Even if the mortgage-scam gangsters hadn't brought things to a near-term head, the US economy was still destined for a painful confrontation with reality. While earlier robber barons like Henry Ford understood that it was necessary to pay his workers a wage that would enable them to buy a Model T, today's robber barons lack that insight, and simply aim to plunder everything they can get their hands on. The predictable outcome has been rising wealth inequality, the 2-tier society, and the putrefaction of political institutions and media.
A System Can't Fix Itself When It Only Wants to Maintain Itself
The tendency towards increasing concentration of capital that Marx pointed to 150 years ago is alive and well. The United States may once have honored a document claiming that "all men are created equal," but going forward, the only visible prospect is a 2-tier society bankrupting itself in endless war, ruled by Wall St and the MIC. The 2 parties scarcely pretend to be more than instruments of the corporate oligarchy, while the media is the propaganda arm of the entire complex. No solution can emerge from official politics, since its function is not "solving problems," but rather protecting the social order -- in part by stifling consciousness of capitalism's inevitable consequences. Just as the oil companies will not permit recognition of global warming, the 2 US parties cannot permit recognition of US crimes in Iraq, and the MSM cannot permit recognition that the current economic convulsions result from Wall St's looting of society's resources. In each case, powerful institutions are closing ranks to protect capitalist imperatives from the type of critical public examination that would discredit the whole system.
Within the context of capitalism, the oil companies, MIC firms, Wall St banks, and media conglomerates cannot be faulted for what has happened. They did just what they're supposed to do. They wanted to maximize profits, and rightly perceived that this required overhauling the US form of government. Unfortunately, this involved scrapping broad swaths of the Constitution & international law, and debasing the media. Ultimately, you can have maximum corporate profits; or the Constitution and some degree of media integrity -- but you can't have both. ("We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both." -- Justice Louis Brandeis)
Once we accept that profits shall be society's supreme organizing principle, we condemn ourselves to a trajectory of ever-increasing rule by a consortium of banks, oil companies, and weapons contractors. Averting one's eyes from this unpleasant prospect may feel better in the short term -- but doesn't alter the trajectory, or the forces relentlessly guiding it.
References:
{1} David Hume, 1758, "Of the First Principles of Government." See for example "The People Who Own the Country Shouldn't Run It," Gore Vidal, http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/2524.html
{2} Michael Parenti, Contrary Notions, 2007, p 33. The bumpersticker Parenti refers to reads "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm."
{3} Karl Marx, Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
{4} Fan site for the film at http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/
{5} Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p 301, Ch 14
{6} World Socialist Web Site. WSWS has articulated this theme repeatedly, recently for example at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/econ-j23.shtml. A fuller exposition is at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/nib2-f13.shtml.
{7} See for example Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 2002, statistical data developed in book's closing section.
A System Can't Fix Itself When It Only Wants to Maintain Itself
The tendency towards increasing concentration of capital that Marx pointed to 150 years ago is alive and well. The United States may once have honored a document claiming that "all men are created equal," but going forward, the only visible prospect is a 2-tier society bankrupting itself in endless war, ruled by Wall St and the MIC. The 2 parties scarcely pretend to be more than instruments of the corporate oligarchy, while the media is the propaganda arm of the entire complex. No solution can emerge from official politics, since its function is not "solving problems," but rather protecting the social order -- in part by stifling consciousness of capitalism's inevitable consequences. Just as the oil companies will not permit recognition of global warming, the 2 US parties cannot permit recognition of US crimes in Iraq, and the MSM cannot permit recognition that the current economic convulsions result from Wall St's looting of society's resources. In each case, powerful institutions are closing ranks to protect capitalist imperatives from the type of critical public examination that would discredit the whole system.
Within the context of capitalism, the oil companies, MIC firms, Wall St banks, and media conglomerates cannot be faulted for what has happened. They did just what they're supposed to do. They wanted to maximize profits, and rightly perceived that this required overhauling the US form of government. Unfortunately, this involved scrapping broad swaths of the Constitution & international law, and debasing the media. Ultimately, you can have maximum corporate profits; or the Constitution and some degree of media integrity -- but you can't have both. ("We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both." -- Justice Louis Brandeis)
References:
{1} David Hume, 1758, "Of the First Principles of Government." See for example "The People Who Own the Country Shouldn't Run It," Gore Vidal, http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/2524.html
{2} Michael Parenti, Contrary Notions, 2007, p 33. The bumpersticker Parenti refers to reads "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm."
{3} Karl Marx, Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
{4} Fan site for the film at http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/
{5} Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p 301, Ch 14
{6} World Socialist Web Site. WSWS has articulated this theme repeatedly, recently for example at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/econ-j23.shtml. A fuller exposition is at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/nib2-f13.shtml.
{7} See for example Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 2002, statistical data developed in book's closing section.
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