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Vijay Prashad follows Noam Chomsky, performing the task of a
public intellectual. While this approach is necessarily
circumscribed by the pressures of immediacy, still it valiantly
pieces together an immense amount of material which makes for
compelling reading. This endeavour implicitly raises significant
methodological questions regarding the efficacy of
post-structuralism, focussing on the episodic fragment and
keeping the larger picture out of the analytical frame. Prashad’s
attempt is to put this dimension into the arena of public
discourse.
The American
Scheme contains three
longish essays producing an assessment of the contradictions of
life in the US where poverty, racism, penal labour and sexism
have brutalised its citizenry. A structural adjustment programme
has withdrawn the welfare schemes to such an extent that any
attempt to avail of this benefit invites the slander of
criminality. This has put an enormous strain on the lower-end
social groups, which tend to be consist overwhelmingly of
coloured people. Coupled with this, petty crime invites heavy
punishment, and jails become "the storehouse of the
redundant working population as well as its soup kitchen".
Despite these
developments, the highly consumerist way of life is rendered
culturally desirable while simultaneously being an economic
necessity to absorb the frequent overproduction — itself a
characteristic of capitalism. War Against the Planet makes
considerable sense in this scenario, when we realise that the
present vilification of the Islamic culture is a direct result
of these lands being oil-rich. Prashad traces the history of the
systematic destruction of the communist organisations in West
Asia. The centre-left Arab nationalism was severely compromised
due to its internal ambiguities as well as by its succumbing to
sustained coercion by the US through its secret agencies and by
taking recourse to cultural practices (in justifying barbaric
regimes citing cultural particularities of the Arabs).
This promotion of
Islamic fundamentalism paid rich dividends when youth were asked
to contribute towards the jehad in Afghanistan against
the Soviets. Thus Afghan Arabs came into being. However, the
Gulf War and the US refusal to leave the Arab lands have led to
the present juncture where the USA is the main target of their
ire. Prashad also senses that popular support for these groups
is also due to the lack of public investment of the petro-dollars.
These radicals represent an — albeit distorted — alternative
to the US-supported despots. He is also aware that terrorism is
only a distortion of the derailed democratic process in those
countries and cannot take on the might of the unipolar world
order.
The choices indeed
are very stark and very few. Non-violent mass movements are the
only way out, according to him. In the US, however, a silver
lining is the resurgence of the labour movement, which is
shunning its pro-corporate moorings. Hence, providing the
essential armature for diverse struggles, e.g. against
sweat-shop labour by the students, against the penal labour,
against the taking back of welfare proposals. Particularly
moving is the account of the New York Taxi-Workers’ struggle,
which is a model of stitching together diverse ethnicities,
nationalities, religious traditions for a common purpose.
These books help
in charging up the public sphere debates by providing
information and also for challenging the establishment agenda in
academic and political arena. This is a contribution which
challenges the paralysing impact of the US hegemony.
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