Koch fully understands what the vast majority of Americans do not: that democracy is in opposition to unfettered, capitalism and its kleptocratic equilibrium. And he and his kind choose the latter.
Many on the Right fully conflate democracy and capitalism, imagining, or choosing to imagine, that they are the same thing (idiotic) or complementary (an hypothesis worth examining). The conflation is not without some history: the advocates of a capital based system have employed rhetoric to confuse the masses. "Free" enterprise is meant to sound like political "freedom," when of course it means no such thing.
Democracy is a political system -- an act of genius invented by classical Athenians, reinvented and applied by the British, the French, early Americans, and others. The US Constitution is not notable for its contribution to democracy as ordinarily understood, but for its protection of the rights of all, even when in the minority -- a valuable step forward, of course, and one to be admired when we live up to it.
The market-based system that grew up in the Industrial Revolution, and evolved into this complex system in which investors allocate our resources according to the optimization of their investment returns, has its merits, but it is not entirely consistent with democracy. One dollar, one vote versus one citizen, one vote. If you pay attention, it's not hard to see the difference.
The confusion -- and the intentional rhetoric aimed at confusing people into supporting this insane brand of unfettered capitalism that has enriched the Kleptocratic class beyond imagination because they reject totalitarianism -- has its roots, according to some scholars, in the Cold War.* As Soviet-style socialism was totalitarian and post-war capitalist systems were more democratic, the war against totalitarianism provided ideological cover for capitalism (as it was working hand-in-hand with democracy).
But socialism around the world today is much more democratic than ever before, and the world's most unfettered capitalist economies (China and the US) are now quasi-totalitarian or on the cusp, so this argument has lost its impact. Further, many of those who reject democracy (e.g., the American GOP and their Kleptocratic puppet masters) are the biggest advocates of unfettered capitalism -- fighting to kill off all democratic voice in regulating business, and thus challenging our sovereignty over our lives, our health, our air, our water, our values. As well, in the US, advocates of capitalism have become authoritarians, thus standing in direct opposition to democracy.
As social movements are more push-and-shove than coherent, this means that much of the American Left, seeing that the totalitarian right is invested in killing democracy and saving capitalism, have chosen not to point out that we could have both, as long we honored democratic processes and imposed social values on business, regulating them as do all civilized societies, but have instead decided that if they are to oppose the Right, they should oppose capitalism. There is some legitimate tradition here -- the far left has long been more sympathetic to the values of communism and less critical of its flaws -- but we are observing is not a nuanced critique of the Right's anti-democratic, pro-unfettered-and-brutal-version of capitalism men like Koch advance. Instead many on the far Left have just jumped into the fight with blunt and uncritical attacks on all market-based systems. When they are forced to acknowledge that a democratic market-system like Sweden's has its merits, they just call it socialism.
To be clear, the far Right knows that full-blooded democracy would never allow their brutal, unfettered version of Kleptocratic capitalism. The exploitation of the 99% since 1980 in the US has been an astonishing success for them. Even folks like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, characterized by the Right as socialists, are offering tiny, tepid solutions; just to recover the sort of society and system we had when the US was an exemplar for the world (say the level of inequality we had from 1950-1966), we'd have to impose wealth and income taxes that no one can offer without political death.
Yet, some version of a market-based system, doing what it does well, with a rational, economic regulatory process to impose both EFFICIENCY and EQUITY, is probably optimal. Because of our history, this centrist idea -- if applied objectively -- is now too far left to be palatable to the majority, not interesting to those on the far left who want the system dismantled, and of course horrifying to the Right, although it would be better for the vast majority of them.
And so we are left with an unfettered brand of capitalism -- a horrible, inequitable and unsustainable version that the brilliant Karl Polanyi, understanding its deadly appeal, called "a stark utopia." This system, dressed up in red, white and blue, and stripped of all civility, decency and effectuality, is our Aegean Sea, home to our sirens, whose song is too strong for us to resist.
Unless we find our own Orpheus to resist them, we will all drown.
___
* E.g.,
Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy
THE COLD WAR ORIGINS OF RATIONAL CHOICE LIBERALISM
No comments:
Post a Comment