Centre-Right Nation?

http://empirestudies.blogspot.com/2008/10/centre-right-nation.html

Who Rules America?

UCSC Sociologist William Domhoff analyzes Power in America. Some definitions:

For purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define wealth in terms of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale (Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a person's net worth.

He describes a distinct pyramid shaped class structure in America that has proven fairly stable over time. Historically (since the 1920s) the top one percent of American households have controlled between 30% and 40% of the national wealth (with the exception of a few years in the 1970s when that proportion dropped into and below the 20s).

He describes the class structure as of 2001:

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).

On inheritance:

Figures on inheritance tell much the same story. According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000).

On taxation (no longer on Domhoff's site) Obama is proposing raising income taxes on the top income bracket from 36% to 39%. This is a very modest increase on what is already a historically low level. This graph (http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php) puts it in perspective: 

Historical rates (married couples, filing jointly)

 Table

Tax year	Top marginal tax rate (%)	Top marginal tax rate (%) on earned income, if different<1>	Taxable income over--
1913	7		500,000
1914	7		500,000
1915	7		500,000
1916	15		2,000,000
1917	67		2,000,000
1918	77		1,000,000
1919	73		1,000,000
1920	73		1,000,000
1921	73		1,000,000
1922	58		200,000
1923	43.5		200,000
1924	46		500,000
1925	25		100,000
1926	25		100,000
1927	25		100,000
1928	25		100,000
1929	24		100,000
1930	25		100,000
1931	25		100,000
1932	63		1,000,000
1933	63		1,000,000
1934	63		1,000,000
1935	63		1,000,000
1936	79		5,000,000
1937	79		5,000,000
1938	79		5,000,000
1939	79		5,000,000
1940	81.1		5,000,000
1941	81		5,000,000
1942	88		200,000
1943	88		200,000
1944	94 <2>		200,000
1945	94 <2>		200,000
1946	86.45 <3>		200,000
1947	86.45 <3>		200,000
1948	82.13 <4>		400,000
1949	82.13 <4>		400,000
1950	84.36		400,000
1951	91 <5>		400,000
1952	92 <6>		400,000
1953	92 <6>		400,000
1954	91 <7>		400,000
1955	91 <7>		400,000
1956	91 <7>		400,000
1957	91 <7>		400,000
1958	91 <7>		400,000
1959	91 <7>		400,000
1960	91 <7>		400,000
1961	91 <7>		400,000
1962	91 <7>		400,000
1963	91 <7>		400,000
1964	77		400,000
1965	70		200,000
1966	70		200,000
1967	70		200,000
1968	75.25		200,000
1969	77		200,000
1970	71.75		200,000
1971	70	60	200,000
1972	70	50	200,000
1973	70	50	200,000
1974	70	50	200,000
1975	70	50	200,000
1976	70	50	200,000
1977	70	50	203,200
1978	70	50	203,200
1979	70	50	215,400
1980	70	50	215,400
1981	69.125	50	215,400
1982	50		85,600
1983	50		109,400
1984	50		162,400
1985	50		169,020
1986	50		175,250
1987	38.5		90,000
1988	28 <8>		29,750 <8>
1989	28 <8>		30,950 <8>
1990	28 <8>		32,450 <8>
1991	31		82,150
1992	31		86,500
1993	39.6		89,150
1994	39.6		250,000
1995	39.6		256,500
1996	39.6		263,750
1997	39.6		271,050
1998	39.6		278,450
1999	39.6		283,150
2000	39.6		288,350
2001	39.1		297,350
2002	38.6		307,050
2003	35		311,950

As the graph makes clear rates increased to nearly 80% in the 1910s. In the 1920s, they fell to around 25%. FDR raised them to about 60% to fight the Great Depression, then to over 90% to fight WWII. They remained in the in the 80-90% range until JFK/ LBJ lowered them to about 70%, where they sat until Reagan lowered back to 1920s levels (28%). Bush 41 and Clinton pushed them back up to 40%, and Bush 43 brought them back to 35%.

Sociologist Walden Bello ask key questions of the new administration:

The question isn't whether there is space for innovation, but whether Obama will go farther and make transformative moves in the ownership and control of the economy. Will we simply have a return to old-fashioned Keynesianism or will we finally move decisively toward a social democratic regime that truly subordinates the market to society? That he is said to have surrounded himself with Democratic neoliberals like Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker is cause for concern but hardly alarm at this point. Obama knows that the vote was a referendum against neoliberalism, whether of the doctrinal Reagan variety or the more pragmatic Clinton kind.

The end of greivance based politics?

On Election night Reverand Eugene Rivers of the Azusa Christian Community told Chris Matthews that the election of Obama spelled the end of "grievance based (race) politics" in the US.

David Roediger, a Marxist historian at U Illinois and one of the pioneers of "whiteness studies" analyzes the impact of the Obama victory and remains skeptical of the triumphalism of left, right and center, and cautions against appeals to "change everything, so that nothing may change."

By all accounts the election of an African-American president represents an important historical milestone in the US, but Roediger points to the deep structural inequities which affect Black communities and warns:

To think more precisely about the coexistence in the U.S. of such stark and deadly racial inequalities with the historic triumph of an African American presidential candidate requires that we recognize that racism is more than one thing and that we specify what has changed. The view that Obama heralds the end of race-thinking in the U.S. rests on a particular definition of racism, one that currently very much holds sway in U.S. politics and popular culture. Racism turns, on this view, on bad but disappearing individual attitudes, of the sort that can be measured by whether many or few voters act on those attitudes on election day, or even by the ratings among whites of Oprah Winfrey’s television shows or the sales of products Tiger Woods endorses. Deep structural inequalities may be considered unfortunate, but race is personal.
...
My recent How Race Survived U.S. History would add that the tremendous influence of African and Latino popular culture, usually in the most highly marketed forms, leaves race seeming more and more a matter of choice and even taste to white young people who came to prefer Obama and his style.

However, to chart such changes is also to note their limitations. Race is not a matter of choice for poor people of color in the U.S., who are often “illegal” in terms of immigration status or “in the system” of incarceration and its aftermath. Moreover, the politics of style which attracted white voters to Obama would have been greatly strained if his campaign also included straightforward plans to redress racial inequalities. The resonances of freedom movements by people of color inspired the Obama campaign, but those movements are in considerable disarray. The election therefore told us critical but by no means simple things about the present and future of race in the U.S.

Africana scholar Corey D. B. Williams offers a similar analysis:

The historic nature of Senator Obama’s campaign and election has been justly hailed as a signal event in American politics. Indeed, given the peculiar – to put it gently – history and character of Majoritarian Democracy in the United States coupled with the deep symbolic investments in the Office of the President, Senator Obama’s ascendancy to the nation’s highest political office will rightly be the subject of conversation and debate for many years to come.

...

Along with a fundamental challenge and transformation of the formal mechanisms of politics – from a domestic policy that leaves citizens unprotected in the face of mounting economic devastation to an ideologically driven economic policy that privileges the wealthy over the needy to a foreign policy that fundamentally reinforces the dictates of empire to a virtually nonexistent environmental policy in the face of a planetary ecological crisis that threatens all of existence – there must be an equally dramatic reconfiguration of power between the American state and the American people.

Thus, while the nation and world breathes a justified sigh of relief, the searing words of Martin Luther King, Jr. serve as a forceful reminder that the work of a just democratic politics has only just begun: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

Sales of Das Kapital soar:

In October Karl-Diez Verlag sold more than 500 copies of Das Kapital, confirming a trend that began early in 2008.

"Until 2004, we sold less than 100 copies of Das Kapital per year," Schuetrumpf said. "In the 10 months of 2008, we have sold more than 2,500 copies. It is clear that people are interested in learning what Marx has to say about why capitalism does not work."

...

A hundred and fifty years ago, the bishop tells IPS, "Marx predicted globalisation, and saw already the failures of capitalism."

Marxist theorists recall that the financial crisis of 1857 in the U.S. inspired Marx to intensify his studies on finance capital and its cycles of boom and bust. Ten years later, he published Das Kapital, in which he described capitalism as anarchic, irrational and blind competition led by the frantic pursuit of profit and accumulation.

To Lead an Empire

Frank J. Menetrez asks Critical questions for Obama:


Will Obama stand up to Wall Street on the regulation of the financial services industry?
Will Obama stand up to the insurance companies and enact meaningful health care reform?
Will Obama stand up to the neocons and remove US troops from Iraq? What long term role does he envision for the US in Iraq?
Will Obama stand up to AIPAC and demand an equitable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Frank J. Menetrez : as a black man, an alleged Muslim, a known associate of former terrorists, and so on, Obama will presumably feel more than the average amount of political pressure to demonstrate unequivocally that he is a good “friend of Israel,” just as Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton have so often supported reactionary “law and order” policies (like Clinton’s so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) to try to prove they’re not “soft on crime.”

Art work by Allan Burch

Tariq Ali on the symbol and the substance of Obama's victory.

Is there life after the spectacle?

New president-elect, but the bombs continue to rain on Afghan villages, and Wall Street scum continue to grow rich suckling from the public teet.

Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a former military analyst for the Pentagon who now lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean, dissects the strategic principles underlying Obama's victory. Obama suceeded in seizing the mantle of Mom and Apple Pie while McCain couldn't figure out if he was a "Maverick" or a "Party Man," a proud "Liberal Republican" in the mold of TR and the Trust Busters, or a proud "Conservative Republican" in the mold of Reagan (come now Mac, give it to me straight, is Govt the problem or the solution??).

Tom Engelhardt reflects on the posts-election let down: What do we do now? (I suppose there is always the Palin 0-12 race to get excited about. Who's up, who's down in that race??) Engelhardt references Tod Gitlins's Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives in discussing efforts to come to terms with life after the "election."

Bacevich predicts that with the election of Obama we have chance to put an end to the Evangelical foreign policy. Let's hope so.

Amy Goodman suggest that Palin may now have a sense of what a "community organizer" does- maybe she could send a note to Rudi.

What will the GOP do? The Party seems to have exploded. The glue holding the neo-cons, free marketeers, and Christian fundamentalists together seems to have grown dry and brittle. This problem first revealed itself in the primary: neocons split between McCain and Rudi, Free Marketeers behind Mit, and and fundamentalist base behind Huckabee. Now that the whole thing seems to be caving in, which way will the party go? More to the center? Will it be more inclusive and moderate (think more "Red Eye," less Brit Hume)? Back to the compassionate conservatism/ kinder, gentler GOP? Or will the party radicalize, and embrace the angry populism of Caribou Barbie and Joe Plummer? My guess is that the system is in a state of flux and that the elements are polarizing. The GOP will tap into that angry populism- as it seems to be the only thing that generates an emotional charge: Grandiose dreams of "democratizing the Middle East" seem frivolous as Americans watch their retirement savings go down the drain; charges of socialism seems to have lost there sting as the "free market" seems to have lost its appeal; but economic hard times, and the visible limits to American power will continue to aggravate conservative middle class anxieties, and christian fundamentalists will feed on this anxiety, look for scapegoats and put their faith in Messianic appeals to God and Country.

What will the Left(s) do? Will they keep quiet out of deference to the new leader as he repays all those who put him in office? Or will they demand that he put some meat on those "change" bones?

I must say that all the talk of Rahmbo and Larry Summers is a pretty disappointing start. On Rahmbo, Angry Arab posts this:

"In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, sometimes more so than President Bush. In June 2003, for example, he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror," Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders "was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense" ("Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2003)." (thanks Eletronic Ali)

There must be someway outta here said the Joker to the Thief

I was first introduced to William Appleman Williams in Ronnie Lipschutz' "The US in the World" class at UCSC. Williams' reputation preceded him. I had a vague sense that The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was the most important book on American foreign policy ever written, but no knowledge of the book's substance. Suffice to say, the book disappointed. I couldn't quite figure out how this book first penned in 1959, with slight revisions in in 1961, and rather substantial additions in 1972. As I read it, it made sense why the book was hardly read in 1959, and almost totally unreviewed. I had recently read Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and J.P. Sartre's introduction. Along side that tract (penned at roughly the same time), Williams' rather rambling meditations on John Hay's Open Door Notes seemed rather modest and tame. I should have read Empire as a Way of Life. If I am ever in the position to assign reading on American Empire, I will give a short lecture on the social origins of W.A. Williams, and the intellectual history of his famous book. But I will assign Empire as a Way of Life: an impassioned and prophetic essay.

Some highlights (perhaps I'll elaborate more):

Empire is about "the loss of sovereignty... the metropolitan domination of the weaker economy (and its political and social superstructure) to ensure the extraction of economic rewards." (15)

Montesquieu's principle [was] that liberty could exist only in a small state. Madison boldly argued the opposite: that empire was essential to freedom." (45)

TJ flirts with the idea of direct redistribution of property- but ultimately backed off from this proposition- and advocated imperial expansion on the frontier as an alternative to a direct confrontation with the Power of Money. (57)

"an honest imperialist is surely preferable to an apologetic, let alone a disingenuous, imperialist." (84)

As for the War of the States, Williams says: "let the South go. Or, for that matter, let the north leave first." But instead Lincoln "made a deal with the Devil." He could have his empire (of "freedom" of course...) only if he "was willing to destroy the southern culture based on slavery." Unfortunately, Lincoln's quick victory did not materialize. Lincoln rolled the dice with the devil and lost. Lincoln and his men "established a strategic tradition of destroying the opponent's society that caused so much trouble - and horror - America's later wars... It was brilliant military strategy and miserable morality." 87-89

Sen James Doolittle: "the surplus of free land 'will postpone for centuries, if not forever, all serious conflict between capital and labor." 90
But in fairness, "One may doubt that even Karl Marx could have done so [devised a persuasive non-imperial alternative to empire as a way of life]. Indeed, Marx would have probably shrugged his shoulders (and ideology) and said only that socialism is unimaginable, let alone pragmatically possible, until capitalist empire has run its course."97

And so TR, Taft and Wilson devised an image as a "global policeman" to replace the continental empire that had reached its limits. 124

It was Hoover who understood the limits of empire- Hoover understood that Wilson's "New World Order" was a fool errand, and had no interest in confronting every outburst of revolutionary nationalism the world over, but he was outgunned in the face of superior Democratic opposition. 139-142

Instead FDR blamed him for the problems endemic to capitalism- and sought to discredit his philosophy, and once and for all put to bed any notion that there were limits to American power.

FDR's New Deal did not generate peacetime recovery -- let alone a new burst of growth and prosperity. Most Americans realized, privately if not publicly, that the economy was revived only through WWII." (148). His first move was to reverse Hoover's policy of cutting military spending by dramatically expanding US war spending (in 1933!). "In the broader, structural sense, the New Deal created an institutional link between the huge companies and the military." 150. FDR "was simply a charming upper-class disingenuous leader who understood that marketplace capitalism had proved incapable of functioning without being subsidized by the taxpayer. And he could not imagine anything beyond marketplace capitalism." 150. "The point is that, while it was a New Deal, it was not a different game. The imperial outlook had once again become a vision of progress for everyone." 151.

on WWII, FDR had a choice, admit we are an empire and fight like an empire (open a second front in France in 1942) or dissemble and try to trick the Russians into fighting for us. He chose the later. While the Russians lost 20 million people, the US gained 20 million new jobs. Americans had never lived so as as they lived during WWII. Oh, if only the war could be kept going forever... The US lost 405,399 men and inherited a world scarred by colonialism. 167-168

Is this deeply iconoclast interpretation of American history simply Williams' nostalgia for his Great Depression era youth? In many ways the book reads like a call to reenter the Great Depression and figure out a new way out of it. One not predicated on global expansion, and the unholy alliance of State and Corporate power.