Doug Dowd's "At the Cliff's Edge" (Part I) - by Stephen Lendman
At age 89, Doug Dowd is a wonder. He's still active, vibrant and thankfully so. He calls himself a "radical economist" in the best sense of the term, and for more than 50 years through the late 1990s, he was a distinguished interdisciplinary professor of economic history and more at Cornell, UC Berkelely and elsewhere. It went along with his activism, progressive thinking, honest concern for the least advantaged, and love of teaching young people. He's no different today, except that he's semi-retired, living full-time in Bolonga, Italy, nearing his 60th year teaching at nearby Modena University, and approaching his 10th decade.
Dowd also authored many scholarly writings, numerous articles, and many books on cutting-edge economic, political and social issues. Included are Capitalism and Its Economics, the two-volume Broken Promises of America, and his newest and subject of this review, At the Cliff's Edge: World Problems and US Power.
Doud dedicates his book to his students in America and Italy. "More than a few of (them) have become dear friends." They've thanked him for his teaching, and this book is his "opportunity to thank them."
He's witnessed history longer than most others and cites his concerns. "The world now stands on 'a cliff's edge' " below which he sees "four related groups of horrors: existing and likely wars, a fragile world economy, pervasive and deepening corruption, and the earth dangerously near the 'tipping point' of environmental disaster." Add one more for good measure - a disdainful administration heading the world for potential disaster, uncaring about what it's doing, and leaving its mess for a successor.
For Dowd, it's ominous and disturbing. We may be at "the last stop" of a centuries-long voyage. It produced 15th to 18th century colonialism and nationalism. They, in turn, spawned capitalism and industrialism, and then combined "transformed colonialism into imperialism."
Dowd wrote his book for a purpose. He learned as a student and teacher that what's in it isn't taught or publicly discussed. His classes were never that way. It's why they were and are still so popular, and why one of his former students asked him to write a needed classroom text. As a high school social studies teacher he found none that were "readable, pertinent, and accessible." Dowd's book fills the vacuum. It's broad in scope, clearly written, easily understood, and a wonderful primer for students. Adults also, and it covers 500 years to the present. In it, he's critically unsparing in his assessment - of the modern era and what preceded it.
The book is panoramic in scope. It's long and detailed, and this review covers its highlights in hopes readers will get the volume for it all. Plus the character of the man who wrote it and now working on a new so far unfinished book with likely more offerings ahead. Approaching age 90, Dowd is resilient, dedicated and continues to write and teach. We're all the better off for it. Read on.
In a moment of reflection, he imagines what America could and should be, not what it is. Therein lies the problem. We have an "unconscious way....of seeing ourselves....as something special (or) better" than others. Hardly so about a country one observer describes as being "a marriage of all that's admirable with all that's appalling" with an emphasis on the latter now and worsening. Instead of being virtuous, "we have evolved toward something like its opposite." Dowd equates the gap between "our realities and our ideals" to "the Grand Canyon."
And sitting in its "dirty center....are three unacknowledged ways of life, attitudes, (and) values that have been mutually supportive:
-- racism and other forms of prejudice;
-- ....violence and militarism; (and)
-- ....insatiable and socially sanctioned greed for money, things, and power."
In his forward, Dowd gives examples but laments that they're not taught in classrooms. One was the Compromise of 1877 unknown to most readers. It was after the Civil War during Reconstruction when northern troops occupied the South. Blacks were nominally free, and southern whites were furious to see them hold office, be policemen, eat in public places, and so forth. The so-called Compromise ended the occupation and "freed whites to do as they wished to black men, women and children." It took almost a century to end Jim Crow laws, savage lynchings, and a federal government committed to stopping them.
Before it happened, here's what the North got in return. The right to exploit southern resources, its mines, railroads, factories, cheap labor, and keep blacks de facto slaves as sharecroppers with no schools, voting rights, safety or any legal recourse from the state. For them, everything changed, yet everything remained the same.
Another example is notable with memories of two stolen elections still vivid. In the 1876 (US) presidential election, Samuel Tilden got "today's equivalent of 2 million more popular votes than (Rutherford B.) Hayes." In all elections, electoral college votes are decisive. Hayes was awarded one more than Tilden, but 20 votes were disputed, so a congressional committee got to decide. In secret session, a deal was struck to make Hayes president. In hindsight, there's no doubt that the election was stolen in similar fashion to the Supreme Court giving it to George Bush in 2000.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
