Americans continue to find it difficult to find good jobs. Those who have jobs continue to find that their share of the economic pie continues to shrink. Republicans insist that, should the Obama administration have followed their economic policies, the economy would be recovering. It is likely that a good number of Americans will agree; completely forgetting that several decades of following Republican monetary policy is what devastated the economy in the first place.
Democrats don’t seem to have a lot to say, which is understandable. For the most part Obama and the Democrats have also followed Republican economic policy. The tax code remains mostly the same, as do banking regulations and government tax support of particular industries and corporations while ignoring others. The reality is both the Republican and Democratic leadership are ardent supply-side capitalists; they are the infamous 1%.
All of the political leadership in this country believes that capitalism is the source for all political, moral and social policy as well as all economic policy. Maybe that is the real problem?
Capitalism as an economic system works pretty well. It provides incentive and rewards for those who provide innovative answers to societies problems; those who design new goods and services, those who dream up new systems of interaction and communications. This kind of capitalism doesn’t wait for, or depend on, groups or governments or corporations to come up with new ideas. Therein lay its strength.
But capitalism is all about profit and rewards, which means it is essentially egocentric and selfish. As such it has little to offer when it comes to governing. It has little to offer when it comes to structuring a society. And it has nothing to offer when it comes to social justice, morality, the picking of allies and enemies, or the expansion of human rights and liberty. Indeed, history has demonstrated time and time again that capitalism will gladly sacrifice justice, civil rights and liberty if profits can be made by doing so. It follows then that governing and building and supporting a civil society, has little to do with capitalism. Yet both political parties are completely sold to the idea that capitalism is the end all and be all to all aspects of society. Until we abandon that idea the country will continue to suffer and falter, drifting away from civil rights and liberties, and sinking slowly under the politics of hate and division.
How that happens with the current political leadership is the question. I don’t think it can. Obama is as fully indoctrinated into the “capitalism only” ideology as is Romney. Americans are pretty much united in the consensus that the current policies have failed, but neither party offers an alternative. No matter who one votes for, one is voting for the capitalist, the 1%, those at the top of the economic ladder who are committed to staying there at any cost. And unfortunately they think they can only stay there at the expense of everyone else.
This all-encompassing worship of capitalism is reflected in another bit of American propaganda; that capitalism and democracy must go hand in hand, that one cannot exist without the other. It sounds good and certainly serves the purposes of America's ruling elite, but it does seem to ignore much of the rest of the world. In the west many countries decried by America's right wing as "socialist" still manage to be thriving democracies. (Given that many are much more sensitive to corruption one might argue their form of democracy is much more healthy than is ours.) On the other hand China is moving forward with many capitalist reforms; but democratic reform is still far off.
Democracy is a political system where the population has at least as much to say about how society is ordered as do the political leaders. This can work out exceedingly well but, as history as shown over and over, there is no guarantee that it will. Capitalism, at least as it is practiced in the US, is an economic system that is run by the capitalists. As such it is, at least on this fundamental level, the opposite of democracy. Indeed, in any tyrannical political system the ruling elite end up looting the resources of the society, hording most of the goodies and living grotesquely opulent lives at the expense of the population.
In that sense capitalism in the US has simply become a tool used a different breed of tyrant to consolidate power. It has become incompatible with a free society. There are only two possible outcomes. The tyrants can lose as people free themselves from the illusion that profits have something to do with building a just, free and long lasting society. Right now that would mean both political parties in the US would lose.
Or the tyrants can win. Since there is no alternative to the two political parties in the US it seems pretty likely that the tyrants will win.
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