Safety in Complexity?

As has been seen, any group we choose to call the "middle class" is so large as to be of little analytical help. Nor do the huge majority who are not rich qualify as a class. Moreover, there remains a very well-paid tier of corporate executives between them and the truly rich. Yet, along with the increased concentration of wealth, we are seeing millions of Americans being laid off, settling for lower paying jobs, losing health coverage, and watching pensions evaporate. Economic inequality is increasing, just as the millions who are born and stay poor are not getting anything like a fair chance to improve their situation. Victims of outsourcing don't fit into a single class, nor do the people who suffer most from living in a society that is increasingly unequal and unjust. To see these trends as matters of class does not explain them. What is clear is that we have yet to see any convincing ways of reversing them.

This excerpt is taken from a NYRB article by Andrew Hacker.  The article itself talks about the difficulties of working with the word "class" in trying to understand our situation in the U.S., to wit:  it's complicated. In a way I find it reassuring that the situation is complex enough that it doesn't fall into some easy analysis.  The more complex things are, the more difficult to control, and so whatever my concerns about the aggregation of power into the hands of fewer and fewer people, the one thing that works in favor of the common good is the complexity and dynamism of the larger society. And clearly the America of 2006 is far more complex than the America of 1906, when a discussion of class would have been a more manageable topic. 

But for my purposes, whether class is the right word for it, the issue is power, not manners or even wealth.  I think it is possible to talk about a power elite in this country.  It's an elite that is created by a system, and so the personalities don't matter so much as the system.  The personalities serve the system and the system demands more control and more power, and the personalities do what they can to feed the system, and they in turn are rewarded with great wealth. 

In the end, it's the system that's the enemy, not the personalities.In the end, the system runs the people, even those in its highest positions.  No one is really in control.  For me a progressive politics is about getting human beings in control of the system rather than continuing to allow the system to dictate the rules.  Libertarianism is the ideology of those who think it's better to let the system do its thing with as little human interference as possible.  Libertarianism, therefore, is the ideology of accommodation.

Wealth matters, but power matters more.  And lots of wealthy people don't care about power.  They just use their wealth for their own high-priced bread and circuses. They don't concern me. They vote for their own interests, but their numbers are not significant enough to effect electoral outcomes.What bothers me is how those who serve the system have got hold of the primary information channels and have convinced people that their interests lie with accommodating themselves to the existing power sytem.   And so the fact of having money is itself insignificant.  The more important question is not who has money, but who controls certain essential fulcrums of power.  And I would like to suggest that in our society the two main fulcrums in the power system are energy and information. What else is it more important to consolidate control over?  Are there any other sectors in our political economy that are more important than these?  Maybe, but these two are what worry me the most right now. 

In premodern societies, land was the power fulcrum, and the more you had of it, the more powerful you were, and with that power came wealth. And politics was about acquiring more land, and in centralizing control of a given territory in a hierarchical system of land-based vassalage.  That was the system, and everyone, high and low, served it. The modern period is the story of the shift of the power fulcrum from land and territorial acquisition for their markets and resources to a system in which the fulcrum was increasingly mobile capital, and then from a state-centered mercantilist model to a private-sector- centered, laisser-faire capitalist model.  The key tensions in the modern period have been between stability and mobility on the one hand, and on the other, the central role of the state vs. the role of the market.   

This first part of this tension is represented by an inclination of mind that could be associated with Hamilton, Lincoln, and Keynes/FDR/LBJ--namely that the central government plays an important role in regulating the economy for the prosperity and well being of its citizens, and it has an interest in preserving a certain level of stability. You would think that this would be the conservative position, but it's associated with the misnomer Liberalism.

The second habit of mind that would be associated with Adam Smith, William McKinley/Mark Hanna, and Friedman/Thatcher/Reagan in which market mechanisms are allowed free rein. This is classic Liberalism, but in this country it's what we call conservatism.  This group promotes the social dynamics that more than any other destroy traditions and foster social instability.  It's the group that promotes  the forces of creative destruction, as Schumpeter called them, which is what the market left to itself unleashes for better or worse. 

It does indeed create wealth but at the same time it destroys traditional social structures and the stability associated with them.  How the second group got traditionalist conservatives to back their program is one of the great propaganda coups of modern times.  Perhaps the key to conservative support for this program is how it inevitably leads to oligarchy. Because really the terms 'conservative' and 'liberal' have become almost completely useless except as rough designations for right and left. 

What we have, really, is two groups--those inclined toward authoritarianism and oligarchy, and those inclined toward  democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law. To me that's the only distinction that matters, no matter what label we give them, and it's time for people to decide which side they're on.  And it should be clear that the whole system since 1980 is trending in the authoritarian direction: The market promotes chaos and the law of the jungle, and in that scenario private parties have the scope to accumulate enough power to dominate the system. I do not think of principled conservatives as consciously supporting the tendency toward a right-wing authoritarian or oligarchic forms of government, but that's what their support of the GOP agenda leads to. For me nothing could be clearer.

In any event, the main problem associated with the first FDR/LBJ group is a tendency for the central government to overstep its bounds and in interfering where it has no business.  I think there is a lot of valid conservative criticism of some of the social engineering projects associated with LBJ's New Society. But that's not what we have to worry about now. In the historical cycle since 1980, we've been dominated by the habit of mind of the second Reagan/Thatcher group, and we're seeing the problems associated with it come to fruition.

There are some early rumblings that the failures of the last six years have completely discredited this group. You'd think so, but I'm not so sure.  They are not going to go away, and the fundamental structural conditions remain that promote the agenda of the system.  The Democrats, insofar as they have lost the allegiance of so many working Americans, have been forced to ground themselves elsewhere, and this has driven them into the hands of Big Money.  This is what the DLC trend in the Democratic Party represents.  The DLC think they are being realistic, and the rest of us are naive idealists, but they've been coopted. They are surrendering to rather than fighting the forces that are destroying our democracy.  There are lots of practical reasons to hope the Dems take back congress in November, but their doing so hardly solves the more fundamental systemic problem, and they have no motivation to deal with it because it feeds them.

But back to the earlier theme about class.  This is the only important thing to remember about it:  it's not about the wealth; it's about the power system. The power system rewards those who feed it with wealth.   And the key fulcrums in the power system right now are communications media and energy.  There are other systems playing supporting roles, but those to areas are key.  We can discuss the fine points, but it's worrisome to see how much influence the energy sector has in shaping American policy, and it's worrisome to see the consolidation trends in the corporate media, which more and more serves the underlying agenda of of the power system.

But what do others think?  Is American society too complex to worry about the aggregation of power into the hands of a few?  Or is it possible to boil a complex situation down to a few key elements, like communications and energy?  I've state the thesis--anybody want to lay out the antithesis? The bottom line is that we all begin to get a better sense about what we're dealing with here.  If you don't understand the problem, you can't frame an effective solution.

Comments

[Joshua]

"But back to the earlier theme about class: this is the only important thing to remember about it. it's not about the wealth; it's about the power."

It seems to me that the relationship between wealth and power is analogous to the relationship between potential energy and kinetic energy in Newtonian physics. In both cases, only the latter is realized, but the former is not something that can just be ignored, because under the right circumstances that potential energy could someday be released, i.e. converted into kinetic energy.

The reason so many people fear great accumulations of wealth isn't necessarily because they assume wealth automatically makes one powerful. It's because people recognize that, given the right motivation (say, a perceived threat to that wealth), wealthy people who today may be content merely to "go fishing in their own way" could change their minds at any time, and set out to convert the potential energy of their wealth into the kinetic energy of real political power, and not necessarily to the benefit of all.

Of course, money is not the only source of political "potential energy". Values, religious beliefs, emotions and even human psychological vulnerabilities are also great sources, at least for politicians who know how to tap into them. The TCS Daily article I linked to in my comment to "Reality's Liberal Bias" describes how populist socialists have harnessed these other sources of political potential energy. This is the sort of potential energy that creates and sustains runaway leaders like Hugo Chavez. It should go without saying that libertarians fear this sort of potential energy for the same reason others fear the potential energy of wealth.

Our Constitution was designed to deal mainly with the kinetic energy of actualized political power. The trouble is that it seems to be sorely lacking in the ability to cope with the vast amounts of potential energy stored in our political system, be it money, religion fear, or what have you - energy which could be released at any time, given the right circumstances, to potentially devastating effect.

[Jack Whelan]

Joshua--

I agree, and I liked the "potential energy" metaphor. And you're right that the challenge is to tap into the political energy in a way that brings the most positive results. We are are also right to fear that it might otherwise be used to promote devastating results.

We're seeing it right now. And a big part of it is because there is no effective vehicle for channeling the potential power that you and I and all the others have who can't stand what's happening, but can't stop it. Our power is too diffused the power of the corporate media and other power fulcrums is fare more concentrated and all the more potent for that. And some "people power" movement would be impossible to bring to bear on issues as complex and subtle as those which we are dealing with now. It's in the interest of the few with concentrated actual power to keep diffuse the greater potential power of the broader population. Watch what happens as soon as some kind of potent opposition starts to organize. It will be discredited and dismissed faster than you can say Noam Chomsky. All right minded people will be told to eschew such extremism, and they will be lulled back to sleep.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

I think your framework needs to be used for this question.

I think in the ECONOMIC SPHERE, it is about the system.

But in the POLITICAL SPHERE, it is about the people in charge (and who run for office).

The CULTURAL SPHERE needs to afford people the time and the space with which to be able to apprehend and grapple with the complexities and urgencies of modern politico-economic life and the mixture of messages and policies that flow from them.

It almost surely is the most remote of possibilities, with virtually no chance of happening, but it IS the answer to fundamental problems in America: POLITICIANS EXPLAINING ISSUES, TRULY MEETING VOTERS HALFWAY, DEBATING LIKE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS AND NOT BUSH-KERRY (OR GORE), AND GENERALLY BEING LEADER-LIKE SERVANTS OF THE COMMON GOOD.

That IS the answer. It's just not an answer likely to be actualized anytime soon. Just see Hillary, the corporate whore, ----ing Rupert in an orgy of money and power.