Economics & Blogging & Ideas & BushCo & WAAGNFNP Posted by Zeus, 27 Aug 2007 06:21 am

Is Capitalism Compatible With Democracy?

In his intriguing, if overly verbose, article on “Capitalist democracy: elective affinity or beguiling illusion” (Daedalus, Summer 2007, pp. 5-13), John Dunn states:

“This much is clear: while in America, Tom Paine and James Madison both imagined that that a commercial society could coexist happily with a representative republic, others elsewhere, from Filippo Buonarroti and the first Duke of Wellington in the 1830s to the Guild Socialist G.D.H. Cole in the 1920s, were just as certain that the inequalities generated by the market economy were incompatible with a truly democratic republic. (p. 5)

To this latter position I would add not only generated but sustained for the benefit of some over others. In the article, John Dunn mentions aristocracy and monarchy as counterpoints to democracy, but fails to follow up on oligarchy, the far more relevant (in my opinion) form of aristocratic “ruling” behavior in a capitalist democracy, and a problem in Greek and Roman times as well. Can a group of leaders so constituted as to view their interests (esp. economic) as either constitutive of or superior to the general public be entrusted with power in a democracy?

John Dunn again:

“Until we learn to distinguish better the elements in our understanding of democracy that do and should sustain us… our political approach to the challenge of fostering our collective survival will remain (a) shambles.” (p. 6)

An interesting and central feature about capitalist democracy in America in terms of its impact on the average citizen is its unstated prompting that we can all be kings! We can democratize lordship through the marketplace that allows each of us (ostensibly) to purchase a castle (i.e. a suburban home) and pursue the benighted American Dream (with all its conveniences and conveyances of “power”, i.e. riding power mower, kitchen gadgets that ‘do your work for you’).

This brings up a subject very tied to discussion on democracy: What is the good life? It is obviously a broad question, but when applied to capitalist democracy specifically, it could lead to challenges of some of capitalism’s tropes, i.e. money/property = fulfillment.

I am struck by Dunn’s assertion later in the article that there are essentially two orders: “egoism” (self-interest) and “equality” (communal interest) (p. 6) and his conclusion that there hasn’t been (nor does he foresee) a practical wide-scale successful demonstration of the latter.

Certainly consumer culture follows the first (and is heir to its weaknesses). This includes the current desire to avoid taxes devoted toward creating and maintaining communal goods so one has more to spend on one’s own goods. At the same time consumerism espouses a certain variant notion of “equality” as “everyone is allowed to buy.” Especially with cheap imports, even the relatively poor can purchase new things at Wal-Mart.

Just as certainly, communist experiments espousing “equality” have fallen into political apparatchikism and despotism. However, I differ somewhat with Dunn’s observation: The problem, from my vantage point, appears not to lie in the presence of the former (egoism) and the absence of the latter (equality), but rather the conflation of the two, which tends toward egoism - consumerism in the case of American “democracy” and authoritarianism in the case of Soviet communism.

However, unlike Dunn, I think there is a budding and promising practical wide-scale demonstration of an egalitarianism which is not reductive to egoism—progressive grassroots and “netroots” democratic discourse. Here, people are becoming informed and informing each other as to the public interest as primary to social well-being and notably constitutive of and beneficial to (vs. adversarial to) their own interest.

This is especially true as more and more people become aware of global environmental problems and other aspects of individual survival linked to social well-being. Not only is this notion of egalitarianism irreducible to mere egoism, but progressives are actually addressing some of the other loopholes of democracy, including the recurrent creation and exploitation of “base” public sentiment (i.e. fear, greed, ignorance, and stupidity) that militates against its own interest, the non-participation of citizens in policy discussion and political representation (running for office, etc.), and so forth.

Jim Webb (D-VA) and Jon Tester (D-MT), upset winners in the U.S. Senate, came to be elected not through the party machinery. In fact they were either opposed or unsupported by the Democratic establishment in their primaries. Rather, they were elected through an engaged citizenry wanting to support and elect political leaders with courage who would represent of the broader public rather than engage in crass careerism and prostrate themselves to special interests.

Contrary to the conflation between “egoism” and leadership evidenced in the “L’etat c’est moi” (I am the State) of old French monarchical regimes, or the more recent “People elected me to do what I believe” of the George W. Bush regime, and to the to “I am the world, controlling the world”, grassroots mentality appears to embody the recognition that democracy and decision-making is an interactive product of “me in and engaging the world.”

This can be seen in some of the arguments to get out of Iraq. Most grassroots participants are interested in a truly democratic “democracy” in the Middle East as much as they are at home, but reject the notion of “democracy” which attempts to conflate egoistic oligarchic interest (oil profiteering and colonial control of foreign resources, for instance) with the national interest and the will of the people.

This leads to Dunn’s excellent question: “Is modern capitalist democracy simply a system of political authorization, or does it offer, as it certainly purports to, a definite and prospectively coherent approach to formatting political deliberation on all major issues of public choice?” (p. 10). I think this WAAGNFNP project, much of the blogosphere, and indeed the very organization I work for, Interactivity Foundation, is a partial attempt to answer this question in a way that is developmental, practical, effective, and both morally and organizationally compelling.

There is a tremendous need for an awakened, informed, and participating citizenry (both in political representation and the policy process among other important civic areas) if egalitarian democracy is to go beyond in-name-only. This citizenry needs to be able to form its own “thinking” (generation, creation of ideals) and practical know-how, not just “opinion” (consumerism and recycling of ideas handed to them) to be manipulated by the “powers that be.” Where ought the power of decision reside publicly, especially over what democracy is and how it ought to operate? It is clear that American oligarchs have an answer: they believe that capitalism (in particular, wealth-concentrating “crony capitalism”) is democracy, and democracy is capitalism. What is our answer (you who are not oligarchs)?

With the departure of Karl Rove, there seems to be an opening, a recognition that the idealistic but cynical (yes, there is such a combo) neo-conservative manipulation of mass sentiment may have lost much of its legitimacy. Not only has it been exposed as essentially incompetent and elitist (except for achieving narrow and short-term political and economic goals). It has also been recognized as shallow and contradictory to what democracy ostensibly aspires to—transparency, accessibility, substantive and not merely procedural or token justice, real choice and not simply selection between the “lesser of two evils”. I suspect, in the post-Rove “recovery” increasing deliberation and involvement of citizens in policy-making will be a key.

To finish with a quote by Dunn:

“There is one tie between the idea of democracy and the structuring of political deliberation: that each citizen should have not merely an equal formal right to contribute to it, but a real substantive opportunity to do so. (p. 12)”

Our task is before us, and no amount of critique of the “system” will automatically show us the way toward replacing it. I like this challenge. It isn’t every day that a citizen really has to step up and be a citizen in order to help his or her society both survive and thrive.

Citizen Zeus

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Responses to “Is Capitalism Compatible With Democracy?”

  1. on 27 Aug 2007 at 6:23 am 1. christian h. said …

    Thanks for this very constructive and thoughtful post, Zeus. I’ve gotta run and have no computer in the office yet, so I’ll chime in later today. For now, you won’t be surprised my answer to the title question is “no”. And I agree with you when you say “I like this challenge”.

  2. on 27 Aug 2007 at 1:39 pm 2. Zeus said …

    Thanks, Christian. And now for the rest of you? Hey, you don’t even have to respond to the essay itself. It may have been so clear and blazingly brilliant as to not need it (yeah, right), but I’d definitely love to get some of your waagnfnp-y ideas about the central question posed, “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?”

  3. on 27 Aug 2007 at 1:44 pm 3. Oaktown Girl said …

    I like the idea of being willing to fight for something better as opposed to just hunkering down - doing your best to save you and yours while waiting for the collapse.

    This whole mess we’re in from unchecked, unregulated crony capitalism reminds me of the movie Goodfellas. Remember how near the end of the movie when our gang of bad guys made their big score, and the brains of the group told them to keep it on the down-low, no ostentatious spending and all? But they didn’t listen, and the greed of their spending aided in their being busted? That’s how I feel things are now. The very, very rich and the very, very powerful were doing just fine, and there was enough spoils left for most Americans to not complain too much. That situation could have likely gone on indefinitely.

    Then these very, very rich and powerful decided they wanted to be super-duper rich and powerful. So we get the union busting and the jobs outsourcing and the de-regulation and the “free trade” and the privatizing of just about every public resource including our elections, and media consolidation and the neocon foreign policy agenda, and now you’ve got too many people not getting enough spoils to be silent and to keep the economy going. So their ultra-greed of the few is their own undoing.

    I think their only hope is continued repression and eating away at the Constitution until we have martial law. But even then, I don’t know how they’ll be as rich as they were before, without a thriving working/middle class.

    As for the rest of us, what’s our hope? My hope is a continued, growing engagement of the citizenry, and that enough folks opt-out of solely a hunker-down strategy to make successful struggle viable.

  4. on 27 Aug 2007 at 1:57 pm 4. Oaktown Girl said …

    Oh. The question. Well, it may sound like a weasel reply, but I think a certain amount (regulated, checked, transparent) of capitalism can be compatible with a certain amount of democracy. Meaning - neither one can be absolute if they are going to be attempted together.

    I say not “absolute” democracy in order to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. Esp. the religious majority.

    I’m sincerely open to hearing other governing options if someone can tell me who gets to run the show, and who gets to decide who runs the show.

  5. on 27 Aug 2007 at 2:48 pm 5. christian h. said …

    It’s not a weasel response at all, Oaktown Girl. Especially since the answer depends on what is understood by “democracy” in the first place.

    Zeus, I do believe that the lower entry barrier to disseminating information afforded by the internet (up to now, anyway) can help in the development of a more politically educated (and therefore, I believe, more radical) populace - a ‘vanguard’ if you allow me some Leninist mumbo-jumbo. Actually, I say ‘vanguard’ for various reasons: because I think the formation of a class conscious vanguard in the Leninist sense may be facilitated and fragmentation of the working class partially overcome with the help of new technologies (e.g., maybe the classical Marxist insight that only the huge shopfloors of industrial capitalism can produce politically conscious and organized workers no longer applies); on the other hand, though, I say ‘vanguard’ ironically, as a warning not to repeat previous mistakes (as in seventies radicalism) and slide into more elitism, substituting a relatively small gang of leaders that ultimately aren’t anchored in the working class (or population, if you prefer) for the whole thing.

    To avoid this mistake, the first task is to make participation in the new expanded discourse possible for as many people as we can - and what’s usually called “bridging the digital divide” is the smallest part of that. More important than giving computers and high speed internet to everyone is to recognize that political power cannot be attained by people who have to work 2 or more jobs just to keep afloat.

    I sometimes worry that various groups are too enamored by the technical possibilities of the web and neglect the vital social-economic changes that have to take place to help them achieve their potential as democracy-enabling technologies.

  6. on 27 Aug 2007 at 2:51 pm 6. christian h. said …

    I hasten to add that by “various groups” I do not mean the Interactivity Foundation, about which I know next to nothing - but what I see on your/their website indicates an agreeably (to me) broad understanding of discourse.

  7. on 27 Aug 2007 at 3:03 pm 7. Oaktown Girl said …

    More important than giving computers and high speed internet to everyone is to recognize that political power cannot be attained by people who have to work 2 or more jobs just to keep afloat.

    Praise Gojira!

  8. on 27 Aug 2007 at 3:44 pm 8. christian h. said …

    Somewhat off topic, I want to add that I do see a chance at progress on economic issues at least. Heck, if necessary I’ll even chew my hand off (the right one - who needs it) and support Democrats - if progressives on the other hand exert some real pressure on them to get actual things done, instead of impotently complaining about the latest cave-in only to give money to the next candidate that’s presented (here is the link to a quite funny article on Counterpunch regarding ‘control by futility’).

    Concretely, I believe the minimum wage campaign, tougher environmental standards, living wage ordinances and “sanctuary cities”, and slow progress on universal health care indicate to me that the best arena to fight is the states, and cities; the best we can hope for on the federal level right now, I think, is non-interference (ie, reasonable people on the NLRB, at HUD, HHS and EPA, and a stop to the bleeding on the federal courts).

    The initiative process is available in many states, and can be used to put issues on the political map even if ultimately unsuccessful; often local politics is (a) not as insanely expensive and (b) done by people somewhat closer to the actual problems. It’s also a question of numbers - organizing a couple hundred dedicated supporters of an issue (through a blog, say) goes much farther in Oakland, or Chicago, or even California or Illinois than in the whole US.

    [The one top-priority issue on the federal level that can’t be left to inertia for at least a short time is war - but as has been said before, we can walk and talk at the same time.]

  9. on 27 Aug 2007 at 4:30 pm 9. Al Martinez said …

    Hmm

    I remember reading on one of Paine’s writings that he specifically said that unrestricted wealth was incompatable with democracy, and that there should be an upper limit on wealth. For that matter I don’t think Adam Smith thought that unresticted capitalism was a good thing either.

    This is really technically a moot point as we do not live in a democracy, we live in an oligarchic republic. If you compare the Constitution with the constitutional schemes laid out in Aristotles Politics, it is clear that the founding fathers thought that participation in public life should be limited to men of means, and that they set up the country this way. The Constitution is what Aristotle calls a “mixed constitution” with elements of oligarchy, aristocracy and democracy mixed together. We have only gradually come to think of this country as a “democracy” and have made participation in political life somewhat more general. But since the Constitution has set up a structure that insures the continued power of people of means, I’m not sure a true democracy is possible (in the classic sense) in the United States. In Aristotle, only the happiness of “citizens”, that is, men of property or means is important. I tend to think that the “pursuit of happiness” that Jefferson refers to is not intended to be the pursuit of happiness for all men, but the pursuit of happiness for all men of property (the way Aristotle had it). In this construction, women, slaves and free men with no property have no particular right to pursue happiness, just as they have no right to political participation because they are not really citizens. Remember, Aristotle didn’t think that under the best constitution, farmers, tradespeople, or craftsmen ought to be citizens, only people who didn’t have to work and had time to devote themselves to public affairs ought to be citizens. In Aristotle’s ideal mixed system, the free men without property were allowed a small amount of political participation so that they would not be rebellious, but only a small amount. It is interesting that the Roman Republic was set up exactly this way, without any direct influence (that I know of) from Aristotle.

    Its all about power and where it resides. If unrestrained, or partially restrained capitalism leads to concentrations of power, democracy is undermined or impossible. It’s a question of how powerful these “concentrations” are allowed (by the citizenry as a whole) to become.

  10. on 27 Aug 2007 at 8:17 pm 10. JP Stormcrow said …

    An interesting and central feature about capitalist democracy in America in terms of its impact on the average citizen is its unstated prompting that we can all be kings!

    As I’ve probably written elsewhere here, my version of this is to note that the unacknowledged “true” religion of America is transcendental materialism, the fundamental belief that if you accumulate sufficient goods and wealth you enter some kind of OK-land. I think this “myth” is helped along by so many of the entrenched power structures of society (TV and advertising certainly leading the way), that per James’s contention, we have literally been driven insane.

    I do think that some manner of “re-centering” is needed for us to get to some manner of governance that is responsive to the more basic needs of the human soul. And part of this re-centering is recognizing that as humans we can all fall prey to the excesses of envy and greed, and that it is OK to build social and governmental constructs which compensate for those excesses (such as estate taxes, graduated income taxes).

    I do admit that I am often flummoxed on what the practical next step in such a program would be. (Defeating the Republicans does seem to be a useful place to start, however.)

  11. on 27 Aug 2007 at 8:27 pm 11. JP Stormcrow said …

    I posted a link to this post in a thread at Unfogged which although it was ostensibly about Gomzales going (muted “Yea!”, because who can imagine what monstrosity they will try to replace him with), contained a lot of back and forth on populism. I doubt I will actually get anyone to come over and read it (I was in way late per usual comment ~300 or so), but I did at least get this response:

    Zeus Yiamouyiannis

    That is SUCH an awesome name.

    Substantiality rules the blogosphere scene!

  12. on 27 Aug 2007 at 10:11 pm 12. Zeus said …

    Great comments. The best attempt I can think to link capitalism (or at least property ownership) and democracy was Thomas Jefferson’s notion of the “gentleman farmer”. His contention was that if voters and citizens had a certain minimum level of property and self-sufficiency (i.e. land that they could grow things on and eat) could be relatively independent and both develop and exercise their integrity AND kindly say a hearty “screw you” to people trying to extort or bribe with threats of firing you and/or shiny material goods. Alas, that is not our present situation, but imagine how it might be built adapted to the present society.

    Certainly this vision has flaws, given the present population, and Jefferson’s old notions of “citizen” that tended to exclude women and dark-skinned people, etc. I won’t go into that, but the basic premise of an empowered people that own the basis of their survival and well-being and therefore can exercise conscience without threat of immediate and/or catastrophic reprisal seems to be a sound one. Many of you have given examples of versions of this: One cannot, but with great difficulty, be an highly involved and informed citizen working three jobs, for instance. One cannot easily cut through the crap with corporate controlled media. But we have examples where these things are being challenged and alternatives are cropping up.

    The internet has provided a very vital alternative mode of information that is (in some sense, with access issues still there) “owned” by the people. You look at sites like Wikipedia and the phenomena of shareware, wiki, linux and other open source and you can see the buddings of democratic media which is either “owned by everyone” or “by no one”. Of course plenty of sneak attacks have already taken place to try to control the internet, though, not quite successfully.

    I had mentioned “farmers markets” as perhaps the modern equivalent of Jefferson’s “gentleman farmer” (especially if one uses “local currency” like they do with “Cornell Cash” in Ithaca, New York). By buying locally and setting up communal exchange medium, one is still engaging in capitalism, but of a very different and certainly more liberating sort.

    However, (and this is key) the PURPOSE is much different. In progressive “capitalism”, possession and hoarding is not the point, nor is it a source of value, but rather SHARING and exchange. In the former, scarcity and someone else NOT having your stuff is a sign of value. You’ve kept ahead of the Jones’s. In the latter, others having your stuff and cycling it through the community creates value. Both are forms of capitalism, but with almost exactly opposite purposes and operations. I think it is a failure of our imagination to give capitalism to the cronies and the corporations. Then again, one could observe that what I am forwarding is closer in energy to what Marx thought up.

    Point being, to whose benefit and well-being is this democracy and capitalism directed and is it actually working to produce what it promises? That is (referrring to christian h’s link to CounterPunch and the difference between the impossible and the futile), perhaps these “impossible” or “utopian” experiments provide the ground for a wider-scale innovation around what capitalism and democracy might mean practically as well as theoretically.

    Citizen Zeus

  13. on 27 Aug 2007 at 10:24 pm 13. James Killus said …

    This is another of those discussions that seem (to my admittedly overtired mind) to be operating at so high a level of abstraction that I cannot grasp much in the way of specifics. Christian has offered a few, so I’ll toss in the opinions that increases in minimum wages are good, “living wage” standards are better, environmental regulation is also good, and any progress towards universal health care always has my vote.

    On the other hand, as someone who lives in an initiative driven state, I must say that I’ve basically come to the point of voting against every initiative on the ballot, because most of them are placed there by corporate shills, and the others are usually so badly thought out that they have pernicious results.

    That said, it’s not clear how many people actually have any handle on how the Big Casino actually works. “Capitalism” is a fog word, numbing the brain and the discourse. “Democracy” is not much better (Bush loves him some democracy; he’ll tell you that at every turn; he’ll bomb people until they accept democracy he’s so in favor of it).

    Great wealth commands massive resources, and those resources are represented by massive organizations. The corporation is a “special” organization. How many people are aware that corporations are considered, by legal precedent, to be “persons” under the 14th Amendment, a concept that would come as quite a surprise to the Founding Fathers, who thought that “persons” were negro slaves, and those who actually wrote the 14th Amendement, who thought that “persons” were former slaves? How many people routinely accept corporate funded lies as part of the price of “freedom of speech” rather than the commercial fraud that it, in fact, is?

    How often does one see such issues in the writings of folks like John Montfort Dunn? Beats me, I rarely read Daedalus, though that should not be taken as a slight against either that publicattion or its readers.

  14. on 28 Aug 2007 at 10:01 am 14. James Killus said …

    One other thing occurred to me last night.

    Gregory Bateson once formulated the “double bind” theory of schizophrenia, which held that the disease was caused by individuals being stuck in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” mindset, generally because of parental authority in early childhood. The theory gained fairly widespread credence until therapists began noting that everybody has had double bind directives hung on them, lots of times, especially by their parents. So the “double bind” observation had no predictive capability.

    So “capitalism” is oligarchical? Find me a society that isn’t. Some people manage things; others prefer to do other parts of the division-of-labor thing. Not all actors want to direct, believe it or not. Not everyone is interested in constantly participating in politics. And even the local co-op has a board of directors.

    “And remember kids! Don’t Forget to Smash the State!” — from an underground comic whose name escapes me.

  15. on 28 Aug 2007 at 10:29 am 15. Oaktown Girl said …

    Sweet Lord Astaroth, “Smash the State!”??
    Damn, that takes me back to my childhood.

    I worry that too many kids aren’t growing up with those kind of anti-authoritarian/imperialist subversive slogans. I think there’s a certain healthiness in it that’s good for society. What does a kid who was say, 3-9 years old when 9/11 hit growing up today have? Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American? Donald Rumsfeld’s “Shock and Awe”?
    Oooo. The establishment is quaking in its boots!

  16. on 28 Aug 2007 at 10:38 am 16. christian h. said …

    Smash the State.

    While I am not a big fan of anarchism (and anarchists usually really hate Leninists), anarchists do have the best slogans. I agree: it’s healthy to develop opposition to authority early on.

  17. on 28 Aug 2007 at 10:43 am 17. Al Martinez said …

    I don’t think that “capitalism”, or “oligarchy” are necessarily “bad”, nor do I think that “democracy” is necessarily good. In a true democracy we would be chosing candidates by lot, or taking turns in office every few days or have everyone vote on everything. Libertarians might like this, as it would lead to very little consistant governance, but I think it would be a mess. Although everyone voting on everything might work on a small scale, no state has ever attempted it on a large one- I just don’t think it could work. However we could make some moves in the democratic election- direct election of the president by a majority of voters, for example. Stripping the Senate of some of its powers and giving them to the House, for another.

    There is also a kind of a sentimental myth in this country that democracy automatically leads to good governance or good policy, but I don’t think history really supports this conclusion. Democratic governments have done a lot of really stupid things. We elected Bush, after all.

    If you start with notions of what people want as a good way of life, and try to figure out how to achieve it, a mixed system of governance is probably the safest and most stable sort of system. But that doesn’t mean it can’t get out of whack. Right now corporations are simply too politically powerful. That doesn’t mean that capitalism is unworkable, it does mean that it has to be managed, as Roosevelt understood.

  18. on 28 Aug 2007 at 11:19 am 18. JP Stormcrow said …

    anarchists do have the best slogans

    My fave is from Jefferson Airplanes “We Can Be Together”: All your private property is target for your enemies.

    … not that they actually were anarchists of course, but it is one of those almost tautologically true statements that border on vacuity, but are still “interesting to remember from time to time”. … for me, at least.

  19. on 28 Aug 2007 at 11:24 am 19. Oaktown Girl said …

    All your private property is target for your enemies.

    New Millennium version:

    All Your Enemie’s Targets Are Belong To Us.

    (Someone be so kind as to post the “All Your Base” link for the uninitiated - I’m at work under the watchful eye).

    [vid added by Comrade James, because links are for wusses]

  20. on 28 Aug 2007 at 12:51 pm 20. Zeus said …

    I think the point is that in a democracy, nothing is “automatic” or automatically leads to the good. If democracy becomes simply another Utopian ideology, it is already dead or dying. Or it becomes merely a slogan covering for its own impoverishment or dissolution. “They just hate our freedom,” anyone?

    I think many of the assumptions around democracy are based upon rather primitive (though certainly empirically pervasive) notions of human nature. Just today in the New York Times, “A World of Eloquence in an Upturned Palm” is an interesting take on this. Apparently we developed our whole direction for language from a simple gesture of open palms, meaning basically “gimme,” according to the authors.

    However, this is simplistic. Even in today’s language (and perhaps the language of chimps, who knows) an open palm can mean receptivity, hospitality, and the opposite of “gimme,” namely giving… “Here is bread, take, eat. Here I am available to you.” It is this latter possibility that I find intriguing for a democracy. It is not only about mixtures of governments (and balancing thereof), whether they be anarchism, oligarchy, monarchy, aristrocracy, democracy, but a mixture of the human qualities and potentialities which I find intriguing. Much like the concentration of wealth and corporate power have empowered greed as “the” expression of human nature, so might a strong taste and development of giving and participation awaken another aspect of human nature and therefore, perhaps, restore some balance in progressive populist directions. In this dynamic, we evolve.

    I’ve never been an advocate of any one ideology as a consequence of its stultifying and disproportioning effect. So “politically correct” (or incorrect) is not really useful and misses the point.

    One of the most destructive myths out there is that giving is somehow a transcendence of our human nature, an “altruism” and not simply a powerful and central part of it. I don’t give as a matter of sacrifice, but because in doing so I find fulfillment and surprise and expansion and deepening of life. I think that to the extent democracy and civic participation encourages this, a healthier, more vital society is a likely result. Unconditional giving in its most basic forms is motivated by abundance, generosity, a desire to share and to care, not ideologically but practically, socially, and perhaps even spiritually.

    The fact that others may abuse this giving, by simply “taking advantage of” the giving, is not a reason to stop giving or be considered naive. Knowledgeable and graceful reception and appreciation is also a part of the giving act and its necessary reciprocal for giving to be completed. It is acutely incumbent upon the giver to understand the effect of that giving, and if the effect is to inspire exploitation, dependency, and deceit, perhaps the giving must take the form of a firm honesty and refusal to collaborate in an essentially lopsided and unhealthy relationship. This is the nature of civil disobedience, which is a very strong form of giving, even though it looks like witholding.

    So, do not ask what you country can do for you OR what you can do for your country, but what the world does for you (in appreciation) AS you do for the world (in gratitude).

    Citizen Zeus

  21. on 28 Aug 2007 at 1:19 pm 21. Oaktown Girl said …

    We do like to slap labels on things (”our government is a democracy/republic/monarchy,etc.), and that really limits not only our thinking (ability to envision the future), but also our reality, because the people who get to decide the definition of a particular label are the ones currently holding the most power at any given time.

    Right now we are living under the label of “democracy”, but the current rulers have declared the personhood of corporations, as James noted above. In fact, corporations have even more rights and freedoms (for good and evil - mostly evil) than real persons do: all the rights but virtually none of the responsibilities and liabilities.

    A couple of days ago I heard Air America radio host Thom Hartmann debating with a Libertarian -specific subject: re-importation of prescriptions drugs into the U.S. The Libertarian went on an on about how awful this would be, said it would be govt. interfering with the profits of private companies, etc.etc. Of course, the Libertarian had no answer at all when Hartman brought up all the govt. “interference” limiting the liability of these same companies. Typical.

  22. on 28 Aug 2007 at 1:54 pm 22. James Killus said …

    Oaktown Girl, the personhood of corporations was declared in 1886 in in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. It was arguably the most egregious case of judicial actvism in U.S. history.

    The gears of memory have ground and informed me that the “Smash the State!” quote is from Skip Williamson’s Snappy Sammy Smoot. I cannot find it on the web, but this might suffice:

    Preservatives might just be preserving you,
    I think that’s something you missed!
    –Jefferson Airplane

  23. on 28 Aug 2007 at 2:22 pm 23. Al Martinez said …

    It is interesting, Zeus, that you equate giving to or doing for the community (which could include taxes) with selflessness. Giving to the community is actually in one’s own self interest, and in a very non-abstract way at that. Red State America seems to think they can do it all on their own, but they can’t and they never have. The Romans had a name for it (I don’t remember it): this duty of wealthy citizens to donate a building, an entertainment, something or other to the community. It was expected, it was not a sign of special virtue (as it is with us), it was something you had to do. This sentiment found it’s way into Caholicism, but is sadly lacking in Protestant cultures.

    In the History of Private Life (edited by Phillippe Aries), I think in Volume II they discuss how in Germanic cultures everything was owned by someone- the king owns the kingdom, etc. - and that they didn’t have the concept of communal ownership and the communal realm that the Latin cultures had. They got this from examining the laws and customs of the Germanic kingdoms. They also note that human life ranked low compared to property in Germanic cultures. I think the U.S. has inherited these (ancient) Germanic tendencies, much to our detriment. Asking what you can do for your country (or planet) is really in your own self interest.

  24. on 28 Aug 2007 at 2:28 pm 24. Oaktown Girl said …

    Oaktown Girl, the personhood of corporations was declared in 1886

    Oh yes, Comrade James, I absolutely do know that. What I meant was that the rulers who made that decision are (basically) the same ones ruling us now (hence my use of the word “current”). And if anyone wants to quibble with that, I will re-phrase it: the current rulers have decided to uphold the previous ruling handed down from our past rulers.

    And thanks so much for inserting the requested YouTube! (Even better than a link, indeed!). I’d love to play it now, but you know, that damn watchful eye (and the boot on my neck).

  25. on 28 Aug 2007 at 3:13 pm 25. Zeus said …

    Al Martinez,

    I think you misunderstand my offering. Giving, in the way I am describing it is neither selfless nor selfish. It is not centered on the self at all (either glorified self or abandoned self), but rather self-in-relation, where the “center” (if there is one) lies between people. Now this has serious benefits for what we may call the “self”– I mentioned surprise, fulfillment, meaning– but this does not derive from a contractually oriented give-and-get that usually constitutes “interest” in our impoverished civic discourse. Rather, the participation experience itself is primary and understood and gauged to be of high quality.

    I believe that the term you are searching for is “noblesse oblige,” the notion that the wealthy have an obligation and not simply a choice to give back to their communities (and usually in impressive ways commensurate with their means, i.e. funding whole libraries, hospitals, etc.). JD Rockefeller’s own spiritual adviser reportedly told him to “make as much as you can, and give as much as you can away,” which is a form of this kind of thinking.

    But again I am arguing against the same “functional” practical understanding that you (I think rightly, at least in strong part) impute to our Germanic Protestant individualism. Though one can see in Catholic traditions and in communal societies a strong breath of authoritarianism that goes along with their ostensible “collectivism”.

    I’ve mentioned this before. Both ultimately stem from individualism the former from modern notions of contract which emphasize “selfish” interest (hopefully of an enlightened kind) and the latter from traditional feudal notions (in which the collective is led and run by an authority that asks you to “selflessly” give your allegiance to it).

    I’m not interested in either modern Protestant or traditional Catholic forms of “giving”. Both imply an alienation, a functionalizing of giving “for” something, rather than an understanding of “inherence” that is the act of giving “as” something, valuable and successful in itself, as long as it can be received and completed in a reciprocal honoring relationship. In my dissertation I tried to describe this relationshiop as the “interpersonal” self.

    Citizen Zeus

  26. on 29 Aug 2007 at 8:59 am 26. Al Martinez said …

    Zeus,

    I disagree only slightly with what you say. As far as I am concerned our notion of “self” would usefully be scrapped altogether, and it seems this is more or less what you are attempting. I wonder if anyone has ever attempted a Buddhist economics based on no-self and a Buddhist understanding of “value” and “happiness”?

    The term I am searching for is “evergetism” - the expectation that public officials and prominent people would spend lavishly on the public. The flip side of this is that “Until the past century it was not considered improper to enrich oneself through government service. In Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma, when Count Mosca Resigns his ministry he is able to give the grand duke incontrovertible proof of his honesty: when he took office he had only 130,000 francs; on leaving it he has only 500,000. Cicero, after a year as governor of a province, was making the equivalent of a million dollars a year and prided himself on his scrupulousness: the sum was considered quite small.” - this is from A History of Private Life, Vol. 1, p. 100.

    It seems to me that many of our public officials still have this traditional mindset: “why not benefit from public office”?

    Also it seems to me that our much vaunted “market” is not so much a free market as a market and a system of clients, patrons, cartels, etc.. People in the same circles help each other out. The same people sit on many boards of directors. Corporations don’t just compete, they also co-operate for their common interests. Money begats money, etc. This is the part, probably the most really traditional part of our economic system that is particularly at odds with “democracy”. Important economic and social decisions are constantly being made outside of the public realm and without general public knowledge.

  27. on 29 Aug 2007 at 3:40 pm 27. Zeus said …

    Al,

    Good points and I tend to agree especially about the last line: “This is the part, probably the most really traditional part of our economic system that is particularly at odds with “democracy”. Important economic and social decisions are constantly being made outside of the public realm and without general public knowledge.”

    It seems as if a “self-interested” notion of self has expanded itself to include not free markets but a “system of”clients, patrons, cartels, etc..” a closed system, not interested in public well-being but rather private well-being, often almost exclusively to the detriment of public interest.

    As the examples you cite show, this is not a recent phenomenon. I think leaders and power brokers and influence peddlers simply justify their welfare AS public welfare. There does not seem to be an independent, or more accurately, interdependent way to verify or consider “benefit.” This will be one of the public challenges heading into the future for democracy.

    Citizen Zeus

  28. on 29 Aug 2007 at 6:16 pm 28. Al Martinez said …

    I don’t think that most people involved in buisness feel the need to justify anything as public welfare, they read Ayn Rand and think “public welfare” is a joke. I read one of the books on Enron and saw one of the documentaries - they thought what they were doing to California was hilarious, and that they had every right to do it because they had every right to do whatever they could to make money.

    I brought up Protestantism before, because, after reading about half of Arnold’s “St. Paul and Protestantism”, it became clear to me that in the lights of most Protestant sects this sort of behavior is entirely justified. Predestination + being saved through faith, not works = let God take care of the poor, we don’t have to. Protestism is a religion designed for businessmen who don’t want to have to care about anybody but themselves and their families.

    At least in Catholic theology works count for SOMETHING. What you DO in this world matters. In most Protestant sects, FAITH is everything.

  29. on 01 Sep 2007 at 8:42 pm 29. spyder said …

    “Is capitalism compatible with democracy?”

    Short quick pissy answer: NO

    More important than giving computers and high speed internet to everyone is to recognize that political power cannot be attained by people who have to work 2 or more jobs just to keep afloat.

    One of the subtexts of my upcoming (damn, now christian is going to hold me to this) thread is that the failure of this nation to provide open nationwide access to highspeed internet is crippling the commons of much of the greater US population outside of the big universities drawing from the bigger cities. I cannot begin to overstate the problem as gleaned from dozens of conversations with citizens begging and demanding information and resources. A big part of the problem is that for thousands of square miles of open plains, the major source of internet is dial-up and the most prolific source of information is conservative talk radio. Given the discussion here a few months ago, and the ongoing efforts of ThinkProgress and FreePress to provide the factual evidence of the overwhelming control of AM talk radio by conservative corporate interests, i can’t see the public commons and thus participatory citizenry becoming very well informed about any of the issues.

    the unacknowledged “true” religion of America is transcendental materialism, the fundamental belief that if you accumulate sufficient goods and wealth you enter some kind of OK-land.

    And herein lies the base nature of the propaganda of fear that is used to motivate the ill-informed constituency to accept reduction of their civil rights and liberties, and to demand forceful rejection of immigration. Be very afraid that you will never achieve your transcendental materialist state, and focus that fear on those that threaten to take it all away from you. Didn’t Bush claim publicly back in the day, that this was a war about the American lifestyle????

    Before i move off for the night, and tonight’s late show, i want to add that one of the books i read this summer on the tour buses was Pynchon’s AGAINST THE DAY! Certainly a work that advocates for an aroused informed citizenry that rises up and tears down the oligarchy. Paraphrasing a passage on page 87 (i think??):If you aren’t killing those that are destroying the innocent through their capitalistic machinations, then you are part of the problem as well. The passage was, as i recall, a quote from a circuit preacher advocating for the poor and downtrodden in late 1800’s Colorado mining towns; interesting juxtaposition of a christian anarchist that be.

    I do want to come back to this and flesh out a more substantive and certainly clearer response, as i think this is a huge question that i have found many people asking this summer across the country. Ecotopia types are advocating secessionism based on watersheds and bio-regions; others are demanding a constitutional convention to rewrite one that holds monopolist capitalism accountable (now that we have an all new Ma Bell complete with all her babies tucked under her celltower); and still others were suggesting that we don’t need any governments at all at this time, just let the whole thing collapse and let the people rebuild it.

  30. on 02 Sep 2007 at 8:51 am 30. Kiera PSI said …

    If everyone had the computers and high speed internet access, a lot less of them would need two or more jobs to keep afloat.

    Educational opportunities, despite the best efforts of the community colleges, are still lacking and that lack is condemning the average citizen to a barely scratch their way by existence. A big factor in the lives of many prospective students that prevents them from taking classes is lack of time and access. While the colleges offer an increasingly substantial number of online courses that solve the time issue, these same would be students do not have internet access so cannot take advantage of them.

    Interesting how one lack feeds another, and then another, and yet another…

  31. on 02 Sep 2007 at 5:04 pm 31. spyder said …

    Interesting how one lack feeds another, and then another, and yet another…

    And i acknowledge here that i was not fully aware of the vast implications of this problem across our country. As we acquire the “new and improved” technological advancements for our use of the tubes of the internets (broadband high-speed portals with massive video/image/audio content) we tend to forget that those with dial-up simply no longer have very useful access to our sites. Sadly, most of the big non-profit environmental groups only provide high-end content, and by doing so they deprive the people who need the information most. This very site is not all that easy to log on to from rural Missouri dialup (i tried) and it only has a few image files in addition to the text. Those same community college students (and many university students) cannot fully utilize online course systems these days, because of the buildout of video/audio content not accessible on dialup.