[Peace-discuss] David Green's article

[David Johnson via Peace-discuss]

    Informed citizens, solidarity needed to save us

Sun, 07/13/2014 - 7:00am | The News-Gazette 
<http://www.news-gazette.com/author/news-gazette>

By David L. Green

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

David L. Green, a social policy analyst with the University of Illinois' 
Institute of Government and Public Affairs, lives in Champaign.

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