The Pathologies of Capitalism

Capitalism owes its resilience to its ability to devise novel tactics to deflect, distort, and deflate mass resistance. Even with the casualties of global capitalism mounting, capitalism’s fixers have channeled public dissatisfaction and disappointment into private diminished self-worth and self-destructiveness.

London Review of Books reviewer, Katrina Forrester, aptly captures this insidious ploy: when faced with oppression and exploitation “Don’t join a union, pop a pill.” In her perceptive review of William Davies’ The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Wellbeing (22 October 2015) she exposes the wide spread practice of defining rebellious behavior or negative attitudes as psychological disorders. “...if you’re not happy, wish things were different, or find it hard to adapt to the conditions of modern life, you may be diagnosed as suffering from a mental illness.”

More and more often, academics and therapists have accepted the notion that depression or dysfunctional behavior is a mark of mental problems regardless of the causes of the behavior or attitude. They “…think of unhappiness as a pathology, a psychological or mental state amenable to behavioral and medical intervention. This is the logic that underpins the growth of the ‘happiness industry.’” Thus, for example, when an Iraqi mother loses two sons fighting a foreign occupier, when her personal security is constantly threatened, and living conditions continue to deteriorate, her unhappiness is pathological. It is not the horrid conditions of her life (conditions which could have been avoided or can be altered), but her “negative” feelings that must be changed.

As Forrester points out, “Many people are unhappy for good reasons, which the new therapeutic practices of the happiness industry largely ignore.”

She goes on:

Where once the solution to unhappiness at work was social reform and collective action, now it’s individual uplift and “resilience”; when we want to resist, we don’t join a union but call in sick. If you lose your job and feel demoralized at the prospect of looking for a new one, that too might be a diagnosable condition.

Forrester reports that in the UK some have taken to rebranding unemployment as a psychological disorder with claimants’ “attitude to work” used as a determinant of benefit worthiness.

While appreciative of the book under review, Forrester faults the author for his weak answer to the happiness industry. Rather than recognizing that happiness-obsession serves capitalism by trivializing capital’s destructive nature, William Davies sees it as somehow a threat to democracy. By touting “democratizing” the work place, Davies joins all social democrats in assiduously avoiding placing capitalism’s pathologies at capitalism’s doorsteps. And Forrester sees this flaw clearly: “Happiness and depression are tied up with capital in ways far more concrete than Davies allows.”

Pathological Blowback

It is no secret that whites have often been the most socially compliant demographic group. Middle-aged white people are today inclined to cling to the dominant ideological narrative, to support the ruling class “verities.” But they are paying a heavy price for the trust that they have placed in wealth and power.

A recent study, Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century, shows that whites, especially less educated whites, between the ages of 45 to 54 have suffered a dramatic increase in mortality since 1999. The authors, Professors Case and Deaton, argue that much of this increase is caused by an over four-fold increase of drug and alcohol overdoses, an over 50% increase in suicides, and an over 25% increase of chronic liver disease. Further, they have related this abuse to mental-health problems and problems in handling personal difficulties, especially economic stresses.

Case and Deaton speculate that increased mortality may have caused 488,500 deaths that could have been avoided between 1999 and 2013—what the anti-Soviet Kremlinologists of the Cold War era would label “unnecessary deaths.”

While there is much alarm in the mainstream academic and social work community, there are few theories about how such mass “unhappiness” could occur and about how to arrest it.

But is it really that difficult to discern the causes of this mental health epidemic?

Should it be a surprise that white people who came of age during and after the Reagan era of fanatical US boosterism, who experienced the period where all social questions were settled with the mantra “Are YOU better off now?”, and who endured a time when personal “success” trumped social relations and social responsibilities, would now find disappointment, even despair in the unrelenting crises of the twenty-first century?

Capitalism fostered an ever-present trend of alienation, isolation, and subjectivism that accelerated dramatically over the last forty years. Extreme competitiveness for jobs, status, and power nurtured the virus of selfishness and insensitivity. In the Hobbesian State of Nature that ensued, many were consumed by ruthless competition—the struggle for success. Those who were “losers”—and there must be losers, if there are winners—were stripped of their self-worth.  

With the promise of boundless prosperity and the ideology of self-advancement rocked by two devastating economic crises in the first decade of the twenty-first century, those most committed to this faith were devastated. Harsh realities caught up with the fairy tales spun by capitalism’s apologists. For those seeing no options, alcohol, drugs, and suicide became an answer.  

But causes of this epidemic are not found in the soul or mind, but in capitalism. And solutions are not found on the therapist’s couch, in self-help sessions, the drug store or the bottle, but in creating a world where everyone has a welcoming, useful, and satisfying place. That place will never be found where capitalism reigns.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Is There Life After Social Democracy?

“Labour's problems aren't very different from those of other Western social democratic parties... In this sense we are experiencing not merely a crisis of the British state but also a general crisis of social democracy” (Labour Vanishes, Ross McKibbin, London Review of Books, November 20, 2014).

McKibbin's summary assessment of social democracy is both keen and cogent. Social democracy, the political expression of twentieth-century anti-Communist reformism, has arrived at a juncture that challenges its vision as well as its political vitality. In McKibbin's words: “Over the last twenty or thirty years the great social democratic parties of Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand (and now France) have bled support...” One could add, though in a less dramatic way, the ersatz US social democratic party, the Democratic Party.

In a real sense, social democracy drew its energy from its posture as an alternative to Communism. For various reasons-- fear of change, anti-Communist demonology, ignorance, imagined self-interest-- many of those disadvantaged by capitalism took refuge in the tame, gradualist, and militantly anti-Communist parties claiming space on the left. By advocating an easy parliamentary approach, charting a cautious, non-confrontational road, and enveloping the effort with civility, social democratic thinkers believe they can win popularity and smooth the sharp edges of capitalism.

After the founding of the Soviet Union and the birth of international Communist parties-- many of them mass parties-- the old Socialist International hewed to a reformist line that separated it from Communism while posing as advocates on the side of the workers and for socialism. Parliamentary successes followed from the adoption of moderation and the condemnation of Communism, a lesson learned only too well by practical leaders.

The model for social democracy after the Bolshevik revolution was undoubtedly the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Assuming power after the abdication of the Kaiser, the SPD swiftly suppressed the revolutionary zeal of the masses and established a parliamentary regime. By suppressing Communism, the SPD sought to accommodate the hysterical fears of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, a tactic destined to permeate social democratic thinking to this day. Despite being the largest party bloc in the Reichstag until July of 1932, neither appeasement of the right nor “responsibly” overseeing a capitalist economy under great duress would rescue the SPD and Germany from the rise of Nazism. Social democrats are fond of blaming the SPD's failure on the militant left or right-wing extremism, but they willfully ignore the blatant fact-- equally true today-- that people turn away from centrist parties when they fail to keep their promises. Ruling Germany became more the goal of the SPD than ruling it well and in the interest of Germany's working people.

With Communists' resistance to fascism earning the respect and trust of the people, as it did throughout most of Europe, social democracy fared poorly after the War. It is well established today that where European social democratic parties were prepared to distance themselves loudly and forcefully from collaborating with Communists, “friends” in the US were only too happy to give them covert and overt aid. The CIA and the host of other acronymic entities created by the US government to subvert anti-capitalist and pro-labor activities worldwide found willing collaborators in social democratic parties, especially among those who clearly identified Communist success with social democratic failure. It was not long before the opportunism of anti-Communism infected the entire social democratic movement: In 1951, the Socialist International formally dissociated itself from Communism, characterizing it as terrorist, bureaucratic, imperialistic, and freedom-destroying. Articles 7, 8, 9, and 10 of the Frankfort Declaration excommunicate Communism, condemning it to the netherworld with all of the fervor of the Inquisition.

But opportunism begets opportunism. By 1959 any pretense of socialism was erased from the grandfather of social democratic parties, the SPD. With the Godesberg program, the SPD effectively renounced a commitment to socialism, replacing it with vague notions of social justice and allusions to democratic advances. German social democracy thus made its peace with capitalism, under the banner of anti-Communism, and would, henceforth, pledge to never stray from the path of reform.

Nearly all other socialist and social democratic parties followed suit. In place of socialism, the doctrine of social welfare emerged as a tepid surrogate for eliminating exploitation from social and economic relations. Social democracy created an artificial, divisive wall between marginally well-off working people-- the so-called “middle class”-- and their more destitute class brothers and sisters. Instead of expropriating the expropriators, social democracy insists that the burden of pacifying the poor should be borne socially, with much of that burden falling on working class families.

Class, like socialism, was relegated to the dustbin. In its place was the concept of civil society with markets determining social status, compensation, and the distribution of goods and services. Those who lacked the physical or mental assets to compete for the “opportunities” afforded by markets were supposed to be protected by a metaphorical societal “safety net,” a set of programs designed to guarantee a marginal life for those alleged to be lacking competitive skills or spirit. Thus, the cry of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” so inspirational in the French Revolution, was diluted centuries later to the liberty of markets, the equality of the jungle, and the selfishness of individualism. The only vestige of eighteenth-century humanism remaining in social democratic theory is a shabby, porous net that guarantees that “losers” in the game of life will remain losers.

For decades, the supposed shining star in the social democratic firmament was Sweden. The myth of Swedish “socialism” sustained the few claims to social justice remaining intact with the soft left's assumption of the role of capitalism's handmaiden. Whatever credibility this view might have enjoyed was devastatingly punctured by an article written by Peter Cohen in the July-August 1994 issue of Monthly Review (Sweden: The Model that Never Was). Taking two Pollyanna articles from the previous year to task, Cohen, a long-time resident of Sweden, states emphatically: “Like all European Social Democratic Parties, the SAP [Social Democratic Workers Party] not only accepts capitalism but defends it against any attempt at change. The party has always argued that what is good for Swedish corporations is good for the Swedish working class.”

Cohen presages the fate of the US and European working classes when he explains that the SAP has always accepted that class collaboration “requires the working class to accept cutbacks-- of all types-- when corporate profits decline, and even when they don't.” Cohen outlines the virulent anti-Communism in the SAP that led it to support internment of Communists in WWII and work hand-in-glove with US Cold Warriors, citing its support for Pinochet's government and hostility to Portugal's revolution.

The SAP instituted the so-called “solidarity wage policy,” a cynical leveling of workers' wages within the total wage package. Cohen explains: “The “solidarity wage” does not affect the imbalance of income between workers and capitalists. It only redistributes wages between different groups of workers. It also makes the SAP look like a dedicated defender of the workers' interests.”

Cohen documents the role of the SAP in introducing private schools into the Swedish education system, in pro-capitalist tax “reform,” and in weakening Swedish social insurance (the “safety net”).

He cites the SAP's call (now ubiquitous in all capitalist countries) to retard workers' compensation in the interests of “competitiveness.”

Cohen's remarkable article is uncannily prescient of the evolution of social democracy over the two decades to follow his article, an evolution of closer and closer class collaboration. In his words: “The table manners shown by the strong in the course of their meal may be more attractive in countries with Social Democratic governments, but the digestive process is the same.”

It is tempting to see this development as a mutation of the social democratic ideal, as a departure.

It is not.

Instead, it is the trajectory of social democracy in a world where the specter of Communism has ebbed. Without pressure from the left, social democratic parties shed all pretense of representing the working class against capital and political power. Today, social democratic parties-- like the US Democratic Party-- function under the illusion that Europe and North America are classless societies, while acknowledging the problem of poverty plaguing the so-called “underclass.” Absent an aggressive commitment to resource redistribution, the 2007-2008 economic crisis has caught the moderate left in the vise of either imposing additional burdens on the majority to help the poor or ignoring their increasing desperation. To a great extent, they have chosen to ignore growing poverty while aiding capital in its effort to extract itself from the mire of global crisis. In essence, social democrats believe that capitalism can be steered out of the crisis without seriously modifying the existing relationship between capital and workers.

For workers seduced by social democracy, the romance has proven truly tragic. A partnership with capital combined with a commitment to buffering capital's “excesses” proves to be an extravagant self-deception; capital accepts no such concession. Rather than delivering capitalism with a human face, the architects of anti-Communist reformism have delivered division, concession, austerity, hardship, and imperial aggression.

But even more tragically, the failure of the social democratic project drives far too many people, including disillusioned workers, toward the extreme right, fascism, and neo-Nazism. Throughout Europe and the US, working people thirsting for answers have been betrayed by reformism. Unfortunately, they far too often turn to the right, a turn that conjures eerie images of the rise of fascism between the Wars.

Workers deserve a better option.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com