Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1953. január-június (2. évfolyam, 1-25. szám)

1953-01-23 / 4. szám

8

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ

January 28, 1953

Big-Bi<í Business Takes Over

With Eisenhower's inaug^ra- j tion the commanders-in-chief of the nation’s top capital empires—the Rockefellert, Morgans, du Ponts, Mellons—are taking direct control of the U. 3. government. His appointees are

.. not just business (but)

BIG-BIG BUSINESS industrialists out of the top drawer even Wall St. is startled

(N. Y. Post, 12-22).

Their march on Washington highlights these facts:

• In the past decade these top capital groups, feeding on soaring profits from military budgets and seizure of raw materials and markets abroad, have enormously extended their control, reach, power.

• They are taking over the machinery of government as the effects of their policies—carried out By (on the whole) lesser representatives in Truman’s administration—grow more critical, showing that like the German financiers of 1933 they can, in a’ crisis, unite behind a single repressive program.

WAR & EXPANSION: Most of the men taking power tried to line up the U. S. with the Ber- lin-Tokyo Axis before World War II: they were stopped by the Roosevelt coalition but have worked unceasingly since to remedy that failura. The capital groups they command have a huge stake in war business and expansion abroad. (Later articles will show this stake, particularly in colonial countries.)

Eisenhower’s closest adviser, Gen. Lucius Clay, has had a ieey role in naming appointess. As a result of his services to top capital groups as U. S. Military Governor of Germany, Clay became board chairman of Morgan’s Continental Can Co., director of Morgan’s world-wide Newmont Mining Co., and more recently of General, Motors He made, suitable choices for the new cabinet.

DEFENSE: C. E. Wilson

The giant GM has consistently been the nation’s top war contractor, garnering a minimum of $20 billion in war orders since 1941. GM pres. Wilson and a GM vice-pres., Roger Kyes, will be Secy, and Deputy Secy, of the Defense Dept., now dispensing S60 billion a year in war business. As Defense Secy., Wilson will have one of the most influential voices in foreign, domestic, military policy, as well as in the distribution of war business.

AI?MY: Robt. T. Stevens

Head of J. P. Stevens, big textile firm in Morgan orbit;

j director of several Morgan corporations — General Electric General Foods, N. Y. Telephone, Owens Corning Fibre Glass—and of Pan-American Airways (Morgan-Mellon-Rocke- feller). Chief of textile-clothing procurement branch, Quartermaster Corps, World War II.

AIRFORCE: H. E. Talbott

N. Y. investment broker holding numerous directorships: most important—Chrysler Corp. vvhere Rockefeller, Morgan and other interests meet. Aircraft production director of the World War II War Production Board; member in the ’30's of several anti-New Deal, anti-labor organizations.

TREASURY: Geo. Humphrey

Through his presidency of M. A. Hanna Co. (iron ore), his exec. comm, chairmanship of j Ernest A. Weir’s Natl. Steel, and | directorship -in the Cleveland'!

Natl. City Bank (meeting place for “independent” steel companies)-, Humphrey has been indentified as a reprsentative of the so-colled Cleveland financial group.

Humphrey and GM’s Wilson served together in 1948 on the committee named by ECA’s Paul Hoffman ,another Eisenhower adviser) which accomplished perhaps the most basic reversal of Roosevelt’s policies in Germany. It halted the dismantling of German steel plants, thus preparing German domination of the Schuman steel cartel and rearmament.

BUDGET: Joseph Dodge

Budget director Dodge was Clay’s financial adviser in Germany. He has played a singulftrly important role in every U. S.-occupied country. In Germany he organized the currency reform, set the stage for it. s. investment, for repayment of U. S. holders of Nazi-German bonds.

As financial adviser to Mac- Arthur, Dodge forced an “austerity” policy on Japan which cut living standards, bankrupted small business, strengthened monopoly; directed Japanese buying to U. S. markets and sales to British territories, rousing London’s ire; opened the door to U. S. investment in basic industry, including oil (Rockefeller) and rubber (du Pont-Morgan).

Dodge was one-time chairman of the GM bank, First Natl, of, Detroit, then pres, of the Detroit Bank (real estate and insurance) some of whose directors are linked to Rockefeller and Morgan interests, and a director of Chrysler (Rockefeller, Morgan, others.)

Dulles, Aldrich & Co.

John Foster Dulles, linked by many ties to.Nazi business and finance, heads the State Dept, for the Rockefeller’s. Winthrop Aldrich, pres, of Rockefeller’s Chase Natl. Bank and brotherin-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr., takes the key embassy in London.

Elevation of John J. .McCloy to the presidency of Chase completes the pattern. McCloy, a lawyer for the Rockefellers specializing in their German business, in 1941 became Asst. War Secy, in charge of the Pentagon’s political policy in Europe. He named the men who overturned German policy, after the war became head of the World Bank, then German High Commissioner.

THE OUTLOOK: The pattern of these appointments accomplishes, under the generalship of Eisenhower, that “threeway partnership'-'-—of big business, military and govémBterrt 'JTfo-' jected by General Electric’s (Morgan) Charles Wilson back in 1944.

At home, to consolidation of government into a huge big-business corporation ready to carry out ruthlessly its NAM policies, and to more determined preparation for war.

Coexistence and its Alternative

*

(Excerpts from a review of Professor Williams book: American-Russian Relations by

Professor Schuman in the January Monthly Review)

America in 1918 undertook tef destroy the Soviet regime by force, and, in so doing, strengthened it and helped to make it “totalitarian.” America in the 1920’s sought to undermine the Soviet regime by non-recognition and achieved nothing whatever thereby. America in the 1930’s found no way of cooperating with the* USSR against the common menace of fascism. America in the 1940’s waged a victorious war in alliance with the USSR and then broke with its allies. Williams shows, incontrovertibly, where responsibility for the break must be placed.

Communism thrives on war, though the world wars of our century are never launched by Communists but by anti-Com- munists in the name of destroying Communism. Americans did nothing effective or even relevant toward averting World Wars I and II. Americans “won” both wars only because millions of Russians gave their lives in a common cause. But Americans respond with fear and fury to the inevitable expansion or Communism which war engenders and, as regards many of the “statesmen” of the Republic, 6eek madly to undo the result through more war. For some, at least, of the winners of the election or 1952, as well

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! as for some of the losers, it is now America’s Sacred Mission to resume the anti-Russian

“crusade” which brought Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler to their doom. All the ghastlly j,errors of judbment and policy manifested in the original

American response to Red Russia have been reproduced, almost verbatim, in American policy toward Red China, thereby suggesting the possible validity of Hegel’s dictum that “the only lesson which history teaches is that history teaches no lessons.”

The Primrose Path

The answers to the question, 1 suspect, is that a community, even though it be the Greatest Power on Earth, which has found no viable and enduring solution to its internal economic and social "vleavages inevitably seeks to achieve unity and prosperity by mobilizing the energies of its people against an “enemy” symbol which threatens its values. This political device is common to democratic fascist, and Communist states. But distinctions are in order. .A fascist state in a highly industrialized capitalist society has no choice but to unleash war abroad as a means to “peace” at home. A Communist state is under no such compulsion, since socialist economic planning, whatever its administrative defects and human costs, admits of internal stability and plenty without the need of militarism and conquest. A democratic state within a capitalist economy—for example, the USA— should, theoretically, be able to do as well or better. But Americans have found it easier to take the primrose path to full .employment and economic expansion through militarism in the name of “defense” against “tyranny.”

A Racket and a Fraud

Pessimists may conclude that the dynamics of this process make World War III “inevitable.” This conclusion I reject for two reasons: (1) No victory is possible in any such enterprise, since the new enemy, unlike his counterparts in World Wars I and II, controls effectively one-third of the human race—and policy-makers, unless they are insane, never embark upon wars in which victory is | obviously unattainable. (2) American common sense, which has an astoinishing way of reasserting itself when least expected, will ultimately perceive chat the “Red Menace”, both at home and abroad, is largely a racket and a fraud, and will find means to maintain full employment and prosperity by methods other than those of global atomic hostilities or even of local “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” as the late Charles A. Beard characterized the delusion of “collective security.” '

Thus far, on the record as Williams’ book brilliantly reviews it, America has failed what Woodrow Wilson in 1918 called “the acid test.” But America can take the test again and conceivably pass—by making peace with Russia and with China, not on their terms or

our terms, since neither side has defeated or can defeat the other, but on terms of compromise and mutual accomodation, leading toward collaboration in building the world order of days to come which all men must have in our time of the Great Society is to survive and flourish. Not to do so will, be to court the incineration of western civilization. To do so will be to open out vast opportunities for peaceful progress for all the peoples of the world. William Appleman Williams has made a major cintribution toward the only solution which sane human beings can accept. For this: our thanks.

What is the new loyalty? It is, above all, conformity. It is the uncritical and unquestionable acceptance of America as it is—the political institutions, the social relationships, the economic practices. ,It rejects inquiry into the race question or socialized medicine, or public housing', or into the wisdom or validity of our foreign policy. It regards as heinous any challenge to what is called “The system of private enterprise,” identifying that system with Americanism. Jt abandons evolution, repudiates the once popular concept of progress, and regards Americe as a finished product, perfect and complete.

Budapest Theatre Season

Few European capitals can offer such a wide variety to theatre-goers as Budapest does this season. The 14 theatres in the Hungarian capital are playing to full houses, and they cater and ballet, one to operettas and for every taste. Of these theaters two are devoted to opera two to variety; there are two youth theatres, one specialising for children, the other for adolescents of secondary school and university age. Several theatres are devoted to straight plays, classical and modern, and there is also a puppet theatre.

A glance through the programmes for the last few monthts indicates the wide range of operas performed. — Hungáriára composers are well represented;. The works of Zoltán Kodály performed at the State Opera House include “Blue Beard’s Castle”, “The Székely Spinners”, and “The Wooden Prince”, “László Hunyady”, by the 19th century Hungarian composer, Ferenc Erkel, was also revived this autumn.

Other favorities at the State Opera House included The Flying Dutchman, The Valkyries, Die Fledermaus, Carmen, Eugene Onegin, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, The Bartered Bride, Lohengrin, Don Carlos, The Barber of Seville, Tosca, Don Juan, Cosi fan Tutte, Halka, by the Polish composer, Moniusko, Othello and Faust.