I didn't like the way I left off my first post of the year. It was a bit of a downer. I've been told it's whinging if you complain without offering alternatives, constructive criticism if you do. So I will elaborate on the previous post as intellectually as I can so that I will appear less of a party pooper. I will also do my best to conjure up the indomitable positivity of the late Howard Zinn and suggest some ways that we might make 2020 a good year.
Back in the 1920's and 1930's and for some time later, a couple of guys named Walter Lippmann and John Dewey had one of the slowest arguments ever. They were arguing in book form. Lippman wrote "Public Opinion" in '22, "The Phantom Public" in '25 and Dewey, by way of rebuttal, wrote "The Public and its Problems" in 1927. They were arguing mostly about the role of "the public" in a democracy. A lot of what I wrote in my last post was awfully Lippmannian. But I'd like to be a bit more Deweyish in this post if I might.
Originally, Lippmann wrote that people face severe limitations in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments. Thus, they tend to employ simplistic stereotypes to a reality that is highly complex. The old frog in a well example is used in Korea. When a frog falls into a well early in life, it sees only that well and begins to believe there is nothing else in the world. We tend to personalize our worlds and create our own pseudo-environments. Most need, or prefer, the world summarized for them by the better informed in whom they place, or misplace their trust.
In this way most "public opinion" is formed. In this way also, it is open to manipulation by anyone who understands it well enough. Lippmann had an odd idea of how this should be avoided in American politics. He (correctly) believed that the political elite were of a class incapable of accurately understanding the public. The public being mostly made up of the middle and lower classes. Anybody see that episode of Ellen when she gets Bill Gates to guess grocery prices? Yeah. NO IDEA about regular folks. So anyway, Lippmann proposed a "specialized class" to gather and analyze data, give the data to the decision makers in society and they could use it to help them govern. This, of course (wrongly) assumed that the ruling elite gave a shit.
Still, in his later book, "The Phantom Public," he cited so many erroneous concepts people have of exactly who and what "the public" is comprised of, that he called the public a myth, illusion or phantom. One of these mistaken ideas was that the public could act competently to direct their own affairs and a functioning government is the will of the people. He viewed the vast majority of the public as ignorant "bystanders" who were more interested in their private affairs than those that govern society. "The outsider is necessarily ignorant, usually irrelevant and often meddlesome, because he is trying to navigate the ship from dry land." He believed that there were a few, the "agents," who were members of the ruling class, who were the only ones capable of governing and that they should be subjected to as little interference as possible from the "bystanders."
"The public must be put in its place... so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of the bewildered herd." By "us" in that quote, I presume Lippmann meant the important, intelligent, upper class people, and he included himself among them. His ideal government was a sort of technocracy in which people with the skills, connections and educations to govern, (the rich) ,were better suited and therefore better governors. This was not democracy.
John Dewey believed that democracy, in which the public chose their representatives, was better for an increasingly complex society even though it was flawed and continuously subverted. The way to make it effective, he believed, was constant public vigilance. He advocated almost total control and regulation of government by the public. Otherwise, he said that politics, laws and policy would be just a shadow cast by business over society. Every governmental authority needed to be constantly challenged and justified. If it couldn't be justified, it needed to be dismantled. The Declaration of Independence states that governments are entirely artificial and when they become destructive of basic democratic principles such as equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government. So while you could make the argument that he had a more American idea of the role of the public than did Lippmann, he also had considerably more faith in the public than Lippmann, or than I did in my previous post.
One way in which they agreed was that the public doesn't really have much influence on the "state," until they experience negative consequences of its leadership. They practice most of their vigilance in the face of substantial crises such as government impeding basic democratic principles. Interestingly, Dewey felt that the biggest problem with this type of public representation was distraction. The largest distraction, he felt, was technology. Back in his day, he was referring to movies, cheap reading material, and cars. I wonder if he'd just surrender to Lippmann if he saw the technological distractions of today. But NO! We can't give up on Dewey just yet!
Dewey believed (correctly) that technology could be used to improve communication and make information more readily available so as to increase public interest in politics. Why, I've been using my computer and internet all day to learn all this stuff I'm blogging about. We ALL can! Right? I won't tell you what I did with my computer and internet for the two or three weeks BEFORE today. But it is this unfortunate reality that makes it pretty tough to side with Dewey on this.
Add to it studies like Gilens and Page that showed about 70% of Americans have no influence on public policy. And, not surprisingly, they're the lower and middle classes. In fact, both Gilens and Page agree that if the missing element in their meta-study, the super rich, were represented, that 70 would rise dramatically.
Noam Chomsky, in his documentary "Requiem For The American Dream" said that even during the great depression, which he remembers, there was more hope than he sees today. Class mobility, which was an important part of that American Dream, has all but disappeared. He tells us that James Madison, the father of the American Constitution said that it should be used to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority." So like Lippmann, he believed democracy should actually be PREVENTED.
Way back in 1776 when Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations," he wrote about merchants and manufacturers thinking of their own profit, no matter how grievous the impact on England. He called it the "Vile Maxim." All for us and nothing for all (or at least the 99.9%) Back in his day it was merchants and manufacturers, while today it's financial institutions and multinationals, but the Vile Maxim remains. Learning about what happened in the U.S. is a good way to learn about what most likely happened to all the other countries that have similar problems, and a solution that works for the States, will probably work anywhere else. So what happened?
Well, I'm glad I asked that. In the 50's and 60's I hear "the public" was pretty happy in the U.S. and in Canada. I think those were pretty prosperous times for a lot of nations who didn't lose the war. Even for those who DID for crying out loud! The whole world was wonderful! Despite all of his policy, I gotta believe these are the halcyon days to which the right impeachable Donald Trump refers when he says he wants to make America great again. If he only knew how they BECAME great!
One of the things that made those years great was actually the kind of vigilance in government regulation that Dewey advocates. Unions were strong, government agencies regulated, businesses actually PAID their taxes, capital gains and dividends were taxed like workers' wages, banks were dead boring places where money was stored, and America made money by making stuff. People felt like they contributed to society and to their government and culture. Almost everybody loved it! Almost.
In the 70's businesses started to fight back. Captains of industry have never liked democracy. It gives too much power to the people who they don't want to wield it. Namely, the people who aren't them. This had to stop. So what did they do?
1. They shifted the economy away from making stuff to money manipulation. This gave financial institutions a lot more power and big businesses started making more money with their money than with their products. For example, by the 70's General Electric made 50% of its profit by just moving money around. Of course new schemes for this magical money manipulation were needed and less regulation had to be part of the plan.
2. Workers were put in direct competition with the rest of the world including the super oppressed workers like the Chinese. Insecure workers don't ask for raises. They don't unionize or complain. They work overtime for nothing. They do as they're told. Alan Greenspan once commented that greater worker insecurity was the base of his success. These insecure workers were even given a title: the "precariat." The precarious proletariat. I have never felt job security in my life. Have you?
3. The burden of sustaining society had been shifted off the rich. Taxes were lowered, in some cases eliminated, CEO's got big raises, stockholders got big benefits from stock buybacks and other financial trickery, workers got the shaft. In the 50's and 60's, companies used to raise workers' salaries so they'd buy more of the companies' products. In the 70's, stockholders got rich through artificially rising company values. Workers get jack.
4. Regulatory capture was necessary. The 70's was a time of lobbyist explosion. People who persuaded governments and lawmakers to do what they wanted bought government favour and literally got laws made for them. Companies became people because they bought laws that said so. Money became speech because companies bought laws that said so. And representatives of companies were showing up in leadership positions of the agencies that were supposed to regulate them. Limitations on risky new money manipulation were removed. Worst of all, agreements were made so that if the financial institutions went overboard, they'd get bailed out. Banks were loaning money on the PROMISE of government bailout! And there's no such thing as "government" bailout, there is only taxpayer bailout.
5. I call number five Applizing. Because as much of a douchebag as he was, Steve Jobs was one of the best at fabricating consumers. Getting people to make irrational decisions about purchases they couldn't afford of things they didn't need. This provided distraction of the "bewildered herd." They didn't realize how bad things were getting as long as they could get, or hope to get the latest gizmo they coveted.
If you're still not with me and Lippman and you don't think democracy is completely gone, total control is in the hands of the elite and most of us are just ignorant bystanders, Chomsky gives a very good litmus test. It's a test we can do once a year on April 15th, the tax deadline. How do people feel at that time? It should be a day of celebration if our society is a successful democracy. We should be happily funding the programs we have all agreed upon. But, like I said in the last post, it seems more like usury/sodomy. Are you happy at tax time?
Okay, Howard Zinn to the rescue. When asked how he can remain so positive in the face of such great negativity about American democracy, he says, "I have seen enough change to suggest that more change is possible."
While he was alive Zinn lost his job teaching at Spelman College for marching in the civil rights movement during the 50's and 60's. He thought the allies couldn't win WWII, but it happened. He thought the US would never get out of Vietnam, but they did. And he remembers that before the famous protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides, there were small protests, sit-ins, freedom marches and freedom rides that nobody knows about. He believes we need to EARN our democracy. The 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution were never enforced... until people forced them to be. In fact the 14th amendment was more useful to hurt democracy. It was intended to protect the rights of freed slaves. But that's the one that was somehow used to get a court ruling that corporations are people.
Zinn was a(n) historian. He wrote a history book that sold more than 2 million copies called "A People's History of the US." He says that incorrect history isn't bad. It can be corrected. He was inspired to write this book by unknown history. The stuff that doesn't appear in history books. The stuff we don't learn in schools. Chapter one in the book is the truth about Columbus. Not a hero. Much is known about the civil war and slavery but little is known about what happened to the native Americans during that time.
Other small people who made a difference were people who went on strike and won. Where are those stories? Why don't school children learn them I wonder. The Colorado Coal Strike of 1913. There's a Woody Guthrie song about the Ludlow Massacre, but does anybody learn the song in school or read about the bloodiest labour dispute in the US? They say between 69 and 199 people died.
What about the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912? Bread and roses. These are heroic stories of small people fighting big industry and winning. Zinn says people don't go to wars, governments do, so when people fight in wars, which he did (he was a bombardier in WWII) they fight for their government, not their country. But people who are fighting for proper labour practices, freedom of speech, equality and the proper government of their country... THOSE are people who are fighting for their country.
It seems to me that governments in the US, and some other countries I can think of, have become destructive of their citizens' basic democratic principles. If people want to fight for their country, they just might have to fight against their government. I'm not advocating bloodshed. I hope we are more civilized in this day and age. But let's all try to do many, many small deeds like joining a rally or protest; starting one; writing a member of government; joining a labour union; starting one; writing a song; (writing a blog post); studying REAL history; learning about REAL heroes in your culture; there are a million things we can do, but staring at our phones isn't one of them.
As we can see already, 2020 ain't making ITSELF a good year!
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