Trickle-down theory puts billions of dollars in a few people's pockets and impoverishes the rest of us and that's precisely what happened. So the the republican party is not the party of Eisenhower anymore. It's not even the party of Roosevelt. It's not even the party of Lincoln. It's the party of the plutocrats, the oligarchs, the predatory capitalists. To a certain extent though, and this is the shame of our country right now, the democrats are of the same fabric.
We don't have the possibility of voting between one party and another and getting something different because both are essentially for the oligarchs. Chuck Schumer, Senator from New York, Barney Frank, former representative had as much to do with the debacle in 2008 that George W Bush expedited with two wars and no taxes and so forth, but they had as much to do with that as any republican did because they're all in tow to corporate interests. Big food, big energy, big insurance and real estate, big pharmacy, and most of all, the conglomeration that goes together to protect their interests.
R.K.: You spoke on Real News about Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the Invisible Hand and how that manifests today. Can you get into this a bit, assuming our listeners are not familiar with the details of Adam Smith's writings?
L.W.: You know, I wish I had more time, we'd have got into his theory of moral sentiments too because Adam Smith was like any one of his time, I think, who thought seriously and critically about things, was imbued with almost a religious fervor about the needs for morality within business dealings as well as the need for, as you said, this invisible hand in the market that sort of controls competition, controls prices, but does it in a way that responds to the natural exigencies of economic business rather than to some government or some corporation's interest.
When we talk about how capitalism can work, we also have to think about and talk about the positive side. And the positive side is it is probably the best economic framework that humans have devised that allows for human creativity, ingenuity, merits, skills, talent, all the good buzz words we like to use to rise to the top and to create wealth in the process. This does sometimes create winners and losers but that's the inevitable fall out that you have to accept.
However, I think Adam Smith, were he alive today and certainly John Maynard Keynes, who kind of followed in that tradition, even though John Maynard Keynes was not really, we forget this, an economist first, I think they would say yes, that's okay as long as there is something to control the more injurious, the most dangerous, excesses of capitalism which we've already referred to and those things that control that are basically two. They're labor and labor's organized interest in combating capitalism's worst tendencies and government.
Helping to maintain a balance between labor and capital and to ensure that the regulatory environment exists to sustain that balance. So I'm not against capitalism and I am not for this or that aspect otherwise of some other system. Capitalism has much socialism in it, especially as it's practiced in places like Norway and Sweden and so forth. It has socialism in this country too. Socialism is not a pejorative, it's a beautiful word really.
It talks about society. It talks about community. It talks about doing things for the global commons, if you will. Doing things for the body of people and not for just the oligarchs. So I have nothing against socialism. Communism now, is a different system altogether, a political more than economic system and people confuse these two systems all the time.
But if you're talking about capitalism and socialism, the two can coexist and indeed probably do have to coexist with this government regulatory and capitalistic tension kept in balance, in order for society to be productive and to succeed the way the United States has or the way Norway has or England has or France has or Germany has, or pick almost any country that's practiced a combination of these two economic systems and read some success through it.
So I'm not against capitalism. I'm just for the kind of capitalism and the kind of creativity and critical thinking and so forth government regulation and labor power that balances all of these otherwise very inimical and dangerous forces and keeps them aimed at the right end product.
R.K.: How is that looking in the US now?
L.W.: Very bad. It's looking as bad as it's looked in our history and that's pretty bad because I said before we've had some real dips in this process where the oligarchs, the Robber Barons, the JP Morgans of the world have almost taken over the country. We're at a point now where I think it's fair to say that much as in Ukraine, much as in Russia, much as in other places in the world where this sort of tension exists and can be exploited by the wealthy, we are turning into an oligarchy.
We are turning into a country for whom the best descriptive phrase is their central purpose in life is: defense of wealth. And not defense of wealth that is spread amongst the many, but defense of wealth that is concentrated in the hands of the very select few. That's called a plutocracy, in old Greek terms. An oligarchy is a few small, a small group of people running an entity, well plutocracy is those few small people being only the wealthy.
Well that's really what we are today. We're a plutocracy. The wealthy have far too much power. They have far too much control over the rest of our lives and they have far too much control over what's supposed to be a democratic government but which hasn't been a democratic government for a long, long time.
R.K.: Do you see any ways that we're going to change this course that we're on?
L.W.: I see it changing with blood in the streets. I mean that's the only way I see it changing. The only way you get out of the mess we've created for ourselves is for at least a goodly portion of the three hundred million people in this country, those who are deprived of what they should have by their birthright, that is the chance for the pursuit of happiness, freedom, liberty, all of the things we pontificate about all of the time.
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