Halliburton,
KBR and Blackwater (recently rebranded as “Xe”) have all become
household names in recent years, and generally with negative
connotations. There is much to be said about their corruption that is
detailed in the books cited below, and we will draw some parallels to
the Prison Industrial Complex in this and other articles. But the bigger
question for anti-imperialists is what this signifies for the
development and maintenance of imperialism.
The books reviewed for this article describe the two sides of the modern
imperialist military of the united $tates. On the one hand you have the
state-run military that is buying off amerikan youth with the mall
culture they are accustomed to, run by cheap Third World labor. On the
other, you have armed contractors, often used for more elite operations,
increasing salaries of u$ soldiers by 100% and probably moreso for
mercenaries from the Third World. All combined, contractors came to
outnumber u$ military personnel on the ground in Iraq. (Chatterjee,
p. xvi) The stories of Halliburton/KBR and Blackwater spell out a clear
trend: it is costing more than ever for imperialism to keep the
personnel levels it needs to maintain global hegemony.
A microcosm of global economy
In Halliburton’s Army, Pratap Chatterjee reports that wages for
contractors in Iraq are tied explicitly to nationality. This picture is
very telling for those who claim that amerikans deserve higher wages
because they are more productive. Here you have people coming from all
over the world to work on the same site and the pay rates are comparable
to what they’d get in their home countries (usually they make more in
Iraq). This rule still rang true in the common cases where the Third
World persyn had more skills or knowledge than the First Worlder.
Contractors from the united $tates who were unemployed and desperate for
work started at $80,000 a year plus living expenses to supervise
Filipinos who made $200- $1000 per month. One amerikan reported making
$130,000 a year to work only 1 day per week. In Bagram, Afghan trash
collectors were paid $10 for a 12 hour day, while Indians made $600 a
month plus room and board working in fast food restaurants on the base.
Filipinos who built the prisons in Guantanamo were kept in horrible
prisons themselves, and paid $2.50 an hour for dangerous 12 hour days
with no safety equipment. Abuses by contractors got so notorious that
India, Nepal and the Philippines all made it illegal for their citizens
to work in Iraq. (Chatterjee)
With 35,000 of 47,000 Halliburton employees in Iraq coming from the
Third World (Chatterjee, p.142), and comparable wages being paid by
nationality, you see a replica of the global economy that most First
Worlders defend, even many so-called “Marxists.” About 25% of the
employees were making exploiter level wages, while the rest were Third
World (mostly migrant) workers doing all the hard and dangerous work,
for wages below the average value of labor. According to the oppressor
nation left, Halliburton wouldn’t employ the amerikans at $80,000 plus
expenses if they weren’t exploiting them. These pseudo-marxists think
that an amerikan signing a check produces 10 times more value than a
Filipino doing construction work or food preparation. On the global
scale there are borders and oceans that somehow make this very same
situation even more palatable to the oppressor nation.
The Prison Connection
While Halliburton’s and Blackwater’s ties to the federal government have
long been in question, the government’s 39th largest contractor is its
very own Federal Prisons Industries (FPI) or UNICOR. (Wright, p. 111)
Like the Third World labor behind Halliburton/KBR, author Ian Urbina
asserts that the u$ military could not do what it does without the vast
amount and diversity of products that FPI provides with prison labor
that is paid $0.23 to $1.15 an hour (amounting to $400 million in sales
to the Department of Defense in 2002). Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the
company using legislation that forced the Department of Defense to
purchase from FPI, even when their prices were not the lowest. (Wright,
p.113) This move by FDR kept money circulating within the state to
further fund its repressive aims, rather than allowing tax money to
return to private hands in the form of profit.
This validates the overall patterns that MIM(Prisons) has seen; even the
biggest prison labor-powered industry in the country is a subsidy for
state repression, not a source of private profit. However we do
recognize that the U$ military is not saving money by buying products
from FPI - private industries can offer products for as cheap or
cheaper. And so we don’t agree with Urbina’s implication that prison
labor is essential to military operations.
Another interesting relationship between the military industrial complex
and the prison industrial complex is found in Blackwater owner Erik
Prince’s $500,000-plus in contributions to the Prison Fellowship
Ministries(PFM). PFM is an evangelical Christian organization that sends
more than 50,000 volunteers into u$ prisons. (Wright, p.130) While
MIM(Prisons) is kept from sending mail to prisoners all over the u$ for
saying that revolution is necessary to end the plight of the oppressed,
Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson has cited Thomas Jefferson to
imply that Christian revolution is necessary in the united $tates.
(Scahill, p. 95) Over 1800 facilities have granted PFM access to run
programs inside the prisons that have enrolled over 20,000 people. Once
again, we demonstrate that censorship of Maoist literature is about
politics and not security.
Wannabe amerikans
Blackwater is busy recruiting former CIA operatives around the world as
mercenaries, bribing them with u$-level paychecks. The outcome of this
should help demonstrate to our critics the importance of the buying off
of a whole nation. Amerikan nationalism provides a much stronger defense
for imperialism than a mercenary army. Even if most of these mercenaries
are steeped in fascist ideology that is conducive to imperialist
militarism, the chances of conflicts of interests developing are
significantly greater.
The globalization of the imperialist army is a sign of weakness, not of
growing strength. Soon there will be absolutely no way for their army to
grow (except with robots).
21st Century Amerikan soldiers
From the Civil War to the Cold War, the u$ national military was not
recruited through profit motives. However, while amerikan nationalism
provided a strong base for imperialist militarism, the continued
increase in demands of the parasitic nation eventually undercut their
willingness to fight and die for their nation. They could hire Mexicans
to do their housework and manual labor, while hiring East Asians to do
their industrial production, couldn’t they just hire someone to handle
the dirty work of fighting their wars for imperialist plunder? Or to
paraphrase Chatterjee, amerikan soldiers went from peeling their own
potatoes in tents that they set up themselves to having Third World
workers serve them all you can eat dinner buffets. You know, to make it
feel more like home.
U$ military public relations explains the need to provide such creature
comforts as necessary to maintain an all volunteer army in the 21st
century. (Chatterjee, p. 10) But the question of why a draft is not
viable is the same question of amerikans not being willing to give up
their cush lifestyles, which brings the threat of a draft resistance
movement that feeds into anti-imperialism.
One soldier reported,
“It is no exaggeration that I live a higher lifestyle here on a base in
Iraq than [I would] in the United States. We have free laundry,
apartment-like housing with unlimited, free A/C and electricity, hot
water, various American fast-food outlets, lounges, free Internet,
coffee shops, and a large PX… Baskin Robbins ice cream… once a week we
get steak and lobster… karaoke night, all kinds of sports teams…”
And he goes on to conclude,
“Yet just a few hundred meteres outside the fence, little kids are
begging for anything: food, bottled water… The reality is very, very,
very shocking. We are truly a pampered and spoiled culture.”
(Chatterjee, p. 11)
This is not a unique realization for spoiled amerikans to make when sent
to war in the Third World. But as this soldier also points out, many are
there for the very reason that they get better material conditions in
Iraq. So they aren’t exactly converting to internationalism in droves,
despite the dose of reality.
Far from peeling potatoes indeed, Chatterjee describes the typical
dining area with ice cream, waffle bars, lobster tails and elaborate
holiday dinners, all free to soldiers. Other facilities on big u$ bases
include a “mini mall” with stores like Burger King, KFC, McDonalds,
Pizza Hut and Green Beans Coffee. He goes on to describe the “Scorpions
Den”: “one is greeted by almost pitch darkness, the background music
from a one-hundred-seater open theater, the soft glow of laptops, and
the flickering lights of video games… There are also free popcorn, boxes
and boxes of bottled water… and a Dipping Dots ice cream machine.” Then
there is the “Sandbox” where “Dozens of soldiers sit slumped into fake
leather armchairs, playing war games or programs like Guitar Hero and
watching a Star Trek movie.” (Chatterjee, p.6-7)
We see this as a new stage in the history of military recruitment by the
oppressor nations. The brutal occupation forces of colonial powers in
the Third World more than a century ago acted in their own direct
interest. They were similar to the Conquistadors and settlers of North
America centuries earlier, when amerikans stole the land they now
occupy. The national unity they subsequently built on their stolen land
and wealth, provided for over a hundred years of relatively successful
forced military drafts. Today, however, amerikans like to pretend that
their prosperity is not built on genocide and slavery. Combined with
their very comfortable lives, the idea of going to war often seems not
just unappealing, but unnecessary. In other words, historical amnesia
may help undercut the oppressor nation as some don’t understand what it
takes to maintain their positions of privilege.
In the beginning of the 21st century, Halliburton had to double people’s
salaries to get them to go to Iraq as civilian contractors, not
soldiers. But even then, is it worth risking your life when life at home
is so comfortable? Amerikans allegiance to u$ imperialism is
demonstrated in their politics, but when it comes to going to war, their
actions will fall a bit short until they really start to see their
material wealth start to diminish, which will happen once the Third
World begins shutting of the paths of exploitation as it has in the
past.
The military industrial complex will not be stopped by amerikan
taxpayers. It is being stopped by resistance fighters who have ensured
that only those who really need to be there are going to Iraq.
Unfortunately, that includes many Third World nationals, some of whom
are being held as prisoners while being forced to work for little to no
pay under the most horrible conditions. More and more will learn the
folly of trying to work for the imperialists. There is no future for the
Third World nations within the imperialist system, only in resistance to
it.
The debates about sending more troops or streamlining the u$ military
are debates about optimizing u$ imperialism. The interesting part to us
is that the struggle appears to be so acute as neither plan is proving
viable.
In our criticisms of the prison economy and the labor aristocracy in
general, we point to overpaid bureaucrats as a significant part of the
problem. But MIM(Prisons) is not Libertarian. If anything, experience
seems to show a greater degree of misappropriation of funds when
services are contracted out. The cause of corruption is the
profit motive, whether ownership is private or public. This is why
nationalizing industries or banks does not stop exploitation, nor does
it signal a move towards socialism.
notes:
(1) Chatterjee, Pratap. Halliburton’s Army. Nation Books,
2009.
(2) Scahill, Jeremy. Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most
Powerful Mercenary Army. Nation Books, 2008.
(3) Wright, Paul and
Tara Herivel. Prison Profiteers: Who makes money from mass
incarceration. New Press, 2007.