04-10-2019, 03:23 PM
It could be that during the Cold War, capitalists really feared Communism and believed that the best way to protect America was to make the capitalist system work for people not capitalists. Not everyone can be a capitalist, but with consumerism one can have a stake in a competitive economy. Of course, fear of Communism in other countries led to full-blown, anti-human fascism that turned workers into serfs, as in Nazi Germany at the most extreme. America may have been reasonably liberal because it began to see Nazi Germany as much a menace as the Soviet Union. If the Marxist appeal "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" applies to toilers whose lot has improved little from the norm of a serf on a huge estate who now find themselves in grimy. disease-ridden firetraps in return for twelve hours of toil each day for bare survival while a capitalist elite lives in flamboyant, opulent splendor, then a proletarian revolution offers freedom and equity. If workers have spacious flats, cars, appliances, and comfortable furniture and can be certain that their children attend school, then they have something to lose in the wake of a proletarian revolution.
The American economy has lost most of its competitive qualities for the elites as Big Business has increasingly tended to monopolize and vertically-integrate in part because the tax laws much favor giant enterprise over cottage industries. Note well that America became a great economic power when most business was cottage industries, and not bloated monopolies. Note also that the managerial elites have often become a Soviet-style nomenklatura that needs not own the assets to exploit workers. American executives used to still be largely middle-class in cultural identity and lifestyle, which was necessary when the American economy was more strictly competitive. The executives that I remember in the 1960s were people who typically had had their first job in their current organization on a sales route in an unattractive part of the country, the mail room, or even the shop floor. Now they are practically an aristocracy. They were men, as a rule (women are as competent, but that was not so well recognized), but they had become executives after they had paid off their home mortgages and were too old to know what to do with a sports car. They were connected to the community. The Soviet nomenklatura developed aristocratic traits out of the natural desire of successful people that their children never endure hardship. American politicians have gone from being honest brokers to their subordinates through the influence of unelected lobbyists loyal only to their paymasters.
Trump or not, we have had government by lobbyist for a long time, and that is a novel form of irresponsible government because the lobbyists have no responsibility except to those plutocrats and executives who control the government. That sort of political reality weakens an honest, competent, principled, and innovative President such as Obama.
But some competition remains in America. Sure -- the common people competing to see who will suffer the most for the least on behalf ot the owners and bosses whose ethical values are little better than those of slave-owning planters. Ultimately people are obliged to go heavily into debt to prepare for a job and to get the means of commuting in the service of their bosses and the owners of their worksites.
Is there a time in American life in which life is so odious as it is now? Even in the Gilded Age, technological progress led to real improvements in people's lives. Today most of us are obliged to suffer with a smile and support reactionary politicians who give rights to the rich and responsibilities to the poor.
We may need an economic meltdown on the scale of 1929-1932 to weaken the power of our current elites. We need an economy in which one must do good to do well; anything else is a nightmare. We need to be more self-reliant so that we not become debt-bonded serfs. We need to be able again to improve ourselves with sweat equity. It was the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 that fostered the building of small business instead of companies best described as bloated, monopolistic, bureaucratized behemoths.
The American economy has lost most of its competitive qualities for the elites as Big Business has increasingly tended to monopolize and vertically-integrate in part because the tax laws much favor giant enterprise over cottage industries. Note well that America became a great economic power when most business was cottage industries, and not bloated monopolies. Note also that the managerial elites have often become a Soviet-style nomenklatura that needs not own the assets to exploit workers. American executives used to still be largely middle-class in cultural identity and lifestyle, which was necessary when the American economy was more strictly competitive. The executives that I remember in the 1960s were people who typically had had their first job in their current organization on a sales route in an unattractive part of the country, the mail room, or even the shop floor. Now they are practically an aristocracy. They were men, as a rule (women are as competent, but that was not so well recognized), but they had become executives after they had paid off their home mortgages and were too old to know what to do with a sports car. They were connected to the community. The Soviet nomenklatura developed aristocratic traits out of the natural desire of successful people that their children never endure hardship. American politicians have gone from being honest brokers to their subordinates through the influence of unelected lobbyists loyal only to their paymasters.
Trump or not, we have had government by lobbyist for a long time, and that is a novel form of irresponsible government because the lobbyists have no responsibility except to those plutocrats and executives who control the government. That sort of political reality weakens an honest, competent, principled, and innovative President such as Obama.
But some competition remains in America. Sure -- the common people competing to see who will suffer the most for the least on behalf ot the owners and bosses whose ethical values are little better than those of slave-owning planters. Ultimately people are obliged to go heavily into debt to prepare for a job and to get the means of commuting in the service of their bosses and the owners of their worksites.
Is there a time in American life in which life is so odious as it is now? Even in the Gilded Age, technological progress led to real improvements in people's lives. Today most of us are obliged to suffer with a smile and support reactionary politicians who give rights to the rich and responsibilities to the poor.
We may need an economic meltdown on the scale of 1929-1932 to weaken the power of our current elites. We need an economy in which one must do good to do well; anything else is a nightmare. We need to be more self-reliant so that we not become debt-bonded serfs. We need to be able again to improve ourselves with sweat equity. It was the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 that fostered the building of small business instead of companies best described as bloated, monopolistic, bureaucratized behemoths.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
