Capitalism: Expanding or Contracting?

Nice in theory but it won't work in practice because capitalism must expand to survive and will eventually expand into the realm of the state. What Amercian history has taught us is that authoritarian capitalism and strong democracy are incompatible. Eventually, one of them will swallow the other one. In America, capitalism has swallowed democracy and we now have a pseudo-democratic plutocracy. The plutocrats do make decisions with one eye on the general popular opinion, to be sure, but when they really want or don't want something and they're not thwarted by struggles within their own camp or by pressures from outside the U.S., they'll almost always get their way and the will and interests of the rest of the U.S. population be damned.

 

This is only true for the brief period of time starting with Roosevelt until the early 1970s at the latest when capitalism need the state to save it from collapsing in on itself.

Once the plutocracy believed the world had been made safe for capitalism in the late 1960s/early 1970s, the gloves came off and the rollback began, even in the U.S. It's been going on here ever since with privatizations, government giveaways, the diminution of welfare for the reserve army of the long term unemployed, the private prison industry, a renewed assault on unions, "free trade" agreements, the strengthening of unaccountable quasi-governmental global economic bodies like the WTO, etc. etc. etc. - all of which date from various points in the 1970s and found their most coherent manifestation in the Reagan regime.

Now, there are power struggles within the plutocracy that are sometimes played out in the government that can affect some sectors of business. When business groups fight each other, weird things can happen. But it sure as hell isn't The Sovereign American People driving those battles or determining their outcomes.

 

OK, now we're getting into "thread hijacking" territory. If we wish to continue this, maybe Gringo can give it its own thread?

 

Thanks, GringoTex!

Now, to the good Doctor's question...

I guess it depends on how drastically you wish to separate theory and practice. If you mean "does any system work absolutely exactly like the very first exponent of that system described it", then the answer to your question is "none" because no system is 100% "pure" in practice.

My point, however, was that some social systems are not terribly compatible to other ones, in this instance the authoritarian capitalist economic system and the "strong" democratic political system. The two will inevitably fight it out for supremacy and eventually one will be the victor even though in practice it will contain a few features, both theoretical and practical, of the loser.

 

Well, right now they are not separate. Therefore, one can argue either that:

a) the state is on the ropes and we're heading into "Jennifer Government" territory.

or

b) in a plutocracy, the ruling class owns both the state and the markets and therefore the state/market "battle" is resolved and all that's left are intramural battles between the plutocrats themselves within their "statemarket" system.

 

Today, not much except that we have much better surveillance and military technology, the practice of "Public Relations" (aka "lying") has grown immensely more sophisticated and capitalism has become truly globalised rather than spread across a thin, precarious layer of states. The Great Depression did cause a pause in capitalism's swallowing of the state here in the U.S. and other countries. Once that got cleaned up, however, the march was back on.

100 years ago people actually fought for their rights rather than sitting in front of their TV drooling on themselves during Joe Millionaire.

The coercive apparatus is still there as many strikers and the WTO demostrators have found out. That apparatus is just being used in a more sophisticated, non-violent and (where necesaary) surgical way than the crude massacres of the past.

Your little diatribe here is exactly an example what I was talking about. You've been trained to think that "the government" is some alien occupying force whereas Big Business is, of course, a happy shiny friend who only has your best interests at heart. It never occurs to you that "government" is still a part of the Founders' ideal of "self-government" and that much of the reason why you feel alienated from your government is precisely because we as a nation have pretty much abdicated our responsibilities and happily handed them over to the plutocrats.

It's a vicious cycle. Concentrated private power (ie, Business) trains people to think that the work of self-government is boring and futile. People begin to believe it and stop governing themselves, handing more power to others. These others then, not surprisingly use this power in ways that the people don't agree with. But instead of doing something about it (because the work of self-governance is boring and futile, remember), the people just sit around and bitch and vote to "throw the bums out". Because the system itself has not changed and the people have abdicated their role as their own watchdogs, the system only produces more bums, ergardless of the rhetoric the bums spout. Tired of endless, futile rounds of "throw the bums out", most people just stop even bothering to vote, further putting power into fewer hands who do not act in the people's intersts, further estranging themselves from "government".

Do you have anything to offer but straw men? Seriously. Do you have a legitimate, rational point to make? If not, stick to whining about "the liberal media" or "nuke Iraq" whatever other right-wing blather you usually proffer here.

An educated, reasonably intelligent person does not need to believe in the Stonecutters and UFOs to know how political power works. You don't even need to read Chomsky. Even a moron like Bush can figure it out.

The hard part, of course, is keeping the critical eye and not getting distracted by empty labels and obfuscatory rhetoric. I can't remember which political commentator said "A good slogan can stop all analysis for 20 years" but he was right. As E.J. Dionne correctly noted, many if not most Americans (leftists included) are walking around with heads full of political labels created during the '60s that are at least 30 years out of date.

Still, all anyone really needs to do is take a few PoliSci classes, study history and keep a critical eye on curent events. Oh, and follow the money. This won't enable you to read Bill Gates's, Dumbya's or Alan Greenspan's mind or predict national or world events with 100% unerring perfection, but if you pay attention you can at least catch the larger trends. No "One Big Conspiracy" theory needed.

 

I thought that's what we had Detroit for...

 

Marx also made this point althiough he located it within a "dialectic" in which the pendulum would eventually swing back in the favor of co-operative modes of social organization as capitalism destroyed itself by its own inner logic - which is exactly what came close to happening in the 1930s although the immediate crisis was caused by something Marx could not have predicted in the 1870s.

Anyway, the demands of the plutocracy are why I laugh at any "conservative" who thinks the Republicans will inaugurate an era of "smaller government" across the board. The CEOs have learned how to milk the government cash cow and they sure as hell aren't giong to kill it to satisfy a few libertarian ideologues. What they WILL do is remove as much as they can of government's role as redistributor of wealth downwards in favor of redistributing wealth upwards through 101 forms of "wealthfare" or "corporate welfare". Basically, the rich want to suck the government teat while denying government largesse to the poor and the middle-class and dooming them to compete amongst themselves for the leftovers.

Just to give Smiley conniptions, I'll point out that this accurate analysis can be found in Lenin's "State and Revolution" where Lenin argued precisely against "big government" because he knew its power, both economic and police/military, would always be used by the elites against everyone else. Lenin would not be the least surprised that the Reeps, despite their rhetoric, won't take the rich off wealthfare.

 

Send lawyers, guns and money

According to Marx it was when the workers advnaced in revolutionary practice enough to "throw off their chains". He did not anticipate that the capitalists would simply steal large blocks of the socialist program to buy off the working class until capitalism could be repaired and strengthened. Thieving your adversary's agenda and practices didn't start with Clinton, ya know.

Well, you forgot the most important part - all the work done by leftist organizers and by the workers themselves (most of whom were unaffiliated with any party and would not have wanted to be labelled "socialist" even though they thought in socialist terms) to wring decent working conditions and slightly less tiny piece of the pie from the rich.

The success of the Russian Revolution and the near success of the German Revolution were also a big wake-up calls that spurred reforms.

Investment bankers and stock traders jumping out of Wall Street windows.

Any number of things could go wrong with the world economic system. Just ask George Soros or Warren Buffett.

Only a total system shock to the entire world economy would do it. Like the collapse of the world banking system due to third world default or a "super-Barings" that could not be successfully unwound. In America, such a thing would lead to fascism, not socialism, as the plutocrats would throw their weight behind whoever would promise not to remove them from their exalted place in society and popular resentment would be easily turned against "communists", foreigners or some other convenient minority. This assumes the military stays in the hands of the plutocrats and that the plutocrats don't start their own little civil war amongst themselves. The Russian Revolution succeeded only because the bulk of the armed forces did not stay loyal to the Provisional Government. The militia gun nuts with their little cammies and peashooters may delude themselves otherwise but the official military would ultimately decide the day should gobal economic and social disaster stirke.

 

Gringo, You better not read my post then or you'll be mainlining Jack Daniels.

 

Re: Re: Send lawyers, guns and money

Well, that's just it. He WILL be a two-faced faux-populist weasel only more violent and authoritarian. The only questions are "Will the plutocrats lose control of him?" and "How murderous will he and his dittoheads be?".

Depends. If by "commies" you mean "unreconstructed Stalinists or thier imitators" (and 99 times out of 100 when an Amercian thinks of "communism" he's really thinking of Stalinism), then probably the plutocrats -- unless the plutocrats are neoNazis or some other form of overt fascists in which case it's about equal. But then, I can say that because I have an education and well-paying job.