Greed Makes a Mess of Things

Always has, and always will.

The superwealthy always seem to win in the short run, but they and all the rest of us lose in the long run. The rich do what they do with a predictablility that is driven by the logic of greed, but the rest of us let them because deep down we want to be them because they are life's winners. They are successful, and everybody wants to be successful. People who  care about more important things or define success in other terms, well that's their choice. But it's probably because they don't have the drive, the ambition, and the intelligence to get rich. They're really losers who don't want to admit it.

Americans glorify the greedy by calling them ambitious and spunky, and they perceive anyone who isn't as shiftless, lazy, and deserving whatever misfortune is his lot. And so these Americans, most of whom are not rich, cannot bring themselves to fight the rich because by some bizarre collective Stockholm syndrome they identify with those who hold them hostage. The rich are the winners, the successful ones. They, as hostages, are the losers. And so these Americans come to accept the viciousness of the rich as the virtue that they lack. No decent American would say it, but deep down, whether they consciously recognize it or not, they believe that "Greed is good."

And that perception of the nobility rather than the viciousness of the wealthy--these 'aristos', these 'optimates', these 'best people'--will continue until we devolve into the inevitable cycle of violent unrest and violent suppression that is the consequence of allowing logic of greed to drive our politics and define success.

America doesn't know what it is anymore; it has lost its idealistic narrative thread. There has always been a viciousness in the American national character, but it was balanced by a robust sense of decency and fairness. But whatever is left of the latter in the political and economic spheres is a kind of tattered memory. And so by default American politics has become driven by the interests of the superwealthy.

The churches used to provide some counterbalance to this American celebration of getting rich, but they are weak and lack credibility except on the far right. But the fanatical religiosity of the nation's right wing has nothing to do with the spirit of Christianity; it's a cargo cult, a Ghost Dance movement, driven by defeated, frightened people obsessed with fantasies of apocalyptic destruction and deliverance. And Liberalism is a spent force--too tied to a now-bancrupt Enlightenment rationalist imagination of reality, and its ranks are filled with sellouts and impotent whiners. The country just does not have the spiritual resources to resist the passionate intensity of the greedy, and so things will just have to cycle out the way these things do.

And so for want of a more compelling narrative, we will continue to revert to the plutocratic historical norm until we're motivated to remember our best selves and retrieve what we've lost. I have no doubt it will happen, but not in my lifetime. The journey back will be painful, but at least interesting. There will be soon enough a clarity we don't have now about about who the good guys and bad guys are. We will come to see the logic of greed for the ugly destructive thing it is.

***

The superwealthy always dominate their respective societies, and the richer the society, the more they dominate the power structure, and the more they use that power to grab for themselves as much as they can. America is no different from any other of history's rich societies. We hear a lot about the "republics" of ancient Greece and Rome and how they were superior to the tyrannies of the barbarians, but those republics were plutocracies. Fifth-century Athens was a bizarre, really bizarre, exception, but the Roman Republic, especially after the Punic Wars, was an unbalanced plutocracy, a wholly owned enterprise of the few hundred superwealthy families in the Senatorial class.

They didn't care at all about the "Republic"; they cared only about their own group prerogatives, and jealously guarded against any one of their group who thought outside the box, e.g., about the broader public good. It wasn't love for the Republic that motivated Caesar's assassins, but a love of their own plutocratic privilege. Caesar diluted those privileges by adding provincials to the Senate and by promoting the political interests of the Populares, the party of the plebs. The Populares,for a good part of the mid first century BC, were for good reason a violently unruly, angry mob because of social conditions created by the greed and short-sightedness of the plutocratic ruling elite. Any rich guy with half a brain saw that it was in his enlightened self interest to redress the imbalances created by the the stupidity and greed of the plutocrats.

Caesar in the mid-first century BC and the Gracchus brothers of the century before were kind of Bobby Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, or Teddy Roosevelt figures: rich guys with mixed motives. They were egoists who loved power, but also intelligent enough to understand that the self-serving, short-sighted policies of their superwealthy class were destroying their respective societies. The greed of the superwealthy always makes a mess of things, and these rich guys emerged and tried to redress some of the imbalances.

In Rome they were destroyed, but in America, until recently, they were actually pretty successful. They pushed back against the superwealthy and ushered in an unprecedented era of broad-based prosperity in the mid-20th century. But the superwealthy on the Right, marginalized as cranks during this period, couldn't stand spreading America's wealth like that. And they used their wealth and power to gradually take the country back. And the rest of us stupidly let them. Everything changed after 1980.

Until then America always had such rich-guys-with-mixed-motives who found ways to push back when the superwealthy were stupidly and shortsightedly grabbing everything for themselves. Not anymore--not any that seem capable of making a difference. But most of the rich will always stupidly and blindly do what they do, and if the rest of us just let them, then we probably deserve what we're going to get--a mess, with all the violent unrest and turmoil that comes with it. What goes around sooner or later comes around.

It won't be boring.

P.S. Digby references an historical essay by Philip Agre that explores this theme from a somewhat different angle. It's an interesting read.

Comments

[Mike McGillicuddy]

Hey Jack:

Is 'middle class' whatever I make and 'rich' one standard deviation higher? Mustn't it be hilarious to much of the rest of the world how Americans in the 90th to 98th percentile in income rage against the 'rich' inhabiting the top 2%?

I endorse your sentiments in this essay and revile American plutocracy as much as the next guy. I favor a much more steeply graduated income tax and I wouldn't blush at estate tax rates that would be broadly described as confiscatory.

But don't progressives' join 'aspirational millionaires' in rampant poortalk? A broad swath of affluent if insecure Americans feel terribly put upon. What does that say about 'really' poor folk here and abroad for whom middle class American privilege might reasonably be defined as 'rich?'

Please help me understand progressive endorsement of a tax scheme ascribing income of $249k as 'middle class'. It is 'rich' indeed for affluent progressives to argue for even this threshold to be raised to $1 million because "it's tough to make ends meet" in coastal cities at lower income levels.

[Jack Whelan]

Mike--It's even higher than 249K, because that's taxable income after writeoffs, depreciation on assets, and who knows what other deductions their accountants dig up to reduce taxable income.

But the point, obviously, is that this has nothing to do with defining middle class and everything to do with finding a compromise number the senatorial class whose job it is to protect the interests of the wealthy could support. But they couldn't get this bill passed with the upper income limit defined at a million dollars.

But while it is ridiculous for middle income Americans to think of themselves as poor, I do think it's important to affirm that the country whose politics is dominated by the middle is the most desirable. The goal is to get everybody below the middle up into it, and at least limit the influence of those who are above it.

This country commonly thinks, however, that it's more admirable to be rich than to be just free, productive, and secure, and it resists defining how much is too much. Freedom is crudely understood as the freedom to get as rich as possible and to have as many choices as possible, and so it's very difficult to organize around issues that define freedom in a way that does not resonate with that materialistic understanding of it.

The truth is that nothing will happen as long as most people don't feel the pain that is the inevitable consequence of these policies, and that pain will come soon enough. I used to think we were smart enough to avoid taking that road; I no longer think so. We are doomed to let the ugly logic of greed play itself out.

[Mike Saatkamp]

Hey Jack and Mike,
It may be that the folks in the middle income brackets see themselves as poor, but what they are is stressed, over-communicated, and consequently making poor choices. It's the inevitable result of a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze. The outcome of endless fight fight or freeze is despair, and loss of voice. So the middle has no representation in government while the wealthy have rest, hence better and more healthy (for them) choices, and they can run the system. I'm nauseated that the church can't seem to muster some outrage over this. I'm still holding out that the speed of change and information flow may break the power trust and pull us into a communitarian state of heart. Otherwise, 'Thus have we made it'.