{"id":52066,"date":"2021-02-24T15:18:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T15:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realprogressives.org\/?p=40114"},"modified":"2021-02-24T15:18:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-24T15:18:09","slug":"how-capitalism-fails-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/24\/how-capitalism-fails-us\/","title":{"rendered":"How Capitalism Fails US"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Hello internet,\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0Jackie Fox and\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0like for you to join me in a thought experiment.\u00a0Imagine an ideal world.\u00a0What do you see?\u00a0How do you know\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0ideal?\u00a0If\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0anything like me,\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0imagining a world without homelessness or hunger, where life expectancy increases along with quality of life, everyone has access to healthcare, the world is\u00a0healthy\u00a0and our ecosystem\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0on the verge of collapse.\u00a0Following the logic of Capitalism though,\u00a0you\u2019d\u00a0really just\u00a0want a strong stock market and around three percent market growth per year; everything else is just icing on the cake.\u00a0
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The problem is that while these two sets of goals\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0entirely mutually exclusive, focusing entirely on market wealth over individual health and outcomes seems to make many of the goals of my idealized world much more difficult.\u00a0Even more difficult would be\u00a0maintaining\u00a0these freedoms in an economic system that prefers everything to be privatized and sold for the highest price the market can support.\u00a0
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This can often mean the market\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0supposed to make everything more efficient may use things like planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity to make the products you consume either lower quality or higher cost than they really could\/should be just to maximize profit.\u00a0capitalism\u00a0probably isn\u2019t\u00a0the worst system in theory; a lot of basic market principles\u00a0extolled\u00a0by capitalists make sense, but the problem\u00a0is humans\u00a0are adept at breaking or gaming systems to maximize rewards.\u00a0When the system is capitalism, the reward maximized will\u00a0generally be\u00a0profit even if this comes at the cost of human health or our environment.\u00a0We have seen this acutely in the US over the last year as stock markets soared even while a record number of people suffered the\u00a0ravages\u00a0of being unemployed during a pandemic.\u00a0
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Wouldn\u2019t\u00a0we all be better off if the variable we used to cheat the system maximized human happiness and quality of life?\u00a0Capitalists might say that capitalism is such a system, noting the\u00a0various ways\u00a0life has improved since trading feudalism for capitalism, but these are lucky side effects of the pursuit of maximizing profit, not actually the goal.\u00a0
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In Mark Fisher\u2019s Capitalist Realism, which I discussed in my last video<\/a>,\u00a0Fisher explains that because of how\u00a0ingrained\u00a0capitalism is in our culture and even our minds, it might be\u00a0very difficult\u00a0to imagine a world that\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0somehow capitalist anymore.\u00a0Or as early neoliberal Margaret Thatcher was fond of saying, there is no alternative to capitalism.\u00a0Others\u00a0posit\u00a0that capitalism has placed us at the end of history.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end of history is a political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government. But is capitalism really the best we can do?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Big Other\u00a0<\/h3>\n\n\n\n


<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Big Other seems to think so, at least, for now, and at least according to Fisher, as he describes in his book: \u201cThe Big Other is the collective fiction, the symbolic structure, presupposed by any social field. The Big Other can never be encountered in itself; instead, we only ever confront its stand-ins… One important dimension of the Big Other is that it does not know everything. It is this constitutive ignorance of the Big Other that allows public relations to function.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the Big Other could be defined as the consumer of PR and propaganda, the virtual figure which is required to believe even when no individual can. To use one of \u017di\u017eek\u2019s examples: who was it, for instance, who didn\u2019t know that Really Existing Socialism was shabby and corrupt? Not any of the people, who were all too aware of its shortcomings; nor any of the government administrators, who couldn\u2019t but know. No, it was the Big Other who was the one deemed not to know \u2013 who wasn\u2019t allowed to know.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the distinction between what the Big Other knows,\u00a0i.e.,\u00a0what is officially accepted, and what is widely known and experienced by actual individuals, is\u00a0very far\u00a0from being \u2018merely\u2019\u00a0emptily\u00a0formal; it is the discrepancy between the two that allows \u2018ordinary\u2019 social reality to function. When the illusion that the Big Other did not know can no longer be\u00a0maintained, the\u00a0incorporeal\u00a0fabric holding the social system together disintegrates.
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In our society, and here in America our government, our Big Other believes in capitalism and even neoliberalism.\u00a0This creates a dangerous limitation presupposed in all political conversations.\u00a0Bernie Sanders running for president showed us a good example of this, as news organizations said he\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0win because he referred to himself as a democratic socialist.\u00a0It\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0that the people\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0interested in socialism, for much of the last decade socialism has garnered more\u00a0favorability\u00a0in American polls than capitalism, so it must be the Big Other who\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0stomach the talk of socialism, democratic or otherwise.\u00a0
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Those of us fighting to make the\u00a0general public\u00a0aware of Modern Monetary Theory face a similar problem.\u00a0Everyone in government – from their actions – seem to understand just how backwards their rhetoric is on the US debt and\u00a0deficit and\u00a0behave often as though they understand\u00a0MMT\u00a0when it\u00a0benefits\u00a0them politically and\u00a0disavow\u00a0it when austerity serves their interests.\u00a0Their ability to do\u00a0this hinges\u00a0upon what the Big Other knows, and I would argue that we behave as though the Big Other is either ignorant or opposed to MMT.\u00a0How can we fight such a large battle and convince a purely symbolic figure whom we can never confront that\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0right?\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0not as hard as it might sound, at least, in theory, as Fisher explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKhrushchev\u2019s speech in 1965, in which he \u2018admitted\u2019 the failings of the Soviet state,\u00a0was..\u00a0momentous. It is not as if anyone in the party was unaware of the atrocities and corruption carried out in its name, but Khrushchev\u2019s announcement made it impossible to believe any more that the Big Other was ignorant of them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


Similarly, this means politicians don\u2019t have to be ignorant of MMT to favor unnecessary austerity programs or to limit what they think it is possible in pursuing their own goals.\u00a0Instead, they simply\u00a0have to\u00a0think most are unaware of such a thing because the Big Other cannot be said to know.\u00a0Breaking this barrier, turning to action, at least in theory, is\u00a0pretty simple.\u00a0Someone important, preferably from the establishment whom no one could easily call a radical, must publicly and vocally embrace MMT.\u00a0Once a respected establishment figure has embraced and legitimized such an idea, it may be much more difficult to\u00a0claim things\u00a0cannot be done with government spending, though I doubt even this will really pull Republican politicians’ heads out of the sand.\u00a0We came close to a moment like this with Bernie Sanders, who was advised by major\u00a0MMTers, but when it came down to it, his ideas of what is economically possible were a little too old-fashioned to\u00a0really publicly\u00a0embrace it.\u00a0Perhaps he\u00a0still has the fiscal mindset of a mayor on some level, where\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0no Federal Reserve to keystroke in money and therefore everything must be covered by taxes.\u00a0
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Actually, the\u00a0ideal person to break the silence on MMT is probably Joe Biden.\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0not saying\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0likely to do so by any means, but if a moderate who has historically supported austerity and strict budgeting in Congress could support MMT, then perhaps with the right media coverage this would be an event that could cause the Big Other to listen up and take notice.\u00a0
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As a recent Guardian editorial\u00a0puts it,<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMr.\u00a0Biden aims to control the virus and then create jobs<\/a> with infrastructure investments\u00a0to reinvent the post-crisis economy for a zero-carbon world. Call it a spend-then-tax policy. If he succeeds,\u00a0Mr.\u00a0Biden will go some way to\u00a0repudiate\u00a0the conventional economic wisdom that argues that if governments keep borrowing too much, they risk defaulting, will end up printing money and be forced in a panic to put up interest rates. The pandemic revealed this to be\u00a0bunk. Central banks can keep interest rates low by buying government bonds with money created from thin air. Last year, they bought 75% of all public debt.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Overnight,\u00a0all of\u00a0our political opportunities could change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive\u00a0pervasiveness\u00a0of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately\u00a0great effect.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Main Street needs a\u00a0Bailout\u00a0<\/h3>\n\n\n\n


<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In\u00a0a number of\u00a0ways, the COVID crisis in the US in 2020 ended up showing us many small moments of a phenomena like this.\u00a0In the Democratic primary for president in 2020, Andrew Yang\u2019s\u00a0initial\u00a0call for a Universal Basic Income was unheard of because\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0an idea that had few charismatic public facing champions.\u00a0The Big Other\u00a0hadn\u2019t\u00a0heard of it, for sure.\u00a0While he had a platform full of interesting and forward-thinking proposals that made all the policy wonks\u00a0swoon, his elevator pitch and his stump speech were all about the\u00a0UBI.\u00a0Because it was unheard of, it\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0spoken of, and because no one had said the words before on the Presidential debate stage before, people thought it was impossible a President might offer you some sort of income as a supplement to your income.\u00a0Your relationship to the government was supposed to be more of the opposite, with you paying them taxes instead of them giving you a dividend on the American wealth creation machine\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0a part of, or at least, that was how Yang pitched it to those watching the debates.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 
Then the pandemic hit, and people as diverse as Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley were calling for as much as $2,000 checks which some plans had recurring until the pandemic ends. As a part of the initial debate over how to deal with COVID on the national level it was a bold minority proposal. It was unheard of. But they spoke it into being. 
 
Bernie shifted tactics to get a bonus of $2,400 a month added into the stimulus, leaving Hawley to vocally push for direct payments. Meanwhile, Bernie stared down multiple powerful GOP senators threatening to derail the whole bill,  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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and after a few tense days he got his demands. Hawley wasn\u2019t as influential or effective, but the initial stimulus included direct payments to Americans on an unprecedented scale. 
 
This changed the realm of what it was possible for the government to do to help its people. It had been clear the government wasn\u2019t scared to pump trillions in new money into the economy in a single year, 2008 and the resulting bail out showed us that. This was a great rebuke of neoliberal austerity; it wasn\u2019t that the money wasn\u2019t there as they frequently told us, because when Wall Street had to pay up on its bad bets the money flowed fast and furious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This incident showed us two important things very publicly; the ‘banking sector’ and ‘low risk’ investments were often built on a series of bets about things like housing prices and that the whole thing could come tumbling down catastrophically.\u00a0And when that happened, they bailed out Wall Street and prescribed more austere measures for Main Street.\u00a0After all, they\u2019d\u00a0just spent all that money covering the losing bets of the richest Americans.\u00a0The Big Other said, \u201cNo money left.\u201d\u00a0
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Occupy Wall Street came and went, demanding a people\u2019s bailout.\u00a0In 2016, Bernie Sanders\u2019 campaign rhetoric reflected this point.\u00a0Main Street needed a bailout too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Fisher puts it, \u201cThe War on Terror has prepared us for such a development: the normalization of crisis produces a situation in which the repealing of measures brought in to deal with an emergency becomes unimaginable.\u201d\u00a0
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If 2008 normalized the idea that in a crisis the government could bail out America to the tune of trillions of dollars without much inflation, 2020s stimulus bill normalized the\u00a0idea we\u00a0could be bailed out too.\u00a0The idea of\u00a0additional\u00a0direct payments grew in popularity since and\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0nearly a\u00a0year later, and\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0only seen an\u00a0additional\u00a0$600, even though the former Republican President called for immediate $2000 checks during his second campaign as a Hail Mary to help him get the edge in the November election.\u00a0
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Democrats won an unlikely clean sweep in Georgia\u2019s second voting in January on calls for passing a $2000 check in the months after November\u2019s Democratic Presidential victory. Biden has said passing a $2000 check is a priority he wants to achieve by passing $1400 checks, which, in addition to the previous check would be $2000. The problem with this logic is that it\u2019s a lot like the issues surrounding the minimum wage – after years of calling for an increase to a $15 living wage, the actual living wage is now above $20 an hour, so even passing $15 now wouldn\u2019t bring us to a living wage. 
 
Likewise, with pandemic relief, and especially after Bernie\u2019s increases to Unemployment Insurance benefits wore off, debts have piled up for the record numbers of unemployed Americans a lot faster than $1200-$2000 every six months.  For many unemployed Americans, the stimulus payments hardly covered a month’s rent. The second $600 check wouldn\u2019t even cover a month\u2019s rent in most of America.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was brought back into the discussion just before the election, without a plan for follow up, like a national payroll system like what many European nations did for their citizens which many likened to an emergency UBI.\u00a0By then $2000 just\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0enough to pay the months of back rent for the Americans who were beginning to lose their homes.\u00a0
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We need a bail-out now more than ever, and recent polling shows direct payments are the number one demand for Americans, topping aid for small businesses and even vaccines.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n