As just one example, to take another dichotomy that had played throughout the years of my youth into my adulthood -- communism vs capitalism. It would be difficult now to argue for communism as a force for the good, particularly in light of those regimes that purported to be communist, but were instead simply another version of a "theocratic dictatorship." It might seem odd to label communism a "theocratic dictatorship," but at the core of it was the "worship" of an infallible idea, captured in sacred texts. As has been said of conservatism today, "communism couldn't fail, it could only be failed," by insufficient faith, insufficient commitment, insufficient or corrupted individuals, et cetera. If one accepted that the infallible idea was, well, infallible, one was justified in seeking out those who failed the idea, and those who "failed" communist idea met with ends better described by Solzhenitsyn. Communism, as it actually manifested itself in the world, was clearly enough an "evil." Regean was not entirely wrong to label communist Russia an "evil empire" to be resisted.
Conversely, of course, we had capitalism. If communism was an evil to be resisted, then capitalism had to be the force for good. Well, perhaps, to a limited degree, but let me spend a bit more time on communism. There was another dichotomy that played throughout the years of my youth -- communism vs democracy. Though it wasn't quite to apparent in the beginning, as time wore on, it became apparent that the state-planned economies of the soviet block clearly did not function quite so well as those governed by the "invisible hand" of capitalism, in part because the people did not have much in the way of a voice in decisions that dominated their lives. Decisions, for good or for evil, were made at the "top," but there was no feedback loop of accountability from the people, who were asked simply to endure the hardships. Again, communism could not fail, it could only be failed by those who demonstrated insufficient endurance on the way to fulfillment of the infallible idea. At least theoretically, democracy created that feed back loop. Humans are hierarchical, and where hierarchies don't exist "naturally" we create them, so decision making was and is still made at the "top," but those at the "top" served ostensibly at and for the will of the people. At least theoretically, in a democracy, we could vote them out of office and replace them with someone who would indeed serve the will of the people.
I should also point out that capitalism and democracy seemed linked in inextricable ways. One, it seemed, could not exist without the other. Just as we had a voice in the success of one "leader" over another, creating a sort of competition between sets of ruling ideas, we had a voice in the success of one "firm" over another. If dissatisfied with our Ford, we could buy a Chevy. The competition between "firms" for our business, theoretically, resulted in the "lowest price and the highest quality." At the macro level at least, voting with our ballots, voting with our pocket books, seemed ultimately to result in a country that reflected, again, the will of the people.
Having said this, however, I should point out that there is no inextricable link between capitalism and democracy. I take it as something of a truism, for example, but in capitalism, there seems to be an inexorable pressure toward anti-competitive, and in that sense anti-democratic monopoly. Competition between "firms" results in a good for people in general, but it does not produce the same good for the owners of the firm. "Lowest price and the highest quality" generally means less money in the form of profit or "surplus." If one were to limit, or even eliminate competition, then of course the owners would be less constrained in both their pricing and the often costly focus on "quality." Competition between "firms" also results in winners and losers, as we're reminded often in this presidential race, and the early winners accumulate greater and greater surplus, which allows them to "buy up" or "buy out" or just "out compete" any potential rival. It pays, in other words, to be an early winner. We see this playing out in the tech firms today. Even if we buy into their mythology that they started in a garage with a good idea and a vision, imagine what it would take today to create another Microsoft or Apple to compete on anything approaching equal footing with the existing firms. If you are sitting in a garage with a good idea, chances are you will be made an offer you can't refuse, riches beyond your immediate reach, and so like the 50s sci-fi blob, the so-called big boys come along and absorb all that might present meaningful competition.
Consider, for example, what Richard D Wolff has to say:
Political democracy has been repeatedly limited, constrained and corrupted by capitalism. That happened because political democracy based on universal suffrage could redistribute or reclaim politically the profits concentrated in capitalists’ hands by the functioning of the capitalist economic system. Majorities by their votes could negate capitalism. To prevent that, capitalists had to control politics. Their financial and related resources bought politicians, parties, mass media, lobbyists, think tanks, public relations experts, etc. With capitalism, democracy thus remained mostly formal, a much-venerated veneer covering the absence of real democracy.
The full essay can be found at (http://www.rdwolff.com/content/alternatives-capitalism). He proposes a solution that I won't discuss, but the sentiment expressed above seems to be playing out in the general election as well. Bernie Sanders could have written the same paragraph, and that he is tapping into populist support after announcing himself a democratic socialist indicates that Wolff might well be correct, that there is a "waning of anti-communism as a national paranoia." When we have a theocratically based terrorism, the red menace is no longer so menacing, but I would go on to say that capitalism, if it has worked "well enough," it has worked because the "political democracy" has placed regulatory limits on its internal dynamics. It is not illegal, per se, to seek monopoly power within a market, but if one actually succeeds, or if it appears that one might succeed through a proposed merger or the like, then the government, reflecting the will of the people, has the right to intervene and "break up the monopoly" and reinstate competitive, democratic capitalism. Most such regulatory limits work within the tax code and labor laws, and if the Marxist predictions regarding capitalism didn't come about, it's not that he was wrong, per se, about the exploitive, extractive nature of capitalism, but that he underestimated the ability of political democracy to limit its worst excesses. If political democracy stands against the excesses of kings and tyrants, so too it would appear to stand also as a bulwark against the excesses inherent in the capitalist systems.
Nevertheless, as another potential Bernie Sanders supporter, Allan G. Johnson, has written:
The most important thing to
realize about industrial capitalism is that it is not organized to meet the
needs of the people who participate in it. It is not the first system for which
this has been true, but it is the latest version and it dominates the world.
It’s true that capitalists have to produce things that people need (or, if not,
to persuade them that they do) in order to sell goods and make a profit. If, as
a result, capitalism does happen to meet the needs of people, that’s fine, but
that is not the point of the system. The point is to allow individuals to
compete with one another in order to maximize personal wealth. How this affects
everyone else is, within fairly broad limits, largely beside the point.
The full post can be found here (http://www.agjohnson.us/glad/if-not-capitalism-what/). There are several arguable assertions here, and in fairness to Johnson, it wast his agenda to argue them fully, but let's argue, by way of example, just one: "it's true that capitalists have to produce things that people need ... in order to sell goods and make a profit." Is it true? Well, first, the whole notion of "need" should be better defined. What exactly is a "need?" I am not suggesting that we revert to subsistence living at its most meager, but let's just accept that, say, personal transportation is a "need." There are many ways, of course, to satisfy that need, but we have evolved, so to speak, into a particular set of circumstances where automobiles, fueled with polluting hydrocarbons, provide personal transportation. It is easy enough to imagine a different evolutionary path, so to speak, where the need for personal transportation is fulfilled differently, but here we are. If you think for a moment how many people, big and small, "profit" from the automobile industry, it would be virtually impossible to say, "whoops. That was a mistake. Let's try something different." But it WAS a mistake, an evolutionary path that has brought us, if not to the brink of extinction, then at the very least into a seriously degraded environment.
There is a sort of sunk cost fallacy implicit in a "mistake" of this sort. We have sunk so much time, effort, money into certain industries, and too many people have become dependent upon those industries for their livelihood, that it might appear we have no choice but to live with them such as they are. The Clinton brand of pragmatism buys into the sunk cost, and there will be plenty of people, who continue to profit from the "mistake," that will resist even slight shifts away from the status quo. It doesn't take much to see that "climate scientists" have little to gain by suggesting that "climate changes" are the result of human activity, driving hydrocarbon fueled vehicles among the bigger culprits. What, for example, do the NASA scientists have to gain by pointing to the diminishing ice caps, to the increasing average annual temperatures, et cetera? Conversely, it doesn't take much to see that those associated with the production of hydrocarbon fuel, those associated with the automobile industry, et cetera, actually DO have something to gain by denying climate change and resisting any regulatory changes that might divert us from the status quo. As Johnson put it, how their denial and the preservation of the status quo "affects everyone else is, within fairly broad limits, largely beside the point." If we are to make changes, it will be political democracy, not capitalism per se, that makes the change, using the tax system to incentivize alternatives (e.g. electric cars) and/or impose sanctions on the status quo (e.g. a meaningful carbon tax) that reduce its profitability.
Having said this, it is perhaps not surprising that the conservative parties, not only here, but throughout the world, have moved toward distortions and at times outright constraints on political democracy. They are aligned with the "capitalists," not those who would restrain the excesses of capitalism -- not, that is, the people. The biggest distortion, of late, has been the Citizens United decision, but the efforts to gerrymander districts, impose voter registration limitations, all have their effect. Setting aside the cynical alignment of religion and conservatism (which, frankly, I see mostly as a red herring -- a side argument that hides the real argument -- except perhaps for a Ted Cruz type who seems to want religion, not the people per se, to regulate capitalism for eschatological
ends) any effort to free capitalism from the constraints imposed by political democracy -- from regulation, from taxes, from legal sanctions -- as I put it in the previous post, simply allows them to keep legally more of what they "extract" and much more latitude in how they go about "extracting" it. It will free capitalism to fulfill its dynamic, move closer to monopoly power, concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands, allow greater and greater disregard for the planet and those that inhabit it. In short, less capitalism, more democracy -- that's what the country needs right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment