Imperialism's racist "burden"

by Arthur Perlo
Chair of the Communist Party USA's Economics Commission

One hundred years ago, Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem, The White Man's 
Burden. The British empire spanned the globe, and the United States had 
just joined the ranks of global imperialist powers with its conquest of the 
Philippines.

Today, the US is the world's dominant power. New York Times writer 
Thomas L Friedman celebrated that power in an article in the March 28 
[1999] New York Times Magazine.

Published exactly 100 years after Kipling's poem, the headline read: "... 
the emerging global order demands an enforcer. That's America's burden." 
What was Kipling's burden, and what is Friedman's?

Kipling wrote, "Take up the White Man's burden ... To serve your captive's 
need ... To veil the threat of terror ... to seek another's profit."

In other words, imperialism would selflessly bring peace and civilisation 
to the ungrateful non-white peoples of the world, whom Kipling called the 
"new-caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child".

There was an immediate worldwide response against Kipling's racism. In an 
eloquent essay, Sixta Lopez, a leader of the Philippine independence 
movement that was being brutally suppressed by US troops, wrote: "... the 
`white man's burden' consists in making colossal fortunes out of the 
inadequately paid labour of the brown man. But ... the Filipino will not 
slave for the benefit of foreigners any more than will the American or the 
Englishman or Mr Kipling." 

Today, America's new burden, as described by Friedman, sounds suspiciously 
like Kipling's "white man's burden". His essay is an appeal to the US 
people, and especially the decision-makers who read the NY Times, to 
undertake the "burden" of ruling the world. 

"As the country that benefits most from global economic integration, we 
have the responsibility of making sure that this new system is sustainable 

Kipling complains of the burden of the world's ingratitude for the gifts of 
British rule:

Take up the White Man's burden, 
And reap his old reward 
The blame of those ye better 
The hate of those ye guard.

Friedman also complains that, from Tehran to Paris, from Indonesia to 
Russia, the US is called the "capital of global arrogance", and that 
"resentment of America is on the rise globally". But that's the price "we" 
pay for global leadership.

Friedman is slightly more honest than Kipling, because he admits that the 
US (or at least the US multinational corporations) benefit from this New 
World Order.

But he's just as proud of the role of global enforcer: "The hidden hand of 
the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot 
flourish without McDonnell Douglas ... the hidden fist that keeps the world 
safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States [armed 
forces]."

We have just seen this in the catastrophe visited by that fist on the 
"sullen peoples" of Yugoslavia.

There is much that is hateful in Friedman's article. It deserves a flood of 
answers, comparable to those that responded to Kipling. One of those 
century-old answers speaks to us today on a vital question: what does the 
imperial burden mean to the ordinary working people of the dominating power 
(Great Britain then, the US today)?

The Poor Man's Burden was written by Howard S Taylor in 1899.
Take up the poor man's burden, 
Accept Great Britain's plan. 
She does all things for commerce 
Scarce anything for man.
Far off among the pagans 
She seeks an open door 
While Pity cries in London 
"God help the British poor!"

It could have been written today about the United States, with Friedman's 
"free trade and competition" the modern form of Britain's "open door".

Taylor continues that poor men's sons will die in far-off places for 
others' gain; that glory will ride, "as ever, upon the toiler's back".

At the end of the last century, British working class youth joined the army 
to escape their grinding poverty. Included were Irish youth, whose parents 
were held in poverty by the same British army.

They served throughout the world, keeping the yoke of British colonialism 
fastened on people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Some of them died 
there.

Others returned home to the mines and factories of Britain, only to find 
that the same imperial interests they served overseas were now their 
oppressors in the class struggle at home.

At the same time, young American boys from farm and town were serving in 
the Philippines under General Leonard Wood. The general got his early 
training exterminating the Native American Indians.

In the Philippines, he directed a brutal war against an entire people to 
crush their movement for independence. A decade later, this hero was Army 
Chief of Staff when federal troops were used on behalf of the Rockefeller-
owned coal companies against the striking coal miners of Colorado.

Friedman tries to instill pride in us, the US working class, because our 
country is number one, because we can beat up anyone on the world's block 
and because "our" way is the only way.

We should reject his arguments because his arrogance, tinged with racism, 
places the majority of the world's people at the service of a few giant US 
corporations.

We should reject him because we will pay with our taxes and sometimes our 
lives for the "burden" of being the multinational corporations' world 
enforcer.

Most important, we should reject him because these same multinational 
corporations, strong and fat with the spoils of world domination, will use 
their strength to cut our wages, close our factories, destroy our 
education, health care and social security, and smash our unions.

To get their way in Yugoslavia, they bombed it to rubble. They will not 
hesitate to turn the lives of US workers to rubble, unless we are strong 
enough to stop them. We can start by protesting and organising against the 
New World Order and all its manifestations starting with the sanctions 
against Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Š* * *

People's Weekly World, paper of Communist Party, USA