Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster: Capitalism, the Absurd System -- A View from the United States

Capitalism, the Absurd System: A View from the United States
by Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster
Monthly Review

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The question we should ask is: What is society actually like when the veil of money is removed, and the real face of power is seen? Is society, stripped of its ideological cover and reduced to nakedness, one of equality—where four hundred individuals in the United States (the Forbes 400) own almost as much wealth as the bottom half of the population (150 million people)?5 Is this a rational society, when a trillion dollars each year is spent on the U.S. military?6 Can it be justified when the system, according to modern science, is pointing to mass extinction of the species, quite possibly humanity itself?

Capitalism’s main economic claim to being an indispensable system is that it promotes economic growth, the benefits of which ostensibly trickle down to the vast majority. Today, however, in the mature capitalist economies, economic growth has slowed to a crawl (though sufficient to threaten the environment). The gains of labor productivity flow upwards by myriad pumps, after which they are seldom allowed to trickle down. The result is a deeply unequal society and generalized economic stagnation, associated with a dearth of effective demand—countered only in part by financial bubbles, which eventually burst with disastrous effects. In the past five decades, the U.S. economy has grown, but at slower and slower rates. The stagnation of the last ten years resembles nothing so much as the stagnation of the 1930s (i.e., the Great Depression years). (See Chart One). The same is true to varying extents for all the other rich, mature, capitalist economies.

This long-term slowdown is associated with growing structural inequality. The economic surplus generated by society is amassed more and more at the top. Worker productivity is much greater than it was back in 1975, but very little of this increased wealth actually goes to workers themselves. As Chart Two demonstrates, the wages of U.S. manufacturing workers have fallen rapidly during the last three and a half decades as a share of value added in U.S. manufacturing. The median wage of all nonagricultural workers has stagnated over the same period.

In this Les Misérables economy, it is hardly surprising that the general quality of life for most people has not improved—despite the continuing growth of overall social wealth and the increase in human productive capacities. The Happy Planet Index, developed by the New Economics Foundation, examines how “happy” a country is—as measured by a combination of life expectancy and life satisfaction in relation to its ecological footprint. In the 2009 Happy Planet Index, the United States—the very model of mature capitalism—ranked a dismal 114 out of 143 included countries.7 The “greed is good,” “shop ‘til you drop,” “whoever dies with the most toys wins” ethos that marks free market capitalism is not conducive to genuine human happiness. What it generates in ever-increasing levels—even among its more successful strata—is stress, heart disease, loneliness, depression, and the waste of human potential. “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism,” Albert Einstein wrote in “Why Socialism?” in volume 1, number 1 of Monthly Review (May 1949).

A lot of this damage to individuals has to do with our lack of concern for collective needs. The physical infrastructure of the United States—the built environment of our cities, roads, railroads, bridges, public water and electrical systems, parks, etc.—is crumbling. The per capita ecological footprint of the United States far exceeds what can be sustained at a global level, contributing to rapid degradation of the earth system. Public education throughout the country is in marked decline. Much of what we produce is nonessential, indeed waste, including wasted labor. The United States has fully lived up to John Kenneth Galbraith’s observation half a century ago that modern U.S. capitalism generates “private wealth” and “public squalor.”8

Massive amounts of labor and resources go toward lethal military purposes, while an increasing amount of human labor and productive capacity lies idle. By virtually all accounts, economic stagnation will be the order of the day for at least a decade, maybe decades, to come. In March 2010, USA Today asked legendary financier Warren Buffett, the second richest individual in the United States: “What if…the U.S. economy goes into a prolonged period of stagnation and weakness, creating a Japanese-like lost decade or two?” Buffett answered: “As long as it isn’t a century, I’m OK.”9

Young Americans are entering an economy in which they have little or no creative or meaningful role to play. It is far truer today than when Paul Goodman wrote his 1960 classic, Growing Up Absurd, that there are “fewer jobs that are necessary and unquestionably useful; that require energy and draw on some of one’s best capacities; and that can be done keeping one’s honor and dignity.” Today even the most wasteful, alienating, and degrading jobs are difficult to get, with growing unemployment, and even faster growing underemployment.10

We face the situation in the next generation of the continued development of tremendous labor-saving technologies, many that are revolutionary in impact. Yet, instead of leading to a higher quality of life for all or most people, these new productive technologies will be deployed primarily to maximize the profits of those atop the system. They will appear, in some respects, to be the enemy of the workers and communities they help to displace. Likewise, in the coming generation, large swaths of our countryside will likely be torn up and developed for tacky residential projects and gated communities, while a good part of our cities and inner-ring suburbs rot. All of this, we are told, is basically unavoidable, the price we pay for having the privilege of living in a free society.

No, it isn’t. It is the price we pay for living in a capitalist society. It is a system in which the “need” of the wealthy to make profit drives everything else, and it is increasingly leading to irrational and disastrous results.

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James C. McKinley Jr.: Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

(Dialogic recommends James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong as a good prep for the history of this American school textbook misinformation/disinformation/propaganda effort and Texas' inordinate influence on national textbook adoption policies. Report via Michael Marchman.)



Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
The New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

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More reports:

(via Betsy Taylor) Huffington Post: Texas Textbook MASSACRE -- 'Ultraconservatives' Approve Radical Changes To State Education Curriculum which provides this nugget: "The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum's world history standards on Enlightenment thinking, 'replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.'”