Insiders and Outsiders

Most Americans are suffering the negative effects of capitalism right now, and they're angry about it. But they don't know where to turn or what to do because the ruling class has hegemony over popular culture.

A handful of giant corporations control almost everything we hear, watch and read - and it's in their interests to say that American politics boils down to Democrats and Republicans. Nothing exists outside of that two-party duopoly for them, and since we are conditioned to consider that "the mainstream", Americans will go to the polls in November and most will vote for a Democrat or a Republican.

But what choice do they have, really? There are a myriad of institutional obstacles that the duopoly throws up for any third party candidate. The difference in resources is simply too vast for anyone to compete with the two corporately-funded parties, with one exception: the trade unions. American labor unions must break with the Democrats and put their resources into backing independent labor candidates.

Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots movement that exists because people realize the two parties walk in lockstep on behalf of corporate interests. The Tea Party is largely astroturf, and is obviously a confused bastion of reactionary beliefs, but the populist elements within it understand on some level that the government does not work in their interests. The common element in rank-and-file supporters of OWS and the Tea Party is a perception that both parties work for self-interested elites and not ordinary Americans.

This will be thrown into even sharper relief if the 2012 presidential election comes down to a race between the two corporate empty suits, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Rank-and-file conservatives don't like or trust Romney, and principled progressives realize Obama offers nothing but empty words.

Despite all the usual nationalist bromides, the rulers of the United States effectively speak a different language than the country's working class. While the ruling elite talks incessantly of deficits, "fiscal responsibility", "shared sacrifice". and endless war to defend oil interests, American workers want to hear about good jobs, education, health care, preserving Social Security, clean energy and ending the wars.

Book Review: "Death of the Liberal Class"

You must read this book. Chris Hedges is one of my favourite writers and he's in top form here - which is to say, absolutely devastating. He tears apart the liberal class for its failure to halt the expansion and consolidation of the corporate state. At this dire historical moment, when the rapacious forces of totalitarian capitalism have destroyed the global economy and are pushing the human race to unprecedented catastrophe through wanton ecological destruction, the liberal class is marked most obviously by its impotence, its utter betrayal of the values it claims to stand for, and its continuing obsequience to power which guaranteed its own demise as a relevant political force. All the traditional institutions of the liberal class - the media, universities, church, trade unions, the arts, etc. - were long ago bought off by corporate interests. Through this act they sold their souls.

Hedges traces the beginning of this long historical process to the First World War, when the dawn of mass commercial culture combined with virulent nationalism and militarism to demonize any opposition to the war as treasonous. The liberal class wholeheartedly joined in this effort, and they later attempted to remain in the elite's good graces by embracing anticommunism. By assisting in the blacklisting and eradication of the American Left during the McCarthy era, the liberal class removed the one force that kept it honest...but also one that supplied it with political cover. With the elimination of radical socialist and communist movements, liberals could no longer claim to be on the centre-left of the U.S. political spectrum, but effectively became the "far left". Today, in the epoch of the violent decay of global capitalism, without the language of class struggle to make sense of developments, the American liberal class has nothing left to offer - and into that ideological vacuum has stepped a plethora of right-wing demagogues eager to commandeer the populist mantle in the face of a confused and angry public.

I appreciated the gusto with which Hedges attacks traditional bastions of the liberal establishment. Universities, for example, have contributed to their own intellectual decay by cordoning off professors into super-specialized fields and frightening away the masses with laboured academic jargon that can appear meaningless (I too blame the French post-structuralists). Art, too, became the domain of the elite as it embraced the abstract and failed to connect with the average viewer. In the same way as the internet divided people into politically homogenous enclaves through the process of "cyberbalkanization" (which Hedges examines near the end), so the art and academic worlds separated themselves from the broader population by speaking only to each other in specialized language.

If Hedges' writing is characteristically excellent, his final chapter reminded me of our differences in political opinion. I cannot say I disagree with his advocacy of rebellion for its own sake, as a quality that helps us retain our humanity. But by explicitly distancing himself from the notion of "revolution", which aims to create a new social order, Hedges distances himself from the solution and reveals his spiritual side. The spiritual is all well and good for uplifting the "soul", but in terms of real political struggle, rebellion for its own sake is not enough. We need a real revolution to determine where to go and how to fight the corporate state. For that, I turn to Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, with a side dose of Saul Alinsky.

The Dam Bursts

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 ruling by the "conservative" majority, has removed almost all barriers to unlimited corporate spending in elections on the supposed basis of the First Amendment. Extreme right-wing justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito - aided and abetted by "centrist" Anthony Kennedy - have declared that "free speech" and "corporate bribes" are now interchangeable terms. While Glenn Greenwald has suggested that the ruling means less than many in the blogosphere have feared - since, he assumes, it is hard to see how the American political system could become any more distorted by corporate campaign dollars than it already is - the ruling nevertheless is an ominous sign that the American people are about to lose any real role they might still have had in the way their government functions.

For the world's wealthiest nation, this ruling cements the transition of the American form of government from representative democracy to outright corporatocracy. While the "American way of life", as touted by reactionary forces, has always included a definitively capitalist economic structure, the Supreme Court has gone one step further by declaring that in the electoral process, as far as "free speech" is concerned, money talks and everyone else walks. Never have the class forces that govern American politics been more clearly visible. Now, the greater financial resources of corporations and wealthy individuals may be directly funneled into the political candidates that represent their interests. Of course, as Greenwald points out, that's pretty much the way it is now. All the same, the floodgates are now open. The ongoing decline and fall of American democracy has now vastly accelerated itself, helped along by unelected, politically-motivated judges.

Conservatives constantly rail against "judicial activism", except when it serves their interests. This was the case with Bush v. Gore and now with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The original focus of the case - whether a right-wing group had the right to promote its film Hillary: The Movie in the immediate run-up to the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries - was swept aside by the right-wing judges, who seized the opportunity to re-interpret federal campaign finance laws in the broadest terms possible. The new ruling overturns almost a century of legislative precedent on the issue, stretching back to the days of trust-busting Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, and further cements the dubious status of corporations as "persons" under the law. Of course, corporations are like no other "persons" - they are effectively immortal, possess deeper pockets than most individuals, and while enjoying many of the same rights as citizens, evade almost all of the attendant responsibilities, such as paying taxes. And as many have pointed out, it says a lot that this right-wing court has declared corporations to be persons, while - say - Muslim detainees in the "War on Terror" are not.

Finally, in yet another example of conservative hypocrisy (an increasingly redundant term), it's worth nothing that the same political faction which incessantly proclaims itself the most ultra-patriotic in the country has further empowered stateless multi-national corporations to vastly increase their influence on the American political system. As Greg Palast notes:

The danger of foreign loot loading into U.S. campaigns, not much noted in the media chat about the Citizens case, was the first concern raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who asked about opening the door to "mega-corporations" owned by foreign governments. Olson offered Ginsburg a fudge, that Congress might be able to prohibit foreign corporations from making donations, though Olson made clear he thought any such restriction a bad idea.

Tara Malloy, attorney with the Campaign Legal Center of Washington D.C. says corporations will now have more rights than people. Only United States citizens may donate or influence campaigns, but a foreign government can, veiled behind a corporate treasury, dump money into ballot battles.

[...]

In July, the Chinese government, in preparation for President Obama's visit, held diplomatic discussions in which they skirted issues of human rights and Tibet. Notably, the Chinese, who hold a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of Obama's health care reform bill. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin? Ya betcha!

The ongoing crises of the American empire are the result of a corporate-dominated political system increasingly incapable of changing course even as it leads to neo-feudalism domestically and ecological catastrophe internationally, in addition to its lucrative policy of perpetual war. The Supreme Court's ruling in the Citizens United case will only further weaken the dysfunctional American system, and underlines the need for a truly democratic, egalitarian movement that places the value of people above those of Big Business. What else is new?