[Peace-discuss] has Congress become Useless?

[C. G. Estabrook]

  > On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 12:30 PM, Ron Szoke <r-szoke at illinois.edu
>  <mailto:r-szoke at illinois.edu>> wrote:
>
>  The book referred to is _The Coming Caesars_, by Amaury de Riencourt
>   (Coward-McCann, 1957, 384 pages)
>
>  "It is the contention of this book ... that the greater the social
>  equality, the dimmer the prospects of liberty, and that as society
>  becomes more equalitarian, it tends increasingly to concentrate
>  absolute power in the hands of one single man"  (p. 5).

In other words, the 'liberty' of some depends on inequality - i.e., that that 
liberty not be enjoyed by many.

In fact, Caesarism/Bonapartism/fascism historically arose from intractable class 
struggles, brought to an end (or rather frozen) by authoritarianism.

Consider the actual careers of Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the 20th 
century dictators. (And /The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon/ remains a 
fascinating analysis of such history, showing "how the class struggle in France 
created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque 
mediocrity to play a hero's part.")

 From Aristotle to Marx, democrats (economic as well as political) recognized  
that "the free development of each is the condition of the free development of 
all" (as the latter put it).

Aristotle took it for granted that a democracy should be fully participatory 
(with some notable exceptions, like women and slaves) and that it should aim for 
the common good. In order to achieve that, it has to ensure relative equality, 
"moderate and sufficient property" and "lasting prosperity" for everyone.

In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor and rich, you 
can't talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy has to be what we call 
today a welfare state -- actually, an extreme form of one, far beyond anything 
envisioned in this century...

Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect democracy, a small 
number of very rich people and a large number of very poor people, the poor will 
use their democratic rights to take property away from the rich. Aristotle 
regarded that as unjust, and proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty 
(which is what he recommended) or reducing democracy.

James Madison, who was no fool, noted the same problem, but unlike Aristotle, he 
aimed to reduce democracy rather than poverty. He believed that the primary goal 
of government is "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." 
As his colleague John Jay was fond of putting it, "The people who own the 
country ought to govern it."

Madison feared that a growing part of the population, suffering from the serious 
inequities of the society, would "secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of 
[life's] blessings." If they had democratic power, there'd be a danger they'd do 
something more than sigh. He discussed this quite explicitly at the 
Constitutional Convention, expressing his concern that the poor majority would 
use its power to bring about what we would now call land reform.

So he designed a system that made sure democracy couldn't function. He placed 
power in the hands of the "more capable set of men," those who hold "the wealth 
of the nation." Other citizens were to be marginalized and factionalized in 
various ways, which have taken a variety of forms over the years: fractured 
political constituencies, barriers against unified working-class action and 
cooperation, exploitation of ethnic and racial conflicts, etc.

(To be fair, Madison was precapitalist and his "more capable set of men" were 
supposed to be "enlightened statesmen" and "benevolent philosophers," not 
investors and corporate executives trying to maximize their own wealth 
regardless of the effect that has on other people. When Alexander Hamilton and 
his followers began to turn the US into a capitalist state, Madison was pretty 
appalled. In my opinion, he'd be an anticapitalist if he were alive today -- as 
would Jefferson and Adam Smith.)

Throughout our history, political power has been, by and large, in the hands of 
those who own the country. There have been some limited variations on that 
theme, like the New Deal. FDR had to respond to the fact that the public was not 
going to tolerate the existing situation. He left power in the hands of the 
rich, but bound them to a kind of social contract.

The two generations of US political/economic  history since de Riencourt's book 
show a marked contrast. The first - which ended in the mid 1970s, when the Nixon 
administration ended the Bretton Woods agreement - adhered to the that social 
contract.  The second - roughly the Carter administration to the present - 
revoked that contract under the name of "neoliberalism." The results included an 
intensification of the class struggle, the extreme concentration of wealth 
(surpassing 1929 - equality in America peaked about 1969 and declined at an 
accelerating pace since),  and the Great Recession.

[Regular correspondents will not be surprised that most of the foregoing comes 
from Chomsky.  It has, in Henry Kissinger's surprised phrase, "the extra, added 
advantage of being true." --CGE]

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