Economist Jamie K Galbraith's recent book
[1] describes modern (Bush-Cheney) Republicanism
as creating a "predator state". Its predatory
aspects are starkly visible in the gangs of
corporate lobbyists who roam Washington DC, the
Halliburton Iraq war procurement scandal and the
corruption and incompetence that surrounded the
Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
However,
the broad concept of a predator state needs
qualification as we are really talking of an
"American corporate" predator state. Thus, the
predatory nature of contemporary US governance is
quintessentially linked to corporations, and it is
also a uniquely American phenomenon.
Kleptocratic predator states, such as
Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe
or Sese Seko Mobutu's
Zaire in Africa, are fundamentally different.
There is no equivalent in Europe, and none in East
Asia where ruling elites have a sense of
obligation to the nation even as they often enrich
themselves illicitly. Nor is there an equivalent
in Latin America because government there never
reached an economic size proportional to that of
government in the US.
It is important to
understand the social origins of the American
corporate predator state because understanding is
a necessary part of developing responses for
caging the predators and replacing them with
another, better, order. Those origins clearly
trace back to the military-industrial complex that
president Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his
final televised address to the nation on January
17, 1961.
That complex has captured
politics and corrupted the business of government,
including of course the conduct of national
security policy. The fact that it has wrapped
itself with the flag makes it impossible to
confront without being charged as unpatriotic.
Worst yet, its enormous enduring profitability has
provided a model for imitation by other industrial
complexes like Big Pharma and Big Oil.
The
political success of these predators is clearly
linked to money's role in politics. Money gives
the power to buy the political process, and that
power is defended by a gospel of free speech that
takes no account of the fact that out-shouting
someone is qualitatively equivalent to silencing
them. Economics also comes to money's defense with
its absurd myth of a market for ideas in which
participants compete on a level playing field and
truth is effortlessly sorted from error.
The American worship of business and
businessmen, which Sinclair Lewis (Babbitt,
1922) wrote about long ago, also plays a role.
This worship privileges business over thought and
other activities, and is behind the dismissive
sneer "if you're so smart, how come you're not
rich?" As a result, Americans are all too willing
to hand over their government to business
predators. Today, it is in Goldman Sachs we trust.
Another feature of business worship is a
tendency to conflate profit with free markets.
That means the distinction between fair
competition (which is good) and fat profits (which
are bad) is lost, thereby providing cover for
predators.
Lastly, there is the legacy of
the Cold War which contributed to economic
dumbing-down and suppression of awareness of class
and class conflict. This suppression was seen as
necessary for blunting the dangerous appeal of
Soviet communism, but a consequence was to create
blindness to the predators in our midst.
All of this reveals a deep deficit in
America's social and economic understanding (some
deficits really do matter). And as long as this
deficit remains, the predators will have a
starting-gate advantage in the game of political
persuasion.
Yet, how to close the deficit
and insert another understanding is an enormous
challenge. There are deep institutional
obstructions in the academy, the media, and the
Democratic Party. Moreover, raising these issues
may create unsettling cognitive dissonance that
pushes voters into denial and a closer embrace of
the predators.
In effect, there is a
paradox to be solved. Lasting progressive
political victory requires transforming
understanding, but the immediate political
incentives are aligned to discourage engagement
with such a project.
Note: The
Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the
Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too, by
James K Galbraith, Free Press, 2008.
Thomas I Palley is the founder
of the Economics for Democratic and Open Societies
Project.
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