( It should be noted that this article was written in early June but just published today, well before the start of global climate catastrophes over much of the Northern Hemisphere.)
While we struggle to save what’s left of our Democracy, it’s worth remembering how/why we got into the current and perhaps inevitable life and death struggle, which is playing out not just in America but in the rest of the world. While challenged by major progressive, labor and even socialist struggles in the19th and especially in the 20th Century, capitalism has prevailed and still dominates the world economy and way of life.
And while today’s computer advances can also be traced to industrial progress and new related technologies, the problems generated by the tremendous class imbalances in wealth and power have created a deadly planetary situation. There has also been an almost complete failure to address the environmental consequences of imbalanced profit-dependent-development which has brought us to a point in which the very future of the planet is at stake.
The dominant grip capitalist, reactionary and fascist elements in the ruling elites have on media, politics, information and patriarchal cultural values play a deadly role in blocking efforts to save our country and our planet. The possessors of the ultimate power in society, those who control both governments and wealth, have largely demonstrated their premeditated denial of the pending world-wide disasters that await us even if we avoid a third World War. Some nations pay lip service to the combatting the crisis and some have even taken modest steps to stem the tide of global warming, especially in Europe, but it has clearly not been enough. Add to that the fact that industrialization based on the profit motive has failed miserably at stemming the tide of the environmental pollution and destruction it has wrought and has already contributed over time to millions of premature deaths from unhealthy man-made conditions and cancers caused by industrially produced toxicity.
Why Capitalism Does What it Does
The golden rule of capitalism is to make the highest profits it can and often by any means necessary as argued by the Orwellian Gordon Gekko character in the movie Wall Street. It is a fundamentally imbalanced system that does this by exploiting various forms of labor and natural resources, doing as a rule, as little as possible to neutralize the environmental consequences and paying/providing as little as possible to its workers. It naturally resists unionization and regulation, to the point where it uses the exploited wealth of others to influence and “buy” politicians and win elections. Competition also acts to create “wars” between rival capitalists entities and even entire countries. Entities, corporations and businesses rise and fall based on the percentage of profits they can make against a competitor with a similar product or service. Individual capitalist owners may have principles and moral values, but the system itself works counter to them and often cancels out any existing moral principles or goals that can be applied.
Capitalism as a universal business model also has no internal mechanisms, other than the anarchy of the market, to balance wages and standards of living or to guarantee a living wage or full employment, with the overwhelming tendency to accumulate wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. Unless those left out of the benefiting capitalist classes succeed in pressuring concessions from them. Marx called it “class struggle”, but you can call it anything you want to, it cannot be erased from society. Capitalism is also inherently hostile to democracy and sharing its power to mold and manipulate societies. And invests much of its profits, generated by the labor of others, to make sure they are in control of how society is organized. And works 24/7 to pay as little of it profits as possible towards the overall benefit of greater society.
Even the aspiring socialist countries in post WWII found that following Western capitalism’s industrial model combined with the then Soviet Union’s alleged “socialist” model led to vanishing popular support and quickly fell back into an authoritarian state capitalist mode, partly because they inherited a very authoritarian patriarchal cultures to begin with. Same happened to the Soviet Union, under constant attack by Western capitalist nations after its founding. They never really were able to develop a successful socialist form of government and morphed into a Stalinist authoritarian dictatorship for a variety of reasons.
Union Lessons Forgotten?
It is largely forgotten today by millions of Americans who have achieved a higher standard of living that it was the unions which thousands died trying to establish over a protracted historical period beginning in the mid 1850s until the 1930s that made this progressive trend and four terms of FDR possible (I recommend any of the many books by historian Phil Foner). Attempts to form unions were typically repressed by hired thugs as well as local police forces and occasionally the national guard. Union leaders were sometimes assassinated, beaten or imprisoned. Today, labor has little of the power it once has, and is often coopted and corrupted. Progressives, socialists and leftists were mostly purged from them in the early 1950s by mob takeovers and allowed to do their dirty work by corrupt politicians in government, who looked the other way as it was happening. Chief among the culprits in government at the time was believed by many to be then Vice President Richard Nixon, who was believed to have a number of higher up mob connections and given them the green light to do their corrupt dirty work.
Despite some important and successful unionization, even at labor’s height of influence 70% — 75% of Americans remained without union protections. Today, that figure has increased to about 85% to 90% without union protection. This has largely eroded 100 years of labor progress. Real wages adjusted for inflation have been falling while income for the wealthiest Americans has risen dramatically.
Today, the instruments of power, mass media and culture all emphasize the benefits of capitalism and NEVER speaks of the perpetual problems it has also given birth to and perpetuates. The growing dysfunctional nature of our Republic can be traced directly to the influence and corrupting aspects of poorly regulated, market capitalism. It’s one reason Republicans are willing to hide behind racism and bogus conspiracy theories and practice the art of distraction, diversion and bare faced lying. Capitalist interests in many cases also have a corrupting influence on some Democratic politicians. It was the main reason the fragile Democratic majority was unable to pass Biden’s much needed reform legislation.
Capitalism, Progress and Fascism
Capitalist individuals and entities are of course not automatically reactionary or fascist. But the system by itself has no conscience and is like a five headed monster, pulling society’s leaders down the path of crisis, immoral exploitation, environmental destruction, crippling war budgets and war itself. Virtually every positive technology has fallen victim to its misuse. Attempts at building a more socially just society have had some successes but have largely failed to defeat capitalism as the world’s dominant system. Thus, whatever progress has been achieved constantly faces destruction or reversal. Fascism often develops in some of the upper circles of power in a country as a way to defend capitalist domination against popular threats to their control and power, especially in times of crisis.
The Republican movement to embrace fascism can be understood as a tendency led by some powerful capitalist interests to maintain their power in light of progressive trends in America that have increasing potential to threaten it. It is the Republican Party that has come to harbor the most reactionary, backward, racist and sociopathic elements we have in ruling circles and has managed to infect many other Americans with its white supremacist and totalitarian goals. Elements in Market Capitalism sense that labor, long divided by racism, can now be easily smashed along with democracy itself, the mortal enemy of market capitalism.
Fundamental Reform is Essential
It would be a serious miscalculation by those opposed to the fascism of the Republicans not to identify out of control market capitalism and trade union decline as a problematic generator of the move towards fascism and dictatorship. While it may be controversial and a bit naive to think that capitalism will reform itself or morph into something better, fundamental reform in the current context is a progressive idea that could be sold to the mainstream, left and at least win back a decent percentage of voters which have defected from the Democratic Party due to relentless racist Republican propaganda. A new wave of unionism has been percolating in recent years, made up largely of those left out of the past labor movement successes, including millions of African Americans and people of color.
Supporting the overall capitalist system without attaching some important reformist and pro-labor qualifications does not lend a lot of credibility to a political program that addresses our country’s present imbalances and problems. Matters such as the real unemployment rate (much higher in poor neighborhoods), perpetual poverty, inflation, the high cost of prescription drugs and medical care, record low taxes being paid by the wealthy, our humongous military budget, global warming and environmental destruction can all be causally linked to our poorly regulated market-profit-driven capitalism.
* (For the question below, too long to fit into it) Including preserving the Union and Democracy, reproductive rights, gun control, opposing white supremacy, global warming, and inflation.