Tweet
The continued slide in median earning power, rather than public obfuscation or even lack of jobs, is America’s real problem. It is the wood as distinct from the trees. It tends to loom larger when the television is off. Edward Luce – Financial Times
Fat, Dumb and Happy No More
What we are witnessing in Europe — and what may loom for the United States — is the exhaustion of the modern social order. Since the early 1800s, industrial societies rested on a marriage of economic growth and political stability. Economic progress improved people’s lives and anchored their loyalty to the state. Wars, depressions, revolutions and class conflicts interrupted the cycle. But over time, prosperity fostered stable democracies in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia. The present economic crisis might reverse this virtuous process. Slower economic expansion would feed political instability and vice versa. This would be a historic and ominous break from the past. Robert J. Samuelson – Washington Post
For almost two centuries, today’s high-income countries enjoyed waves of innovation that made them both far more prosperous than before and far more powerful than everybody else. This was the world of the American dream and American exceptionalism. Now innovation is slow and economic catch-up fast. The elites of the high-income countries quite like this new world. The rest of their population like it vastly less. Get used to this. It will not change. Martin Wolf – Financial Times
The quotes above are the witness to the seeds of mighty change in the years to come. In them is the embryo of the world of the future.
Capitalism’s winning weapon in the great struggle with Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War, was the elevating of the former starveling, sans culottes of Marx’s Das Kapital into the well fed, healthy, well educated, home-owning, fat, dumb and happy, paid-vacationing, new middle class… that, until not too long ago, made up the majority of Americans, or at least the way most Americans saw themselves or at least their children.
Now all of this is being taken away from them in the interest of technological progress, globalization and fiscal responsibility…
Good luck one-percenters, I have news for you. Today’s soon to be déclassé new middle class are infinitely more dangerous than the 19th century proletariat that Marx thought would be the protagonists of his revolution. We are talking about people with much more education, knowledge of and access to the levers of the economy than the “masses” of former days. In fact this sort of educated malcontent was previously only a tiny minority, but even so was feared as the seed corn of revolution: the “vanguard of the proletariat”… now there are masses of them.
The fools that want to take away these people’s “entitlements” are just that, fools. This middle class was created so that rich people could sleep soundly in their beds, while sugarplum fairies danced in their heads.Take away their “life style” and they will devour the perp.
35 Comments
Booga booga.
Bunga bunga!
Are the David Seaton who heads the Fluor Corp. or is that simply your nom de guerre?
The elites keep acting as if growth is forever, even as the planet informs them, with increasingly frequency, that it is not. That reality will cause a few of the ones who actually don’t think of themselves as Randian superbeings and the rest of us as untermenschen to realize that the most moral things to do are also, in the long run, the only things to do.
How will they do it? I suspect that there will be two ways. One will be via electoral politics, but that will just pretty much be how they keep things from totally collapsing before the main action, the creation of worker-run entities like the Mondragon Corporation, bears fruit.
Stupid Bourgeois Pirates have a revolution? Ha ha ha ha.
Ridiculous. War is the Capitalist way.
Vanguard of the proletariat, indeed. History is replete with rebellions and peasant revolts which failed, and shows far fewer revolutions which succeeded, if one defines success as the end of whatever ruling power structure existed before the revolution. The English, American, French and Russian revolutions all clearly resulted in that end.
For that matter, so did the Spanish one the last century. Even though the forces of reaction ultimately prevailed, the ancien’ regime was gone forever.
All of these successful revolutions had people who could easily be classified as middle or professional class at their heads. That’s just a fact.
Good observation. Scary parallel to modern times. Recc’d. Things are heating up in Spain now, are they?
History is no measure of the present day, because no prior period of history featured the social order we see today.
Judging by the comments of the MSM before and after Chavez’s victory yesterday I can’t imagine a less fertile ground for progressive change than our present day U.S. Would the ratings even be high enough to get a second news cycle slot? So important for these movements to catch hold, no? While pols emphasize ” constituent service ” on the Democratic side; the Republicans will have the vitriol and menace constituency pretty well wrapped up for the next 4 years and beyond. That’s assuming Obama wins, again. That would be pretty much cause a political stalemate, at best. Constituent service is about preserving the present. While very important it doesn’t seem to create the energy for better policies strengthening the middle class. Treading water doesn’t necessarily mean your going to be saved by the lifeboat. It just means you’ve still got a chance.
Seaton is a rather common surname in both Scotland and Ireland… St. David is the patron saint of Wales. Take a look at Facebook, there are dozens of us. I have a friend in Facebook, also named David Seaton, also from Chicago… as black as your hat. There was also a David Seaton in England involved in some huge scandal, another lost at sea…. I could go on and on.
I see this more an American thing than a Spanish thing. Americans really feel they have a “God-given” right to live well, that this is their “manifest destiny”. Spanish people just like to live well, who doesn’t?
Americans are terribly self-righteous… Once they are convinced that the system is not going to produce results for them anymore (this will take some time because of the ideological “sunk costs”) then things might move with surprising speed.
Why? When? How?
First the why:
In America we are talking about a huge mass of people who believe that if they do well in school and work hard, they have a right to live well. The end of growth means that the deal is off.
When?
When it becomes obvious to critical mass of these nouveaux pauvres that this is not a momentary condition, but the new world that they, their children and grandchildren will be forced to inhabit.
How?
That is the interesting part… I imagine that because of the educational level of the victims that their reactions may be quite creative and original.
I wonder. Could this not play out differently? The “mass” of people boasting to themselves of their great education and understanding may even be an impediment to radical change. There seems to be a tendency amongst Americans of this type towards rampant, delusional and futile individualism. Their response to every new phase of crisis is to convince themselves that their personal resources of intelligence are sufficiently greater than everyone else’s to somehow outsmart the rest of the population and come out on top. As I say, completely delusional. A consequence of them a) not being anywhere near as smart as they think themselves, and b) an educational culture which is itself ideologically flawed (and this is desired by the elites.
In any case, the result could be that these super-educated masses will actually thwart any and every movement for change ad infinitum, due to their cat-like inability to belong to any herd for more than a nanosecond.
History never exactly repeats, but it does have similar patterns. People are people, even Americans. The following quote fittingly from a Spaniard may not be exactly true, but it still has power because it holds a lot of truth:
“Those who fail to learn from their history are condemned to repeat it.”
–Santayana
Our PTB haven’t even learned from our own history. What headed off revolution 80 years ago hasn’t even been tried.
Isn’t there a correlation between education and denialism? Compradorship has been explicitly rewarded for at least a generation. The question for the A-merkin elite is whether the transition to depressed expectations can be completed – with a generation of proles raised without optimism and under constant threat.
For A-merkins, revolution would begin at home. Would self-righteous bourgeois pirates “invest” in comrades? No. They already invest in their predation.
Seaton’s got a ridiculous view of revolution. There’s plenty of bread and circuses to keep A-merkins preoccupied. You’re not going to get a revolution out of self-righteousness. Second, he completely ignores the empire’s comprador programming, its vaccination to revolution: you don’t deserve a god-damned thing unless you take it; all “entitlements” are delusion (of course, this is the mass programming, since the elite must still doublethink they are entitled). Third, a Reaganite “Sunrise on America” just around the corner will be perpetually propagandized. This will stifle A-merkins’ consensus on the end-of-growth. Jimmy Carter’s collective economizing will always lose to Ronnie Raygun’s clownish optimism.
Could A-merkins escape their piratical upbringing? Of course they could. But they’re not going to through advertising nor vocational education, nor creative entrepreneurship. Perhaps comrade Seaton would indulge in a comparison between the Spanish anarchists and the A-merkin pirates. That should quell his enthusiasm.
Here is a good start:
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder – Trailer
The Prosecution of an American President
Film Website
David Swanson Interviews Vincent Bugliosi
The idea of the “end of growth” is revolutionary in American terms… Expansion and growth are at the center of the American experience. When this new concept sinks in the result could very well be explosive.
Well, eplying to both Ludwig@15 and David Seaton just above me, the logical comparison is to South America, where almost an entire continent of (?) 500 million people (?) has undergone a peaceful revolution. Or at least so it seems. Clearly the peoples of many different South American countries, most recently Venezuela, for the 4th time, are willing to subscribe to a more collectivist politics and remain allergic to neo-liberalism. However, South America is very definitely nowhere near “end of growth”. It remains a region with close to boundless opportunities for the future. Comparisons aren’t straightforward.
As I said, the counter-revolution to the end of growth has been ongoing in A-merka for at least a generation.
A-merka, the land of illusion, which has neither growth nor allows class-consciousness, will continue to follow authoritarian delusions.
They have a long way to go in South America to get to the middle class prosperity that is America’s defining characteristic. The USA can only be compared to western Europe and yet it is very different because Americans expect so much from life.
Nobody allows class consciousness it grows wild on its own in response to the insistence of reality.
Two minutes to think about that rejoinder, eh? No wonder it doesn’t apply. Bodies do allow class consciousness and A-merka’s censorship is systemic – self-censorship is key.
If you argue there must always be classes and thus class unconsciousness, are you hoping A-merka will be like it was in the good ole days, Comrade Seaton?
Simply this… Americans have in their DNA the idea that things can always get better and that anybody who works hard and keeps their nose clean can get ahead. When this becomes so manifestly untrue that even the most deluded can see it and this frustration becomes a common topic of collective conversation, the anger will be like atomic fusion. This is a totally new situation.
I’m not completely sure about that any more. Growth in Brazil, and Argentina has been spectacular. Adjusted for purchasing power (yes, I realise that is a very hairy concept), the masses (US versus South America) aren’t perhaps that far apart.
But in general, yes, which is actually what I meant by the boundless future opportunities there. These countries are still growing fast and spreading much needed wealth through their populations.
I think to a certain extent this is true. What I have personally noticed is those in the say lower part of the 10% – those making 100 grand or more – that live in the outer ring burbs here in Cleveland are aware they are 1 or maybe 2 paychecks away from financial disaster.
But they will not as of yet admit it openly.
And I wonder myself if this is not the case for a good deal of those on the right wing.
Their motivation is this internalized fear. Blaming the left for this predicament. Refusing to accept that the system they worship is what is responsible.
Like an alcoholic blaming his wife, children, boss, society..whatever for his/her lousy life and refusing to admit it’s their drinking that is responsible.
I think our perception of affluence is like our perception of speed. We notice the changes rather than the actual level. My grandparents considered themselves upper middle class even before they had electricity, and they never had indoor plumbing at the farm. They had plenty to eat, though, a well-built house, 7 healthy children, tons of relatives and good neighbors living nearby. The boys all went to college, the girls at least to a fancy boarding school and the youngest daughter got her BA in English. They seemed reasonably happy and had enough ‘wealth’ to share with friends, relatives and neighbors as reaquired.
None of the kids wanted to farm, though, so my grandparents rented the land out when they moved to town when both of them were to tired to do all the work. Eventually they sold it. No idea if it is still a working farm.
We are only 100 years away from those times.
These compradors have trained their entire lives to do what needs be done to prove themselves worthy. Which way do you think persons embedded in such a culture of deceit would do should that disaster happen? Moreover, what do you think such a person would do to prevent such a disaster?
On the other end, there are many, many A-merkins who don’t believe Seaton’s ridiculous A-merkin can-do dream; in fact they’ve been conditioned to against it, to root for the winners in their families, etc. as substitute for their own fair progress.
The tensions will most likely not produce, nor will be allowed to produce, some grand populist fusion. Rather, as the A-merkin empire is so practiced in, new distractions, delusions, and threats will be conjured as long as possible, until the whole colony is a mass of exahusted and quivering souls.
Yes, the goal is to steal as many resources as possible before A-merkins can react to their decline so as to deprive them of response. Maybe the next generation will hope for progress after the reset or maybe they will be so pissed at their forebears they will not take their advice.
Or maybe …?
Link, comrade?
I dunno, Dave; this guy at Macro Business saw Wolf’s comments kinda differently than you, and Wolf had a very nice time at Bilderberg, yes he did.
But sure, as the ‘middle class’ descends the economic ladder (or when they wake up to the fact), things will be dicier, we hope.
I’d cynically add that the major ‘innovation’ in the US since deregulation has been Wall Street’s derivatives (and other rent-seeking profits), most of which were either fraudulent or so opaque they may as well have been. Some insane percentage of our GDP is exactly these financial transactions.
Derivatives capitalized the entire entire US GDP, so that all “product” pays for the returns on financial assets. This is abstract feudalism anticipating real feudalism.
Capitalism is Fraud.
Probably 15% of the “middle class” are hard core compradors and they’ve little to wake up to; they will be working hard to earn their cut of the feudal rent by undercutting any revolutionary movement. Comrade Seaton dreams thinking they’ll break with the proletariat.
In the end it all comes out vanilla, as my granny used to say.
The middle class, which is what has stabilized the system is going to be shrunk and decimated and that means a mass of very angry people… They will be the “new proletariat”.