Discovering America As It Is [Paperback]

Valdas Anelauskas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 27, 2002

America's Extreme Capitalism Wreaked Havoc on the American People -- Even Before the Bubble Burst DISCOVERING AMERICA AS IT IS, is a monumental study of the devastating effect American-style capitalism has been having on the American people -- even before the onslaught of recession. It raises serious questions not only concerning America's role as a leading model for development, but even as to its future capacity to compete due to the deterioration of its human capital resulting from anti-social domestic policies. During the era of the Soviet Union, many human rights dissidents turned to the United States to champion their cause. Many even emigrated to the USA. Few, however, have expressed the disappointment that awaited them there, and fewer still have publicly exposed their view of human rights as practiced in the U.S.. That fact, in itself, would make Discovering America As It Is an important book, written by a journalist who was expelled from the USSR for human rights activities on behalf of his native Lithuania, and who, upon arriving in America, shared a political platform with such leaders of the American Republican Party as Newt Gingrich and Phil Gramm. "America remains the destination of choice for those who wish to emigrate from their own countries. It is still like a mysterious enchantress to many," Anelauskas writes. "I write this book for them. I have now spent ten years observing American society. Not only observing, but studying, analyzing and comparing it to other societies. When I lived in the Soviet Union, I thought that the Soviet communist system was the worst possible social order. The more I scrutinize American reality, the more I realize that they are like two ends of the same stick..." Ten years' observation of American reality has led Anelauskas to conclude that the U.S. extreme capitalist system poses an even greater threat than Soviet mock-communism to the well-being of the world. He paints an extraordinary portrait of the America he discovered - the America as it exists for most Americans. While it has been argued that capitalism in Russia failed because the Russians "didn't know how to do it," in the United States, the veritable beacon of world capitalism, capitalism does not appear to be working for most people, either -- even before the bubble burst. America's two-decades-long love affair with its free market gurus has gutted the body politic, leaving the American Dream of prosperity for the ordinary man little more than a charade the U.S. corporate, media and government elite successfully fronts to a credulous world. Twelve highly-documented chapters - on poverty, crime, health, education, homelessness, the deterioration of the family, income inequities and the replacement of welfare by workfare - detail the public disarray which results from an unfettered system of great wealth where the rich determine the social priorities. Even more telling than the comparison of American capitalism with communism, an issue which may -- or may not -- be moot, Anelauskas' book ceaselessly poses this question: Does capitalism have to weigh upon its people so mercilessly - or is the American version more extreme, more pitiless than that of other industrialized nations? In thousands of citations, Anelauskas documents the precipitous plunge in living standards of American citizens, measured not only against the standards enjoyed by citizens in other capitalist countries in the industrialized world, but against their own past levels. Among the many searing results: in all categories that measure economic equity, citizens of all other industrialized countries generally fare better than do Americans. This blistering reality is culled from innumerable researches by international organizations, domestic and international NGOs, independent U.S. think tanks, journalists, scholars, and even from American government sources, documented in over 80 pages of endnotes. While most critiques focus on one social secto

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book sheds light on the use and abuse of unsuspecting foreign human rights activists by US officials, agencies and conservative groups as they seek to forward US foreign policy objectives through human rights complaints.

Anelauskas' revelations punch holes through the public policy platitudes surrounding the Republican Contract With America, and reveal in shocking terms the impact recent public policy has had upon the American body politic. Even more significant than present effects are the projections that are drawn from these "facts on the ground."

How does American capitalism treat its citizens, compared to capitalism in other countries in Europe and elsewhere? Anelauskas provides copious amounts of up-to-the -minute comparative documentation on indicators of social well being in health, education, housing, the environment, etc., not only concerning the U.S., but also concerning a range of European and other capitalist countries. His sources range from government statistics, mainstream newspapers and business publications, to studies by international organizations, highly reputed non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and institutes.

From the Back Cover

Discovering America As It Is raises serious questions not only concerning America's role as a leading model for development, but even as to its future competitiveness due to the deterioration in the well-being of the American people resulting from antisocial domestic and foreign policies.

"This is an extraordinary book, especially startling not because it is a diligently researched and scathing critique of contemporary America, but because it is written by a Soviet dissident who arrived here with great expectations and discovered a sobering reality. The scope of the book is breathtaking, a sweeping survey, factually precise and philosophically provocative , which deserves to be compared to de Tocqueville's 19th century classic. I hope it will be widely read." Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Boston University, author of A People's History of the United States

"Anelauskas' examination of many dimensions of current and past realities of the United States is a veritable tour de force. He avoided the usual approach to deal with these dimensions as separate fragments, each with supposedly separate solutions, but traced them to their underlying common roots in the dynamics of the capitalist institutions and ideology of this society and its culture. Teachers and students of social sciences, history, and philosophy will find in this book a rich source for understanding the forces which shape the quality of our lives and human relations, at home and abroad." David G. Gil, Professor of Social Policy, Director, Center for Social Change, Heller Graduate School, Brandeis University

"Valdas Anelauskas' Discovering America As It Is illuminates the dark corners of U.S. history and current events, and draws all the right conclusions. If just one-in-ten lifelong Americans had ever bothered themselves to learn as much about their country as has this recent Lithuanian immigrant, the horrors he writes about would never have existed. This is must reading for the entire population." Ward Churchill, activist and author of "A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 582 pages
• Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc. (November 27, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932863299
• ISBN-13: 978-0932863294
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,240,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Reading for Anyone Who Cares About this Nation, December 16, 2000

By 

Samuel Freeman - See all my reviews

This review is from: Discovering America As It Is (Paperback)

Anelauskas does the American people a huge favor in writing this book. Had it been written by someone born in the U.S., the author would have been denounced as a subversive communist traitor and invited to move to Russia. But Anelauskas was born in Lithuania and grew up under Soviet imperialism. He knows the system well. Until coming to the U.S., he had few kind words for it, which earned him repeated arrest and, ultimately, exile to the U.S., where he took up with the likes of Newt Gingrinch and Phil Gramm. Being an intelligent and educated person, it did not take him long to see through the lies of the American right. In retrospect, he now sees there were some positive qualities to the USSR. The irony is not lost on him, and it is somewhat discomforting to me--having no love lost for the Soviet model--as he says some things were better, and certainly more humane, in the USSR than in the U.S. Yet, it is hard to argue he is not correct.

Discovering America As It Is systematically exposes the lies of the American right, Republicans AND Democrats alike. Some of Anelauskas' most scathing comments are reserved for Republican in Democrat drag, Bill Clinton, whom Anelauskas clearly demonstrates waged an even more merciless and devastating war against the least affluent 40% of the American population than did Reagan. Anyone who thinks a (Daddy George) Bush or Dole presidency would have been more harmful to the poor, or who thinks, somehow, Al Gore would be the "lesser of the evils" will have to reexamine their logic after reading Discovering America.

Anelauskas' work is meticulously documented from a myriad of sources--academic scholarship, poll data, census data, think tanks, studies by agencies of international organizations such as the United Nations, non-governmental organizaitons, government data from the U.S. and other nations, particularly other capitalist nations. The sheer volume of information, of sources, and the consistency of the data, truly, is astounding. During the recent presidential election, George Dubya raised the spectre of "class warfare" in response to (another Republican in Democrat drag) Al Gore's so-called "populist" nomination acceptance speech. The data Anelauskas presents makes it crystal clear there is a long running class war in the U.S.--a war of the most affluent 10% of the population against the other 90%. And the 10% are winning!, primarily because they control all of the major institutions of soceity; in partiuclar the political institutions, schools, media and churches.

Anyone who reads this book should recognize Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Milton Friedman, and David Horowitz for the lying charlatans they are. Anyone who reads this book should realize the Democrat party is as much the party of the propertied class as the Republican party. And anyone who thinks the there is any worthiness to capitalism as an economic system, or who believes the propertied class is not waging unremitting class war against eveyone else should consider the words, not of Karl Marx, but of Abraham Lincoln: "These capitalists act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people."

If I were to fault Anelauskas, it would be for implying America's "ultra-capitalism" is some perverse, grotesquely mutated version of an otherwise viable economic ideology. One need only read the originators of capitalist ideology--Malthus, Ricardo, Adam Smith--to see they fully understood what they were creating. They knew capitalism would be a tremendously productive economic system; but, as they followed the logic of the economic principles they were developing and articulating, they also realized it was a system which eventually reduces virtually the entire population of capitalist societies to starvation while all the wealth becomes vested in the hands of an ever shrinking elite. As they themselves predicted, capitalism is an economic system which ultimately destroys itself and takes everyone with it. It, quite literally, is the Titanic of economic systems; and its advocates preach it is unsinkable. Because the version of capitalism practiced in most European nations is not as pure, not as true to the principles of capitalist ideology as in the U.S., the inherently destructive consequences of the ideology are not as pronounced and as profound as in the U.S. The European nations may be "behind" us, but what is happening here will happen to them; it is inherent in the logic of capitalist ideology.

That fault notwithstanding, the book is superb. Only the blindest of readers will not be profoundly affected and disturbed.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I had the pleasure of reading some of Valdas' other writings, May 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Discovering America As It Is (Paperback)

I must say that the man is indeed a controversial mind compared to other brilliant writers. His vieuw on the social systems worldwide is so profound & his ideas very well documented that this work will most certainly shake up the all American concience. Even as a Western European I often feel the blood boil in my vains, but at the end of each essay I mostly had to admit: "My goodness, he was right after all". The abstracts of his latest book - I found on his website- give you an impression of his talents. Thou his style reads easily, it does grabs you by the nuts & pulls you with both your feet back on the ground. Certainly not a book for socially anorexic citizens. His writings give a deep vieuw into the American heart & rip off the mask of a society in distress!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the Best, October 2, 2000

By 

"dkutzik" (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Discovering America As It Is (Paperback)

Anelauskas' book is a tour de force which could only have been written by a person brutally disillusioned with the candy-coated image of America as an ideal democracy. It is a must read for all seeking a serious critical examination of the fundamental institutions of American capitalism. Impassioned, yet dispassionately objective in its recounting of facts, it injects the reader with moral imperative to rethink the most basic assumptions of our political order. Not since Tocqeville has such an insightful outsider's inside view of America been written. I will use it in my courses and am recommending it to my friends.