The Return of Alien vs. Predator, or, Why Liberals Lose When They Take on Corporate Power: Part II

On August 2, I wrote, "Modern liberals use state power to check and constrain the power of capitalism, which they see as posing the greatest threat to our ability to live free and flourish....

Does the strategy of posing state power against corporate power work? Only if we control the state AND state power is stronger than the power of capitalism. But neither of these is true."

If you want to re-read Edward S. Greenberg's arguments demonstrating that elections don't keep elected leaders faithful to the wishes of the people, go back to August 2. But I think the point that corporations often escape government control is obvious if you've been reading the headlines for the last decade. Enron. Halliburton. Qwest. Arthur Anderssen. Global Crossing. In Massachusetts, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, which gave us leaky tunnels years after Bechtel gave us Iran-Contra criminals Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz. And these are just the ones that have gotten caught.

One of the biggest employers in America, Wal-Mart, has repeatedly been fined for paying workers less than minimum wage, making them work longer than legal hours, and allowing sexual harassment in the workplace but refusing to allow union organizing. They just pay the fines and keep on doing it. Some of the biggest financial institutions in the country knowingly lent money to people they knew could not afford to pay it back, then sold the loans to investors, creating the housing crash and the Great Recession.  And the conservatives complain we're an over-regulated society!

This all goes to the second reason the liberal strategy is just not enough to rein in corporate power. Government is frequently NOT stronger than corporations. Here are some of the reasons:

* Government officials rely on corporate money to run their election campaigns. It buys "access," which means the chance for the corporate leaders to explain what they want and, if the elected officials don't give it to them, to know the reason why.

* Government officials often ARE corporate leaders. They take a turn "serving their country" before going back to "making a profit"--but all too often the way they think and act in the two roles is exactly the same!

* If government creates rules or imposes taxes that corporate capitalists don't want to live with, they can do the big money equivalent of taking their ball and going home: namely, they can stop investing for a while and go on "capital strike." Alternatively, they can move their money to investments in other countries. Then, jobs will disappear, wages will decline, and "the economy" will be bad (in that phrase we use without thinking about it to describe what affects rich people--we never use "the economy" to mean the minimum wage, for example!). Without their overtly making it happen, corporations will exert power over government, using us as their tool. Politicians will come under public pressure to do something about "the economy"--with the public never realizing that it's "the economy" which is doing something nasty to them!

* For more than a hundred years, we have been taught that freedom = "free enterprise," meaning corporate power goes unchecked by democratic political power. Every law, regulation, and enforcement action is defined as a threat against freedom. It's ingrained in us to think government power used against Microsoft or McDonald's is power that could turn against you and me. So we give away our power in the name of a freedom that only other people enjoy.

And yet, and still...sometimes, in limited ways, government can force corporate business to act in the public interest. It's worth using the liberal approach, if not as a strategy, at least as one tactic, one tool, one finger in the dike to stop the flood from rising further. Moving people who haven't ever understood why you would WANT government regulation is a worthwhile endeavor, too.

It's simply not enough. It never will be enough. It doesn't change the underlying structure of power. Without that, we can count on seeing things get worse and worse. That's why I cheer and applaud my liberal friends, and at the same time, I encourage them to think deeper--more radically--about what it will take really to make things better.

Time for Less Positive Thinking!

I understand that people who are out of work have to stay positive, as an article in the Boston Globe reported today. It's a psychological necessity--even if it gets extreme at times.

Steve Kitay, laid off from Fidelity Investments, made a vow to stay upbeat during his job search, even as his wife, Cilla, was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Nobody wants to talk to you if you’re negative,’’ said Kitay.

And he's right, unfortunately. But the rest of us, those who have jobs, should not stay positive. It's our duty to be critical--and even negative.

We should think critically about the claims that people are personally responsible for their unemployment. It took years and years of rapacious profits and mendacious politics to get us to this point. Close to one out of every six people in Massachusetts are not living in poverty because of character flaws. This is a social problem.

We should also think critically about the claims that government has done all it can do and that it's time to worry about deficits. There is no history to back that up, and the economic theory that supports laissez-faire and trickle-down is the same theory that got us into the recession in the first place. Even Alan Greenspan confesses that.

We should be negative. We should say no to tax breaks for the rich, bonuses for the speculators, and war profits for Halliburton and Xe (which is really Blackwater but dares not speak its name). We should say no to wars that waste the lives of people back home as well as those who are killed and maimed in battle. Unemployed people cannot afford to be negative? Then they must depend on us to do it. We cannot afford to be brightsided any longer.