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.

Alien vs. Predator, or, Why Liberals Lose When They Take on Corporate Power: Part I

All right, it's the moment you've been waiting for. I've been explaining why "liberal" is not a badge of shame (as the O'Reillys and Limbaughs of the world would have it be) but the name of an honorable tradition of thought about freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. So why don't I call myself a liberal? What more do I want?

Plenty! Let's remember what liberalism has always been about: liberty, the freedom to make a good life of one's own design. And let's recall the strategy that liberals have used since the late nineteenth century to ensure liberty. 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.

Do We Control the State?

The primary tool of democracy is elections. Leave aside all the questions about stolen or fraudulent elections that agitated so many of my friends in 2000 and 2004, and even the voter repression tactics the Republicans practiced in 2008 and 2012. When elections run right, are they a powerful enough tool so we, the people, can use them to get the government we want?

Edward S. Greenberg once asked "what parties and elections would have to look like if they were to truly be vehicles by which political decision makers were kept responsible and responsive to the American people" (The American Political System: A Radical Approach, 1989). I like his answers.

1. Candidates and parties should present clear policy choices to the American people, and these policy choices should concern important issues.

2. Once elected, officials should try to carry out promises made during the campaign.

3. Once elected, officials should be able to transform campaign promises into binding public policy.

4. Elections should strongly influence the behavior of those elites responsible for making public policy.

It's not clear that ANY of these four conditions are met in America.

1. Sure, the last presidential race presented us with clear choices on some crucial issues. Some of these choices were very narrow, however.  Should we keep on using drone strikes abroad and surveillance at home at the current, unprecedented level, or become even more aggressive?  Should we cripple the economic recovery through across-the-board federal budget cuts or by targeted cuts?  For most of us (and especially for the poor and the unemployed), these are not choices but threats.

Meanwhile, out of 535 Congressional elections, only a handful were seriously contested. Bottom line: if you wanted to change the way government works by finding enough candidates who agreed with you and electing them into office, you were out of luck.

2. Do candidates try to keep their campaign promises? The answer seems to be, "When they must." But LBJ ran promising "no wider war" in Vietnam and then sent tens of thousands more troops. Ford (an unelected president) pardoned Nixon after swearing not to. Reagan ran against "big government" and created the biggest budget deficits in history, before the current administration! George H.W. Bush famously promised "no new taxes," but bowed to reality and broke his promise. Clinton ran on "putting people first," but as Bob Woodward documented, he actually put the needs of bond markets first--he cut social programs that help the many and the vulnerable in order to shrink the budget deficit, pleasing the few and the rich.

George W. was the dangerous exception to the rule. If we hadn't stopped him from keeping his campaign promises, God help us!  Obama was very careful to raise hope without making very many promises.  He also has the built-in excuse that whatever he tries to do, the Republicans automatically oppose.

3. American government is set up to keep elected officials from making broad changes in policy. Most of the time, control of the three branches of government is split between the two major parties. When the national government is split, it's difficult to make dramatic changes on issues people know and care about.

When the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are all dominated by people from one side of the political spectrum, they still have a tough time making changes. Each branch is protective of its own powers and jealous of giving too much to either of the others. They compete as much as they coordinate, despite party. Besides, as we have seen in the recent NSA scandal, the Republican Party includes moralists and libertarians (and some out-and-out fascists). The Democrats house technocrats, progressives, and socialists. Party affiliation doesn't make them concert their efforts around one platform. Most are too busy calculating what will ensure their own personal re-election!

Finally, if the federal government seems united, then state and local governments can oppose and at least delay the national agenda. Look at Massachusetts with gay marriage, California with medical marijuana and tough clean air standards, or southern states' opposition to civil right and anti-poverty legislation and programs. For better or worse, we live in a system of fragmented state power. And this is the tool we want to use to humanize an entire economic system based on self-interest?

4. Even if we had competitive elections with choices that reflect what people truly need--and politicians tried to keep the promises that got them elected--and government weren't set up to impede the progress of any dramatic changes--most of the choices that affect our daily lives are not made by government. Quoting Greenberg again, "Elections hardly affect decisions relating to the location of businesses, the growth of cities, the development of technology, the center of work, the shape of educational experience, or the distribution of wealth and income."

Beyond Wishful Thinking

It's still worth fighting elections to put candidates in office who can use state power for what it's worth. But it's not worth as much as we imagine. We are strangers in our own land, and when liberals think they can address the alienation of vast parts of the population through another law or another policy, they are engaged in the wishful thinking that has become another synonym for "liberal."

Look for the Liberal Label

One of the tools we're going to need to change America is an accurate understanding of what "liberal" means. For 20 years, conservatives and right-wingers have tried to turn the name into a term of abuse. But I think the Rev. Jesse Jackson is right when he reminds us, "America was a liberal idea from the start." 

The Liberal Revolution

To understand what liberalism means, go back to the days when Christian kings and queens ruled their European nations in the name of God. Each person was assigned his or her role in life: rich and powerful aristocrat, poor peasant, serf tied to the land. You were not supposed to have a life of your own. That was considered unnatural, unnecessary, and even sinful. You were supposed to live out your role in this life and hope for a reward in the next one.

But a new idea about the good human life began to spread (first in cities), and its name was liberty, or freedom. To be free meant not to live a life determined in every detail by tradition but to have choices, and to make them as your own reason and tastes told you to. Free men (and to a limited extent, women) had property of their own they didn't owe to a lord or king. Free people made rules together to govern their relations with each other. They called these rules "laws," and they began to consider the laws free people imposed on themselves as equal or superior to the dictates of religion or the commands of the state. So, freedom and self-government became linked.

Notice that in those days at the end of the Middle Ages, the dominant forces shaping people's lives against their wills were government and religious authority. That's why liberals, people who believed in freedom, had to try to limit government and separate church from state. They confronted what they saw as the biggest forces against freedom in their times.

Enter Capitalism

Flash forward to the Industrial Revolution. The new system of production gave the people who had money to invest (capitalists) power over everyone else. If you wanted to work, increasingly, you had to work for them, for the hours and wages they set. If you didn't want to accept their terms, you were "free" to go elsewhere. But capitalists were "free" to wait you out. While you were looking for work at a decent wage, and starving, they were sitting on their wealth--or hiring your neighbor who got desperate earlier than you did.

Freedom in a capitalist system, in other words, had to mean something different from what it meant in the Middle Ages. Government and religious institutions still had the power to impose on people's lives, but so did the rich. And the tools liberals had developed to carve out a sphere of liberty in the middle ages didn't work against the power of capitalism. Indeed, the owners were oppressing the working class, all in the name of freedom!

Separation of church from state didn't separate wealth from power. Government under law could at the same time be government under class rule. As the writer Anatole France put it, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." 

Redefining Liberalism

What was a liberal to do? People who believed in freedom had two choices.

1. They could stick with their old definition of liberty and give up the broader notion behind it: that to be free meant having the chance to live a flourishing human life of your own making. Many traditional-style liberals went with this option. Today, we call them conservatives! (That's why conservatism is such a mixed bag. It includes the people who respect religious tradition and political authority above all, as some people have done since the Middle Ages, and it also includes people who believe in limiting government even if that means inequality and immorality survive and spread.)

2. They could expand their definition of liberty to include ways of ensuring people had the material prerequisities of a good life. Without food, clothing, shelter, and education, the new liberals realized, people are just not in a position to make choices about what kind of life they want to live--or to put those choices into practice.

Liberalism: Still About Freedom

Sometimes conservatives accuse this new kind of liberalism of forgetting about freedom in order to achieve equality. But liberals don't see it that way. FranklinRoosevelt, for instance, spoke of the New Deal as involving Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship God in his or her own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The first two are expressions of traditional liberalism, and "freedom from want" is as clear an expression of the new liberalism as anyone has ever formulated.

The new liberals didn't stop worrying about the power of the state to oppress. They made a calculation that they could use state power to check and constrain the power of capitalism. Agree or disagree, but don't let anyone tell you liberalism is some wild notion ungrounded in reality. Liberalism has produced the greatest freedom as well as the greatest prosperity this country has ever known.

Then why am I not a liberal myself? That will wait for a future post.

Happy Days Are Here Again?

At 55, I watch the stock market more than I used to.  Oh, not its daily ups and downs, which are like my cats chasing each other around the house: something spooks them and off they go.  But I have a graph in the back of my mind. I'm aware that my hopes of a retirement with Rona partly depend on the value of our retirement accounts.  When the line is going down, as it did in the Great Recession, we have to exercise patience.  When it's going up, we get to wonder how two children of working-class parents can grow up to be secure, even at a modest level.

That's why I take personally the question that James Surowiecki raised in a recent article in The New Yorker: "Boom or Bubble?"  The stock market has been going up, even though employment, housing, and income equality have lagged behind.  Is this really sustainable? 

The answer I get from reading the article is: unfortunately, yes.

The value of stock is based on the triumph of corporate power.  The last time what we now call "the 99%" could consistently force the wealthy to share the wealth we all created was when I was a teenager.  Since then:

• Corporate tax rates have fallen dramatically (and so have the rates that rich people pay as individuals).  
• Corporations have gone global. A study of "American" corporations that Surowiecki cites found "they got forty-six per cent of their earnings from abroad."
• Partly as a result, corporations have broken the power of unions and forced wages down.  (Retirement benefits, too.  If we had pensions instead of 401ks and IRAs, stocks would be lower, and we wouldn't care.)

And one more thing that Surowiecki doesn't mention but his colleague Elizabeth Kolbert makes clear: raping the planet is good for profits.  If the companies that our financial advisor has invested us in were to pay the full environmental cost of just the energy they use, then they--and we--would have far fewer dollars in our accounts.  But that is just what I would like to see.

I would like to see fewer new products and more days when the air is clear.  I would like to see lower profits and more social benefits.  We and the vast majority of other Americans would lead happier lives if corporate taxes went up instead of the stock market--and we used that tax money to pay for universal health care and a more generous retirement benefit for all.  No boom, no bubble, just lives of useful work and pleasurable leisure with friends, followed by an old age not hampered by concerns about my investments, your children's future, the fate of our earth.

Where's the Outrage--and Where Should It Be?

Money is not the issue. Power is.

A year after causing the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, corporate chieftains are paying themselves big bonuses again. Many of them get more in bonuses than you or I earn in salary or wages all year. The Obama administration is mildly chiding them. Some columnists (like the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson) are calling it an outrage. But what they are looking at is just the symptom, not the disease.

Why do corporate CEO's, top managers, and boards get to decide what to pay one another, in an orgy of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"? Why does the finance industry get to accept billions in bailout money from you and me, then refuse to lend to people with good credit, including the small business around the corner? Why, when the U.S. government just saved corporate capitalism from a complete breakdown, does the government still defer to the corporate capitalists who steered us into the ditch to begin with?

Corporations in this country are more powerful than the people we elect to represent our interests. Until we squarely face that problem, shouting about exorbitant bonuses is just a way of letting off steam.

Did Somebody Mention Corporate Power?

How do we know that the Obama administration will be under pressure to cave to corporations? I couldn't say it any better than Derrick Jackson did the Globe:

For the first time since 1994, the defense and healthcare industries gave a majority of campaign contributions to the Democrats - albeit bare majorities. They will expect to be first in line for loopholes from Obama. Resistance to modernization is likely from energy companies and the transportation industry, which gave about two-thirds of their funds to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

For all the chaos this nation was thrown into by the $700 billion bank bailout, the Washington Post reported this week that $290 billion of it has been committed without anyone yet being hired to oversee it. It also happens that the banking industry was another sector that gave Democrats a bare majority of campaign contributions for the first time since the early 1990s. How much oversight will Obama truly insist upon?

Obama Silent on Corporate Power

Progressives in Somerville, as elsewhere, have invested a lot of hope in an Obama presidency. After the Bush administration's systematic attack on rights, liberties, and the common good, Obama can hardly help doing better! Yet on some of the most basic issues, Obama has been silent.

Issue #1: Corporate power. It's refreshing that the Obama-Biden campaign pledged to protect consumers. On issues like mortgage fraud, predatory credit card lending, and bankruptcy laws, the new administration has taken positions we should support, and there are plenty of other examples. We have to ask, though: why have Democrats not addressed these issues already? It's not because they just discovered the issues. It's because any attempt to help the majority of us runs into the buzzsaw of corporate power.

• Corporate leaders directly intervene in elections by supporting some candidates over others. Obama may be less indebted to corporate funds than most candidates because of his ability to collect small donations in large numbers--but he has to work with Congress, most of which is already bought and paid for.
  

• Corporate lobbyists have tight relationships of long standing with the Congressional committees that write laws and the bureaucracies that create and enforce policies in that corporation's line of work. These "iron triangles" are part of the reason the country is in the mortgage/foreclosure/banking crisis we are in right now. Out of sight, they worked in corporate interests and against the public interest.
  

• Corporate capital often gets what it wants without bribes or explicit threats. They just say that a given policy would not be good for "the economy." (When I hear "the economy" these days, I think of men in $2,000 suits getting $2,000,000 bonuses for crashing their companies.) Or they say that if a certain policy were passed, it would "cost jobs." This is a threat in disguise. Jobs don't just disappear. Corporate leaders slash positions when they are not making the profits they want--which are much higher now than corporate profits have ever been!
  

The whole liberal idea is to use government power to rein in corporate power. Unfortunately, and especially in the era of globalization, corporate power has been stronger. Barack Obama shows no signs of recognizing this problem, let alone using people power as the solution. So, it's up to us.

If The People Lead The Leaders Will Follow

Organizing to End Poverty, 21st-Century Style

Wednesday was National Blog Action Day on poverty. Since I work at an anti-poverty agency, I had a lot to say about the topic, and I've been writing about how to end poverty all week. Here's the conclusion: It's necessary. It's possible. But it will take more than my agency can do, and more than politicians will do on their own.

Strategy 3: A New Social Movement

Even well-meaning liberal politicians consistently put other issues over poverty. Just a week ago, we saw the majority of Congress vote to give $700 billion to banks--with hardly a thought about the new wave of homeless people that are about to created, as banks evict people from houses on which the mortgages have been foreclosed.

Poor people and their allies don't have the money to buy politicians' attention. What we do have is numbers. Especially in an election year, elected officials run scared when they hear a large number of people all clamoring for the same thing. This election is almost over--but your Representative in Congress and most of your state and local officials face elections again in 2010. For them, the election never stops. That gives us an opportunity.

We have a long history of social movements for change in this country. In my lifetime alone, we have the Civil Rights Movement and antiwar movement , the women's and gay liberation movements, the antinuclear movement, movements to abolish nuclear weapons and to support people's movements in Central America, and the movement against global corporatism and for global democracy. We can learn lessons from them about how to get large numbers of people organized: not just for a rally or demonstration, but for the long haul.

We can combine those lessons with 21st century techniques. Meetups, viral messaging, DIY video, databases, Facebook pages, other online social networks, and yes, blogging: we can take advantage all of these techniques to get people to act as one. Technology does not replace face-to-face organizing: it empowers organizers. MoveOn does it. The Obama campaign has done it. We need to learn how to do it, too, but not to get candidates elected and then to forget about them. We get them elected, and then we hold their feet to the fire of public outrage.

It's not only the politicians who need to feel the heat. Banks that evict good tenants just because the owner of the house where they rent is in foreclosure need crowds on their doorsteps, at their stockholder meetings, writing Wikipedia articles about them, doing Michael Moore-style exposes...you name it. Employers that keep wages down and squash unions, media that spend endless inches of print or minutes of air time on the lifestyles of the rich and famous but haven't a moment to spare all week for the poor...the possibilities are endless.

There's a lot of work to be done. If you want to join in but you don't know where to start, write me for suggestions. As a rabbinic saying states, "It is not incumbent on you to finish the task, but neither are you free to abstain from it."

Female Bonding Isn't Feminism

Ellen Goodman wrote last week that some conservatives are calling liberal women out because they won't support Sarah Palin for Vice President. Aside from the fact that you can't do that without voting for McCain as President, the charges of hypocrisy ring all hollow.

Feminism is not, and never was, an attempt to replace the Good Old Boys with the Good Old Girls. Feminism is an analysis of how power works and how to end oppression.

From the 1960's to now, step by step, feminists have pointed out:

*Prejudice: the mental image of women as inferior.

*Discrimination: actions that keep women in an inferior position (whether the acts are based on prejudice, or on male self-interest, or inertia, or just plain obliviousness).

*Woman-hatred, as expressed in degrading images of women and degrading language about women.

*Rape and sexual violence.

*Institutionalized discrimination: where seemingly neutral standards, like long hours and no provision of child care for men or women, actually hurt women more.

Who would do more to oppose these strategies of domination? Good Old Girl Sarah Palin, who doesn't even recognize they exist? John McCain, who verbally abuses his wife in public? Or Michelle Obama's husband?