Arena Books (Publishers)

For Safeguarding Democracy & the Economic & Cultural Integrity of Peoples

ISBN 0-9543161-5-0
pp. xix/222
Retail price: 14.99

The author

Robert Corfe is a prolific writer who has written extensively on the benefits of social capitalism. He is a political scientist and businessman, with considerable experience of political life, and in this book he sets out the arguments for a worldwide systematic anti-Americanism, as the only means for reviving effective democracy. For many years he was a senior manager in manufacturing industry, and later a management consultant advising SMEs, usually in the engineering sector. He is also the author of two autobiographical books under different pseudonyms: Death in Riyadh dark secrets in hidden Arabia (Geoff Carter), based on his experiences as a businessman in the Middle East in the 1980s, and, My Conflict with a Soviet Spy the story of the Ron Evans spy case (Eddie Miller), based on his adventures in Scandinavia in the 1960s. In 1987 he founded the Campaign For Industry, to which he was elected Chairman, and for which he wrote many pamphlets on the problems of contemporary business. His broad experience, frequent travels overseas, and years of residence in Continental Europe have given him a unique perspective of

About this book

Anti-Americanism has now become an imperative for the sanity and stability of the world. Over the past 30 years almost every foreign adventure of the US has led to failure in compounding existing problems, and after the withdrawal of her forces, conditions have been left worse than when she intervened. Added to that is the resistance of her government to recognise the reality of global warming, and most recently, blundering policies have instigated a series of unexpected terrorist outrages on innocent victims which have made the world a more dangerous place.

There are many justifications for anti-Americanism, but there is one which rises above all others: viz., a financial-industrial system which clashes with the long traditions of the social democracies in Europe and the Far East. Two incompatible capitalist systems have emerged amongst the advanced industrial economies in the post-War period: the Rentier capitalism of the US, and the Productive capitalism of Europe and the Far East. Each is guided by its own ideology, the neo-liberalism of America versus the social democracy (a broad term transcending party politics) of Europe and the Far East Tiger economies.

With America emerging as the clear victor of the Cold War in 1989, her government and corporations have been sufficiently confident to impose their financial-industrial system on the rest of the world, and this is proving disastrous to the social democratic consensus and welfare policies built up since 1945 and before. The argument is propagated that the European system is no longer viable, and must therefore surrender to the American way and globalisation, but this is shown to be a fiction invented by US policy makers.

There is an in-depth analysis of American culture which explains its political system, and the US is revealed to be very far from a true democracy. It is in Europe and elsewhere where the ideals of democracy, justice and equity are best promoted. The final chapters home-in on a European resolution to the most difficult problems of our time, viz., saving the environment; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and how to de-fuse the causes of Terror. The book is an appeal for the cause of civilisation, social justice and equity for all humanity.

Book Contents

• CHAPTER 1
  America Versus the World
  1. Defining the divide
  2. An end to the old bases for conflict
  3. The internationalisation of political issues
  4. America is the enemy of world justice
  5. The ideology of corporate power
  6. Benign and malign economic systems
  7. Fall of the Berlin Wall saw the onslaught of America’s economic aggression
  8. Failure of the counter-attack
  9. A strategy for the future
  10. Restoring the lost tradition of social progress
  11. Futility of debt cancellation
  12. Why privatisation is a misnomer
  13. Need for personalisation policies
  14. What they would mean for the poor
  15. How America repudiates equal trading rights with the Third World
  16. Personal property is necessary for the free individual
  17. Need to stage development in the Third World
  18. Personalisation policies in industrially advanced economies
  19. Why international power today is economic but not Democratic
  20. Defining Economic Integrity
  21. But this clashes with the interests of American corporate power
  22. Internal capitalisation versus rentier exploitation
  23. Flunkeyism never gains respect
  24. Why Britain should lead the initiative for world freedom
• CHAPTER 2
  America and the Deception of the World
  1. Why anti-Americanism is necessary
  2. The fraud of American democracy
  3. The charlatanry of her foreign policy
  4. Her gung-ho militarism
  5. The rule of the philistines
  6. How “presidential” government is replacing democratic government
  7. But corporate power is more wide-ranging
  8. American-style finance has undermined Japan
  9. Need to politicise the underlying economic issues
  10. How America won her reputation as a benevolent superpower
  11. And how she lost it
  12. The futility of inter-party strife within nations
  13. Anti-Americanism is necessary in concretising complex socio-economic policies
  14. Reservations with regard to anti-Americanism
  15. The nastiness of the complacent
  16. The fallacy of the chosen-people syndrome
  17. The poison of American religiosity
  18. A wake-up call to the American people
• CHAPTER 3
  America and the Debasement of Cultural Values
  1. Interrelationship between cultural and political values
  2. Some difficulties in defining Freedom and Democracy
  3. Americans subject to universal dislike
  4. Problems of debasing cultural standards
  5. Comparison between American and non-American values
  6. Origin of American values
  7. Their disparaging of the strange and foreign
  8. The proletarianisation of society
  9. The movement to dumb-down culture
  10. Examples of American mass culture
  11. A dumbed-down culture unique to America
  12. Emergence of a hedonistic youth culture
  13. Early response to youth culture in Europe
  14. America and the drug culture
  15. Art forms and their influence on character
  16. The need to resist American power
  17. Origins of the cultural-political divide between the US and the non-American world
  18. Hypocrisy of American freedom and democracy
  19. Populism and the debasement of standards
  20. Cultural cleft between the US andl non-American mindset
  21. Money is the criterion for American values
  22. Monetary worth directs the American moral sense
• CHAPTER 4
  America and the Debasement of Democratic Values
  1. Limitations of the American concept of freedom
  2. The USA is not in origin a democracy
  3. Why freedom is better understood in the non-American world
  4. The brutality of US industrial relations
  5. When a democracy becomes a plutocracy
  6. The non-American world has a better understanding of democracy
  7. How America repudiated the politics of justice
  8. American democracy corrupted by a debasing populism
  9. The problems of populism
  10. Comparison between superficial and real freedom
  11. Necessary conditions for the achievement of full freedom
  12. Establishing electoral mechanisms not sufficient to create a democracy
  13. The American system is corrupted by high finance
  14. The de-humanisation of life
  15. Enslavement through the unstoppable demands of an economic system
  16. America in need of an upward-inducing mobility
  17. High culture as an aid to political consciousness
  18. American is against majorities everywhere
  19. Confronting the issues of price competition
  20. America does not carry the emblem of ideal modernity
• CHAPTER 5
  A Global Strategy for the Planet and Humankind
  1. America’s irresponsibility to the world community
  2. The consequences of absolute power
  3. Confronting America is an ethical imperative
  4. Political justification for anti-Americanism
  5. A pattern for a more creative politics
  6. Moving from a class-based to an internationally-based politics
  7. National interests only achievable through international cooperation
  8. Anti-Americanism is the creative radical politics of the future
  9. The call for a more intelligent political class
  10. Enlightened business magnates and the mantle of power
  11. How business leaders will succeed where Socialists failed
  12. Contrasting attitudes of experts and ill-informed to problem-solving
  13. Launching the politics of tomorrow
  14. Confronting climate change with clean energy
  15. Desalination, afforestation and hydrogen power
  16. A National Planetary Service
  17. America incapable of meeting the funding needs of the environment
  18. Reconstituting the United Nations
• CHAPTER 6
  Defusing the Causes of Terror
  1. Political injustice gave rise to terrorism
  2. Liberal values the key to inter-racial concord
  3. Religious bigotry is always self-destructive
  4. Worldwide Jewry must resist the mischief of American diplomacy
  5. Why the Islamic and Western civilisations are incompatible
  6. The political secularism of the non-American world must confront the political religiosity of the USA
  7. An Islamic Conference to promote international understanding
  8. Women and freedom in Islamic societies
  9. The question of polygamy
  10. Reforming Shariah law
  11. A hierarchical Islamic church for sanity and stability
  12. Dissenting Christian clerics often no less mischievous than those of Islam
  13. A dialogue with Islam is an imperative for world peace
  14. De-fusing the future social crisis in India
  15. The non-American world will carry the torch of progress
  16. The underlying unity between Europe and the Far East
• APPENDIX A - Draft proposals for an association to be known as Freedom From America International
• APPENDIX B - Draft proposals for a manifesto for Freedom From America International