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Is there a Global War Between Financial Theocracy and Democracy?
Senate and House conferees are about to reconcile a financial reform bill that is virtually designed to institutionalize "too big to fail." And when they do we'll lose another battle in the ongoing war between global financial markets and democratic nation-states.
This war has been going on for decades -- but democracy hasn't always been in full retreat.
The New Deal Conquest: During the Great Depression democratic forces gained the upper hand in the war. We realized that financial markets, which are driven by the largest banks and financiers, had to be tightly controlled. We knew that global speculation on currencies only deepened the Depression and had to be strictly limited. We knew that an iron curtain was needed between commercial and investment banking to protect Main Street depositors from market madness (that was the Glass-Steagall Act). And most importantly we knew that the key to preventing economic upheaval was to limit the wealth of the super-rich and to increase the wealth of working people through progressive taxes, Social Security, wage and hour laws, and the promotion of unionization. The Bretton Woods agreements forged by the Allies during WWII set up strict rules for global finance, rules that kept financiers in check for more than a quarter century.
And it worked pretty damn well. As economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, this era saw only one financial crisis (Brazil, 1964), and working people in western democracies made huge gains. Since the era of deregulation took hold in the late 1970s, the world has suffered over a hundred financial crises and middle-class incomes have stagnated.
The Deregulatory Counter-Offensive: By the late 1970s, bankers regained the advantage through the spread of a new faith in self-regulated markets. The economic apostles of unfettered markets lobbied against progressive taxes, unions, and social welfare programs. The new orthodoxy was: Let the elites collect the money--they'll invest wisely (instead of consuming), and all boats will rise. This near-religious revolution rapidly spread through the economic and policy establishment. Regulations were dismantled right and left, and the revolving door between government and Wall Street started spinning. The American financial catechism ruled the world. And on Wall Street, the money tap was open. It did not trickle down.
Then, suddenly, in 2008, the market gods destroyed themselves as the unregulated financial casinos crashed and burned, just like they did in 1929. For a few months, it seemed like the deregulatory theology become a global heresy. It was obvious that Wall Street's reckless speculation and its bold new wave of financial engineering had caused the Great Recession. (See The Looting of America for an accessible account.). It was also clear that if government didn't come to the rescue, Wall Street would lay in ruins, along with the rest of the economy. This was the perfect moment for democracy reassert democratic control on financial markets, just as we did during the New Deal. We blew it.
The Victory at Too Big to Fail: At the moment when Wall Street was on its knees, we decided to bypass serious reform. Instead, we rebuilt Wall Street, using taxpayer money and guarantees - more than $10 trillion worth. We let bankers use our bailout money to pay themselves $150 billion in bonuses -- at a moment when over 29 million Americans were jobless or forced into part-time jobs. We allowed the top hedge fund managers to walk off with over $900,000 an hour (not a typo) in 2009. Windfall profits taxes? No. In fact we let hedge fund honchos pay an extra-low tax rate by calling their income "capital gains." We didn't restore Glass-Steagall, we didn't break up "too big to fail" financial institutions. In fact the biggest banks became even bigger, courtesy of the U.S. government.
The Invasion against Democracy: The war is escalating. Right now, financial elites aren't just fighting a defensive battle against new regulations. They're playing offense: They're whipping up deficit hysteria around the globe and calling for drastic cuts in middle class programs. Why? They want to ensure that their loans to governments aren't threatened by rising public debt. Ironically, the public debt they're so worried about was created in large part by them -- the result of huge bailouts and other expenses stemming from the crash they caused. Although the bankers want us to dismantle what remains of our worker-oriented policies, welfare for the financial elites is still fine and dandy.
This is the most dangerous counter attack in the history of finance. We had better know a great deal more about the attackers. Who makes up this shadowy force called "global markets"? Who fights their battles? Do they have a high command?
Not really. There is no executive committee of financial elites. There's no international conspiracy, no Elders of Zion. Instead these markets are pulled and pushed by about 50 very large banks and financial institutions. This is where much of the nation's $2 trillion in hedge fund money roams. This is where the top six US banks frolic. They don't have to sit around a table strategizing. They instantly sense threats to their power. They instantly smell profitable openings and they're poised to grab what they can, whenever they can. They thrive on turmoil, which gives them new "proprietary" trading opportunities to exploit. Volatility means big bucks, especially now that the largest players know that the government will back up even their wildest gambles. History has just proven that they are way too big to fail.
Of course they still have to lobby government officials--many of whom either were bankers, or will be once they leave office. But their most powerful lever on government is through the market itself: Here, by moving vast quantities of money around, they can instantly veto policies they don't like. If the EU talks seriously about financial transaction taxes, the markets go down the Euro grows weaker, and interest rates rise--making it more expensive for governments to borrow the money they need to operate. Politicians have learned to "listen" to the markets and are conditioned to placate them.
Should a nation state get out of line (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc), the markets slap them silly. Politicians rush to the scene and start slicing social spending. If instead they demand new taxes on financial elites to reduce public debt, the markets respond with even more fury. Money flees.
All the external machinery of democracy still clanks along. We still pull the levers in the voting booth. But the decisions that affect us the most are made in a profoundly undemocratic way. Faceless financial markets exercise far more control over politicians than the voters who elected them.
So the problem isn't just the corporate campaign contributions, or corporate media control or the academic consensus supporting our financial theocracy. It's the raw power of the markets. They've been roaming free and virtually unregulated for more than a generation, and now their power is unparalleled. Just months after they brought our economy crashing down, they're right back to their old tricks, setting the stage for the next crash and the next bailout while getting filthy rich along the way.
Bill Clinton nailed it on the head when he reportedly said:
"You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fxxxing bond traders?" (See Agenda by Bob Woodward)
No Retreat, No Surrender? There's no room for pacifists in this war. Clearly, Wall Street and its global minions are not seeking a truce. Instead, they're coming after our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs. They want us to work longer before we retire and get less when we do. They want us to pay more for health care and get less of it. They want less public money to go to schools, teachers and public infrastructures. And they want us to get used to a jobless recovery with double digit unemployment rates. (And when millions and millions of people are unemployed, we can't maintain high labor standards, and our wages and benefits erode.) In short, they want to undermine all the policies and programs that have built and sustained middle class life.
Already government officials in the UK, Germany and here are telling us we must endure austerity for "decades to come." As Fed Chair Ben Bernanke candidly put it:
"We can see what problems can arise in a country if investors lose confidence in the fiscal position of that country, so it is very important that we address this problem."Of course, he's not going to point out that this austerity is only for the masses, definitely not for the financial elites. Or that the underlying cause of the debt investors are so worried about is the giant economic crater caused by the very same financial elites who now might "lose confidence" in financing a middle class society.
We shouldn't kid ourselves about the pitched battles ahead. Fighting back won't be easy, and winning will be even harder. People in country after country will have to mobilize themselves in defense of real democracy, in defense of each nation's right to provide its people with a decent quality of life. In my opinion, that includes sustainable jobs with decent benefits and a solid public infrastructure that promotes equity, protects the vulnerable and enriches the environment.
Unfortunately, no one can guarantee that democracy will prevail in the war against financial theocracy -- just recall the totalitarian chaos in Europe during the Great Depression. But don't count it out, either. It's true that many of us regular folks have been diverted by the media, distracted by the Internet or lulled into a stupor by pharmaceuticals. But when we realize that we've been shoved into a corner with no way out, we'll act. A popular struggle will begin. And when it does, we'll at least have a fighting chance to recapture our democratic souls.
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Show AllIn the May issue of the International Socialist Revue, there is an article by Arundhati Roy describing her time with the Maoists of the Dandakaranya in central India. These are people who have so far staved off plans by the government of India to commit what can only be called genocide against them on behalf of globalist mining corporations. The Maoists are tribal people that have lived on the land for countless generations - and their resistance has not been peaceful. But is has been successful enough so far to be notable.
And the wrongly named "Maoists" - tribal people - were at it with this resistance long before Mao was even known. The wilifying of people through namecalling is part of what needs to be fought back.
"Is There a Global War Between Financial Theocracy and Democracy?
DUH! Absolutely. This article is spot on.
But do enough Americans have the audacity to ever come together and unite in countering the massive and intricate offensive being waged against them in a culture so highly divided, individualized, militarized and policed? The social cohesiveness of American society has been ripped to shreds and it will take a multi-generational effort over a protracted long haul to help repair the damage inflicted to it by the global corporatocracy and its economic weapons of mass destruction.
" . . . do enough Americans have the audacity to ever come together and unite in countering the massive and intricate offensive being waged against them . . . "
At this moment, the answer is no. What it will take to make the answer "yes" is beyond me.
The only way we the people can have the audacity (I would say guts) to come together in fighting back to regain what democracy we had and restore our Constitution is to stop voting for the paid lackeys of the corporations who now hold elected seats in Congress.
If we had representatives who heed the voice of the people,instead of obeying their paymasters, we could take control of our economy from the banksters and put it back with the Treasury Dept as is stated in our Constitution. We must repeal the Federal Reserve Act and establish state banks in each of our united states.
These public banks could lend to busineses that will improve the lives of the people of that state. We, the people, would loan our future tax funds to people living in our state to finance a plan approved by the state as being of use to the people of the state. Borrowing from ourselves could be at very low interest.
Most of our tax funds now go to the banksters to cover the money they create out of smoky hot air in the back rooms at the Federal Reserve. The banksters gamble and if
they lose, we pick up the tab. If they win, they happily continue to screw us.
When one percent of the people have nearly 98% of the money; democracy can not exist. What we have now is a plutocracy. Want democracy? Kick the corrupt out of Congress. Vote out the incumbents and let a fresh breeze blow through those chambers. Get rid of both corporate parties. A 'D' and/or an 'R' is the same carnivorous beast. (and it is your flesh they are eating)
The banks are too big to fail and Obama is too small to succeed.
... And some of the commenters are too defeatist.
C'mon - fight back, Mordechai. Talk about what's needed, bitch about it, joke about it, be lively frustrated about it. Never surrender! C'mon, friend, we can do this!
"Is there a Global War Between Financial Theocracy and Democracy?"
There was... Democracy lost...
Benito Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."
This is a useful quote the next time someone from GlennBeckistan makes the argument that liberals are fascists. Nothing like getting it from the source.
This is a superb article.
I think to bring about a democracy, it is important to understand the forces and groups who have made our federal government a corporate, militarist, totalitarian plutocracy.
Only then can we oppose those forces with our rights as a sovereign people to govern our nation according to our wishes.
When public policies—domestic, foreign and electoral—come to match public opinion, we'll know that we have created a democratic republic. Until then, we have work to do as citizens.
"By the late 1970s, bankers regained the advantage through the spread of a new faith in self-regulated markets. "
Actually, there was never such a thing as "self-regulation". It was a matter of changing the wires on who to over-regulate vs who to under-regulate. The change was from regulated capitalism to disaster capitalism. Government has since then oversubsidized their businesses with our taxpayer money and crushed the small banks policy after policy.
Unlike Europe, the USA refuses to do away with "too big to fail" and those of us who are fighting to go small and local are forever facing confrontations and persecutions from our very own brothers and sisters on Main Street who should be fighting with us against Wall $treet. Getting people to think like Europeans is a difficult task especially when our society is so individualist by nature that it would be vulnerable to allowing the "too big to fail" ideology to ruin our society and invade other nations just as it is continuing to do. People can talk crap about Europe failing but looking up closer, one would find that they have the collective efforts and thinking to prevent "too big to fail" from completely taking over even though it will be a bloody battle kicking that ideology off completely. I am optimistic that in the end, Europe will prevail while the USA will be further set back until it changes its attitudes from individualism to collective thinking and actions in conjunction with individual ideas and actions.
We have to determine fundamental action for collective to take while each of us pursue our own actions that are bound to contribute to fundamental action.
So the question is which set of fundamental action will we buy into to protest extortion from Financial industry. The loop hole I see is that they enjoy having level playing field. Its time to make it rocky and unpredictable.
These all involve individual to sacrifice but remembering that each sacrifice will contribute in lost revenue for the financial industry. These actions will not be noteworthy and will slowly build into doubts in large bankers and financiers who think they have us covered. It will be easier than hearding cats.
Enjoy becoming local.
"This was the perfect moment for democracy reassert democratic control on financial markets, just as we did during the New Deal. We blew it."
What do you mean 'we'? Our elected "leader" did it intentionally.
I agree that at heart it's a "war" between those in power (Financial Theocracy) and justice for people (democracy).
But I would add that the greatest obstacle or Achilles' heel--in relation to people mobilizing to challenge those in power--is internal.
It's the so far unquestioned, undisturbed, unrefuted acceptance of injustice by most people--but especially including liberals and progressives.
In fact, when it comes to learning not to challenge those in power, liberals and progressives have not only been excellent students--but expert instructors as well.
Consequently, everything this author writes here--each and every convincing argument and insightful point--can all be easily circumscribed or short-circuited by the all pervasive notion--a cult at this point--that people need to be "realistic," "negotiate" and "compromise" when it comes to the prerogatives of power.
When it comes right down to it--and in light of recent world events--it's really not about "negotiation" and "compromise"--that yeah, you really do have to, you know, fight.
There is certainly a sustained global attack against Democracy by Financial Theocracy -- but I wouldn't call it a war in the US theatre of operations.
War, by standard definition, is suposed to mean two or more organized, actively opposing forces, each fighting the other for supremacy and victory.
In the US, Financial Theocracy is obviously organized, active, and making immense headway -- but it's doing so without any organized opposition.
So here, in the alleged Land of the Free/Home of the Brave, where this Theology has already -- long ago, really -- intellectually/politically/spiritually disarmed its opponents, you'd have to call what's happening a Juggernaught, not a war.
Maybe in Venezuela it could still be called a War.
But definitely not Here.
Two ways to approach the "divided and conquered" situation are:
1. Create alliances between a hodge-podge of disparate groups united on the common interest of challenging those in power.
2. Building a movement based on principle for which to challenge those in power.
They might sound similar--but there's a huge difference between the two.
The first approach you could liken to that taken in the cold war in the U.S. against the spread of Russian or "communist" influence. You could also liken this approach to FDR's now failed liberal approach under the New Deal.
The second more resembles the approach taken by someone like MLK or Thomas Paine.
I guess its obvious which one I would choose.
As I have mentioned many times here, I see no possibility of a democratic solidarity arising between, progressives - not democrats - and the teaparty right. Those that follow Beck/Palin hate us, they are rabid Randian anti-socialists, and they do not see how they are used by the corporate elite.
Thus, when the sh** hits the fan, and people have no jobs or money and finding food is a REAL problem, and the corporate state cracks down on mass protest, will people become united? I doubt it. People on the far right will look for scapegoats to *blame* for the economic collapse of this country. In many ways it will be a war of all against all as people struggle just to keep themselves and their families fed.
I see rough times ahead, and I wish and hope I am wrong.
"People on the far right will look for scapegoats to *blame* for the economic collapse of this country."
Not just the far right but liberals too "will look for scapegoats to *blame* for the economic collapse of this country." (link below))
That's why I believe that at the core of any challenge to power has to be powerful and deeply held beliefs and convictions.
Challenges to power that have as their core an alliance merely based on common interest are more susceptible to a wide range of attacks--such as scapegoating.
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/mass-j14.shtml
Our future may come down to the emergence of a charismatic leader, either right or left, appearing at an opportune time. A roll of the die, if you will...
I tell people this every day - that until it is made clear to the majority of the American people that the "New Pearl Harbor" on 9/11 was a crime enabled and/or committed by elements of our government, we are screwed... Anyone who takes the time to read and look at photos and videos will come to the realization that the WTC was imploded with explosives....!!
"Progressives" are forever trying to re-define the class war waged incessantly by the ruling Capitalist class. This class war, brought on by the long term decline and now collapse of U.S. capitalism, reveals itself as the major social, political, ecological, and human crises increasingly threatening the very existence of millions and even billions of humanity.
With the collapse of the "evil empire" Soviet Union, the de-facto rulers of the US have sought desperately to find a "scapegoat" to cover their global imperialist ambitions. The Project for the New American Century, signed on to by the major neo-cons of the Bush/Cheney administration, noted that the US was the sole military super-power, and should use this power to secure the economic resources (and restore lost wealth and profits) by military means.
Thus the following has happened in the last decade under Bush and now especially under Obama and the Democrats.
* Wars (for profit and oil) continue unabated and are expanded.
* Global Warming persists, because to cut carbon emissions would require shutting down profitable polluters. BP and the entire oil industry should be NATIONALIZED. But this obvious solution will never be mentioned among pro-capitalist progressives.
* Health Care "Reform" further expands the profit of for-profit industry players, while excluding millions of US residents of health care. Social Security is to cut as an unaffordable "entitlement" despite the billions to Wall Street, billions for unending wars for profit. The life expectancy in the US is in decline, and many countries in the world have a better health care system than the U.S.
* Public Education is being destroyed in the United States. Public education consumes too much taxes, according to the economic "ruling class" and they simply do not want to pay any taxes on their millions and billions of accumulated wealth.
* The organized labor movement in permanent decline for decades,is the "business partner" of corporate capitalism, forever supports the corporate controlled Democratic Party. The existing labor "leadership" will never work to create a new socialist political party for all working people to unite and seize political power to oppose corporate corruption.
You will not find out WHY all these things are happening from "Progressive" Media. Listening to DEMOCRACY NOW! , subscribing to the NATION magazine, or listening to allegedly "progressive" Pacifica radio like KPFK, never reveals the crises of humanity are rooted in the global crisis of Capitalism.
The only existing source of an international socialist perspective is the World Socialist Web Site. http://www.wsws.org
Individual efforts, family efforts to survive and provide the essential food, clothing, shelter for themselves and their children is no long just "difficult". It is becoming "impossible" to survive for tens of millions of people without work. The vast majority of people in the U.S. are becoming increasingly impoverished with jobs, and with the few social and commonwealth supports (free public schooling, public health, public transportation, destruction of air and water, even our food supply is causing obesity, diabetes, etc. due to corruption of food by corporate profit!)
One of the problems with liberal and progressive thinking is that they are both constrained by capitalism. Now, I don't know it you need be an anti-captialist to be a free thinker, but at the very least you need to be able to think outside capitalist constraints.
Hi Greg,
As Les Leopold says of the Capitalists, "they're poised to grab what they can, whenever they can."
It is sad, therefore, that Mr. Leopold envisions going back to the "progressive" capitalism of the New Deal. As long as the capitalists hold the majority of the economy in their hands, they will ALWAYS manage to claw back whatever temporary restraints have been placed on them. ALWAYS. They will use their wealth to buy more political power, which will win them more wealth, which will buy more power, and so on in a never ending spiral until they destroy the purchasing power of the working class and the economy collapses.
The only way to break out of this dismal cycle is for workers to take the economy away from the capitalists so that we can run it ourselves in democratic co-ops and collectives. Which requires solidarity between all working people. That will take a long time to build, but if we don't do it we condemn the world to tyranny, poverty and ecological destruction.
Political democracy is impossible unless it is accompanied by economic democracy, which means democratic power over our workplaces.
"Political democracy is impossible unless it is accompanied by economic democracy, which means democratic power over our workplaces."
hey Laurence,
Well said. The entire post.
I'm not familiar with the work of Mr. Leopold, but his writing here reminds me of Robert Reich--whose books and articles I've read. And Reich, bless his little heart, provides a perfect example of how the ideas and values of capitalism--through the agency of liberalism--can take over your head.
Have you ever talked with or read something by someone who's obviously intelligent and thoughtful and yet nonetheless they seem to put the ideas and values of capitalism on par with democracy--as if they were competing products? That's Reich. And possibly Mr Leopold. And maybe all liberals and progressives too.
To borrow a phrase from another exellent commenter here--liberalism and progressivism act as an emotional "buy in" to capitalism.
But what really is liberalism?--The Massachusetts Senate's recent draconian anti-immigrant law. This is liberalism. (see wsws.org article)
Or, more specifically, this is where liberalism eventually ends up.
When economic times are good--as in the years following the New Deal--its not tough to like liberalism (if you're white and comfortable). But eventually, and historically, capitalsim matures and breaks down. And right along with it goes liberalsim because they are both fundamentally linked.
Fundamental to both liberalism and capitalism is a definition of human worth not grounded in human equality but instead, human worth defined by the pragmatism of profit and/or financial worth.
And so both, constrained by this artificial definition of human worth, go down the toilet in tandem. And that's what we're witnessing now and in the years ahead.
p.s.
also regarding the point you make in your quote, I think most conservatives, elites and liberals/progressives etc., understand this--and are determined to prevent it:
As Kalecki argues, the biggest barriers to the maintenance of full employment are primarily political in nature, not economic:
"Under a regime of permanent full employment, the "sack" would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow."
Kalecki Again
by Chris Maisano
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/maisano080610.html
WSWS is great, and rational, and empathetic, and intelligent, and ......
Best, Alan
Hooray for Les Leopold. He speaks the truth that a rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats. It actually swamps those which are tightly tied in place.
Any time anyone in the middle class, or a politicuan speaking for the middle class, or a columnist writing an opinion sympathetic to the middle class says anything about the concentration of wealth and power in the United States, there is likely to be a near-immediate outcry of "Class Warfare" by politicians who are in debt to the status quo -- I guess I could say most poiliticians -- and by those members of the media who are well-paid to protect the status quo -- I guess I should say most American media.
Well, I would like to remind my fellow members of the working middle class as well as the wealthiest members of American society that WE DID NOT START THE CLASS WAR which we have been losing for my entire life.
I'd like to see middle America wake up to the fact that we have long been played for fools by the wealthy. How long will we accept name-calling and not-so-subtle put-downs in place of democracy?
OK, I'm ready for someone to challenge President Obama in the 2012 primaries.
trollwiththepunches, I'll bet that you and I would agree on a long list of things that need to be done;
but "stop voting" is not on my list of how to revitalize democracy in this country.
Actually, "stop voting" sounds to me like one of many things which the power elite would really like more middle class people to do.
However, I am certainly in favor of your exhortation to "Organize. Protest."
Nevertheless,in my experience organizing to protest is more likely to be effective in focusing attention on specific problems, rather than bringing about changes in national policies. For example, protests certainly helped to bring about an end to the Vietnam "conflict," but did very little to diminish the power of the military-industrial complex. OK, OK, I'll agree that neither did the politicians since then. But I still think that if you outnumber your enemy you should fight on multiple fronts, and, for me, voting will remain an important battlefield.
trollwiththepunches:
Our postings crossed in the mail. Like I thought, we are often on the same wavelength. So please, even if you give up on poiticians, don't just give up.
It is gonna be a long struggle against formidable forces. The war is truly heating up. The Roberts Supreme Court has further legitimized the myths that corporations are "people" and people have rights to free speech which include spending huge amounts of money to influence election results; another step in building a defense for the power elite to use against democratic choice. Would that a few more people have lined up to vote against The Decider.
Isn't the fact that bond traders are considered very powerful a huge clue into what has to be done in order to dilute their power and increase the power of democracy?
Countries need to regain control of how much money can come into and leave their countries. That changed I believe in the '90s when money was allowed to freely cross borders without question but people could not.
Chomsky calls this free-flow of money across borders a "virtual senate", by unelected people, which can veto the democratic decisions of entire populations including the U.S.
redwriteman --
Feeback--?
I think what you perceive about the US is much on the mark - including your wondering whether any possible, mass rising-up -even if peaceful- of an awakening US citizenry would be "allowed" by the US national security state's police functions. I think the answer to this, at least, is NO.
The pre-conditions that have in the past enabled a modest few humane political Revolutions (to the extent there is such a category), are to difficult ferret, let alone predict in the present.
I don't think we know enough, yet, about what we humans are, as elemental social creatures, -- and especially not enough yet, about the cultural variables that seem to underline mass psychologies of elitist-organized abusive states -- to say with much precision what will or even could happen in any given society/polity.
Nobody would've predicted, for example, the Tianannmen Square uprising (not that it toppled the gov -- but it did change it), in a country like China, with a 4-millenia-long history of severely acculturated authority worship that went straight from an ancient line of abusive Emperors to and thru the-then, seemingly stable 40 yr old-to-date, tyrannical Maoist state... (not to say, either, that China's post-Tiananmen taking of a capitalist road, economically, was wise -- only to say that the mass protests at Tiananmen did have an effect...)
Yet, as so with China, it's fair to ask: why, then, haven't the North Koreans, for example, ever even TRIED to storm the offices of THEIR elitist abusers?
But --Q.E.D. -- modern political theory lacks any fundamental insight into the elemental subject, namely: the plasticity of human-qua-diversely-hypnotized creatures, to offer much insight in such cases.
Such questions of Revolution and mass consciousness, and their presumed answers, could go on and on, depending on where and how we analyze human history, and yet we'd still have no usefully systematic answers.
IMO, one of the few deep thinkers who began to draw usefull analytical light into the mass psychology contradictions of the post-WWII capitalist west tyrannies, was H. Marcuse -- mostly in his signal books, Eros and Civilization (1954), and later, in the '60's, One Dimensional Man.
Unfortunately, Marcuse died before being able to hazard answers to the questions he raised, namely, about how or whether presumed instinctual human tropes toward freedom and social responsibility, which when subjected to ever more subtle forms of "soft tyranny become suicidal, could or might still break free to some higher, commonly shared understanding of social/economic organization and Legitimate Authority.
The interesting thing to observe about such questions now that HM and the Frankfurt School, and its analytical influence, is all but dead, is what's currently happening in a country like Venezuela.
There, via the efforts a seemingly crude secular monarch, political and economic power is actually being de-verticalized; horizontalized outward, to the mass control and direct benefit of the majority of the country's long-suffering, elitist-abused residents.
While the Venezuela-Chavez phenomenon doesn't seem like a universally reproducible or virtuous solution to global Capitalism's corruption of [intended] Democracy, at this point in human history I'd say that we humans could do, and generally are, doing far worse.
redwriteman, super post. That's why I love CD, and CDers, because I learn stuff.
Your comments on Herbert Marcuse are fantastic, and fit in with Sheldon Wolin (Berkeley) "Democracy Incorporated; Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism".
I should, and now will from your advice, read more Marcuse. Too bad he's gone. Wolin is 88, but still going strong.
Did you ever see Marcuse's parable of "The Skylark and the Frogs"? It appeared in "The Making of a Counter Culture" back in the 60's.
I'm guessing you might be a product of the 60's generation yourself, like me. Pleasant and hopeful memories, eh?
Maybe we can still get it done.
Best and thanks,
Alan
>>>jj apple wrote: Yet, as so with China, it's fair to ask: why, then, haven't the North Koreans, for example, ever even TRIED to storm the offices of THEIR elitist abusers?
The answer is simple - it has been an authoritarian state, with big brother controlling every aspect of the citizens' lives. Censorship and restrictions on communication the with external world make this control near-total.
There is apparently no censorship in the USA. And yet, why is the MSM so scared of factual reporting on Israel/Palestine, for example? Why aren't the American people rising up against the bankers? Against a health insurance industry that would put the mafia to shame? How did the Iraqi invasion get pulled off, despite ample evidence that there were no WMDs in Iraq? And what exactly have been the consequences for those who dragged the country into an expensive and illegal war?
Great article, Les.
However, it's not as simple and limited as "A Global War Between Financial Theocracy and Democracy".
Rather it is an absolute rout, thorough thrashing, abject defeat, and shameless surrender of democracy to this global ruling-elite corporate/financial/political/militarist EMPIRE, which has now taken over full control of 'our' former country, by hiding behind its facade of a TWO-Party 'Vichy' sham of faux democratic government (aided by an equally 'Vichy' propagandist media -- both TV/print and internet) which would cause Hitler and Goebbles' dead eyes to glow with admiration and envy in doing something they could not --- establishing a secret thousand years Reich fascist EMPIRE, without causing suspicion or any resistance!
Sorry, Les, but we've got bigger problems right here in River City than just the financial portion of this unified and integrated global corporate/financial/political/militarist EMPIRE --- which uses what Berkeley's Sheldon Wolin calls "Inverted Totalitarianism" to fool all the people all the time. And that big trouble in River City begins with E and it includes Economics, and it rhymes with EMPIRE.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
PS. Les, I love your revelation of that $900,000 PER HOUR for Hedge Fund Whores.
Wow, I'm retired and I teach/sub in English, History, and Economics at my local HS, and I could tell you what I make an hour, but it would get the school system in trouble for paying less than minimum wage. But, hell, I teach because I like to, not for the money.
Anyway, if you like interesting and shocking economic facts like your hedgie's hourly 'take', you might be interested in the fact that the US GINI Coefficient of Income Inequality is pretty close, and closing fast on that of Robert Mugabe's dictatorial kleptocracy of Zimbabwe (0.53). Both countries are way above the level that our own CIA connects with "civil unrest" and potential revolution.
Leopold: "We allowed the top hedge fund managers to walk off with over $900,000 an hour (not a typo) in 2009."
Funny how these crimes stack up so fast, in these times of wholesale thievery, that we grow numb and let them slouch past unnoticed. Hedge funds are at the center of the casino WallStreet has become. It has been argued, most popularly by Matt Taibbi and Naomi Klein, that bust-n-boom is their bread-n-butter. They WANT the economy to appear to tank, and then to appear to recover, like a boxer on the ropes. While the rest of us are reacting to apparently 'random' events, they, having corraled the massive finance power (called derivatives) to actually CAUSE these events, are forewarned of their happening. To them, there's nothing random about them. Hence, when the markets tank, they know it is going to happen, and are at the ready with their (borrowed) funding to short it. And to buy back in when the head-fake they partially caused is countered (as it must be) by the government, and the markets recover.
Hence, 2009 was the year the market tanked, then recovered. 2009 was the year in-the-know hedge fund managers made, literally, billions of dollars apiece in capitals gains. This is not random folks. This is not coincidence, and its not luck. This is the set-up and execution of a scam maybe 20 years in the making. With enough derivative-infused control over the market, these people can cause a liquidity problem of massive proportions, KNOWING that the government must respond to control the market drop and help the recovery. Hence, knowing when to short, and when to buy, becomes trivial: they control the timing of the market tank, and the subsequent market recovery. There is nothing astute or lucky about it.
'Weapons of financial mass-destruction', indeed.
We should admire these folks like we admire the Mafia.
ubrew, as Nobel Economics laureate, George Akerlof said all the way back in 2001, "This is not normal government economic policy, but rather a form of looting"!
The whole 'financial crisis' of 2007, 08, 09, 10 .... was the world's biggest 'gaming' of the known 'market flaw' of allowing 'negative externality costs' to be dumped to create phony profits out of pure air --- an alchemy that beats turning lead into gold.
Joseph Stiglitz's fantastic "FreeFall", as well as Simon Johnson and James Kwak's "13 Bankers" seem to exactly concur on the diagnosis of this monumental looting via externalities (and guile, of course). "Great Moderation" and Greenspan, my ass.
Best,
Alan
I have 13 bankers but have yet to finish it, which I will now. I've been looking at 'Freefall' and, at your recommendation, will get it. Thanks.
Not a conspiracy?
It is a conspiracy.
It is manufactured by like minded individuals. They insist they are in competition with each other but, acknowledged or otherwise, in the greater scheme of things this is always the case with conspirators. It is not necessary to sit round a table in secret, although these financial conspirators do. What differs between various conspiracies is the the degree to which the competition is admitted.
But then, when a conspiracy wishes to appear to be business as usual they will advertise the competition. Whatever the degree to which this is admitted, they all know each wishes to be the winner who takes all.
This is each conspirator believing he can be God controlling the finances of the world (taking His 'cut') even if just for as moment.
They are a joke! Given their age, the open secret is that they are either retards with the understanding of children or deviants. Either way they need to be educated. If they refuse they need a smack on the bottom, and given they are adults, with whatever weapon is available.
Let them scream. It will happen.
Thanks for the discussion. As for retards, we are in agreement. My post was purposefully short.
Retardation in the development of an intellect is usually partial. A mathematical genius can be retarded in that although he can test the bounds of analysis he cannot make a cup of tea. We can forgive him his inability. I can indulge in mathematical analysis to the effect of designing innovative machines that work when made but am retarded in mathematical terms when alongside the genius of mathematical theory.
A Psychopath is a social retard.
to amacd --
RE your 10:48 post:
glad you liked my 8:58 post, and that you'll read more Marcuse!! Everybody should...
I think you assumed that my 8:58 post to redwriteman, in which I mention Marcuse to him in response to his request for feedback to his much earlier post, was written by redwriteman -- but actually I was the poster who wrote about Marcuse -- hpoing that he might co-respond.
Well, at least YOU responded. redwriteman never did...
best regards,
jj apple