Democracy Soiled: The Case against the US Ruling Class

Reading the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News opinion poll is like glimpsing a snapshot of an alien civilization. Surely these are not the opinions of the flag-waving, beer-guzzling US masses depicted on television and by the rest of popular culture. Surely this is not the world view of the self-absorbed, numbed populace, addicted to the NFL and movie weepers.

Are we to believe that nearly two out of three (62%) of those polled are dissatisfied with “America's role in the world”? If most citizens are unhappy with the US government destabilizing Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, or supporting genocide in Palestine despite unrelenting media lies and government deception, then how do our leaders justify their acts? Why do innumerable and endless wars continue?

Why do almost two-thirds of those polled (64%) express dissatisfaction with the “state of the US economy”? Are they not following stock market euphoria? Are they not listening to pundits who have declared “recovery”? Aren't US citizens paying attention to financial cheerleaders?

Why do three out of four (76%) of the people have no confidence that “life for our children's generation will be better than it has been for us,” up from 60% in 2007?

Why the negativism? Why the pessimism? Why do over half (54%) of poll respondents believe that “[t]he widening income gap between the wealthy and everyone else is undermining the idea that every American has the opportunity for a better standard of living”?

How can our fellow citizens hold such bold, radical ideas? How have they escaped the constant beating of the drums of war and the ubiquitous celebration of prosperity and American grandeur?

The answer is really quite simple: they have lost confidence in politicians, the political system, and other key institutions. The WSJ/NBC poll reveals that approval for President Obama has, this month, reached an all-time low of 40%. While this may seem like good news for the Congressional Republicans, it is not. Only 19% of respondents held positive views of the Republican politicians.

Perhaps the most stark demonstration of popular anger is the wholesale rejection of the “political system”: four out of five polled (79%) were dissatisfied with “the political system.”

Two things stand out: First, hyper-patriotism, economic confidence, and trust in the widely heralded US democracy is a myth. Second, the US people have far greater dissatisfaction with the course of the country than our leaders and the commentariat would like us to believe.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between the sentiments and desires of the masses and the actions and views of politicians and their media lackeys. In the most basic sense, the US political system does not respect or reflect the popular will. That is just to say it does not function democratically. Paraphrasing the pundits, the US is a failed democracy.

The same undemocratic leadership arrogantly postures as the guarantor of democracy to the rest of the world! The US government audaciously assumes the privilege of telling everyone else how to live! Knowing no shame, US rulers ignore the democratic crisis at home while mounting a crusade to enforce sham democracy abroad-- a bitter irony.

Forcing US “Democracy” upon the World

Nothing exposes the hypocrisy of US rulers like their tragic destruction of Iraq. Driven by a lust to control the fate of all oil reserves in the Middle East and an intolerance of any regime that shows even a spark of defiance to US dictates, successive administrations have invaded, bombed, economically terrorized, invaded a second time, occupied and rekindled ethnic and religious animosities for over two decades---all in the name of fostering democracy. As a result, a once stable state is now what the US media like to call a “failed state.”

Never mind that the US had covertly helped to install the vicious, anti-Communist Saddam Hussein as a puppet ruler of Iraq. Never mind that the US encouraged and aided his brutal regime in a war against Iran. Never mind that despite Saddam's iron grip, Iraqis enjoyed a relatively high standard of living and one of the more secular cultures in the Middle East in a country now often without electricity, insecure, and ridden with ethnic hatred.

Nonetheless, US elites celebrate the gift of democracy to the Iraqi people, dismissing the pain of war and occupation as a price well worth paying (by the Iraqis!).

Yet paradoxically the US government has friends--intimate friends--who are far more in need of a lesson in democracy, friends with even less regard for human rights and democratic practices. Consider the 1989 version of the CIA's World Factbook, hardly a source likely to present the US's foes in a good light or its friends negatively. Compare pre-invasion Iraq to imperialism's best friend on the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia. Despite the massive losses incurred in the war with Iran, Iraq had a slightly higher life expectancy than did Saudi Arabia in 1989. Literacy was also higher. More to the point, the CIA describes trade unions as “illegal” in Saudi Arabia, and suffrage and elections as “none.” Saddam's brutal Iraq, by contrast, citing the same source, allowed some trade union activity and boasted universal suffrage and National Assembly elections last held four years prior. While Saddam's democracy scorecard was pathetic, surely the feudal-like theocracy of Saudi Arabia was even more deserving of remediation.

Iraq's once regionally stellar economy, measured by GNP per capita, was set back greatly by the Iraq-Iran War and was further devastated dramatically by US intervention and its aftermath, sinking to levels below those of 1950. Is that, and a decline in life expectancy, an acceptable price for US-imposed “democracy”?

We got a taste of the flavor of US-style democracy as we watched the US Administration call for the peaceful overthrow of the constitutionally installed Prime Minister of Iraq. It was no secret that the call for Maliki's retirement or removal from the position was a condition of continued US support. Shamelessly, the Iraqi peoples' will played no role in this extortionate change; the US Administration, not the Iraqis, decided Maliki must go. So Maliki is gone and another puppet is in his place.

While poll after poll demonstrate that most US citizens are tired of endless war, imagine what the Iraqi people feel about constant death and destruction from 1990 until today, unending war and death-dealing sanctions without relent.

The powerful, aggressive ISIS today poses the latest threat to Iraqis, thanks to the US government's meddling in the affairs of her neighbors. Stirring the Syrian opposition and encouraging US allies to support the sectarian-driven insurrection against Assad has provided both the material means and tacit acceptance for ISIS's machinations. Only unmatched hubris and unlimited hypocrisy could so irresponsibly unleash the dogs of war. Now the most militarily effective force in the US crusade against Syria's president has crashed the Administration's party in Iraq, threatening the very existence of a US puppet-state. And, despite desperate bombing by the US military, the only effectively proven counterforce to the brutal ISIS now is the guerillas of the Kurdish Workers Party, a movement that the US and its allies have hysterically labeled “terrorists.” How ironic, how insane, how tragic!

Twenty-first Century Crusades

Extinguishing independence and advancing US capitalism are unquestionably the constant goals of US foreign policy. But since the demise of Soviet power, those policies are advanced by a world-wide crusade under the false banners of democracy and human rights. Like the crusades of old, sanctimony proves to be a good cover for otherwise naked, indefensible aggression, plunder, and intervention. Whether it’s soft intervention (USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, NGOs) or military aggression (the CIA, NATO, US military), US rulers continue to push the limits of popular tolerance of a malignant foreign policy, an effort aided immensely by the lap-dog media.

Most recently, the US and NATO have destroyed Libya as a stable, viable state, interfered in political events in Egypt, and sparked a civil war threatening the future of Syria. The US arms and encourages Israel in its apartheid and genocidal policies while uncritically protecting it from the censure of most of the rest of the world.

In Ukraine, the US has played an irresponsible role-- not unlike its strategic engagement with religious, anti-secular zealots in the Middle East-- by funding, training, and encouraging the most xenophobic, nationalistic, even fascist elements to stage a coup against the elected president. Since the stage-managed replacement of Viktor Yanukovych with one of the country's richest elites, Ukraine is waging a cruel, bloody assault on its dissident Eastern territories. Sickening irony: the US angrily condemns even the most moderate government actions against dissent in Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and a host of other countries perceived as adversaries, yet it finds no cause in the bombardment of innocent civilians in Eastern Ukraine. Where are the human rights organizations? The civilizing NGOs?

No country has been targeted by the US's hypocritical “democracy” and “human rights” crusade as has Cuba. No country has so admirably repulsed that campaign. From assassination attempts to invasion, from raids to biological warfare, from slander to blockade and terror, the Cuban people have successfully guarded their independence and defended their chosen path. The latest exposures only show how desperate US elites are to return Cuba to the Empire. USAID, a government agency masquerading as a nonpartisan promoter of democracy, unleashed two recent covert programs against Cuba. Both programs bordered on the ridiculous: one, a “twitter” like program to seduce Cuban youth into dissent and, the other, a phony health care project to enlist Latin American youth to travel to Cuba pretending to promote health care and HIV prevention while planting seeds of opposition to Cuban socialism. Both programs show how easily deceit and dishonesty mix with US-style “democracy”.

Retire the word?

Once, the word “democracy” had meaning for those living in the US, a connection-- often slender, but a connection-- to the interests and collective will of the majority of people, the masses. No rational person ever thought that democracy was perfect, complete, or absolute. But many drew hope from the promise of democratic rule and democratic institutions. Many celebrated the democratic content of freedom from the bondage of slavery, of universal suffrage, and of the progress of labor. At the very least, the democracy inherited from the colonial revolutionists served the bourgeoisie and its cohorts well and left the the door cracked open for some truly democratic reforms (though the door was slammed shut when the danger of radical democracy arose).

But in the US today, the word is used to deceive, cheat, and oppress. “Democracy” serves to mask an oligarchic regime employing a Gestapo-like surveillance of every citizen. “Democracy” seeks to legitimize a two-party system that produces one-party results. “Democracy” is bought and sold like any other commodity. And “Democracy” is the protector of wealth and power.

Perhaps the D word, like the word “terrorist,” should be retired until sensible people with a principled commitment to popular rule can counter its defamation. Maybe “democracy” should be put on the shelf until a movement truly worthy of the word emerges. Judging by the recent WSL/NBC poll, the people are waiting for it.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Beyond Piketty: The Democratic Conundrum

In a country where sports stars are offered as role models and actors aspire to political office, celebrity intellectuals are a rarity. Thus, the meteoric rise of economist Thomas Piketty to celebrity status comes as a surprise. The English language edition of his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, sold out swiftly while reaching best-seller stature, a unique achievement for a book originating from an academic press. Possessing charm, wit, and youthful good-looks, Piketty toured the US, generating demand from myriad talk-show hosts and magazine interviewers.

A month before its release, sensing that Piketty had something fresh to offer, I wrote:

Piketty's argument is a welcome antidote to the paucity of explanatory theory presented by the liberal and social democratic punditry. The controversy stirred by Piketty's argument well before its English-language availability is a sure sign that he offers something beyond the conventional... Closer examination of Piketty's interesting thesis must await publication of the book. (ZZ's Blog, Tuesday, February 11, 2014)

Little did I suspect that Piketty-mania would spawn a sustained discussion penetrating the highest reaches of the mass media. Piketty's argument has shattered the navel-gazing of academic economists, while demonstrating an intuitively obvious fact in a way that even the most thick-headed pundit can understand: capitalism produces and reproduces inequality. Unfortunately, Piketty timidly hesitates to draw an equally compelling conclusion: the only way to eliminate unjust inequality is by eliminating capitalism. It's as though a researcher has discovered the cause of cancer, but is reluctant to endorse its cure.

My own thoughts on Piketty's provocative, stimulating book are posted on Philosophers for Change.

The Piketty phenomenon overshadows what may well be an even more provocative, suggestive study by two US professors, Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page. Their paper, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics), offers results that could shake the complacency of political theory in much the way that Piketty's book rocked bourgeois economics. Unfortunately, Gilens and Page lack Piketty's panache and insist upon writing in the arid, formal style of academic political science. Consequently, few have commented upon it, notably excepting a column by Margaret Kimberley aptly entitled Democracy is Dead in the inestimably incisive Black Agenda Report.

Democracy or “Democracy”?

For the apologists for capitalism, “democracy” is the sure and sole path of escape from the grip of economic inequality-- capitalism's tendency to produce and reproduce wealth and income disparity. Outside of the revolutionary left, liberals and social democrats promise to harness the legislative system and existing political institutions to tame, regulate, reform, or manage the capitalist system. They argue for a strategy that would engage citizens, coalitions, and interest groups in lobbying and electoral politics in order to shift the balance of power into alignment with the people's will. Taking the existing political institutions as adequate for change, as sufficiently democratic, they opt for a road that will supposedly trump economic power with people's power through bourgeois democracy.

It is to test this perspective, and ones like it, that researchers Gilens and Page ask the following pertinent questions:

Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? (p. 3)

They are querying whether “democracy” as we know it is really democratic: Does it generate or realize the will of the people? Or does it only give the appearance?

As they acknowledge and document, these are questions that have animated scores of philosophers, social scientists, and political activists. But in this case, Gilens and Page actually engage an empirical study to determine what others have only speculated. The results of their study are telling:

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. (p. 3)

As with Piketty's findings, these results cohere with what any honest observer of recent history would expect. They are consistent with what a Marxist analysis predicts. It is only the social science establishment that continues to believe that bourgeois democratic institutions function democratically. Gilens and Page make this point in academese: “...a good many scholars – probably more economists than political scientists among them– still cling to the idea that the policy preferences of the median voter tend to drive policy outputs from the U.S. political system.” (p. 5).

Credit the authors for calling out the various schools of thought that provide intellectual cover for the myth of the US as the world's model for democracy. The smug intellectual foundation that supports US intervention in places where US elites claim a surfeit of democracy crumbles under the weight of hypocrisy.

Without a shred of irony, Gilens and Page offer the following caveat to their picture of the failure of US democracy:

...the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of “affluent” citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically elite citizens who wield the actual influence. (p. 22)

In other words, average citizens do see their desires heeded provided that they want the same thing as elites! It is only in that case that bourgeois democracy works for the average citizen.

What Does This Mean?

Gilens and Page are showing us that elites wield a veto over US political institutions. The collective will of the majority cannot trump the will of the privileged minority. Nor does the collective will organized into interest groups: “...existing interest groups do not serve effectively as transmission belts for the wishes of the populace as a whole.” (p. 22) Thus, unions and other mass organizations fail today to effectively advance the political interests of the majority against wealth and power when those interests are in conflict.

Couple this empirical conclusion with Piketty's findings and we are presented with a seeming inescapable conclusion: growing inequality and the diminishing power of the majority are inevitable. The remedies for inequality can not be realized when the interests and will of the majority are locked out of democratic discourse. The path towards economic justice is blocked by undemocratic institutions only posturing as democratic.

While Gilens and Page refrain from explaining the causes of the failings of US democracy, they are not difficult to adduce.

The US two-party system that consistently bends towards money and influence surely explains much of the corruption of democracy. As grass-roots organizing has been supplanted with costly media campaigns, the power of wealthy contributions has been amplified accordingly. The two US political parties have long since scorned the mass participatory model for a model constructed solely around fund raising and regular electoral campaigns. Aided by a legal system that establishes near insurmountable barriers to third-party efforts, the two parties are largely insulated from any external shocks to their narrow field of operation. At the same time, corporate interests control the internal life of both parties.

Aiding and abetting the two-party system, the mass media in the US are nearly entirely owned and directed by monopoly corporations. The limits of discourse are shaped by both the interests of wealth and power and the programs of the two parties. No fresh air enlivens the public debate except on the fringes. Under these conditions, the interests of the majority and arguments for those interests are marginalized.

A Way Out?

Surely, the Gilens and Page study offers compelling reasons that continuing on the same road will not lead to significant change in favor of poor and working people, the vast majority of US citizens. Those who insist upon data-driven, fact-based evidence now have what they want; they must face more than impressions, more than speculation, but ugly facts: capitalism tends to generate inequality and choke off the democratic process.

What road is the same road? The dead-end road?

The road that brings failure leads through the two-party system, particularly the false friend, the Democratic Party. Those who remain faithful to securing change through the Democratic Party must ask themselves and others how that has worked for most of our lifetimes. If it had worked well, Piketty, Gilens, and Page would not have raised the alarms that their works bring forth.

And those who hold out hope for changing the Democratic Party must surely see the unlikelihood of that prospect after six years of a disappointing Democratic administration. Surely, the euphoria of 2008 is now replaced with a justified skepticism.

Instead, advocates for change must add their endorsement and support to third-party movements and extra-electoral action. They must fight to overcome the barriers to democratic expression in the US and the inertia fostered by the occasional electoral circus. Public demonstration of advocacy energizes political life and counters the passivity of purposely narrow electoral participation. Agents of change must understand that defining electoral life merely as marginal campaign engagement and dutiful voting serves well the ruling elites. The lack of a vocal, militant, and disruptive peace and anti-war movement, for example, has given US militarism a free hand throughout the world.

The potentially most game-changing mass group-- organized labor-- cannot lead us to a new road without undergoing substantial change. Business unionism, class collaboration, partnership-- call it what you like-- has shortchanged working people, contributing to the erosion of US democracy. The Gilens and Page study shows that economic elites like monopoly corporations do not compromise their interests-- they insist on and get what they want through the US political system. With both enormous economic resources and unfettered political clout, US corporations are not inclined to “negotiate.” They are equipped for and disposed toward class struggle, even if the trade union leadership is not.

Only through a radical change in the ideology and tactics of organized labor will an answer to expanding inequality and shrinking democracy be found.

History shows that the socialist option-- a movement to sweep unjust inequality away by strangling capitalism-- serves as an ever useful prod to “liberalizing” bourgeois democracy and engaging social justice. The progressive gains laid claim to by the Democratic Party in the US were forced upon the political agenda by Communists, socialists, and other radical critics of the capitalist order. Republican and Democratic leaders are not inclined to fault or correct capitalism without organized anti-capitalist pressure. From the New Deal to the War on Poverty, concessions to the masses, to democracy and social justice, were accepted to counter the internal or external influence, pressure, or leadership of a radical left.

The revitalization of the movement for socialism, therefore, counts as a vital and urgent component of the fight for social justice and democracy.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com