Rob Urie takes a good run at explaining some of the problems with the United States polity. The infusion/revolving door of money and politics means that society is being run for the benefit of tiny minority of people. They have two ‘choices’ in the electoral sense, but it does nothing to halt this malformation of democracy and democratic values.
Even with the realization of late that money determines political outcomes, the distribution of income and wealth is considered economics while the use that these are put to in the political arena is considered politics. The unvirtuous circle of capitalism, where concentrated income and wealth are used to affect political outcomes so as to increase concentrated income and wealth, ties economics to politics through the incompatibility of capitalism with democracy.
Modern electoral politics replaces this relationship of economics to politics with color-coded branding— red or blue, where ‘our guy’ is what is good and true about America. The other party exists to pin ‘our guy’ into a corner that prevents him / her from acting on this goodness. Barack Obama was prevented from enacting his ‘true’ progressive agenda by Republican obstructionists. Donald Trump is being persecuted by deep-state, snowflake, socialists.
Left unaddressed and largely unconsidered has been the persistence of class relations. The rich continue to get richer, the rest of us, not so much. For all of the claims of political dysfunction, when it comes to bailouts and tax cuts, wars and weaponry and policing and surveillance, these opposition parties can be counted on to come together to overcome their differences. Likewise, when it comes to the public interest, partisan differences are put forward to explain why nothing is possible.
The unitary direction of this government response in favor of the rich may seem accidental, a byproduct of ‘our system’ of governance. In fact, the defining political ideology of the last half-century has been neoliberalism, defined here as imperialist, state-corporatism, controlled by oligarchs. And contrary to assertions that neoliberalism is a figment of the imagination of the left, its basic tenets were codified in the late 1980s under the term ‘Washington Consensus.’
What the Washington Consensus lays out is the support role that government plays for capitalism. Its tenets are short and highly readable. They provide a blueprint that ties Democratic to Republican political programs since the 1980s. They also tie neoliberalism to the Marxist / Leninist conception of the capitalist state as existing to promote the interests of connected capitalists. Left out, no doubt by accident (not), was / is a theory of class struggle.
When Donald Trump passed tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the rich and corporations, this was the Washington Consensus. When Barack Obama put ‘market mechanisms’ into Obamacare and promoted the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), this was the Washington Consensus. When Bill Clinton tried to privatize Social Security, this was the Washington Consensus. The alleged ‘opposition parties’ have been working together from a single blueprint for governance for four decades.
The intended beneficiary of this unified effort is ‘capitalism,’ conceived as multinational corporations operating with state support to promote a narrowly conceived national interest. An ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) clause was included in NAFTA when Bill Clinton promoted and signed it. An even more intrusive ISDS clause was included in the TPP when Barack Obama promoted it. The intent of these ISDS clauses is to give the prerogative of governance (sovereign power) to corporations.
It is no secret in Washington and outside of it that multinational corporations pay few, if any, taxes. The logic of this is two sided. On the one side, the neoliberal / Washington Consensus premise is that corporations can put the money to better use than government. The other is that the role of government is to support capitalism, not to constrain it. Barack Obama’s consequence-free bailouts of Wall Street, often at the expense of ordinary citizens, possessed an internal logic when considered through this frame.”
2 comments
November 13, 2019 at 8:02 am
radfemspiraling
Politics in the states is like wrestling. It’s theater, designed to make it look as if there is representation of business, which is the moneyed class, and the people, the common class. No matter what party is in control, we move steadily to the right, since 1980. Women lose rights, and rich get richer, and the Democrats pretend like the meanie Republicans just won’t let them give anything to the people, while Republicans pretend like they are just tough and they are going to do whatever they want.
In respect to anything for the people, the Democrats practice “rotating villian”, meaning that Democrats get elected on a specific issue (which is almost always healthcare) and they promise to correct it. For example, Obama was a Democrat at the beginning of his presidency, he had both houses of Congress, passing universal health care should have been easy. But suddenly, Democrat Congress people that vocally supported universal health care suddenly decided that no plan was good enough, even plans that they had supported just a few weeks beforehand. They take turns rotating the villan, it only takes a few to keep the status quo.
Every single action is theater of the government trying to work for the people, but it just kind of ends up giving to the same few men. The states are very much a “survival of the fittest” mentality while claiming to be Christan, the sheer amount of cognitive dissonance that worldview demands is astounding. Especially since the “fittest” are dudes like trump, and a few of them have been literally crying on news outlets about the thought of paying a dime in taxes, while still being a zillionaire. I have to laugh, the fittest are doughy old white males that got money from their daddies and have the government protecting them. Trump’s family fortune originated from his grandfather trafficking in prostituted women. Every dime he has came off of the backs of women the males in his family enslaved and sold to other men.
The fittest love austerity, scarcity, punishment, and creating fear. It’s not my government and it doesn’t represent me, since I am female. It will still tax my money, give it to men, put me in jail, etc. Government is wildly ineffective while being dangerously ignorant, and that describes pretty much every male system ever.
(Here is an article about the rotating villian, if you are interested.
https://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/democrats_34/
It’s pretty interesting.)
Also, as an aside, I really like oversimplified on YouTube. One of my favorite channels.😊
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November 30, 2019 at 8:06 am
The Arbourist
@rts
That is a good Salon article. It illustrates quite nicely the notion that there are only two business class parties in the US. Different wallpaper, same rotten house underneath. :(
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