An involuntary bargain

We cling firmly to our ideologies, and see competing ones as inferior. The choice is usually to wall it off, and not leave it open to questioning. History is on the side of the second. Ideologies, if worth defending, can withstand reasoned argument. Too often, in the current state of affairs, this goes missing. In its place is argument by slur based on the dogma of the dominant society. The aim is not even to win the argument. It’s to stop it.

Politicians will routinely flatter the American people that we are the smartest and most creative people in the world, but we can’t decide anything. Oh, we can vote for president, but that’s the only input we’re permitted on the national level. It’s our “civic duty” to show up once every 1,460 days.

The lesson of history is that whenever power is invested in the few over the many, there exists the potential for abuse of that power. No so-called system of checks and balances can obviate this. We have more or less accustomed ourselves to this perennial imbalance. Call it an involuntary bargain.

So how are we doing as a society? What is the current state? Are things the way they should be, or should they be different?

The American list of socialisms is long and sturdy (fire, police, post office, public schools and universities, community colleges, public parks, water supplies and sewers, social security, medicare), the product of the hard fought battles to secure it.

To what, then, does socialism owe its bad name? I suggest, the strains of capitalism. Capital, responsible for the grotesque and indefensible rising worldwide gap between haves and have nots, endless resource wars, and the looming perils of climate catastrophe and nuclear annihilation, has no response other than to demonize its alternative, socialism.

The American public is assumed to be schizophrenic, benefitting from social programs without seeing them as socialist, while selling their labor, punching clocks, and gratefully clipping coupons that corporate marketing geniuses have designed.

Here’s what it amounts to. Capital has to push so hard against socialism precisely because the socialist idea is so persuasive. Its spirit is, in essence, that the rich should not appropriate from the poor. It’s a reaction against that which has always characterized the relation between oppressor and oppressed.

For all its violent and racist underpinnings, the United States of America is premised on beautiful, humanistic ideals. This is another form of schizophrenia, the America that is beautiful and the America that is ugly. Its economy in the past century was able to create a great middle class, with rising living standards.

Along with the contentment bred by rising living standards, we were educated to believe that a communist menace threatened our way of life. We didn’t bother to ask why a different economic system in a different and far off country would threaten our way of life here. The word, imperialism, was never mentioned. Now we know. How can you rule the world when other countries want a piece of it too?

Propagandists know the best way to demonize socialism. They ask, show me a single example of a successful socialism? Well, there hasn’t been one. That is, there hasn’t been a socialism in modern society. Not one that was allowed to exist. The easy ones were snuffed out, or wrecked beyond repair. The former Soviet Union called itself socialist for its moral prestige, and the United States called it socialist to demonize it. Presently, Russia and China practice state capitalism. North Korea calls itself communist, but Karl Marx wouldn’t recognize it.

A better question for the times is, show me a single example of a successful capitalism in the 21st century? For this metric, every billionaire, every nuclear warhead, every celebrity, every surveillance camera, every public relations firm, and everyone in prison count as failures of society.

Do we have reason to fear our own government? Turn this around, if you please, because a government should fear its people. It can become very unhealthy when it doesn’t. It’s everyone’s involuntary bargain.

James Rothenberg resides in North Chatham.