===== The problem with redistribution schemes in the capitalist West is that they legitimate initial distribution. Capitalism is only a system of ‘natural’ distribution in a particular configuration of circumstance— in the absence of asymmetrical social power, which its ‘fact’ assures will never arise. Through the expression of market power the rich become rich by making the poor poorer. The ‘initial’ fortunes in the U.S. came through genocide to ‘enclose’ indigenous lands to turn it into ‘property,’ through the use of ‘private’ property designation to claim ownership of ‘natural’ resources, through the expropriation of slave labor and through ‘externalizing’ costs that have by now rendered large swaths of land uninhabitable, water undrinkable and air unbreathable. The distribution of capitalist abundance absolutely does matter because political-economic asymmetry is self-perpetuating. According to recent economic chatter the great ‘mystery’ of the Internet is that independent content providers receive less and less for their ‘product’ whereas Internet ‘providers’ use horizontal, and increasingly vertical, monopoly power to extract economic rents. As with health care, in the U.S. Internet service costs twice or more as much as other systems and runs half as fast. This is broadly analogous to the mechanics of the social distribution of income and wealth in the capitalist West. Capitalism in fact is absolutely antithetical to ‘natural’ distribution even granting for the moment that the idea makes any sense. In political economy where the rich become and stay rich by making and keeping the poor poor it is both theoretically incoherent and politically infeasible to ‘ask’ the rich to give some back through redistribution ‘downward.’ The contemporary storyline of ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ takes the incoherence of liberal / progressive policies of redistribution to their logical conclusion— within the frame of capitalist theoretics it is wholly coherent (and wholly circular) and outside of it a near absolute reversal comes into focus. Through the use of asymmetrical social power it is the rich who are the ‘takers’ and the rest of us the ‘makers.’
In this latter frame the corporate-friendly policies of liberal Democrats Obama and Clinton and their cohorts in Congress tie directly to policies of immiseration. Mr. Clinton used a stock market bubble engineered by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve to end ‘welfare as we know it’ while ‘freeing’ the banks to loot ‘the economy.’ Mr. Obama’s first task in office was to restore this very same financial cartel while pushing wholly inadequate economic ‘stimulus’ and a series of conspicuous scams against working people and the poor. Mr. Obama’s milquetoast call for raising the minimum wage is placed against his rapid and complete restoration of the forces driving wages down— Wall Street and other public-largesse dependent multi-national corporations. His unilateral move in an election year to raise the minimum wage for government ‘contractors’ leaves unanswered, and apparently unasked, why the Federal government is hiring contract workers at low pay in the midst of the greatest crisis for Western labor since the Great Depression? The U.S. government has a fiat currency meaning that it can simply ‘create’ the money needed to pay labor a living wage but Mr. Obama, like Mr. Clinton before him, hides behind the contrived lie that budget ‘constraints’ prevent the Federal government from acting in the interests of those made and kept poor by monopoly capitalism. To be clear, there is no suggestion here that capitalism should be ‘reformed.’ It is the political economy of divergent interests put forward as singular. Class warfare is clearly understood by actual capitalists even as it remains a mystery to their academic apologists. So: which side are you on?
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics will be published by CounterPunch / AK Press later this Spring.
===== The problem with redistribution schemes in the capitalist West is that they legitimate initial distribution. Capitalism is only a system of ‘natural’ distribution in a particular configuration of circumstance— in the absence of asymmetrical social power, which its ‘fact’ assures will never arise. Through the expression of market power the rich become rich by making the poor poorer. The ‘initial’ fortunes in the U.S. came through genocide to ‘enclose’ indigenous lands to turn it into ‘property,’ through the use of ‘private’ property designation to claim ownership of ‘natural’ resources, through the expropriation of slave labor and through ‘externalizing’ costs that have by now rendered large swaths of land uninhabitable, water undrinkable and air unbreathable. The distribution of capitalist abundance absolutely does matter because political-economic asymmetry is self-perpetuating. According to recent economic chatter the great ‘mystery’ of the Internet is that independent content providers receive less and less for their ‘product’ whereas Internet ‘providers’ use horizontal, and increasingly vertical, monopoly power to extract economic rents. As with health care, in the U.S. Internet service costs twice or more as much as other systems and runs half as fast. This is broadly analogous to the mechanics of the social distribution of income and wealth in the capitalist West. Capitalism in fact is absolutely antithetical to ‘natural’ distribution even granting for the moment that the idea makes any sense. In political economy where the rich become and stay rich by making and keeping the poor poor it is both theoretically incoherent and politically infeasible to ‘ask’ the rich to give some back through redistribution ‘downward.’ The contemporary storyline of ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ takes the incoherence of liberal / progressive policies of redistribution to their logical conclusion— within the frame of capitalist theoretics it is wholly coherent (and wholly circular) and outside of it a near absolute reversal comes into focus. Through the use of asymmetrical social power it is the rich who are the ‘takers’ and the rest of us the ‘makers.’
ReplyDeleteIn this latter frame the corporate-friendly policies of liberal Democrats Obama and Clinton and their cohorts in Congress tie directly to policies of immiseration. Mr. Clinton used a stock market bubble engineered by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve to end ‘welfare as we know it’ while ‘freeing’ the banks to loot ‘the economy.’ Mr. Obama’s first task in office was to restore this very same financial cartel while pushing wholly inadequate economic ‘stimulus’ and a series of conspicuous scams against working people and the poor. Mr. Obama’s milquetoast call for raising the minimum wage is placed against his rapid and complete restoration of the forces driving wages down— Wall Street and other public-largesse dependent multi-national corporations. His unilateral move in an election year to raise the minimum wage for government ‘contractors’ leaves unanswered, and apparently unasked, why the Federal government is hiring contract workers at low pay in the midst of the greatest crisis for Western labor since the Great Depression? The U.S. government has a fiat currency meaning that it can simply ‘create’ the money needed to pay labor a living wage but Mr. Obama, like Mr. Clinton before him, hides behind the contrived lie that budget ‘constraints’ prevent the Federal government from acting in the interests of those made and kept poor by monopoly capitalism. To be clear, there is no suggestion here that capitalism should be ‘reformed.’ It is the political economy of divergent interests put forward as singular. Class warfare is clearly understood by actual capitalists even as it remains a mystery to their academic apologists. So: which side are you on?
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics will be published by CounterPunch / AK Press later this Spring.