Tag: capitalism

The End of Democracy

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Chief Petoskey might agree that democracy is a failure.

It may be my bad luck, and my generation’s bad luck, to be alive at a time when we are witnessing the limits of democracy. We’ve had a good run–over two hundred years now–but it may be time to call it a day and start over with some new form of government.

I suppose I am as patriotic as anyone. There are two times in my life when I felt tears well up in my eyes solely because of my pride in being an American. One was after a three-week trip to Iceland, Scotland, and England in 1996, when I returned with my young family to Houston Intercontinental Airport. Waiting in customs, I noticed a babble of languages, and looking around, I saw myself surrounded by people of color, dressed in a variety of ways, many with headscarves or turbans. At that time, it was easy to imagine that these people, if not Americans themselves, would be welcomed as visitors to the United States, or perhaps as potential citizens. That was enough to make me sentimental about the diversity of my country, to be thankful to live in a country that valued all people.

(I will pass over for now the very real possibility—indeed, the near certainty—that this was simply a fiction, even at that time. My belief, however, was real enough to draw tears of pride from my eyes, which of course I quickly wiped away.)

The second time I became emotional with pride in my country was in about 2003 or 2004, when, as a union member from the local community college I stood in solidarity with nurses who were striking at the hospital. I was proud to do so—it is our right as Americans to stand and protest, as so many of us have recently found out. I was proud to be a citizen of a country that allows its citizens to congregate for such a purpose, despite the inconveniences that may be caused by it.

In the last couple of years, I’ve seen protests, but I haven’t taken part in them. I’ve supported them, but I have not been able to make myself participate in them. During the Women’s March, I stayed home, dissolved into a teary mess most of the day. But these were not tears of pride. Perhaps there was some pride mixed in, and admiration for the women who dedicated themselves to the cause, but there was also a feeling of profound despair at the need for such a march. It was the same thing with the March for Our Lives. What a beautiful expression of solidarity, but why should the people of this country need to march in order to protect our children, in order to stand up against an organization that should have no part in our electoral process, to protest the very electoral process that has been shown to be corrupt—not only because of foreign interference, but because of outrageously large campaign donations that fund and sway our elected officials?

Don’t get me wrong. To those of you who are participating in these movements, I want to say that I admire and love you for what you are doing. Yet I cannot help but feel that the need for such movements marks the decline of democracy, the end of this glorious experiment in civic rule that began over 200 years ago.

(Again, I will pass over the fact that this glorious experiment probably started, as so many others have, with the desire for personal gain on the part of the architects of the experiment.)

Democracy cannot work when it is corrupted by the desire for financial gain. It cannot work when the electorate is divided along the lines of hard-held, incontestable beliefs that brook no argument or discussion. It cannot work when our elected officials are, like the people who elect them, small-minded, fearful, and utterly dependent on large corporations who try to direct every facet of their lives and thoughts and are free to do so if they spend enough money on licit and illicit media campaigns.

Recently, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called for the repeal of the Second Amendment. It may in fact be time for such a step. But I fear it may be time for a more drastic step: to admit that our democracy, such as it is, has failed, and that it is time to go back to the drawing board to find a new, more equitable, more humane way of living together in this world that we have created for ourselves.

Did Madame Defarge Knit Pussy Hats?

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Sketch by Harry Furniss (1910).  Image scanned by Philip V. Allingham and located on the Victorian Web

Last night, in shameful parody of democratic rule, the U.S. Senate passed a sweeping tax bill that undercuts the middle and lower classes, eviscerates health care, and attacks education–all while giving more money to the very entities that need it least: the wealthiest portion of the population and the corporations they control.

Instead of analyzing how this happened, or why the people we elect have sold us out to the people who keep them in office–their political campaign donors–I will make some grand generalizations here to shed light on how the United States has become what it is today, on December 2, 2017: a plutocracy.

Let’s start with history: in the late Bronze Age (1200 BC or so), the growth of powerful societies was carefully controlled by a simple custom. Simon Stoddart, Fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford, speaking on In Our Time, a BBC 4 radio podcast, explains that in these societies, “it was not permitted to become too powerful,” and if a king did attain too much wealth, he was expected to throw a huge feast to dispense his wealth, or even bury excess wealth in a hoard. Doing this would gain the king prestige and restore economic balance to the region, but it would also lead to some instability in succession, because great wealth could not be inherited. Yet the custom was apparently  practiced by European Bronze Age societies as a levelling mechanism, to prevent one person or family from becoming too powerful.

Now why on earth would a powerful king consent to this kind of rule? The answer is simple: it was the custom of the time–he could not avoid doing so. And why was there such a custom? My guess is that early societies, living close to nature, observed  a natural balance in the world they lived in, and they knew that no good could ever come from upsetting this balance. Think of it this way: early societies observed first-hand what happened if there were too many lambs born in a certain year, or if too much rain fell on crops–or if one man became too powerful.

Human societies unlearned this lesson when they became less reliant on the natural environment they inhabited. By the early modern age (1500 or so), people were beginning to control nature to meet their needs. Transportation was easier, so if you depleted your farm’s soil, you might move to another one. You could drain bogs to make more arable soil on which to grow more crops and raise more livestock. You could even, as so many people were beginning to do, move to the city and try your hand at making a living completely divorced from the cycle of nature.

By the late 1700s, we see the beginnings of  the massive growth in urban areas that will characterize the world we live in today. It is no coincidence that we also see the rise of capitalism–as a philosophy and as a practice–at this time. And while the idea of capitalism is based on balance–the invisible hand adjusting the scales–it’s clear now that such an invisible hand was more wishful thinking than reality.

My point is that we have lost any notion of the need for balance in our political and economic systems. We have forgotten that when the very wealthy take more than they can possibly use, they leave other people in penury. Certainly the wealthy people have forgotten this law of nature and are simply grabbing all they can while the grabbing is good. The real problem is that too many people in the United States have identified with those wealthy people (how this has happened is interesting but must wait for another post), trusting that if the very wealthy are taken care of, they will be taken care of, too.

This tragically flawed logic is like thinking that in a shipwreck, if a powerful and athletic man manages to secure a place on a lifeboat, he will always make room for–in fact, he will always exert himself to save–the women, children, and less fortunate men who are still waving from the deck as it sinks below the waves. But here’s the problem: exerting oneself to save others demands a strong sense of either ethics or altruism, both of which seem to be lacking in the American upper class.

I don’t have any answers or solutions to offer. We live in dark and troubled times. To say that I despair for my country is not an exaggeration. Indeed, I never knew how much love I had for this country, this grand and imperfect experiment in democracy, until last year, when I witnessed what I think now might be the first chapter of  its descent into decay and destruction. Last night, while we were sleeping, we may well have seen the second one.

But I do know one thing: one way or another, balance will be re-established. It may be a somewhat orderly process, in which case we will see a great deal of corrective legislation coming from a newly elected Congress in the early months of 2019…. Or it may come after a long, destructive, and painful struggle, with lives lost and ruined in the process.

Either way, fasten your seatbelts, Americans. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

Could Capitalism Be the Enemy?

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Earth Day 1971 Poster, from Wikipedia entry on “Pogo”

Like many other people these days, I’m asking a lot of questions, and I’m not finding too many satisfying answers. But that doesn’t matter. We should all be suspicious of quick—and satisfying—answers. While it might produce a kind of temporary euphoria, the tendency to try to solve our problems quickly and neatly is precisely what seems to have landed the world in this precarious position, with climate changes staring us in the face as we confront unprecedented human migration across increasingly hostile borders. It is a scary place to be.

One question I’ve been asking is this: could capitalism, with its emphasis on constant growth and acquisition of wealth, be the evil spirit lurking behind this state of affairs? This is a difficult question to consider, and it’s likely that few people will be brave enough to confront and admit such a question. (For curious readers, here is an article in last week’s New Yorker that explains, at least in part, why new ideas and self-criticism meet such resistance.)  But it’s worthwhile to lay out a few arguments for this menacing explanation, even if not many people take the time to consider it.

First of all, capitalism, with its emphasis on garnering profit, depends on constantly expanding market shares. It doesn’t work in a static environment; in order for a capitalist economy to function well, it must grow. And yet, as any observant person realizes, constant growth simply isn’t sustainable. Eventually the market place becomes saturated. When that happens, there are few options for the capitalist enterprise: either it expands its market—in which the same thing will happen a few years, or decades, later—or it works to cut out competitors and appropriate their growth and their profit. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or an economist, to determine that this process isn’t feasible for long-term stability in a society dedicated to equity and the pursuit of happiness.

And that brings up the second problem with capitalism as it has developed. The acquisition of profit and material goods seems to be insufficient for the kind of capitalists, the captains of industry, we have created in recent years. In other words, the most successful capitalists have become so wealthy that it is ludicrous to suppose that they are intent on gathering still more money, or luxuries, for themselves. How many mansions are necessary for a person’s, even a family’s, happiness? Is it really necessary for Mark Zuckerberg to own 700 acres of prime Hawaiian land—and to sue longtime landowners to make sure that his privacy on this new piece of property is inviolable? One theory about the tendency of the super-wealthy to engage in this kind of action this states that capitalism’s great heroes and heroines garner not only wealth for themselves, but happiness as well. And, since happiness is not as easy to gauge as material wealth, the best way to determine whether one is happy is to compare oneself to those who are not happy. This, in essence, is what capitalism does: it takes happiness away from people in order to create a sense of happiness in the capitalist, who, numb to the thrill of wealth and plenty, cannot determine whether he is actually happy unless he can be sure that there are others who have been made unhappy by his own acquisitive actions. This view of capitalism presents it in a horrifying, sordid light. It goes something like this: once their quest for great wealth has met with success, capitalists create another quest for themselves: that of acquiring the happiness of others. This kind of theorizing leads to a truly disconcerting question: What if the “pursuit of happiness” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, and so dear to every American citizen, has become a literal pursuit, in which the happiness of others becomes fair game for pursuing? This frightening scenario, in which capitalists resemble Dementors more than anything else, may well be taking place in our society.

But we need not enter the world of Harry Potter to find a third reason to reexamine capitalism in our time: it appears to be antithetical to the idea of ecological conservation. I could argue this carefully, in a step-by-step demonstration of the ways in which capitalism abuses the natural environment, but this is quite unnecessary, with stories like Standing Rock, Line 5, the Kalamazoo River oil spill, fracking, and other items in the news. We all know that big business cares little about the natural resources it uses, regarding these resources like factory machinery as it tries to figure out a way to produce still more oil for an ever-growing market. The argument that capitalism stands in opposition to safeguarding our environment has undoubtedly been made before, and it is unnecessary to go into it at length here.

Instead, I would like to offer a fourth reason that capitalism may be the enemy. It depends on competition, maintaining that competition brings out the best in people. But even Darwin, as this article in The Guardian points out, believed that cooperation was at least as  important in evolution as competition.

I have little hope that I can change anyone’s mind about capitalism. Most Americans cling to their belief that it offers us, and the world at large, the best way to live—period. Besides, changing our ideology would be too great a task to undertake.

Or would it?

As we encounter more and more crises, sooner or later we will have to face the fact that Americans are not always the good guys, as we have been taught to believe. Ideology is a difficult veil to penetrate—in fact, it may be impossible to penetrate the veil at all, and we may have to be satisfied with shifting it aside from time to time to try to catch a mere glimpse of the truth. Denying the efficacy and value of capitalism is a scary proposition, and doing so necessitates that we decide what will take its place—another scary proposition. It will take some time to reach the point where we can face these difficult ideological problems. But I believe we will get there. For now, let’s start by admitting that the old comic strip from 1971 was right: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

On the Limits of Education and the Meaning of Work

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From the opening scenes of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rich and Strange (1931) from http://filmtravers.com/reviews/FT_Rich_and_Strange_1931.html

A couple of weeks ago, I told my freshman composition class that they needed to think hard about whether they should be in college. This flies in the face of what community college professors are supposed to say. We’re programmed, in one way or another, to tell students that getting a college degree is important to their success, that it can help them to a good, stable job, and that it will improve their lives–all of which are excellent things. There’s only one problem.

I no longer believe it will.

I won’t go into the fact that my students, like most community college students, live on the edge. It takes little to derail them: an illness, a sick parent or child, pregnancy, a missed payment on their house or car, a pink slip. Granted, these are not the kind of people who are movers and shakers, who are watching TED talks on how to make their work meaningful as well as rewarding (a sample of which you can find here). Yet these very students are among the most ambitious I’ve ever encountered in my 25 + years in higher education, and all they want is the lowest degree possible after high school: an associate’s degree, which may not be worth the paper it’s written on.

I won’t even go into the argument alluded to above: that the value of associate degrees is not guaranteed (although articles like this one in the October 3, 2013, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education make that sobering point). My point was quite different, and it’s one I wish more people would consider.

It stems from the fact that most of us–99% of us, in fact–have to work to feed, clothe, and sustain ourselves. Of course, humans have always had to work for sustenance, and for much of our history, this work wasn’t too engaging. How interesting is it, for example, to gather berries or tend livestock? It may be satisfying, to a certain degree, but it isn’t mentally stimulating–at least, not in the same way that studying philosophy, or working on a multi-national marketing project, can be. Some time in the last fifty years or so, it seems that Americans have added several requirements to any job that we consider for a career: it must be lucrative, it must be meaningful (whatever that means), and it must be intellectually engaging. Any truly desirable job must exercise our minds and feed our souls as well as fill our pockets.

And because of this expectation–that our jobs will exercise and use our minds–we have given up the responsibility to do so ourselves. What this means is that when we take a job that is not intellectually challenging, as some of us must, we tend to give up on seeking out ways to enrich our minds through work. We succumb to the lure of popular culture, with its insipid siren call to watch pointless television shows; we anesthetize ourselves with a partying culture that emphasizes drinking, drug use, and sex as a means of escape from an existence of drudgery. Once thoroughly anesthetized, we are seduced into accepting the status quo without questioning if it is, after all, the best way to live.

It doesn’t have to be this way, however. What I told my students is that they need to find out what’s important to them and make that their Work–with a capital “W.” This Work, I said, is what will get them through all the crummy jobs–and there will be many of those–they’ll be forced to take. For example, maybe their Work is writing short stories, or playing jazz guitar, or spinning wool and knitting sweaters: the actual Work they do doesn’t matter. Rather, it’s the devotion they bring to it, their dedication to it, that will enrich them and allow them to deal with having to take work that doesn’t allow them to find life meaningful. Be a barista if you have to, I told them; but make sure you have Work to make your work worth doing.

Those of us who live in capitalist countries, whose work is appropriated by others for profit, have the greatest need to find our own Work, so that we make our lives count for something other than a ledger sheet of profit and loss. If we must labor to live, and if only a few of us can find work that exercises all–or even a majority–of our faculties, then it is up to each one of us to find the Work that makes us human. This is what I was urging my students to do when I told them to think about whether they should be in college: do not let college prevent you from finding your Work and dedicating yourself to it. Don’t expect to find a job that will line up perfectly with your Work (although some people are lucky enough to do that). Instead, I said, get a job to help support that Work and make your life possible; your Work will make it meaningful.

Why Bookstores Might Be the Enemy

Here’s an interesting tidbit I’ve discovered about myself: while I love libraries, I don’t like bookstores. And yet I should adore bookstores, since my professional life is based on reading (I’m an English professor) and since I read incessantly. In fact, one of my favorite cocktail party questions is this: If you had to choose between never writing another word or never reading another book, which would you choose? Most of my friends choose the former: for them, writing is of paramount importance. They hesitate a bit when making their choice, it’s true. But for me, there is no hesitation, because there is no choice: it’s far more important for me to read than to write.

And so I should love bookstores; after all, when I’m in one, I’m surrounded by what I love. But that’s not the case. The truth is, I never leave bookstores filled with satisfaction and pleasure, even when I buy an armload of much-desired books. It’s only recently dawned on me, in fact, that I must not really like bookstores at all, because I often leave them feeling depressed and anxious. Once I realized this, however, it didn’t take me long to figure out why.

Let me stop for a moment and explain that I do in fact love libraries. I can sniff them out in a town I’ve never been before and locate them (despite the fact that I have a deplorable sense of direction) with as much ease as a Ring-wraith sniffs out Frodo when he’s carrying the Ring. And once inside a library, I especially love checking out old, forlorn copies of books that no one reads anymore.

So what is the difference between libraries and bookstores?

It’s an easy question: the answer is money. Libraries need money to run, of course, but they don’t make money off the books they lend. That’s why I never mind paying late fees–and I’ve had some whoppers–to libraries for the books I’ve checked out. On the other hand, bookstores make money off of books; they turn books into commodities. For me, that’s an ugly process, one that I abhor. That’s one reason I won’t proclaim–here or anywhere else–my love of books or brag about how many books I have. (I will brag about the lonely orphans of second-hand books I have occasionally brought home, however, and kept close to me through the years: The Complete Works and Letters of Charles Lamb, the poor, neglected thing, and a 1963 edition of Waverley with cute colored-pencil illustrations).

And so, from now on, to get a sense of peace, of timelessness and of the pleasure that comes of these things, it’s the library I’ll be heading to, not my local independent bookstore. And when I hear the local bookstore tout itself as a mainstay of culture in my community, I’ll be thinking about the unpleasant nature of the publishing industry, the difficulty encountered by writers of all varieties and talent levels, and the intense competition for attention waged by all of the above entities. I’ll disappear into the stacks, turn up yet another unloved copy of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and I’ll remember that bookstores themselves might just be the enemy of all writers and readers who truly love books.