What's a life worth?

I've been following the debate about "global Keynesianism" and 
whether 20th century communism was worse than 20th century capitalist 
imperialism.  Here's my contribution to the discussion.

With the media giving some attention to the 25th anniversary of the 
end of the US war against Vietnam, I devoted some time during the 
last week of my classes to discussing the war.  To help students 
understand that the US was not fighting to defend "South Vietnam" 
against an invasion by "North Vietnam," I discussed the historical 
process by which the US first supported and then attempted to 
supplant French colonialism in Indochina.

As readers on this list probably know, the US paid at least 80% of 
the cost of the war for the French between 1946 and 1954.  Indeed, it 
would have been impossible for France to attempt a reconquest of 
Indochina without US support.  That support was provided through the 
Marshall Plan, the US plan to save capitalism in Western Europe.  A 
key element of that plan, especially for France and Britain, was the 
preservation of their empires in Africa and Asia.  Preservation of 
empires did not necessarily mean maintaining formal colonial rule.  
It might mean granting independence if the indigenous leaders 
taking control were supportive of continuing imperialist economic 
arrangements.  But it meant opposing independence, if the 
independence movement was led by communists or other radical forces.

Thus, US assistance that helped restore the functioning of capitalism 
in France after World War II necessarily involved support for the 
French war effort in Indochina.  The rebuilding of French prosperity 
went hand in hand with the destruction of Vietnamese society.  If not 
for the Marhall Plan, there would have been no French-Indochinese War 
and thus no US war against Vietnam.  Neither phase of the war was 
primarily a civil war.  Both were wars of imperialist aggression.

Thus, it is impossible to separate the restoration of the French 
welfare state from the imperialist war in Vietnam, and subsequently, 
the French war in Algeria, which killed between 10 and 20 percent of 
the population of Algeria betwen 1954 and 1962.  After all, without 
Marshall Plan aid, France would have been in no shape to fight in 
Algeria either.  It is therefore entirely artificial to make a 
distinction between mass killing in one's own country versus mass 
killing in another country.  But that should be obvious in a 
discussion on the World System Network.

Finally, it was the communist movement that fought to expel 
colonialism from Vietnam and to oppose colonialism throughout the 
world.  Notwithstanding the errors made by the communist movement, it 
fought to free the majority of humanity from capitalist colonialism.  
And, as W.E.B. DuBois astutely pointed out, colonialism killed many 
times more people than the African slave trade did.

I remember, as a graduate student at Brandeis, walking on a picket
line in 1968 with striking Raytheon workers in Waltham, Mass.  They
made the missile guidance systems that were being used in Vietnam. 
They were exploited workers who had real grievances in their strike,
and they welcomed support from college students.  But capitalists 
were paying them to produce "weapons of mass destruction" for use 
against Vietnamese revolutionaries.  Of course, Vietnamese were more 
impoverished than Raytheon workers.  That's how imperialism works.

Steve Rosenthal