At Davos, Debating Capitalism’s Future
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/opinion/at-davos-debating-capitalisms-future.htmlThis is by Ed Miliband, the Labor leader of England. It's kind of a bookend to Obama's SOTU address, which Miliband references in this Op-Ed.
Both the United States and Britain suffered because their economies were overly reliant on the financial sector’s artificial profits; living standards for the many worsened while the economic rewards skewed to the top 1 percent; a capitalist model encouraged short-term decision-making oriented toward quarterly profits rather than long-term health; and vested interests — from giant banks to media moguls —were deemed too big to fail or too powerful to challenge.
We need to recognize that the trickle-down promise of conservative theorists has turned into a gravity-defying reality in which wealth has flowed upward disproportionately and, too often, undeservedly. To address properly the squeeze in middle-class incomes on both sides of the Atlantic requires fresh thinking from governments about how people train for their working lives and what a living wage should be.
Governments can set better — not necessarily more — rules to encourage productive businesses that invest, invent, train, make and sell real products and services. We need rules that discourage the predatory behavior of those seeking the fast buck through hostile takeovers and asset-stripping that do not have the interests of the shareholders, the employees or the economy at heart. In Britain, the Labour Party is considering how we can raise the bar for corporate takeovers so that companies’ futures are not determined by just a handful of speculators.
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In my country, I believe that changing the rules of capitalism will mean a change of government. But more generally, it will require a change in what citizens expect and ask of politics. The question is not so much whether 20th-century capitalism is failing 21st-century society but whether politics can rise to the challenge of changing a flawed economic model.
Never let it be said that public displays of opposition to spending cuts do not affect the discourse of politics. Only a few years ago, both the US and UK were on the austerity train. The UK has been slashing public services like it was a fire-sale. With things like Uncut and Occupy, at least the governments seem to have once again become aware that we exist. Hopefully the words will translate into action, and rich people/corporations will start getting their taxes raised.
I wonder what Miliband means by "changing the rules of capitalism". If you changed its rules a great deal, it would no longer really be capitalism. Any thoughts?
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So this heyday of capitalism that a few people have mentioned, I wasn't around for. 
I would have liked the WPA and other New Deal policies, I'm sure. The bad things that I can see from reading history--we still had Jim Crow, so there were some citizens that capitalism wasn't working well for. Civil rights laws took another two decades to enact, and in the ensuing 20 years since, even with that improvement, the black community has still suffered the most when capitalism has a crisis.
Now capitalism has suffered one of the worst crises in the history of its existence. Those crises are a feature, not a bug. There's no way to avoid them because of the nature of how the system works. Regulated capitalism put the breaks on the heart attacks for a little while, but now we're at a point where we have to consider another bypass or if it's time for a transplant.
There is a chance that the rich *might* have their taxes raised--*if* this happens, this can buy us a little time to shore up fragile social nets, give people some hope in life. Taking a bite out of the power of the 1% could take us in a couple of directions. We can call it done and hope their tax rates stay high enough to sustain the rest of us under this system, and pray that another RWer doesn't come to power to undo it again.
But what if we had some breathing space to build something better, something that the 99% have more direct control of? Something that won't subject us to the political whims of the 1%?
And, alternatively, what do we do if the wealthy *don't* get their taxes raised?
(I don't have all the answers to these questions, I'm throwing them out there 
)
Well, I'm a Marxist and we have a long complicated answer on the nature of greed*, but let's put that aside for the moment. 
The way to stop them in the short run is to take away as much of their wealth as possible to utterly deny them their power base. Just drain them down. The 1% is now down to what? 400 people, maybe 1000 tops in the 1%-5% range? There are more of us then there are of them. *How* we do this--that's where we need to put our heads together. Like you say, they aren't going to hand it over if we just ask nicely.
Then the 99% could decide what cool things we are going to do with all the money. Nearly all of it is from our labor, so it should be ours to spend on social good. If you had billions of dollars for public spending, what would you do first?
*
(The long Marxist answer about greed is that it is rewarded like Pavlov's dog is by profits. It's a behavior that is exacerbated by the system that feeds it. If we could change the system, so it gets no reward for its efforts, then we might diminish the behavior over longer and longer periods of time. We form a system that rewards things that we'd like to see more of in society. It might not be a *cure*, but it would it could keep us out of a terminal death spiral and planetary destruction.)
To me anyway. Shoot starry, we might even be able to get you that iPod or whatever that electronic doodad is that you've had your eye on "Comes the Revolution".
And yep, I remember when I had bills paid and about $1500 in the ole account. And no it wasn't that long ago for me either. Of course, the last five years of un and under employment has pretty much done that in.
First, like s_n_TN says: deep taxation. The political will is building. It's not all the way there yet, but I think we can feel it growing. More and more people think what is going on with the wealth accumulation is totally untenable. It will be a messy fight and it might take awhile. Some of the wealthy will have to sign on too, like Warren Buffet and some others have, calling for a higher tax rate on their accumulation. Maybe there will be a peer pressure effect.
Second, take back the media and other commons from private hands. Break the monopolies. Keep the resources that we helped build, but the profits goes back into society, not into the hands of a few corporations. They just keep slushing it back and forth between themselves. This will take passing laws and maybe some of the examples set by Occupy will show people that public is better than private. "Move to Amend" is aiming to reverse Citizens United. People are sick of corporate power (I saw a poll that said 77% of Americans think corporations have too much power).
Those are two ideas! Things like that can break the death spiral. It's not an impossible task, just difficult. I think if we just keep talking we can come up with even more ideas.
Last edited Sat Jan 28, 2012, 10:07 AM - Edit history (1)
Hopefully I didn't give the impression that this was the only answer, they were suggestions. What ideas did you have? This is a place where we can bring our thoughts together on that.
I think the US people can have a major influence on the wealthy if we learn to work together. The wealthy used to have a much higher rate of taxation. That happened because of fear of the people who really do have the power--us. Look at the influence Occupy has had already, just in a short time. The narrative has changed from "lower the deficit" to focusing on the terrible effect the economy is having on people.
edit to add: apropos of our talk here, I just found this article on twitter: http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/
I'll post it as an OP too. I think you might find it interesting!
I meant to come back to your questions. We do need specific ideas, and I welcome ideas from anyone interested too. If this is all depending on me, I'm going to be gibbering in a corner. I have specific ideas, I will share them.
-Rebuilding the labor movement in this country is key. The difference between the US and Social Democratic countries in this regard is stark. Our "right to work" laws would be unheard of in any other industrialized country. There are several states *right now* that are trying to become "right to work". This is insanity. If you are not already in a union, go the AFL-CIO website (http://www.aflcio.org/) and sign up for their newsletters and see how you (or anyone reading this) can get involved. This might seem boringly prosaic, but the more people we can get onboard to protect workers' rights and expand trade unionism, the stronger our fist against the ownership class.
The unions only depend on the Democratic party because if they didn't, they'd be even more vulnerable to right-wing attacks. Anything anyone can do to swing public support for labor will give us a leg-up for a progressive labor movement. Norway and Sweden, etc. won their progressive economies with a backbone of strong labor. With more of a voice, labor can do more than just protect the beach heads. When we had stronger unions, we had more robust public programs and media. The two things are related.
-Agitate in whatever way you can. Signal boost for labor and Occupy. If it's here, Twitter, Facebook, email, wherever, any little bit helps. You never know who is reading, and though it can be tempting to retreat in the face of attacks, any little ground we gain is a victory over the bosses' narrative that the American people will never fight back against the draining of our lives and labor. Connect the struggle for workers rights' to the struggle for freedom and democracy. Part of winning this war is mental, and people will think about things if we are clear and relate things to their lives. Maybe not right away, but a few months later. The economy is such in the toilet right now, that people are looking for any clue on how to better their lives. We can't leave them vulnerable to right wing ideology.
Things like this are slow, but can accumulate into powerful masses then they are built up over time. We need to build up our armory and forces. This is literally a war for our lives. Anything we can do to keep people talking to each other, so they know that they are not alone in this will be very powerful. The worst thing the bosses can do to us is make us feel alone and isolated. The more people we gather, the more resources we have to draw on, to get even more specific ideas.
The long Marxist answer about greed is that it is rewarded like Pavlov's dog is by profits. It's a behavior that is exacerbated by the system that feeds it. If we could change the system, so it gets no reward for its efforts, then we might diminish the behavior over longer and longer periods of time. We form a system that rewards things that we'd like to see more of in society. It might not be a *cure*, but it would it could keep us out of a terminal death spiral and planetary destruction[/quote]
and I'm STILL a Marxist. The problem is that regulation never lasts. Every time it's been "regulated", it eventually shakes off it's shackles and reverts to it's true exploitative nature. Because it's inherent nature is exploitative, it's only going to work if it's ALLOWED to be exploitative. That's great for the 1%, but REALLY sux for the rest of us.
And there is one more thing that you touched on in your post that is also important. The natural resources problem which leads into another inherent problem with capitalism, namely the constant pressure to expland. I'm not sure we have any room for a capitalist expansion that can benefit everyone like we did in the early and middle part of the last century.
This might seem weird coming from me, but there's a point where "trickle down" can work IF THERE'S PRESSURE FROM BELOW. Pressure that shows the top layer that it's to it's benefit to let go some of the wealth for the rest of us. However no matter how strong the pressure, if the resources aren't there for the "trickling" WITHOUT HURTING THE TOP, it CANNOT happen. At least not without a revolution that actually overthrows the entire system. The problem was that "trickle down" became the primary economic mover at a time when resources were beginning to become scarce. Ergo, it WASN'T a way to benefit everybody, but merely provided a propaganda cover for a MASSIVE wealth redistribution UPWARD. NOT for the rest of us, but for the ones who ALREADY had the wealth. The ACTUAL "trickle down" was what we had before, which used some socialist principles.
And it ALL ties in to another Marxian principle, the principle of historical progression. Capitalism was an systemic improvement over feudalism and took over as a natural progression by proving that it was better at wealth accumulation than the older system. Now that capitalism is bumping up against it's natural limits, it's in the position that feudalism was before. We now know how to accumulate wealth. Now it's time to learn how to distribute that wealth for the benefit of all people. That means socialism and eventually communism.