I wanted to expand on a response to a comment made by Eustochius to my post yesterday on Libertarianism. He feels that what I'm describing here is too conspiracy theory-esque with the use of such words as "overclass" which suggests the phrase "class warfare"--a big no-no in polite conversation, especially with conservatives. They don't like anyone putting a name on what many of them are themselves blatantly doing. It's been frequently pointed out that the GOP is playing the class card everytime its operatives try to provoke red-state resentment of relatively powerless Northeastern or Hollywood liberal elites. And it has also been pointed out how tricky this tactic is, because it distracts all the resentful red-state non-elites from what the real power elites are doing, which is shifting the tax burden on them, outsourcing their jobs, and sending their kids off to die or be maimed in an unnecessary, poorly planned war.
So class war is something the GOP has been very skillfully executing on behalf of a mix of groups that compose what I've been calling the American overclass. The phrase "class warfare", therefore, while it may be distasteful to many readers, nevertheless
accurately describes what is happening because it's been happening since humans began organizing themselves into societies. Unless the relatively weak organize to defend themselves, the relatively strong
naturally seek to dominate them. Oligarchy and feudalism are just the way of the world in a fallen world if ordinary people don't remain continually vigilant and ready to fight to prevent it.
Political hierarchies form quite naturally when wealth and the power that comes with it become concentrated in the hands of a few. There is a natural tendency for those who have a lot to want even more, and, as I wrote the other day, the correct word to describe this compulsion is "avarice", but in contemporary Libertarian America, it's called "freedom". Sleepy Americans say to themselves, "Avarice = bad; freedom = good. Libertarianism = freedom, Libertarianism = good. Libertarianism is for getting government off our backs. QED: Government = bad."
But government is the only tool ordinary Americans have to effectively organize the power they have in numbers to protect themselves from the predations of the powerful. The superwealthy understand that, and so it is natural that they would want to take that tool away from those who would use it to prevent them from doing as they please. Americans who buy into the Libertarian ideology of the corporate overclass, even superficially or moderately, are colluding in their own disempowerment.
In democracies 'the people' own the government; in oligarchies the few, usually the richest, do. Which word describes our situation today more accurately? Is policy really being developed in the intersts of ordinary Americans? Why don't we have a sane healthcare system, then? Why are we fighting a war that no one wanted before the propaganda barrage began? Why have we allowed taxes to be cut although most Americans did not see a need for it? Do you think that might explain why most Americans feel so dispirited when they go to the polls in national elections? Do you think it might have something to do with voting coming more and more to feel like a meaningless ritual?
In any event, there is quite a large literature (start with old-school Republican Kevin Phillips' Democracy and Wealth) developing that documents how the top 5% or so in this country have significantly increased their wealth while the rest of the population has stagnated since Reagan became president. It's the natural result of people who have acquired wealth and power
using that power to consolidate their position by pressuring the
poltical system to work for its benefit. The Clinton years were very much a part of this progression with his ramming through NAFTA, his failure to get healthcare reform, and the loss of the House to the Republicans who essentially destroyed his capability to do anything for the rest of his presidency.
There's no conspiracy here; it's just what you would expect to happen because it always happens, and we shouldn't be surprised or shocked that it's happening because Americans are not exempt from the human condition. I don't think there is a secret committee representing the American overclass which meets secretly to plot its next move. There are all kinds of very-well financed think tanks and foundations for that. People who are very wealthy (and wealthy wannabes) naturally tend to support policies that help them to secure their interests, and they use their wealth as the source of their power to make the system responsive to those interests. What's disappointing is that the rest of us have in our complacency let them do it.
The U.S. was founded as a political organization, a republic, after a fight against the power of existing oligarchies in Britain to dictate policies that the Americans, mostly bourgeois and middling gentry, thought not to be in their interests. The founders were very concerned that this new republic not evolve into yet another oligarchy, and the most prescient of them understood that it would be continuously threatened by the tyranny of the powerful few who would seek to dominate it.
And they were right; that's what happened. To simplify a little, it was threatened first by the southern oligarchs, then by the Robber Barons, and now by the corporate overclass. And the threat was beaten back the first two times because alert, patriotic Americans recognized the threats for what they were, and fought them. The question now is whether things have already progressed too far for a third fight to be mounted and to have a chance--I don't know. I have my doubts because only a minority of Americans seem to have a clue about what is really happening.
This most recent battle in the ongoing class war has been waged behind a cloud of propaganda and confusion that has made if very difficult for many decent Americans who want to think well of their political leaders to recognize what has been happening. God knows the corporate media isn't going to talk about it. The first set of Robber Barons were bare-knuckled captialists who felt no need to hide what they were up to and felt no compunction about doing whatever it took to run over whoever got in their way. The current crop is much shrewder, and they have been very adept at disguising their agenda, which is nevertheless very easy to recognize by anyone who cares to look.
My post yesterday argued that Libertarianism was the propaganda tool used by the current overclass that was an essential element in their strategy to muddle our thinking about what is in most Americans' best interests. Hint: It's not lower taxes. It's not the war in Iraq. It's not the anarcho-capitalist idol, free trade. It's not indiscriminate deregulation and privatization; it's not the Medicare Prescription Plan. It's not indifference about global warming. It's not a whole host of things that Americans don't want but which has been shoved down their throat because they've allowed themselves to be conned by overclass marketing through the media it controls and naturally uses to promote what is in its best interest.
Along these lines, the right in this country has deliberately tried to make the phrase 'class warfare' radioactive so that people have precisely the reaction I'm sure many of you readers are having to it now as you read this post--it's one of those unspeakable words; we can't talk about it, and so it seems invisible. But it's the big story that the overclass right doesn't want anybody to be telling, because it's a war that they can wage all the more effectively so long as the rest of us are sleeping while they do it.