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Month: October 2015

What’s Called “Capitalism” Is Far from Any Model of Capitalism or Market, by @Gaius_Publius

What’s Called “Capitalism” Is Far from Any Model of Capitalism or Market

by Gaius Publius

A recent piece I did on the British Labour politician Tony Benn featured a speech that offered a “history of neoliberalism” (click here to read and listen). Near the beginning of the speech, Benn said, “This country and the world have been run by rich and powerful men from the beginning of time.” Consider that for a moment, what that means about the arc of human history.

Predators and prey. The homeless and left-behind are at the bottom (“decomposers”). Most of everyone else is in the next layer up (“producers”). The rest, from the well-off to the wealthy, are “consumers.” Interesting how that language works, isn’t it? (source)

Near the end of his short talk, referencing the Thatcher (and Reagan) counterrevolution against the great populist gains of the 19th and 20th centuries, he said that this is “what the whole [modern] crisis is about, the restoration of power to those who’ve always controlled the world, the people who own the land and the resources and all the rest of it.”

That radical re-transformation of the world back to control by its original and longtime owners, “rich and powerful men,” was begun in England by Margaret Thatcher and several deliberate policies. Benn (my emphasis): “So privatization is a deliberate policy, along with the destruction of local democracy and the destruction of the trade unions to restore power back to to where it was.”

Benn also mentions the role of crushing personal debt in the Thatcher de-democratization of her society:

What she said, and this is very clever, “You can buy your council house so you’ll be a property owner. You may not be able to get a wage increase, but you can borrow.” And the borrowing was deliberately encouraged because people in debt are slaves to their employers.”

Notice that this re-transformation back to what was, this re-transfer of power to society’s original owners, isn’t about any ideology, any set of theories, any academic anything about “invisible hands” or mathematically correct economic models. This is about one group — “rich and powerful men” — reasserting control of the world, a control they’ve enjoyed since the virtual “beginning of time,” since the first day “property” meant more than just personal property (what I carry and wear) and included ownership of fields, buildings and land itself.

That period, which started the day the first city-state, the first temple-state arose, lasted more than 5,000 years. For almost all of the time since humanity left the Stone Age, the mass of humans have been ruled by the rich and powerful, until the opening of a very brief window initiated, as Benn tells it, by the trade union movement of the mid-1800s.

That small window is now closing. We’re watching the end, if we allow it, of this one-time-only freshwater teardrop in time, as it falls into the deep well of our salt-water civilized past. (And don’t be confused. If that small window, the 250-year period of relative freedom, closes — if “rich and powerful men” regain full control as they have almost already done — they will also end the 5,000-year window of human civilization. Because, climate.)

Please don’t take a short view of the times we inhabit together. This is what’s at stake, now, this year, this election cycle, this decade — at most, this quarter-century, which is more than half over. To help with that larger orientation, I showed you Tony Benn’s brief history, and also Tony Benn’s optimism (scroll to the end for that). Now I want to show you two contributions on this subject by Noam Chomsky — a piece of analysis, presented here, and his pessimism, presented later, which I will try to counter.

Today, the analysis.

What’s Called “Capitalism” Is Far from Any Model of “Capitalism” or “Market”

Simply put, we’re not living in a “capitalist” economy, and present economic activity is not properly described by the word “market.” To see and say that completely misses the facts. The economic “theory” we’re guided by, if it can be called a theory at all, is what Benn described at the start of his speech: “This country and the world have been run by rich and powerful men from the beginning of time.” The closest I can come to describing this “theory” is “predators and prey.” For more than 5,000 years the predators — “rich and powerful men” — enjoyed complete control. “Capitalism” is what they’re calling today’s reassertion of that control.

But it’s not by any stretch “capitalism,” not even close. Noam Chomsky, in a recent interview with Jacobin magazine, says it quite well. First, from the introduction to the interview (my emphasis):

Throughout his illustrious career, one of Noam Chomsky’s chief preoccupations has been questioning — and urging us to question — the assumptions and norms that govern our society.

Following a talk on power, ideology, and US foreign policy last weekend at the New School in New York City, freelance Italian journalist Tommaso Segantini sat down with the eighty-six-year-old to discuss some of the same themes, including how they relate to processes of social change.

For radicals, progress requires puncturing the bubble of inevitability: austerity, for instance, “is a policy decision undertaken by the designers for their own purposes.” It is not implemented, Chomsky says, “because of any economic laws.” American capitalism also benefits from ideological obfuscation: despite its association with free markets, capitalism is shot through with subsidies for some of the most powerful private actors. This bubble needs popping too.

The interview ranges widely (feel free to read it all). I want to point to just one section, in which Chomsky characterizes what we insist on calling and defending as “capitalism” (my emphasis in italics):

[Q] How do you think that the capitalist system will survive, considering its dependence on fossil fuels and its impact on the environment?

[Chomsky] What’s called the capitalist system is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism.

And the same is true of other components of the so-called capitalist system. By now, in the US and other Western countries, there’s been, during the neoliberal period, a sharp increase in the financialization of the economy. Financial institutions in the US had about 40 percent of corporate profits on the eve of the 2008 collapse, for which they had a large share of responsibility.

There’s another IMF study that investigated the profits of American banks, and it found that they were almost entirely dependent on implicit public subsidies. There’s a kind of a guarantee — it’s not on paper, but it’s an implicit guarantee — that if they get into trouble they will be bailed out. That’s called too-big-to-fail.

And the credit rating agencies of course know that, they take that into account, and with high credit ratings financial institutions get privileged access to cheaper credit, they get subsidies if things go wrong and many other incentives, which effectively amounts to perhaps their total profit. The business press tried to make an estimate of this number and guessed about $80 billion a year. That’s got nothing to do with capitalism.

It’s the same in many other sectors of the economy. So the real question is, will this system of state capitalism, which is what it is, survive the continued use of fossil fuels? And the answer to that is, of course, no.

By now, there’s a pretty strong consensus among scientists who say that a large majority of the remaining fossil fuels, maybe 80 percent, have to be left in the ground if we hope to avoid a temperature rise which would be pretty lethal. And it is not happening. Humans may be destroying their chances for decent survival. It won’t kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically.

If you click that last link and scroll down, you’ll get his sense of where we’re headed as a species, in particular with respect to habitability and climate.

But your takeaway should be this. Economic predation by the powerful is not an economic system in any sophisticated sense, any more than organized bullies stealing every child’s lunch money the minute she enters the building is a “system” in any complex sense. It’s not even a “racket” if that term implies misdirection and a multi-step process. It’s just boots on the neck and hands in the pocket.

Nor is such theft a “market” by any definition. It’s simply theft, backed by the power of the bullies themselves, their fists, their clubs, and the power of the state that enables them for a cut of the prize.

Feel free to defend (or not) what this “system” is becoming. Just don’t misdescribe it. It’s not capitalism by any definition. Nor is it a market, unless a factory farm with a slaughterhouse at one end is a market. Don’t confuse others; don’t confuse yourself.

When we next return to Chomsky’s speech, I’ll address why he’s wrong about Bernie Sanders (click to support; you can adjust the split at the link).

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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No privacy issues here. Drone along. by @BloggersRUs

No privacy issues here. Drone along.
by Tom Sullivan

Both Digby and I have written about the growing drone industry before with some reservation. A nightmare for civil liberties? Privacy issues? Aw, c’mon, but they are so cewl! Everyone will want one for Christmas this year:

You’re probably getting a drone for Christmas this year, whether you want one or not. Aviation Week reports that, at a recent industry summit, Rich Swayze of the Federal Aviation Administration said that the agency expects up to 1 million unmanned aerial vehicles to be sold during this year’s holiday season. Swayze’s prediction, if true, is simultaneously great and terrible news for the drone industry. It’s great news because, hooray, money! It’s terrible news because some of these drones will be gifted to kids, and idiots, and others who know and care little for safety and decorum.

Justin Peters has a series at Slate called Future Tense that looks at drones. The project supported by the Omidyar Network and Humanity United includes a drone primer from sponsor New America here. Everybody is so excited about what they’ll get for Christmas that still no one seems worried about a fleet of military surveillance drones in our airspace.

As we have noted before, and as the Washington Post reported last year, the military is planning to fly its large fleet of military drones from 144 U.S. sites. If the Air Force gets its way, the Reapers will soon be sharing the friendly skies with your mother’s flight to Cleveland. “With my flight to Cleveland,” another blogger exclaimed at a conference last weekend:

Shortly after the day’s final bell rang and hundreds of youngsters ran outside Lickdale Elementary School with their book bags and lunchboxes, a military drone fell from the sky.

The 375-pound Shadow reconnaissance drone skimmed the treetops as it hurtled toward the school in Jonestown, Pa. It barely missed the building, then cartwheeled through the butterfly garden and past the playground. The aircraft kept rolling like a tumbleweed and collided with a passing car on Fisher Avenue. People called 911. The rescue squad arrived in a hurry. Luckily, no one was hurt.

The April 3 near-disaster was the latest known mishap involving a military drone in the United States. Most U.S. military drone accidents have occurred abroad, but at least 49 large drones have crashed during test or training flights near domestic bases since 2001, according to a yearlong Washington Post investigation.

The Shadow is one of the smaller drones the military flies. The Global Hawk has a wingspan greater than a 737‘s. But the public is so fascinated with the GoPro-equipped, Chinese toys that they won’t pay attention to the military drones until one actually crashes into a school.

But beyond kids and idiots…

Since issuing draft rules for flying domestic drones in February, the FAA began issuing exemptions, requiring commercial operators to attest the flights pose no threat to privacy. Barry Summers (http://reaperscomehome.blogspot.com/) noticed Exemption No. 11555 for the Wilson Security Agency, a private detective agency in Lexington, North Carolina.

In its application Wilson seems to have cribbed from Exemption 11460 by manufacturer American Drones, L.L.C. of Oklahoma City, whose name appears nine times in the Wilson Security application.

Privacy issues? This is from American Drones’ application:

And here’s Wilson’s:

No privacy worries there. The private detective agency will operate its drone “only in rural areas.”

Status? Approved.

The Freedom Caucus (for patriarchs)

The Freedom Caucus (for patriarchs)

by digby

I think one of the most astonishing ironies of the House speakership brou-ha-ha is the fact that member of the so-called “Freedom caucus” are backing a member of the Duggar’s authoritarian fundamentalist cult. You cannot make this stuff up.

I mentioned it the other day but Sarah Posner has the details:

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) is running as the alternative to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House. He also has a decades-long affiliation with the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the controversial ministry whose founder, Bill Gothard, resigned last year after more than 30 women accused him of sexual harassment. As TPM reported earlier this month, IBLP subjected young followers to victim-blaming “counseling” for rape, as well as grueling work schedules at its facilities for little or no pay, requiring women to engage in gendered tasks that included scrubbing carpets on their hands and knees.

Webster’s association with IBLP and its homeschooling program, the Advanced Training Institute, made national headlines when he first ran for Congress in 2010. Alan Grayson, the firebrand incumbent Democrat, criticized Webster, who had served 28 years in the Florida legislature, in an ad characterizing him as “Taliban Dan.” The ad showed clips from a Webster speech to an IBLP conference during which he spoke of a biblical command that wives submit to their husbands. Webster, who went on to win the election, insisted the clips were taken out of context.

But IBLP’s teaching on wifely submission is just the tip of the iceberg of the ministry’s authoritarian ideology, which includes opposition to, among other things, public education, “humanistic” laws, contraception, and even rock music. Despite downplaying his adherence to a core Gothard teaching, Webster has been, as a 1997 St. Petersburg Times article put it, “an enthusiastic supporter” of IBLP.

Webster’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In a 2003 speech at an IBLP conference, “Discover the True Qualities of Leadership,” Webster boasted of how he diligently conducts both his private and public life according to the “commitments” he made to the principles he learned at IBLP seminars. By his own account in the speech, and according to statements in ATI newsletters, Webster began his affiliation with IBLP when he attended a seminar for legislators at IBLP’s Northwoods Conference Center in Watersmeet, Michigan, in 1984. A few months later, Webster said during the speech, he attended an IBLP “basic seminar” in Tampa, Florida. His family later joined ATI, and his wife homeschooled their six children with the curriculum. (Webster’s first legislative achievement in Florida was a bill legalizing homeschooling, which became law in 1985.)

In the 2003 speech, Webster said he “made every commitment” Gothard asked of attendees at his seminars. “I raised my hand every time, because it absolutely changed my life,” Webster said.

There’s more. You have to read the whole thing to really understand just how extreme this man is. He’s running for Speaker of the House. Meanwhile, recall that Ben Carson insists that Muslims must repudiate the beliefs of their most extreme members before they can be considered for office.

When you think about it maybe his being a member of the Freedom Caucus makes some sense after all. A patriarch is pretty much free to do whatever he wants, amirite?

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