Corporate Counterattack Continues
An Institute for New
Economic Thinking article
summarizing historian Nancy Maclean’s new book (Democracy
in Chains) about Nobel Laureate economist James Buchanan gives us
glimpse at one possible big picture framing for current events.
It helps us see
common threads loosely connecting the otherwise incoherent thinking and talking
and acting on the far right, now sadly and increasingly including our current
president (who formerly had no real ideology but now appears to have been
seduced by the most craven wing of his plutocratic country club pals).
If it feels like everything we have been building since WWII
is crumbling around us. This story suggests this is not far from the truth…and
since this crumbling benefits some as it harms others…not by accident.
Everything? Really? That is the plan.
“Buchanan focused on such affronts to capitalists as
environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to
dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public
education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go,
too. Buchanan considered it a socialist project.”
Unlike ‘sunny’ libertarians like Ayn Rand, this strand, with
generous Koch funding, is uninterested in making government efficient and only
interested in “tearing it out at the root.” Thus, the communication strategy of
identifying government as ‘the problem’ to undercut efforts to use government institutions
to craft democratic solutions. The root to tear out is democratic decision
making—powerful government (under the unconstrained control of the wealthy) will
still be needed to, as political scientist Ira Katznelson once said, ‘manage
the consequences of choosing to live in a capitalist society,’
In case this seems like we must be putting words into
Buchanan’s mouth, here is him in his own words: “Despotism may be the only
organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe,” the
economist had written in The Limits of Liberty.
In The
Republican Noise Machine, David Brock (a former journalist for the
far-right) outlines the communication strategy: sow doubt, distrust and
confusion to gradually reduce confidence in the institutions and processes and
attitudes and behaviors of democratic governance (think civility crisis today,
and its most triumphant practitioner—our president).
In Distorting
the Law, we see a brilliant analysis of just one prong (the tort reform
movement) in this loosely coordinated effort.
These two books make it clear that today’s most familiar
talking heads, expert commentators, think tank scholars, ‘news’ networks (Fox,
Washington Times) and interest group lobbyists did not get there by accident. Dominating
the news media, the same forces created their own publishing houses and changed
law (eliminated the Fairness Doctrine for instance) to make it possible for
talk radio and cable news to explode. Combined with well-funded training for
federal judges, academics, journalists…an alternative information system was
created—from K-16, news and entertainment, scholarly and applied.
“The Koch-funded Virginia school coached scholars, lawyers,
politicians, and business people to apply stark right-wing perspectives on
everything from deficits to taxes to school privatization.”
In today’s news we read about Republican efforts to pass a constitutional
amendment requiring government budgets to balance each year. While this sounds
like an idea worth considering, it is a Trojan horse to make it impossible for
democratic governance to work. Just like endless budget cutting of public
schools has resulted in a loss of confidence in public schools and more calls
to cut their budgets, this is an effort to impoverish the public sector so it
cannot challenge, let alone constraint, wealthy plutocrats.
This is not new. But it is happening like a slow burn. In
some ways this is always happening: rust never sleeps. Democracy is not the
next step on a steady progression of human history. It has always been the
product of a struggle. And there is no reason to imagine we are somehow immune
from the outcomes of this struggle we observe elsewhere.
“MacLean illustrates that in South America, Buchanan was
able to first truly set his ideas in motion by helping a bare-knuckles
dictatorship ensure the permanence of much of the radical transformation it
inflicted on a country that had been a beacon of social progress. The historian
emphasizes that Buchanan’s role in the disastrous Pinochet government of Chile
has been underestimated partly because unlike Milton Friedman, who advertised
his activities, Buchanan had the shrewdness to keep his involvement quiet. With
his guidance, the military junta deployed public choice economics in the
creation of a new constitution, which required balanced budgets and thereby
prevented the government from spending to meet public needs. Supermajorities
would be required for any changes of substance, leaving the public little
recourse to challenge programs like the privatization of social security.”
This is a sustained assault on shared values and community.
A sustained assault on environmentalism and public health because the wealthy (falsely)
believe they can insulate themselves from the dangers in private enclaves. An eagerness
to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and public education,
however, does create public harms that private enclaves (with a strong government
enforcement power) might provide protection against.
And as we privatize all of these, on the ‘reasonable’
argument that this is prudent fiscal policy, we also expand police powers,
suppress voting turnout and voting rights, manufacture a crisis in public
retirement plans, compel arbitration to deny due process, denying clean air and
water, living wages and decent housing, allowing our public infrastructure to
crumble, because there is a deeper conflict in play here. Taking these changes
together we…
“radically alter power relations, weakening pro-public
forces and enhancing the lobbying power and commitment of the corporations that
take over public services and resources, thus advancing the plans to dismantle
democracy and make way for a return to oligarchy. The majority will be held
captive so that the wealthy can finally be free to do as they please, no matter
how destructive.”
Buchanan and others like him provide the scholarly support
for these policies. We should not take this lightly, simply because we are
offended by what appears to be an unsustainable cold-heartedness.
MacLean interprets an essay by Buchanan to mean that people
who “failed to foresee and save money for their future needs” are to be
treated, as Buchanan put it, “as subordinate members of the species, akin
to…animals who are dependent.’”
This is the type of sound bite that seems to make sense. It
silences someone in an argument. But it really only makes sense in retrospect.
After one has already stumbled into a comfortable place in the world, it becomes
a lot easier to forget all the lucky breaks, to overlook how clueless we were
most of the time, and in doing so make it possible to judge uncomfortable
others as lazy failures who just needed to plan ahead.
This article was worth reading. Makes me want to read
MacLean’s book.
Since I am always astonished at the crazy conspiracy
theories that get traction, I wonder, is this my own private conspiracy theory?
Am I failing to see this as a crazy notion because it makes sense to me and is
that what is going on with others I see as just losing their minds or hateful?
A question for another time.
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