3 comments
20 Nov 2006 @ 04:37 by Hanae @68.164.52.212 : Crony Capitalism and Faux Anarchism
One of the interesting evolutions of the Individual Anarchist political ideology---for it is an old political ideology (same o’, same o’) just like any other of the political attitudes on the table above (no more, no less)---is how Individual Anarchism has been co-opted today in modern American politics.
Individual Anarchism just like its Conservative and Reactionary counterparts on the Retrogressive scale (above) envisions a sort of social Darwinism, which, if carried far enough, as it often is by its proponents, can become a kind of "one, true, and only me-ism" in which only the self counts. Carried to its extreme, it isolates people more than any other ideology.
The most chaotic, violent, and destructive of Anarchist theories were developed in Russia during the 1860s as a result of the influence of people who were extremely frustrated politically:
"What can be smashed must be smashed;
whatever will stand the blow is sound,
what flies into smithereens is rubbish;
at any rate, hit out right and left,
no harm can or will come of it."
The Anarchists of that era, it is clear, believed that their society was so rotten, so corrupt, so decayed that it was beyond repair. The only constructive act possible, in their minds, was complete destruction of the society.
Grover Norquist, the president of the noted anti-tax lobbying group "Americans for Tax Reform," once told National Public Radio: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." And the way to get it down to that size is to starve it of revenue: "The goal is reducing the size and scope of government by draining its lifeblood."
Sounds pretty close to Individual Anarchism, to me. The problem is that the author of the quotes above is not an Anarchist. Grover Norquist is a Conservative Activist, and very much part of the "establishment," and possibly of that which very precisely is corrupt within that establishment. His close business and political ties to recently indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff are currently the object of a federal investigation, and, well, let’s just say that I do not think that ideologically Jack Abramoff exactly qualifies as an Anarchist either, Crony Capitalism seems more like it to me.
"Don’t vote." "Don’t pay taxes."
It has become hard to distinguish the true motivations of who it is who speaks nowadays behind such slogans (independently of what the legitimacy of the origin of such slogans might be), to what purpose, or (beyond the aw shucks Hannity/Limbaugh anti-government faux populism food-fight) the end of what system exactly it is that they are seeking.
The New Right think tank Heritage Foundation, for one, is pretty clear about it. To that organization "Government" means the evil of the "New Deal" and the "Great Society" which they use in a derogative way, implying their desire to do away with the institutions Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson created (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,…)
As Paul Krugman ("The Great Unraveling") observed:
"The starve-the-beast doctrine is now firmly within the conservative mainstream. George W. Bush himself seemed to endorse the doctrine as the budget surplus evaporated: in August 2001 he called the disappearing surplus 'incredibly positive news' because it would put Congress in a 'fiscal straitjacket.'"
And (still according to Paul Krugman) this is how it is done:
"To starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There's a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don't pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these "lucky duckies." (Yes, that's what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their 'blood boiling with tax rage.'"
It is an interesting irony how two ideologies, one would expect should have an adversarial relationship (Individual Anarchism vs. Crony Capitalism), are pursuing a seemingly similar strategy of doing away with government. One group does it, allegedly, because the system is utterly corrupt and there is no remedy to Crony Capitalism, the other group does it for the exact opposite purpose of consolidating the power of Crony Capitalism.
In other words, it is an interesting paradox how the no-government, no-tax, laissez faire theology of those who call for the abolition of government doesn't seem very different from the catechism of the anti-government, anti-tax wing of the ultra-conservative movements who claim they want smaller government, when what they really want is to eliminate regulatory agencies and social programs and deny access to protection or legal recourse against abuses such as injuries sustained from dangerous "deregulated" working conditions or poor medical care, environmental deregulation, etc.
Seems like a return to Oliver Twist and Corporate Feudalism to me.
If "Money" is indeed the problem, I submit that what is needed is not "no-government" but a strong people-orientated government that can get the big money, both private and Corporate, out of the election process and the legislature.
As I was commenting recently on a post on Ming.tv on the topic of Collective Intelligence, what is at stake has not changed much since John Stuart Mill wrote "On Liberty" back in 1854. The good news is that the medium however has changed. Hopefully the revolution brought out by new ways of connecting and new technologies, such as the ones that the development of personal computers and the Internet have made possible, will trigger the emergence of patterns that allow something bigger to emerge. Or, I don’t know, maybe it will be something else – e.g. we’ll all become telepaths, or humanity will awaken to a new kind of global consciousness – it’s all good to me, and so is the contribution of anyone, be it in the realm of art, science, philosophy, political activism (within or without our existing political institutions), system thinking, or practical endeavor, who is working to make our world a better place for all.
5 Aug 2006 @ 16:58, by D
