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<h2 class="nodetitle">Informed citizens, solidarity needed to save
us</h2>
<span class="submitted">
<div class="submitted"><span class="timestamp">Sun, 07/13/2014 -
7:00am</span> | <span class="authors"><a
href="http://www.news-gazette.com/author/news-gazette">The
News-Gazette</a></span></div>
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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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