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<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>A good article to prepare us for
2014,</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial>however it appears that the ruling elites have
become so arrogant that they will not even allow " social progress ", only more
phoney identity politics to divide us while they push our standard of living
even further down with their austerity aganda.</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial>David J.</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Arial></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
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<H1 style="MARGIN: 0px 0px -3px" class=articletitle>Bait and Switch: The
Heavy Price of Social Progress</H1><SPAN class=wwscontent><I>By <A
class=wwscontent href="http://www.opednews.com/author/author3049.html"
rel=author>Chris Floyd</A> </I></SPAN><BR><BR>
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<P class=wwscontent align=left>Source: <A
href="http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2363-bait-and-switch-the-heavy-price-of-social-progress.html">Empire
Burlesque</A><BR></P>
<DIV>
<DIV style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; WIDTH: 400px; FONT-SIZE: 80%"><IMG
style="PADDING-BOTTOM: 0.5em"
src="http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploadnic/1-1a-jpg_3049_20140103-818.jpg"
width=400><BR><CITE class=wwscontentsmaller>(image by <A
href="http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2012/12/index.html" rel=nofollow
target=_blank>Progress Ohio</A>)</CITE><BR></DIV><BR>At CounterPunch, <A
href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/03/obama-mandela-king-and-the-paradox-of-progress/"
target=_blank>Jason Hirthler identifies one of the most important
dynamics</A> in the modern political world: "For every social advance, an
economic price paid." <BR></DIV>Hirthler examines the real-life aftermath
of the social breakthroughs and advances represented by the social justice
campaigns of Martin Luther King, the ending of apartheid under the aegis of
Nelson Mandela, and racial symbolism in the election of the first black American
president, Barack Obama. In every case, Hirthler notes, genuine social
achievements were followed by a brutal and ruthless expansion and entrenchment
of "neoliberal" economics -- that is, the aggrandisement of elite power and
privilege. <BR><BR>One of the most glaring examples detailed by Hirthler is
what happened after the genuinely astonishing and significant triumph of Mandela
and the ANC: the share of South Africa's wealth owned by whites has actually
increased since the ending of the apartheid, thanks to the ANC's betrayal of its
own economic principles and its capitulation to the existing economic power
structure.<BR><BR>This is the pattern that has been followed for decades: some
social advances are accepted by the power structure -- as long as the economic
dominance of the ruling elite is not challenged. In Obama's case, of course,
this was a <EM>prerequisite</EM>, not a consequence, of his election. He
would not have been allowed to be in the position of being elected president had
he not clearly and continually signalled to the elite that he was in no way a
threat to their power; in fact, as Hirthler notes, he went much further, and
made it clear that he would be a more efficient and effective promoter of
economic elite than cack-handed Republicans like George W. Bush, John McCain and
Sarah Palin. And so it has proved. The nation's oligarchs, corporations and
financial sectors have devoured ever greater proportions of the nation's wealth
under Obama's rule, while chronic unemployment and underemployment grinds on,
the nation's infrastructure rots, and the quality of life (and hopes for the
future) of ordinary people continues to be degraded.<BR><BR>The case of King is
somewhat different. Unlike Mandela, who acquiesced in the ANC sell-out to the
elites (no doubt as a tactical decision; social freedom would be more likely to
come sooner, and with less violence, than economic justice, which could remain a
future goal), and Obama, who was a signed-up sell-out from the beginning, King
was actually growing more radical as time went on, broadening his critique from
racial oppression to the underlying, all-pervasive evils of militarism and
elitist greed that shaped American foreign policy and its economic system. He
was killed for this, of course, having already become increasingly marginalized
by "serious" and "respectable" political opinion -- precisely because of his
increasing radicalism.<BR><BR>This dynamic is not confined to Hirthler's three
examples. It was also played out in the breakdown of the Soviet Union, where
Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts at broad social reforms (and mild economic and
political reforms) were met first with the backlash of an attempted coup by
Soviet hardliners, and then, after the dissolution of the Union and the rise of
Boris Yeltsin, by the imposition of "Shock Doctrine" economics. Here was the
very apotheosis of neoliberalism -- unrestrained, unopposed, relentless. The
result, as we know, was the beggaring of the nation, an unprecedented plunge in
life expectancy, the collapse of society and the ascendancy of a rapacious
elite. (Plus the loss of many of the political and social freedoms that had been
genuine gains from the otherwise traumatic regime change.)<BR>
<DIV class=adsplat></DIV>And so on it goes. In our day, social progress is a
tool used deliberately by our leaders to extract more gains for the elite at the
expense of the general public. Vast amounts of energy and attention, especially
potentially dangerous progressive and/or populist energy, is expended on social
gains -- on winning them, opposing them, maintaining them, trying to reverse
them, etc. -- while the overall system of domination rolls on unopposed. Obama
benefits from this on the left, where his cynical nods to social progress --
without actually doing anything very concrete about it with all the power he
holds -- mutes "progressive" criticism of his truly abominable foreign and
economic policies, which include state murder, Stasi-like surveillance, the
exaltation of the rich and the degradation of everyone else. In the same way,
George W. Bush gave lip service to the <EM>opposition</EM> to social
progress, on abortion, for example, while never really doing anything about it,
which fired up his own political base even as he, like Obama, advanced economic
and foreign policies that degraded the lives of ordinary people -- including his
own fired-up followers. (Ironically, anti-abortion forces have made much greater
strides during Obama's tenure, <A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/us/women-losing-access-to-abortion-as-opponents-gain-ground-in-state-legislatures.html?hp&_r=0"
target=_blank>as the NY Times reported</A> on Friday.) <BR>None of this is
to gainsay the great worth of those social freedoms we have managed to advance
over the past decades. It is a great thing, a wonderful thing, that American and
South African blacks have more political freedom than they once had. It is a
great thing, a wonder, that people who love people of the same sex are no longer
subjected to quite so many of the legal restrictions and cultural calumny that
they have long endured.<BR><BR>But the dynamic -- social freedoms being
"allowed" or accepted only if the ever-increasing power of the economic elite is
not threatened -- still holds. Hirthler's piece provides a good analysis of this
phenomenon. Below are a few excerpts:<BR>"Almost as an antidote the onset of
holiday cheer, the 2014 budget deal was released in December as a sort of
deflationary tactic -- lest the masses get their hopes too high ... The 2014
budget strips away unemployment benefits, food stamp assistance, while doing
nothing to shutter tax loopholes for the wealthy, all while proposed military
cuts are essentially restored with some fantastic sleight of hand. This
represents a continuation of the neoliberal austerity program implemented by
bi-partisan consensus after the meltdown of 2008. And how nicely timed it was to
follow on the heels of the global outpouring of feeling for the dearly departed
Nelson Mandela.<BR><BR>"Alive, King was a provocation, and at the time of his
assassination seemed to be turning toward racism's companion grievances of
poverty and war. How fortunate for the shadowy redoubts of wealth and militarism
that he was slain. In death, his economic and foreign policy challenges were
interred with his casket, and he was posthumously pedestaled for his commitments
to civil rights alone -- a cause that no right-thinking human could deny. Those
companion causes, however, were bold and contentious critiques of power itself,
and its capacities for self-enrichment. As such, the tidy janitors of historical
revisionism swept them from sight.<BR><BR>"How interesting that King died in
1968 -- just as he was shifting course, attacking the Vietnam War and the
economics of poverty -- and Lewis Powel's rallying cry to the American Chamber
of Commerce appeared in 1971, effectively launching the politicization of
neoliberalism as a form of class war by elites against the disenfranchised,
prioritizing the very evils -- war and disenfranchisement -- against which King
fought.<BR><BR>"How curious that Barack Obama ascended to the throne of American
power in 2008, just as the African-American populace found itself on the wrong
end of one of the greatest transfer of wealth from one group to another -- over
half their wealth, mostly in the form of real estate, largely from black hands
to white hands, from vulnerable families to faceless real estate trusts. One
would think, by listening to the glistering orations of Mr. Obama, that he would
have acted to instantly restore the wealth of an abused minority. But, of
course, Obama would never have been handed the scepter of American power had he
not first paid fealty to the embedded wealth of American society. Had he not
assured real estate, finance, and insurance sectors he was 'a free market guy,'
capable of enabling corporatism like the best of Republicans. And that he could
in fact do it better than his predecessor. Simply swap out the labels to suit
the changing economic climate. Deregulation would be reconfigured as toothless
regulation (with its overweening regard for the market). Privatization would be
swabbed off as energy independence (using the American obsession with
independence to undermine ecological mandates). Federal downsizing would be
recast as deficit reduction (falsely conflating declining growth with social
spending). But as he shouldered his way through the living rooms of silent
power, he assured the assembled doyens of industry that it all came to the same.
Thus, the downward spiral of blacks was simply accelerated, their claims denied,
their houses foreclosed upon, their creditors enriched.<BR><BR>"How instructive
that Nelson Mandela precipitated and oversaw the dismantling of the racist
apartheid regime in South Africa, but his ascendancy to power corresponded with
a fatal shift in the economic fortunes of black South Africans, who would watch
manufacturing, employment, and wages all decline during Mandela's prime (see
Patrick Bond's expert summary). Even as whites watched their share of South
African wealth rise, as white-held corporations evacuated their money from the
newly free state, and as all the best land, mines, manufacturing, and finance
remained in the hands of white power.<BR><BR>"What can we surmise from these
three paradoxes of justice? Namely, that social gains seem to happen only when
they don't threaten established wealth, which is ensured by a clandestine
decoupling of social issues from economics. As society steps forward socially,
it steps backward economically.<BR><BR>"In each instance -- following King's
assassination, and Obama and Mandela's election -- the social gains made by the
majestic courage of millions were balanced by a backdoor betrayal of their
economic interests. ... All of this is disguised by the clever machinations of
the budget office, which is able to artificially create the impression of
general growth and prosperity by masking the negative metrics with astonishing
stock market growth. Rather than investing in more productive fixed assets in
the real economy, from which it is harder to extract one's capital, investors
prefer the easy mobility of financial speculation. Preferably through the
creation of a derivatives-based real estate bubble (see Japan, the U.S., and
Ireland for instructive examples in this regard). The numbers from this
stupendous growth for the few are conflated with the figures of stupefying
decline for the majority to produce a perverted per capita profile -- one that
characterizes a nation in free fall as one in flight.<BR>
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<DIV dir=ltr><BR><BR>"And that process leaves us with a picture that oddly
resembles modern South Africa. Enfranchised blacks in dire straits, with no
political party representing their interests. A well-tanned imperial elite doing
fabulously well. The government doing little to help the poor, but plenty to
enable the rich. And when the complicit politicians and court journalists get a
free minute, they step forward with poetic odes to another fallen champion of
the underclass -- even as they quietly celebrate the renewal of mass delusion
and the injustice of the status quo."<BR></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>