The Plutocratic System

[blindpig]

This is an excerpt from a much longer piece from the Monthly Review

Boiled down, U.S. politics under today’s mature capitalism are not about the welfare of the demos (i.e., the people) as envisioned in classical notions of democracy, but rather about which party can best deliver profitability to investors and corporations. There are continuing debates between those who simply want to slash labor costs, taxes, and regulations for the rich, and those who want to do some of that but also use some regulation and government spending to encourage higher wages and demand-driven growth. Both sides, however, accept that making the economy profitable for the owning class is the sine qua non of successful administration. Within these constraints, there are occasional important political fights and periodic bones to throw to the electorate. But, in times of economic stagnation, the bones get smaller and even disappear. What passes for genuine political debate often tends to be irrelevant gibberish and blatant manipulation on side issues, or inconsequential nitpicking on minutiae. The big stuff is off the table. The system is democratic in theory, plutocratic (rule by the rich) in content.

The hollowness of democracy in today’s capitalism is evident in the blatant corruption of governance at all levels in the United States, and the non-accountability of all the major players. The corruption we are discussing is not about politicians getting inordinately great seats at the World Series, but the degeneration of the system and the dominance of a culture of greed that is now pervasive and institutionalized, contaminating all aspects of life. The manner in which, during the current Great Recession, the dominant institutions and investors were able to coalesce and demand hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars in public money as a blank check to the largest banks—and then shamelessly disperse multimillion-dollar bonuses to individuals at the apex of those very same corporations now on the public dole—was a striking reminder of the limits of self-government in our political economy. When the Masters of the Universe, as those atop the economic system have been called, need money, when they need bail-outs, when they need the full power of the state, there is no time for debate or inquiry or deliberation. There is no time for the setting of conditions. There is only time to give them exactly what they want. Or else! Egged on by the news media, all responsible people fall in line or face ostracism. As for education and the social services that mark the good society, well, they have to wait in line and hope something is left after the capitalist master is fed. In stagnant times, it is a long wait.

Marx’s work provides searing insights on how to understand a society that, at the surface, appears to be one thing but, at its deeper productive foundations, is something else. Marx argued that a core contradiction built into capitalism was between its ever-increasing socialization and enhancement of productivity, and its ongoing system of private appropriation of profit. In other words, one of the great virtues of capitalism, in comparison to the relatively stagnant societies that preceded it, is that it is constantly revolutionizing society’s productive capacity and the social interconnections between people within production. But, at a certain point, private control over the economy comes into stark conflict with the vast productive capacities of social labor that have developed. These means of private control, the dominant class/property relations, become “so many fetters” on the further development of society, of human potential, of even the sustainability of human society. The fetters must therefore be “burst asunder,” to allow for new stages of human development.11

http://www.monthlyreview.org/100601mcchesney-foste...

[Greyhound]

1. K&R.

[villager]

2. A DLCer seems to've unrecc'd this in a cold sweat....

Plutocrats -- or more likely, their apologists -- don't like being called out, I guess...

[Octafish]

11. They're hiring.

Rather be broke than work for such, eh, minds.

K&R to make up for one.

[DJ13]

3. The link doesnt work

You've submitted a request for a file that does not exist on this server. Please correct your URI and try, try again. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=389&topic_id=8521704&mesg_id=8521704 98.242.0.191 /100601mcchesney-foste www.monthlyreview.org Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100205 SeaMonkey/2.0.3 404

[blindpig]

4. Here ya go;

http://www.monthlyreview.org/100601mcchesney-foster.php

[DJ13]

5. Thank you, looks interesting!

[spin]

6. K&R (n/t)

[Starry Messenger]

7. k & r

[amborin]

8. K&R

[Laelth]

9. Clearly stated. k&r n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[ProSense]

10. This part is interesting:

From the birth of democracy in antiquity, it has been true that those with property will only concede fundamental rights to those without property when they fear for the very survival of their own privileges. “If there is no struggle,” as Frederick Douglass said in 1857, “there is no progress….Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will….If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.”17 People arrive at more radical, revolutionary positions through concrete struggle.

The unwillingness, so common among U.S. progressives, to embrace a critique of capitalism, to take it to its radical conclusions, including the necessity of a serious class struggle, has another unfortunate political consequence. It opens the door to phony right-wing populist movements seizing the mantle of “radical” opposition to the status quo. With the economic system off-limits to criticism (even invisible in its main power dimensions), attention necessarily gravitates to government as the root of all evil. The state must therefore be the source of the peoples’ problems; and indeed, it seems very seldom to operate in their real interests. It is the state, after all, that imposes taxes that seem to provide ordinary people few benefits; runs deficits, the burden of which falls disproportionately on those who gain the least; and controls the military and police. In today’s Tea Party ideology, engineered principally by the right, capital is deemed natural, while the state is unnatural—imposed from without on those who would otherwise be free. The social crisis is then seen as a crisis of too much government, too much interference by state interests in the natural order of things. Capitalism is treated as an elemental force, like the wind and tides, or a mere byproduct of human nature. The reality of power in today’s society is hidden behind the mist generated by this false “naturalism.”

The underlying principle, therefore, is clear: progressives need a fundamental critique of capitalism and an open discussion about the possible advantages of socialism—even to attempt major reforms within capitalism. And when they begin that critique, we believe, most progressives and most Americans will come to the conclusion that C.B. Macpherson, in his The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, reached some four decades ago: It is increasingly difficult to reconcile liberal democratic values (much less anything remotely resembling genuine democracy) with today’s monopoly-finance capital. Something has to go. And that is exactly why capitalism is off-limits to honest discussion, and why the constraints placed on public debate in our political culture prevent any real, permanent forward movement.18

We have not forgotten the basic realities of class. We know that most of those self-identified as part of the U.S. liberal-left are very privileged, relative to the larger working population. The liberal-left is heavily entrenched in the professional-managerial stratum, or the upper middle class. Many of them are employed by the state. Theirs is a class reality that ties them in innumerable ways to the system. They may want significant change, but most of the liberal-left is materially linked, in a way that the vast majority of the population is not, to the existing power structure. Nevertheless, there is no imaginable path toward socialism in the United States today, in which a considerable portion of those who currently constitute the “liberal-left” do not play an important role as key initiators and supporters of a general revolt in society.

The current state of U.S. politics might be described as one in which the right has gained more power by moving right. The left needs to gain more power by moving left. If this means increased political polarization, so be it.

See this

[blindpig]

20. What's your point? n/t

[Ardent15]

23. --

delete

[Uncle Joe]

12. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, blindpig.

[Laelth]

13. I liked this quote a lot.

On issue after issue, progressives tend to garner a significant percentage of the American people’s support, yet they do not have anything remotely close to commensurate political influence. The recent debacle over health care, in which the Obama administration and its Congressional allies successfully played the left-wing and voting base of the Democratic Party for patsies and delivered on a gold platter a bill to the liking of the corporate sector, is the most recent evidence.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ProSense]

14. "played the left-wing and voting base of the Democratic Party for patsies "

Wow, so the left wing is gullible?

This is a common theme: We were duped.

Evidently, the left wing are perpetual victims.

[blindpig]

15. Depends what you mean by 'left'

If you are talking about the liberal/progressive wing of the Democratic party, afraid so.

But if you're talking about the traditional anticapitalists, anarchist, communists, socialists, not hardly so much, though it has happened.

People gotta understand, there is no compromising with Capital.

[ProSense]

17. "played the left-wing and voting base of the Democratic Party for patsies "

No, it depends on what the author means by left.

[amborin]

25. the left wing isn't a perpetual victim, those are YOUR words; it simply got shafted big time recent

[Echo In Light]

16. K/R

[valerief]

18. The elites own the military but the proles (us) keep feeding them bullets (soldiers).

If we stop feeding them bullets, we'll have the bullets--and the power.

[blindpig]

19. Conclusion

Capitalism, as an economic, political, and social system based on private ownership, directed to the greatest possible profits for particular individuals and corporations, is, in our day, entirely absurd. It has no rational or orderly relationship to human life or to the future of humanity. Socialism, as its heir apparent, stands for the chance that still exists to create a just, egalitarian, and sustainable world directed at human needs, in which the people themselves are sovereign—once the fetters of private profit are burst asunder.

Is this possible? Who knows? What we do know is that, as long as we breathe air, we have no real choice but to rebel, because under capitalism humanity has no future.

[Hannah Bell]

21. k/r

[Hydra]

22. I liked this part in particular

Of course part of the liberal-left’s weakness in U.S. politics is due to the news media, unfavorable election laws, and a number of other factors with which progressives are all too familiar. But a more significant reason for that weakness is that nobody in power fears the liberal-left—and no one should. The liberal-left tends to trip over itself as it establishes its pro-market bona fides for decision makers. “Take us seriously, pretty please; we are not really radicals and certainly not socialists, we want to make your free market system work better, and don’t we have some jolly-good ideas,” they seem to say.

We have nothing to threaten them with.

"What are you going to do? Vote?"

[Ardent15]

24. K and R

[Hannah Bell]

26. excellent article:

In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, an enraged Okie tenant farmer, a victim of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, wants to know, as he is being removed from his farm by the bank, whom he can shoot. The tractor driver who comes to demolish his house says it would do no good for the farmer to shoot him, since he’s just an ordinary working stiff doing his job and would be quickly replaced by another. When the farmer counters that he will then shoot the person who gave the order, the tractor driver replies that this too would be useless, since that individual is simply a bank employee. “Well, there’s a president of the bank,” continues the farmer. “There’s a board of directors. I’ll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank.”

The driver said, “Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were, ‘Make the land show profit or we’ll close up.’”

“But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.”

The problem faced by Steinbeck’s hapless tenant farmer is that there seems to be no individual or group of individuals who are ultimately responsible and accountable for the economic decisions that are harming people all over the country. It is a system “made by men,” and some are obviously gaining at the expense of others. The relation between the haves and the have-nots is clear, but the opacity of the market and the impersonality of it all nonetheless seem to constrain the possibility of active rebellion... Who really is the boss? Who is making the decisions?

We come to believe that, as individuals, we are unconstrained in our day-to-day activities, since we remain at liberty, except when the state intrudes on our lives. Everything around us seems to function via Adam Smith’s invisible hand. What we lose sight of is the reality of an alienated, commodified existence with its innumerable chains forged by class and property relations.

http://monthlyreview.org/100601mcchesney-foster.php#en65

[amborin]

27. wasn't it Lenin who said don't blame the individual capitalist? otherwise, the opacity & notion of

"the system" or even the notion of "capitalism" in general all serve the ruling class's interests...


no time to read the article right now....but it seems to be getting at the social relations of production...the crux of the matter: it's the everyday actions, choices, behaviors of men and women that shape the system, and perpetuate it; or which can radically transform, even anhiliate, it....

[krispos42]

28. Bookmarking n/t