emphases added) ...

I thought it was weird back in the 1970s that the National Security Advisors were usually foreign-born, but, then again, I'd rather have Zbiggy and Dr. K. on my side than on the other side.
'Identity politics': Ideologies are promoted that counter the concept of unity among the toiling and oppressed. In the late 1960s the US ruling classes were disturbed by signs of unity among anti-establishment organisations of various oppressed sections (for example, the Black Berets, a militant Chicano group in New Mexico, began meeting with Black Panthers, the Young Lords and the American Indian Movement and expressing solidarity with Cuba). Thus began the foundation-supported emergence of the distinct 'identity politics' of each socially oppressed section.

Okay, but, seriously, who really believes the over-grown juvenile delinquents of the Black Berets, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and American Indian Movement could have organized their way out of a paper bag? Look at Angela Davis's prison boyfriend's Black Guerilla Family, now best known for the philoprogenitive Tavon White.
Beginning with early 1970s Ford began to fund women's studies too, a major area for it today. 
... Beyond the splintering effect, foundation initiatives helped transform radical movements into professional-led scholarly or bureaucratic organizations. ...

Affirmative action was originally conceived of largely as a Danegeld to be paid to the smarter blacks to keep the dumber blacks from burning down their slums again. Did it work? Maybe ...
 In 1969, McGeorge Bundy, then president of Ford Foundation, was asked by a congressional hearing on foundations why Ford supported 'radical' organizations. He replied: 
"There is a very important proposition here that for institutions and organizations which are young and which are not fully shaped as to their direction it can make a great deal of difference as to the degree and way in which they develop if and when they have a responsible and constructive proposal they can find support for it. If they cannot find such support, those within the organization who may be tempted to move in paths of disruption, discord and even violence, may be confirmed in their view that American society doesn't care about their needs. On the other hand, if they do have a good project constructively put forward, and they run it responsibly and they get help for it and it works, then those who feel that kind of activity makes sense may be encouraged."

A more realistic perspective would be that in the late 1960s, both the Establishment center-left, as represented by the Ford Foundation, and the radical left (e.g., David Horowitz helping out the Black Panthers), saw their projects founder on the low human capital of the lumpenprole minority organizations they became fixated upon in their boredom and/or distaste for advancing the interests of the white working class. Tom Wolfe's Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers documents the comic results of Establishment do-gooderism in the San Francisco black slums.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jun/11/man-steel-hollywood-break-superheroes

Anonymous said...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/14/191638620/doctors-to-vote-on-whether-cheerleading-is-a-sport?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130614

Any trans cheerleader?

I'm sure media will love that.

http://youtu.be/KuvRRPq-AtY

Carol said...

I'm afraid White Guilt has also sunk into the psyche of the white lumpenprole too...where are our white gangs, our violent rednecks? They're now contented with beer, pot and TV, their only edginess expressed in piercings and tats.

Unknown said...

This clip of Gloria Steinem telling Mike Wallace about the nice people at the CIA who financed her activism backs up the claims made by the book: Gloria Steinem Discussing Her Time in the CIA

It's part of this CBS documentary about funding domestic activists: CIA's Covert Funding (1/5)

You don't have to be a Marxist to see that the heirs to the old robber baron fortunes were doing their darnedest to pull the ladder up behind them and make sure all those newly prosperous postwar families in suburbia would not spawn a new political and social force to replace them or even challenge them.

fnn said...

Anyone recall when the labor movement was a major force in American life? When plumber George Meany and teamster Jimmy Hoffa were important national figures?

Unknown said...

Carol said...

I'm afraid White Guilt has also sunk into the psyche of the white lumpenprole too...where are our white gangs, our violent rednecks? They're now contented with beer, pot and TV, their only edginess expressed in piercings and tats.


As Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, PhD wrote:
"Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like(as long as it does not encourage behaviour that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice "safe sex"). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behaviour.".

Sam said...

These foundations have more than simply fund these 60's type groups.

Back in the late 60's/70's Antony Sutton, a British scholar at the Hoover Institute, found a curious connection between the technological and manufactoring base in the Soviet Union and Western elites. His study was quite detailed and embarrasingly so. When he tried to write a non-academic popular version of his large study he got canned by the Hoover Institute.
He was a very meticulous researcher and both Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes thought he was correct.
Brzezinski:
"For impressive evidence of Western participation in the early phase of Soviet economic growth, see Antony C. Sutton's Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917–1930, which argues that 'Soviet economic development for 1917–1930 was essentially dependent on Western technological aid' (p.283), and that 'at least 95 per cent of the industrial structure received this assistance"
and Pipes:
"In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet Purchases of Western Equipment and Technology ... Sutton comes to conclusions that are uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work tends to be either dismissed out of hand as 'extreme' or, more often, simply ignored"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_C._Sutton

For anybody interested in conspiracy Sutton is the type of guy I would start with reading. Not perfect but some of the facts he has uncovered are incredibly damaging and revealing.

As a previous commentator said you don't have to be a marxist to believe that politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen act in their own self interest. Some of the best revisionist work has been done by New Left and Libertarian academics.

Anonymous said...

"Fertile" is indeed a vulgarity to the Cathedral. The proles may talk about sex all they like, but talking about sex and babies together is just--ewww.

Dave Pinsen said...

Is this the same David Horowitz who's now against amnesty? If so, quite an ideological turn he's made.

Mark Plus said...

@Carol:

Kaczynski just rephrased Aldous Huxley's insight in the Foreword to his post-War edition of Brave New World:

"As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate."

Anonymous said...

Back in the late 60's/70's Antony Sutton, a British scholar at the Hoover Institute, found a curious connection between the technological and manufacturing base in the Soviet Union and Western elites.


I remember reading a book by Nixon, written during his mid-80's rehabilitation when I was in HS, he pretty much said the same thing, that large US companies built around 300 top of the line factories for the Soviets from the late 1920's into the 1930's. The implication was that this provided the lion's share of Soviet industrial output that was then used to defeat Germany during WW2, independent of the Lend-Lease aid from 1942-45, which was also considerable.

Mark Plus said...

@ Chubby Ape:

Sorry, I intended to direct my Huxley reference to you.

As for, "We can believe in any religion we like(as long as it does not encourage behaviour that is dangerous to the system)," that would explain the ruling class's toleration of the christian doomsday nonsense in a big swath of American culture. Not only does this delusion make the people who believe in it passive (why exert yourself to make life better if the world will "end" soon any way?), but it also indirectly supports American policies which help Israel because the Jewish state somehow fulfills biblical "prophecy."

Anonymous said...

Is Huxley's view plausible only if one is not aware of hypergamy? I don't really believe that hypergamy and the alpha stuff is nearly as pronounced as Whisky says, but if sexual freedom leads to sexual monopolization are the options for the state to a) push porn and then if that doesn't work (which some people say is increasingly the truth on account of the ever weirder and weirder nature of porn) then b) reap the whirlwind or could drugs replace porn. I just don't see how wide scale drug use doesn't destroy productivity. Indeed, I'd say sexual liberalization has contriling for other variables been detrimental to productivity too but not nearly as much as wide spread drug use would.

Rob said...

Okay, but, seriously, who really believes the over-grown juvenile delinquents of the Black Berets, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and American Indian Movement could have organized their way out of a paper bag? Look at Angela Davis's prison boyfriend's Black Guerilla Family, now best known for the philoprogenitive Tavon White.

Well, that's the thing - if a group is philoprogenitive enough, it doesn't need be able to organise its way out of a paper bag. When they've produced enough voters, politicians will have to give them what they want.

fnn said...

I remember reading a book by Nixon, written during his mid-80's rehabilitation when I was in HS, he pretty much said the same thing, that large US companies built around 300 top of the line factories for the Soviets from the late 1920's into the 1930's. The implication was that this provided the lion's share of Soviet industrial output that was then used to defeat Germany during WW2, independent of the Lend-Lease aid from 1942-45, which was also considerable.


This book has all the details.

Jim Bowery said...

So the funding criteria from the foundations is: " If they cannot find such support, those within the organization who may be tempted to move in paths of disruption, discord and even violence, may be confirmed in their view that American society doesn't care about their needs."

Well its pretty clear that American society doesn't care about the needs of the Nation of Settlers. So why isn't there all sorts of money pouring into the organizations like "The Pioneer Fund"?

Could it be that the foundations are confident that the Nation of Settlers will not turn violent even as they are being eliminated?

Unknown said...

@ Mark Plus
Yes and that's why active Christians - whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic or from the Great Awakening tradition - make the current governing class go totally ape. Mormons send them into a tizzy too. Anyone with a radically different view of history and mankind's place in the Universe is an intolerable troublemaker for those groomed by the foundations.

Just the other day I found this old article from the London Spectator of 1897:

The Aggressions of American Wealth
.... the Trusts in the United States have determined to lay their hands on the Universities and to control the economic teaching given there, so that nothing shall be uttered which has not the hall-mark of monopolist approval.
....
Being audacious beyond any recent Old World experience, the great capitalists of America are determined to capture free opinion and to prevent criticism. They subsidise pulpits, they buy the Press, they seat their well-paid attorneys in the United States Senate, and at length they stretch their hands over the Colleges, which it is easy to capture by examples of generosity. Thus their design is to prevent any effective action which shall in any way weaken their authority or undermine their position. Their object cannot be mere wealth-making, for they already enjoy wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Apparently their intention is first to convert the United States into a powerful oligarchy, and then to extend the sway of that oligarchy over other lands.....

http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/31st-july-1897/7/the-aggressions-of-american-wealth-d-iming-the-pre

It's only thanks to the web that we're able to piece together this relatively recent part of our history. I think it helps us figure out why the West now has such an eerily similar political monoculture in which all the major parties and commentators agree on everything that matters. Thankfully we seem to be breaking out of what Chris Anderson calls the "lock-step culture". He's referring to pop culture but I think it applies to politics as well.

George Wilson said...

"As the imitation of American ways gradually pervades the world, it creates a more congenial setting for the exercise of the indirect and seemingly consensual American hegemony. And as in the case of the domestic American system, that hegemony involves a complex structure of interlocking institutions and procedures, designed to generate consensus and obscure asymmetries in power and influence." (emphases added)"

- Sure but when a significant part of the American culture of the day (Which IS being imitated) is to hate Americans, esp. its white founding stock? Its certainly not too hard to get foreigners on board with that or with preferential views of foreigners and foreign cultures. China and other countries are more than happy to republish news from a liberal perspective about evil America from the very mouths of American "experts" living and born in America.

PropagandistHacker said...

you are misreading or deliberately misinterpreting the book. This movement by the plutocratic-funded foundations was nothing new. It was just a "long game" attack on the culture that was derived from the strategy used by the so called 'founding fathers' when they replaced the articles of confederation with the constitution--divide et impera. You divide by increasing factions within political districts. The plutocrats were fighting the eternal battle with labor. You fight labor by decreasing unity among the populace. You decrease unity by increasing factions.


From Montesquieu to James Madison and their 'divide et impera' game to the plutocrats and their foundations that played the culture game, to modern day white-race-guilting that enables today's high-volume importation of faction-generating cheap labor.

Madison et al used enlarged electoral districts to create factions. Then over 100 years late, the plutocrats Getty, Rockefeller et al., played a long game on molding the culture and created a culture oriented around identity politics.


The so-called Civil Rights Movement was the primary manifestation of the decades-long fruiting and harvesting of the foundation-based culture game.

Nowadays, the rich investors are using different variations of the same factionalization game against Labor. These days the battle (actually it is more like genocide these days) is oriented around direct importation of factions. The unity of the american populace is so decimated now that the rich investors are hardly hampered at all when it comes to direct, mass importation of factions, i.e., millions of nonwhite third worlders annually.


And why are you casting this as some sort of "marxist" thing? That tired old theme is worn out, steve. Cultural marxism, etc? Totally played....

Dump the Model A, the Model T, the coupe, etc. Get on board with modern real politik.

Some more reading: Read Dr Petra's review of THE CIA AND THE CULTURAL COLD WAR.

Read Dr Holton's UNRULY AMERICANS.

ben tillman said...

Perhaps this should have been the basis for your "singularity of stupidity" post. That first sentence from Bundy is one of the wordiest and worst imaginable.

And talk about begging the question -- Bundy says that the foundation supports "radical" organizations because it has hired lots of their members.

Hello, McGeorge!?!?!?!

Water Damage Denver said...

The greatest threat to America and Americans are organizations like the NSA and CIA that pretend to protect us from all sorts of dangers by invading our lives. That it is all done in secret allows them to make any number of claims about their successes without any means to verify if they are true.

Unknown said...

Water Damage Denver said...

The greatest threat to America and Americans are organizations like the NSA and CIA that pretend to protect us from all sorts of dangers by invading our lives. That it is all done in secret allows them to make any number of claims about their successes without any means to verify if they are true.


Reminds me of something I heard recently in a discussion between Stewart Brand and Nicholas Negroponte during the Q&A section of Negroponte's talk at the Long Now Foundation. Brand said something like "the trouble with non-profits and foundations is you can't tell when you're failing".

Nicholas Negroponte “Beyond Digital”

Listening to Nicholas Negroponte(Choate School alumni)and Stewart Brand (Phillips Exeter Academy alumni)talk shop about post-nationalism, anti-nationalism and playing the non-profit game is a real education. Middle class and blue collar white Americans clearly don't exist in their world. There are philanthropists, Ivy League types like themselves and then deserving folks in the Third World; no one else seems to exist. Negroponte in his introduction says "I grew up without feeling an ounce of nationalism....I grew up without thinking I belonged to a country and I have three passports. I've never thought of nationalism or parts of countries and it may show in some of my remarks". Yes it does Nicholas.

Wikipedia says about him:
Negroponte was born to Dimitri John Negroponte, a Greek shipping magnate, and grew up in New York City's Upper East Side. He is the younger brother of John Negroponte, former United States Deputy Secretary of State.

Wikipedia's main photo at Negroponte's page has as its caption "Nicholas Negroponte delivering the Forrestal Lecture to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis". Super duper.

Sam said...

"I remember reading a book by Nixon, written during his mid-80's rehabilitation when I was in HS, he pretty much said the same thing, that large US companies built around 300 top of the line factories for the Soviets from the late 1920's into the 1930's. The implication was that this provided the lion's share of Soviet industrial output that was then used to defeat Germany during WW2, independent of the Lend-Lease aid from 1942-45, which was also considerable."

What book by Nixon was that?

Anonymous said...

"Okay, but, seriously, who really believes the over-grown juvenile delinquents of the Black Berets, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and American Indian Movement could have organized their way out of a paper bag?"

Rotfl.

Anonymous said...

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/is-american-theater-really-dead/#more-20952

Anonymous said...

"When it comes to choosing which lumpenprole groups to fund, the rich are hopelessly all at sea, which produced grave consequences for the White majority, especially for the greatest numbers of Whites who comprise the low IQ white working class."

They finally found an 'oppressed' group that likes what they like.

The gaytocracy.

Anonymous said...

http://thinkprogress.org/media/2013/06/14/2162501/george-zimmermans-father-says-the-true-racists-are-all-african-american/

Dang.

TGGP said...

Fabio Rojas of OrgTheory wrote the book "From Black Power to Black Studies" about that sort of thing.

I have put "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" online here.

Anonymous said...

E Michael Jones has similar theories on the ruling elite's handling of the Catholic urban working class.

http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/SlaughterReviews.html

"Okay, but, seriously, who really believes the over-grown juvenile delinquents of the Black Berets, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and American Indian Movement could have organized their way out of a paper bag?"

Sure, but second and third generation urban Poles and Irish? Destroy their neighborhoods and get them out to the suburbs, quick!

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OGpAGteG3Y

In prison but I'm dancin, I'm dancin'!