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Great article David !<br>
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<h2 class="nodetitle">Informed citizens, solidarity needed to save
us</h2>
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<p>By David L. Green</p>
<p>Over the past four decades our democracy has increasingly
become one in name and electoral process only. Nevertheless, we
are fortunate that revealing information is widely available and
that some scholars and analysts have been up to the challenge of
explaining our plight. We have a number of important recent
studies that illuminate our history and current reality, and can
inform our collective political behavior.</p>
<p class="">Most celebrated among these studies is Thomas
Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which explains
the long-term trend of increasing wealth and income inequality,
nationally and globally. Piketty summarizes historical data in a
manner that debunks the notion that we live in a meritocracy in
which income and wealth disparities reflect educational
achievement and productive contributions. Moreover, the dynamics
of financial capitalism and wealth accumulation are such that
disparities will continue to increase exponentially unless a
fundamental political response is successful.</p>
<p class="">Piketty's proposal of a redistributive wealth tax,
including on a global level, nevertheless begs the question of
how this is to be achieved in light of the overwhelming
political influence of the economic plutocracy and political
oligarchy that dictate policy in all important areas, as well as
controlling the mainstream media and the electoral process. He
also fails to address the need for more fundamental structural
changes in what has become a ruthless, violent, and
climate-threatening global system of neoliberal capitalism.</p>
<p class="">The origins and nature of our undemocratic society are
addressed in two important recent articles. Political scientists
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page in "Testing Theories of American
Politics" have meticulously constructed a database of nearly
2,000 federal government policy decisions over two decades. They
conclude that economic elites and organized business interests
have substantial impacts on U.S. government policy, while
average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or
no independent influence: "The results provide substantial
support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for
theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of
Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."</p>
<p class="">Even less surprisingly, foreign policy is completely
unaccountable to the majority of citizens. In "National Security
and Double Government," Michael J. Glennon traces the history of
what he calls the "Trumanite" national security state since
World War II. He concludes that U.S. security policy has been
defined by executive officials who "operate largely removed from
public view and from constitutional constraints."</p>
<p class="">The public believes that the
constitutionally-established institutions control national
security policy, but Glennon convincingly argues that that view
is mistaken: "Judicial review is negligible; congressional
oversight is dysfunctional; and presidential control is nominal.
Absent a more informed and engaged electorate, little
possibility exists for restoring accountability in the
formulation and execution of national security policy."</p>
<p class="">These democracy deficits in domestic and foreign
policy are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is the
historical control of our economy and government by big business
and Wall Street banking, including their global ambitions. In
their important book The Making of Global Capitalism, economic
historians Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin define four decades of
rapacious neoliberal economic policies as a response to
partially successful democratizing efforts and increased
economic equality from 1945-75.</p>
<p class="">They describe neoliberalism—that is, globalization,
outsourcing, financialization, corporate capture of state
regulatory mechanisms (patent regimes, multinational trade
agreements), privatization of government functions, tax evasion,
phony government debt crises, increased private debt,
militarization, healthcare for profit, attacks on labor unions
and government employees — as "political responses to the
democratic gains that had been previously achieved by
subordinate classes and which had become, in a new context and
from capital's perspective, barriers to (wealth) accumulation."</p>
<p class="">Neoliberalism has involved not just reversing those
gains, but weakening their governmental institutional
foundations, including a "shift in the hierarchy of state
apparatuses" towards the Treasury and Federal Reserve (as well
as "national security") at the expense of the old "New Deal
agencies": Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Education,
Health and Human Services, and welfare/safety net programs.</p>
<p class="">Due to the actions of unelected but powerful
individuals in unaccountable and opaque institutions, we have
witnessed a destructive global empire, diminished public
provision, crippling private indebtedness, and a government that
is ultimately unresponsive to the needs and demands of the vast
majority of citizens, including the fundamental need for full
employment at living wages. What politicians offer is platitudes
and gimmickry in lieu of honestly addressing these structural
crises, which would require them to confront the interests of
concentrated wealth that pay for their campaigns.</p>
<p class="">We have allowed to be imposed upon us a deep-seated
and institutionalized economic plutocracy and political
oligarchy, insuring increased and unjust inequality and
attendant class warfare from the top down, as well as organized
attacks on civil liberties — especially of those who challenge
authority. Only informed citizens acting in organized and
purposeful solidarity can begin to change that.</p>
<p class="">David L. Green, a social policy analyst with the
University of Illinois' Institute of Government and Public
Affairs, lives in Champaign.</p>
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