Workers World, Vol. 23, No. 14
April 1, 1981: A virtual state of civil war emerged between the principal factions in the Reagan administration immediately following the announcement that Reagan was shot. The shooting, however, did not create the dangerous power struggle between the factional protagonists. The shooting brought the struggle out into the open for all the world to see and threatened to precipitate what conceivably could be a violent struggle for power.
No amount of pronouncements calculated to put a good face on the so-called orderly functioning of the government can cover up the depth and virulence of the antagonisms which have been wracking the Reagan administration since practically the first day it took over.
The attempted assassination temporarily shook up all of the financial, industrial, and military cliques and caused consternation and confusion in their ranks. In the event of an assassination of the president, who is both the chief executive officer of the capitalist establishment and its constitutional head, many of the smaller grouplets in and around the military-industrial complex could be cut loose from their moorings and become isolated unless they quickly regroup in a new coalition.
The uncertainty and confusion, however, lasted only a few hours, until it was ascertained that the president would survive the assassination attempt. It was not the succession question as such which brought the factional struggle to razor edge sharpness. It was the character of the struggle in the contemporary political situation of the U.S. as well as in the world. Fundamentally, this stems from the deep contradiction in the Reaganite program that is fostering industrial contraction and cutbacks in social services while simultaneously trying to carry out military expansion.
With respect to the two principal factional protagonists, it would be good to examine how some of their well-wishers in the leading capitalist papers exposed their bias.
Take, for instance, the editorial commentary of the arch-reactionary and pro-militarist Wall Street Journal of today:
“By 4:15 p.m., an hour and forty minutes after the shooting, Secretary Haig was announcing to the press that the crisis team was in place, he was temporarily in charge and in touch with Vice President Bush, who was en route. Much has been made of the Haig performance, for two reasons.” One, the Journal says, was because of “one slip by Secretary of State Haig which TV-man Dan Rather blew up to far greater significance than it deserved.” This, it turns out, was “His remark to the press that ‘constitutionally’ he was third in line to the President and Vice President ... the Presidential Succession Act of July 18, 1947, put the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate Pro Tem before the Secretary of State.”
“Aside from the constitutional slip,” says this apologist for the general, “it would be hard to fault Mr. Haig’s performance. He was the ranking Cabinet officer in the White House at the time. He was in touch with the Vice President. His answers to other questions were careful and correct.”
Indeed!
When Haig emerged from the Situation Room in the White House, he said, “As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending return of the Vice President, and in close touch with him.” He added, “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State in that order.”
The point that stared everybody in the face who heard this remark (from the man holding the highest office in the diplomatic corps) was that he, a general, was in control at the White House while the White House staff was at the hospital.
This could scarcely be interpreted anywhere in the world among diplomats, politicians, and military leaders as a slip, but rather as the pronouncement of a fait accompli. The Wall Street Journal attempt to put a good face on it does not measure with the facts which have come out everywhere since then.
For instance, White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker acknowledged that “Haig, as soon as he heard of the shooting, called the White House to suggest that he be in charge at the White House” (New York Times, April 1, our emphasis). “Mr. Haig,” the article continues, “also acted without consulting senior Reagan aides in getting in touch with other government and in talking to the press about his primacy in the Situation Room.”
The fact that Baker now endorses the Haig fait accompli after the fact is merely an attempt to put a good face on the situation, but is in no way an attempt at reconciliation.
The Situation Room is described as a military command post and a communications center. The idea that the mere wounding, death, or resignation of a president would in and of itself create a military threat has been continuously embedded into the mass psychology of the people by uninterrupted saturation of anti-Soviet propaganda over the years. But nowhere is there even a hint given that the sudden appearance of a secretary of state at the Situation Room in the White House might in fact be the prelude to a military adventure, or that perhaps the planning of a military adventure might have been one of the principal causes behind this blind and virulent struggle over directing and redirecting a mad U.S. military policy.
Nevertheless, it is important to examine the other protagonists in this faction feuding at the summit of the military-industrial complex and the capitalist establishment as a whole.
The principal supporters of the Reagan political, economic, social, and military position are Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, CIA chief William Casey, and the three principal aides to Reagan: Counselor Meese, Chief of Staff Baker, and Michael Deaver. Without Reagan, his three principal aides would immediately lose their stature and could be counted out of the struggle altogether. This also includes Richard V. Allen, Reagan’s national security advisor.
Only Weinberger and Casey could possibly garner independent political standing to retain their posts even for a time. Weinberger is a staunch right-winger and supporter of Reagan for all these years, but has independent ties to the military-industrial complex, which of course includes his years of tenure in the giant military contractor, the Bechtel Corporation.
Casey has connections to banking and financial interests.
Much has been made of Weinberger’s challenge to Haig’s fait accompli in taking charge of the White House, and of the Situation Room in particular. This ordinarily might be run by the secretary of defense if, indeed, he has the office by virtue of a living president. Even then, it must be remembered that he is a civilian. While legally the Joint Chiefs of Staff are nominally his subordinates, and are supposed to report to him, the facts of life strongly suggest that when an unbridled military leader of a cabal, in the form of General Haig, has taken charge of the Situation Room, it is highly questionable that the Joint Chiefs would subordinate themselves to Weinberger’s orders – unless they (or a substantial section of the military) regarded him as their man as against Haig. This assumption cannot under the circumstances be validated except by an open struggle.
It should therefore be plain that, until Reagan was pronounced merely wounded and recovering, the basis for a virtual coup d’etat, even if called peaceful or constitutional, had been laid. The foundation for this was laid by Reagan himself when he first nominated Haig as secretary of state.
He then recoiled after Haig handed him a proposed executive order to sign which turned out to be such a vast encroachment on presidential authority that it well may be regarded as an ultimatum.
The modification of Haig’s proposed executive order, euphemistically called a “job description” of his duties as secretary of state, did nothing to diminish his increasing attempt to make further inroads into presidential authority.
Reagan then tried to remedy the situation by appointing Vice President Bush to head the “crisis management team” of the White House, which would thereby substantially downgrade Haig’s authority.
In an effort to maintain the appearance of having achieved a peaceful solution, Reagan again gave his blessing to Haig as “his principal adviser and formulator of foreign policy,” while at the same time keeping Bush as the head of the crisis team. This did not end the struggle, but merely drove it a bit under cover.
Here it is necessary to examine more critically the nature of the attempted assassination, and the timing of it. It is of course entirely conceivable and believable from the facts thus far obtained that here was a lone, more or less psychologically or mentally disturbed individual who happens to have been a member of the Nazi Party and who took it into his head to murder Reagan without any apparent motivation. So be it. Such are the facts as presented.
But the facts must also be examined in relation to the entire contemporary political situation as it has evolved in the U.S. To digress for a moment, it would be well to look at Britain in historical evolution.
Britain has been one of the longest-lasting and most stable capitalist democracies. It has over several centuries now maintained a parliamentary system of government on a stable capitalist, and later imperialist, basis. Who would ever suspect, at least on this side of the Atlantic, the possibility of a military coup d’etat in Britain to overthrow the Wilson Labour government at the instigation of the Tory banking and financial clique?
Yet such a military plot was undertaken at a time of acute political struggle and social crisis in the 1960s, by none other than the highly esteemed and “respected everywhere” Lord Mountbatten! So such things are possible even in Britain, which does not deem itself the military policeman of the planet and is content to be a junior partner to U.S. imperialism. Then why is it not possible that a military plot of the same dimension was and still may be in the heads of the unbridled military of the U.S.?
Nor should we in any case assume that Haig himself is the architect. Military leaders are more apt, more experienced in the art of maintaining secrecy than other strata of the capitalist establishment. Often faceless men who are wholly unknown emerge right behind the front man, who may be only the titular leader. They may never really be known unless they succeed, which is still a question.
The Reagan faction, as opposed to Haig, has of late been talking even tougher than Haig himself. Whether this is to ingratiate themselves with the military or to strengthen their position in the extreme right of their so-called constituency is hard to know. But it should be plain to all that on the basis of public pronouncements by either of the factions, there is no fundamental difference in policy.
The Vance-Brzezinski struggle had at least this merit: that one could easily see, even when attempts were made to cover it up, that Vance was speaking a softer and more moderate line; he ultimately resigned or, more correctly, was ousted. The so-called liberal imperialist faction of the moderates was broken up and defeated.
Here there is not even a semblance of difference between the principal protagonists in the factional arena, certainly not so far as military adventures or domestic reaction are concerned. The organic tendency of the military in the epoch of imperialist decay to more and more encroach on the civilian arm of the government should of course be a matter of deep concern to the civilian administrators of the imperialist state. Yet the propensity of the capitalist politicians, especially the more rightist elements in the House and Senate, is to outdo even the military in their ostentatious posturing for approval by the military chieftains.
Last Sunday, March 29, the administration trotted out Defense Secretary Weinberger, Secretary of State Haig, and Senate Foreign Relations chairman Percy. They were interviewed on the three separate talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC. No one attentively listening to them could possibly detect a difference in substance, even on minor aspects of the matter they dealt with: the Soviet Union and the Polish crisis. It was clear, however, that each in his own way was trying to outdo the others in the ferocity of his attack and unrestrained threats against the USSR.
Nevertheless, a slight shift in emphasis or the appearance of it here and there by one of them could be the cause or the pretext for an assault by the other. Take for instance this item which appeared in Newsweek magazine dated April 6 but obviously written before the assassination attempt:
“He may have to bite his tongue, but Ronald Reagan plans to reverse a campaign position and endorse arms control this week in public remarks welcoming Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt to Washington. Since taking office, Reagan has decided that he must support SALT if he expects to win concessions from Europeans on other matters. The President particularly fears that European countries will refuse to deploy the Pentagon’s new cruise missile if the administration doesn’t give at least lip service to arms control.”
This is an extraordinary revelation, if true. It is noteworthy that it got little, if any, publicity in the rest of the press or media, to our knowledge. It may, perhaps, have been no more than a trial balloon. It may, perhaps, have been no more than a trial balloon. It may also have been the first step in preparing right-wing public opinion, or it may be altogether untrue. Nevertheless, the White House didn’t rush to discount such a significant report coming from a magazine with a tremendous mass circulation and eminent big business credentials.
Is it altogether impossible that this could have been the impetus for a military cabal to undertake a coup? If it was not impossible for the British with their more stable capitalist establishment, how can it be regarded as impossible for a capitalist establishment which still aspires not merely to be the policeman of the world but to dominate it financially, economically, and of course militarily?
Those who look upon the virulent factional struggle in the capitalist establishment as merely a struggle for naked power bereft of deeper, fundamental causes, are looking at symptoms and not at the driving forces behind the struggle. The principal contradiction which motivates the current struggle is of an extremely acute and insoluble character.
It derives from the extreme right-wing character of the various reactionary groupings in the Reaganite coalition. The driving force behind these groupings is Big Oil, the military-industrial complex, and the military itself. The program which they have set themselves in the field of domestic politics, such as massive cuts in such fields as medical care, mass transportation, the environment, and so on, all inexorably tend to slow down the economy, lead it into stagnation as well as galloping inflation. It’s a program of economic and industrial contraction.
At the same time, with a program of absolute stupendous and unprecedented defense expenditures, they are embarking on a course of military expansion. This contradiction between economic and industrial contraction and military expansion can in the long run only lead to a catastrophe.
The factional struggles in the capitalist establishment merely reflect the irreconcilability of this basic contradiction. This in turn flows from the nature of decadent monopoly capitalism itself, where the individual, private ownership of the means of production increasingly comes into collision with the highly social mode in which production takes place. Only the massive intervention of the working class and the oppressed people can resolve this contradiction and at the same time truly put an end to imperialism’s mad race to destruction.
Last updated: 11 May 2026