by ProgLegsFollow

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Pope Francis responded on Saturday to Rush Limbaugh’s recent accusation that he is a “pure Marxist.”Asked how it felt to be called a Marxist, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year answered:

“The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.”

Pope Francis went on to reiterate his criticism of trickle down economics, saying it never benefits the poor, instead resulting in the rich simply keeping more for themselves:

“The only specific quote I used was the one regarding the “trickle-down theories” which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and social inclusiveness in the world. The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger nothing ever comes out for the poor. This was the only reference to a specific theory. I was not, I repeat, speaking from a technical point of view but according to the Church’s social doctrine. This does not mean being a Marxist.”

[pullquote]Not as energetic a response as we would like, but at least he said forthrightly that Marxists are good people, too. On the other hand, by revitalizing social christianity he may be trying to pre-empt the allure of real socialism. In the end, his opening to the left—real or not—may encourage other religious to side with liberation theology again. [/pullquote]

Nelson Mandela’s death has precipitated a global discussion as to his remarkable personal story and profound historical role.  Surprising, his death has sparked an unexpected debate within the conservative right, revealing its ongoing unraveling.  More significantly, this debate raises questions about Mandela’s relation to Cuba, his affiliation with the Communist Party and his support for armed struggle.

The comments of Republican politicians, 2^nd-rate talking heads and establishment op-ed writers help illuminate the parameters of political discourse.  They are part of a larger social discourse that characterizes both the disinformation industry (e.g., newspapers, cable news, blogs) and the distraction industry (e.g., TV entertainment, movies, videogames). They frame the boundaries as to what is reported, discussed, known.  Together, they help forge the take-it-for-granted social consciousness that leads to the invasion of Iraq and the mass complacency over government-corporate digital surveillance.

The following examples suggest the scope of politicalization of Mandela’s death by the conservative right.

* * *

A critical aspect of social discourse is what is not said.  This intellectual failure is evident in the media coverage of Mandela’s death and the memorial events that followed.  Most illustrative, one incident that drew the ire of conservatives was Pres. Obama’s shaking hands with the Cuban president.  Florida’s rightwing Cuban-American congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, denounced the gesture.  “Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raul Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant,” she lamented.

Missing from the various comments regarding Mandela’s past was any mention of pivotal events of 1975.  One did not find reference to them from Ros-Lehtinen or the establishment media.  In 1975, while Mandela was safely imprisoned on Robben Island, two events took place that foreshadowed Mandela’s fate and the future of South Africa.  One involved South Africa’s failure – with CIA backing – in its interventionist effort in Angola; the other involved Israel’s effort to help South Africa gain nuclear weapons.

In November 1975, the MPLA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) was about to legally take power as part of Angola’s independence from Portugal.  In an effort to stop this from happening, the South African military intervened to support UNITA (Union for the Total Liberation of Angola).  Then U.S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approved Operation IA-Feature, providing $40 million and U.S. military trainers to support UNITA and other anti-MPLA groups.  Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, faced with the likelihood of losing Angola, declared: “We might wish to encourage the disintegration of Angola.”

The Angola war dragged on for more then a quarter century, 1975-2002.  The MPLA’s ultimate victory was due in large measure to the support it received from Cuba.  Between 1975 and 1991, Cuba committed an estimated 300,000 fighters, educators and doctors to the anti-colonist struggle.  In Angola, the showdown between the Cuban and South African forces took place at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987-1988.  Writing from prison, Mandela acknowledged the decisive importance of the battle: it “was the turning point for the liberation of our continent — and of my people — from the scourge of apartheid.”

In 1975, P. W. Botha, South Africa’s future president, was defense minister and Shimon Peres, Israel’s future president, was defense minister.  In May ’75, they met and signed a secret defense pact binding both parties to absolute secrecy.  A key component of their agreement was that Israel would provide South Africa with nuclear weapons.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky details the meeting and agreement in his 2010 book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Alliance with Apartheid South Africa.  As he discovered, Israeli officials “formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal.”  He quotes South Africa’s then military chief of staff, Lieutenant General R. F. Armstrong: “In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: a) That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere.”

As further clarified in a Guardian report, South African did not close the deal with Israel.  Nevertheless, it “eventually built its own nuclear bombs, albeit possibly with Israeli assistance.”  Going further the Guardian notes that “Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa’s post-apartheid government from declassifying the documents” upon which the book was based.  A spokesperson for Peres said that there were “never any negotiations” between the two countries.

This history explains why Cuba was Mandela’s first stop on his now legendary 1991 trip to North America.  It also may explain why, among all the world leaders who attended the memorial ceremonies, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was noticeably absent.

* * *

Among the Christian right, Mandela’s death has fostered an impotent debate between rightwing “wimps” and “hardliners.”  The wimps are represented by Newt Gingrich, former Congressman, failed presidential contender and political money-changer.  Rick Santorum, a former Senator and failed presidential contender, represents the hardliners.

Shortly after Mandela’s death, Gingrich posted the following to his Facebook account: “President Nelson Mandela was one of the greatest leaders of our lifetime,” he wrote. “When he visited the Congress I was deeply impressed with the charisma and the calmness with which he could dominate a room.  It was as if the rest of us grew smaller and he grew stronger and more dominant the longer the meeting continued.”  His sincerity seemed genuine.

On December 5^th, Santorum appeared on Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor and extended the following homage: Mandela “was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that.”  No one missed his gross insincerity

The debate between these two talking heads frames a growing split between factions of the Republican right.  On one side are many representing global capitalism, especially finance capital, the country-club establishment.  On the other side are Tea Party activists, split been “free market” advocates, libertarians, anti-abortionists and racists.  This debate will likely intensify as the 2014 election nears.

In a New York Times op-ed, writer Bill Keller, a leading voice of the establishment right, offered a far more trenchant critique of Mandela’s pre-imprisonment activism.  Drawing on the work of British historian Stephen Ellis, Keller insists that Mandela was once a member of the South African Communist Party.  He suggests that this matters, reveling Mandela’s mendacity and political pragmatism if not opportunism.  He grudging acknowledges that Mandela’s politics and practices were shaped by the Cold War.  However, Keller never mentions the obvious conundrum that Mandela faced: if the U.S. and Britain backed South Africa’s apartheid government, where could he and the African National Congress go for support

Keller seems genuinely confused over the complexity of Mandela’s historical personality.  It leads him to blunt the edge of his critique, acknowledging: “He [Mandela] was at various times a black nationalist and a nonracialist, an opponent of armed struggle and an advocate of violence, a hothead and the calmest man in the room, a consumer of Marxist tracts and an admirer of Western democracy, a close partner of Communists and, in his presidency, a close partner of South Africa’s powerful capitalists.”

Keller fails to mention that Mandela was on the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008, more then a decade after being elected president of his country.  Perhaps more intellectually dishonest, he argues that Mandela was “an opponent of armed struggle and an advocate of violence” – the opposite of what he practiced during his pre-imprisonment period.  Is such misrepresentation a cover for ignorance or a reflection of ideological intent?

Keller paints a picture of Mandela as a complex, committed and moral man, a remarkable historical figure.  Sadly, Keller doesn’t know how to reconcile Mandela’s complexity, let alone that of an ordinary person, to the larger historical context in which everyone – Mandela, Keller, you or me – actually live.  Remarkable, Keller never mentions key notions of the mid-20^th century anticolonial struggles, especially “imperialism” and “national liberation.”  The absence of these concepts – shorthand for global tyranny and local resistance — reflects an analytic absence, a blindness, to the direct links between power – social, political, economic — and the everyday lives of ordinary people.  It helps explain Keller’s intellectual shortsightedness.  One can only wonder if Keller would have supported Sam Adams and other insurgents during the earliest days of the American Revolution?

* * *

Nelson Mandela lived a remarkable life and, in distinction to most other world-historic figures, remained true to his basic principles in jail and in power.  The established media’s hero worship of Mandela, like that of Lincoln, serves to reduce the complexity of both history and character to clichés.

The absence of any substantive discussion of what happened in 1975, particularly the U.S. role backing South Africa’s failed attempt to overthrow the Angola government, contributes to the mythology of America as the noble liberator.  The absence of any mention of Israel’s role in support of South Africa’s atomic bomb efforts is equally telling, especially in light of the current brouhaha over the nuclear policies of Iran and North Korea.

The end of apartheid not only brought freedom to South Africa’s majority black population and Mandela’s election as the nation’s president, but it also opened-up a long secret history of the country’s misguided effort to become a nuclear power.  It’s a history one can only hope that politicians, pundits and media would recall in all the commemoration accompanying Nelson Mandela’s passing.

David Rosen writes for the AlterNet, Brooklyn Rail, Filmmaker and IndieWire; check out www.DavidRosenWrites.com.  He can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net.

Pope Francis had dared to call out the inequities of laissez-faire capitalism, giving fits movement conservatives, long accustomed to a friendly Vatican focused almost exclusively on cultural war issues.  The conservative pundits who hyperbolically miscast the pontiff’s recent encyclical as call to Marxist revolution didn’t know or didn’t care that Francis was articulating nothing more than good Catholic social teaching.

South Africa’s young people today are known as the Born Free generation. They enjoy the dignity of being born into a democratic society with the right to vote and choose who will govern. But modern South Africa is not a perfect society. Full equality – social and economic – does not exist, and control of the country’s wealth remains in the hands of a few, so new challenges and frustrations arise. Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle like myself are frequently asked whether, in the light of such disappointment, the sacrifice was worth it. While my answer is yes, I must confess to grave misgivings: I believe we should be doing far better.

There have been impressive achievements since the attainment offreedom in 1994: in building houses, crèches, schools, roads and infrastructure; the provision of water and electricity to millions; free education and healthcare; increases in pensions and social grants; financial and banking stability; and slow but steady economic growth (until the 2008 crisis at any rate). These gains, however, have been offset by a breakdown in service delivery, resulting in violent protests by poor and marginalised communities; gross inadequacies and inequities in the education and health sectors; a ferocious rise in unemployment; endemic police brutality and torture; unseemly power struggles within the ruling party that have grown far worse since the ousting of Mbeki in 2008; an alarming tendency to secrecy and authoritarianism in government; the meddling with the judiciary; and threats to the media and freedom of expression. Even Nelson Mandela’s privacy and dignity are violated for the sake of a cheap photo opportunity by the ANC’s top echelon.

Most shameful and shocking of all, the events of Bloody Thursday – 16 August 2012 – when police massacred 34 striking miners at Marikana mine, owned by the London-based Lonmin company. The Sharpeville massacre in 1960 prompted me to join the ANC. I found Marikana even more distressing: a democratic South Africa was meant to bring an end to such barbarity. And yet the president and his ministers, locked into a culture of cover-up. Incredibly, the South African Communist party, my party of over 50 years, did not condemn the police either.

South Africa’s liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC’s soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we “sold our people down the river”.

What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles. Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals. To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.

To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela’s leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.

It was a dire error on my part to focus on my own responsibilities and leave the economic issues to the ANC’s experts. However, at the time, most of us never quite knew what was happening with the top-level economic discussions. As s Sampie Terreblanche has revealed in his critique, Lost in Transformation, by late 1993 big business strategies – hatched in 1991 at the mining mogul Harry Oppenheimer‘s Johannesburg residence – were crystallising in secret late-night discussions at the Development Bank of South Africa. Present were South Africa’s mineral and energy leaders, the bosses of US and British companies with a presence in South Africa – and young ANC economists schooled in western economics. They were reporting to Mandela, and were either outwitted or frightened into submission by hints of the dire consequences for South Africa should an ANC government prevail with what were considered ruinous economic policies.

All means to eradicate poverty, which was Mandela’s and the ANC’s sworn promise to the “poorest of the poor”, were lost in the process.Nationalisation of the mines and heights of the economy as envisaged by the Freedom charter was abandoned. The ANC accepted responsibility for a vast apartheid-era debt, which should have been cancelled. A wealth tax on the super-rich to fund developmental projects was set aside, and domestic and international corporations, enriched by apartheid, were excused from any financial reparations. Extremely tight budgetary obligations were instituted that would tie the hands of any future governments; obligations to implement a free-trade policy and abolish all forms of tariff protection in keeping with neo-liberal free trade fundamentals were accepted. Big corporations were allowed to shift their main listings abroad. In Terreblanche’s opinion, these ANC concessions constituted “treacherous decisions that [will] haunt South Africa for generations to come”.

An ANC-Communist party leadership eager to assume political office (myself no less than others) readily accepted this devil’s pact, only to be damned in the process. It has bequeathed an economy so tied in to the neoliberal global formula and market fundamentalism that there is very little room to alleviate the plight of most of our people.

Little wonder that their patience is running out; that their anguished protests increase as they wrestle with deteriorating conditions of life; that those in power have no solutions. The scraps are left go to the emergent black elite; corruption has taken root as the greedy and ambitious fight like dogs over a bone.

In South Africa in 2008 the poorest 50% received only 7.8% of total income. While 83% of white South Africans were among the top 20% of income receivers in 2008, only 11% of our black population were. These statistics conceal unmitigated human suffering. Little wonder that the country has seen such an enormous rise in civil protest.

A descent into darkness must be curtailed. I do not believe the ANC alliance is beyond hope. There are countless good people in the ranks. But a revitalisation and renewal from top to bottom is urgently required. The ANC’s soul needs to be restored; its traditional values and culture of service reinstated. The pact with the devil needs to be broken.

At present the impoverished majority do not see any hope other than the ruling party, although the ANC’s ability to hold those allegiances is deteriorating. The effective parliamentary opposition reflects big business interests of various stripes, and while a strong parliamentary opposition is vital to keep the ANC on its toes, most voters want socialist policies, not measures inclined to serve big business interests, more privatisation and neoliberal economics.

This does not mean it is only up to the ANC, SACP and Cosatu to rescue the country from crises. There are countless patriots and comrades in existing and emerging organised formations who are vital to the process. Then there are the legal avenues and institutions such as the public protector’s office and human rights commission that – including the ultimate appeal to the constitutional court – can test, expose and challenge injustice and the infringement of rights. The strategies and tactics of the grassroots – trade unions, civic and community organisations, women’s and youth groups – signpost the way ahead with their non-violent and dignified but militant action.

The space and freedom to express one’s views, won through decades of struggle, are available and need to be developed. We look to the Born Frees as the future torchbearers.

Ronnie Kasrils was a member of the national executive committee of the African National Congress from 1987 to 2007, and a member of the central committee of the South African Communist party from December 1986 to 2007. He was the country’s minister for intelligence services from 2004 to 2008. This is an extract from the new introduction to his autobiography, Armed and Dangerous.

The New Norm
by ANDREW LEVINE

It must be hard for people who came of age politically during the past thirty-five years to appreciate how it used to be taken for granted that increasing productivity would bring increasing wellbeing to the vast majority – higher wages and salaries, better social insurance programs, better public education, better pensions, and the like.

It was taken for granted too that national, state and local governments would be run efficiently on fiscally sound bases – that, when necessary, taxes would go up as well as down, and that the tax system would be generally progressive.

In those days too, the idea that a major city like Detroit would go bankrupt seemed about as likely as that a meteor would flatten it.

And no one expected that, in the near future, the very rich would enrich themselves egregiously, as they had in earlier eras, while the vast majority would become worse off.  The expectation instead was that economic inequality would continue to wane.

There were anti-capitalists in those bygone days, many more than now; but few of them thought that life under capitalism was becoming harder to bear.  Plainly, it was not.

Their idea was that a socialist alternative would be better still – that it would attend to fundamental human needs without having to rely on wasteful military spending or irrational consumerism to keep the economy on track.  Under socialism, work could become more meaningful and other human endeavors more fulfilling and ennobling.

For anti-capitalists in the first three decades of the post-War period, it wasn’t so much a matter of escaping from a burning house as moving to a better neighborhood.

However, with the house not on fire, anti-capitalism never quite gained mass acceptance; most people were content to stay in the old neighborhood, and either to leave it as is or to try to make it better.

It was not just that the Soviet model scared people away from more radical alternatives.  It was also that prosperity and good order were generally on the rise, and there was every reason to think that progress would continue.  Change is risky; why chance it?

On that last point, there was widespread agreement.  It was assumed, across the political spectrum, that at least some of the most debilitating kinks and flaws of earlier versions of capitalism could be worked through; that capitalism with a human face was a live prospect and already, in many respects, an actual fact.

European social democracy led the way.  However it was much the same in all developed capitalist countries, including the United States.

To be sure, the American case was unusual in several respects.

During those decades, capitalist countries other than the United States (and, to a lesser extent, Canada, New Zealand and Australia) were still, for the most part, ethnically and culturally homogeneous.  The idea that one’s fellow citizens were brothers and sisters under the skin therefore came naturally; the nation was the family writ large.  The United States was too diverse for that; solidarity was always a struggle.

Also, with its legacy of slavery and its on-going continuations, there were severe racial divisions in the United States that had no real counterparts in other developed countries.  To the extent that, despite everything, the American nation was a family, it was a dysfunctional one.

Ethnic and cultural diversity forced American reformers to become coalition builders, mediators of group interests that did not always coincide; while institutional racism limited the scope and depth of their projects.  Reformers in more homogeneous societies had smoother going.

America was also unusual – exceptional, according to the literal meaning of the term – for not having made universal health care a right like, say, public education through high school.  This is why, to this day, the United States (with or without Obamacare) does not provide free (or nearly free) health care for all; why it is decades behind other countries.

For that anomaly, the American Medical Association was, at first, the main culprit.  Nowadays, private insurance companies and other health care profiteers have taken the lead in keeping progress at bay.  They operate with bipartisan support and with a friend in the White House.  Nevertheless, they are not now and never were the only problem.

Historical circumstances also played a role.  World War II decimated Europe and Japan, at the same time that it rescued the American economy.  Health care provision, like everything else, was therefore in shambles elsewhere; in the United States, it was in as good shape as it had ever been.  And because there were wage and price controls imposed during the War years, corporations, competing for workers, could only offer fringe benefits – like health insurance.

Therefore, when the citizens of other capitalist countries were in desperate need of everything, including access to health care, many American workers already had health insurance.  When wage controls were lifted, health insurance came to be one of the many benefits won or enhanced through collective bargaining, and it was also a perk some unions offered their members directly.

For the most part, the labor movement in the United States favored universal coverage, nevertheless.  But like DC statehood for the Democratic Party, it was an idle aspiration for which their leaders hardly lifted a finger.  Everywhere else, the issue was or soon became a prime demand.

Other countries had and continue to have their own peculiarities too, though the American case is undoubtedly the most extreme.  Nevertheless, the similarities swamp the differences.  The New Deal-Great Society liberal settlement was, for all practical purposes, an American version of what social democratic and labor parties elsewhere were forging.

The emergence of capitalist states that undertake affirmative social policies – beyond the “night watchman” and defense roles of earlier periods – had been in the works for a long time.  But it was not until the Great Depression of the 1930s, and then more clearly after the Second World War, that the affirmative state came into its own.

There were many factors that made this possible: a sense of shared sacrifice brought on by the War; the possibilities, especially in war-ravaged countries, inherent in starting over almost from scratch; the specter of (actually existing) Communism which made economic elites more willing to make concessions than they would otherwise have been, and the salutary influence of newly invigorated labor movements.

In Europe especially, labor movements were connected historically, and sometimes politically, to Marxist and other socialist political traditions; in the United States, post-War McCarthyite politics wiped out all remnants of that.  But a liberal-labor coalition nevertheless became a potent political force.

America in the late forties and early fifties was an extreme case, but radical anti-capitalist politics was, in varying degrees, suppressed everywhere.  Still, in most countries, including the United States, intellectual and cultural forces friendly to left alternatives withincapitalism were tolerated and even encouraged.

Progressive thinking was never quite hegemonic, but it was everywhere a pole of attraction and a force to be reckoned with.  And the ideological vestiges of earlier, less humane capitalist eras were effectively marginalized.  Even in the United States, if anyone defended the kinds of neoliberal views that have now become mainstream, it was from far out in right field.

This was a matter of plain common sense.  Developed capitalist countries were increasingly prosperous, and nearly everyone benefited.  Austerity was an unpleasant, but increasingly distant memory.  Equality was on the rise.

What reason could there be to advocate policies certain to counter these developments; policies calculated to make the rich richer and to reduce the wellbeing not just of workers but also of the vast majority of the so-called “middle class?”

There were, of course, timeworn ideological reasons – the ones that have lately been revived.  But they had been repudiated long ago, and everyone knew it.  They therefore had little appeal outside the most retrograde circles.  Hardly anyone wanted to turn the clock back; why would they?

Then the world changed.

* * *

It started sometime during the Carter administration in the United States, and more or less contemporaneously in Great Britain.  By the time Margaret Thatcher and then Ronald Reagan assumed power, the process was well underway.

In short order, the rest of the world followed suit.  The more progressive they had been, the lower they fell.  The trajectory of the Mitterrand government in France is an extreme case, but there were others as well.

The factors that had made progress possible didn’t go away overnight.  But they were not decisive; and they were themselves affected by changing circumstances.

Social solidarities frayed for many reasons; including increasing levels of immigration all over the developed world.  Before long, many formerly homogeneous European countries had become multi-ethnic and multi-cultural conglomerations.  Memories of wartime sacrifices dwindled as well; and the specter of Communism faded and then altogether disappeared.

But the main factor is that capitalism succeeded too well in building up productive capacities.  Capitalist firms must grow to survive; they must therefore invest.

But after thirty some years of steady and significant growth, there was more than enough capacity already in place – not in the sense that all wants could easily be satisfied, far from it; but in the sense that, given the over-capacity already there and under-utilized, the profit to be made by investing in more significantly declined.

Capitalists could have staved off decline, at least for a while, if they had been able to gain a larger share of the total social product.  But, thanks to all the gains registered in the preceding period, they were able to squeeze workers’ wages only so much.

Of course, they still try, and sometimes partially succeed.  The service industry is particularly vulnerable; unskilled service workers in traditionally low paying jobs therefore bear the brunt.

But in that sector too, there are limits.  And so it is that, even in today’s tight job market, workers in the fast food industry – many of whom risk deportation under the Obama regime — are fighting back.

But squeezing workers wages as much as circumstances allow is not nearly enough of a solution to the problem capitalists face.

For that, capitalists must call upon the state for aid.

Thanks to “free trade” and obliging tax policies, states in capitalist societies have made it possible for the capitalists they serve to export manufacturing jobs abroad — to places where wages are preposterously low.  This is not just an American phenomenon; it is a defining feature of the neoliberal world order.

That sort of fix would have been impossible in the days when the greatest diagnosticians of capitalism’s “laws of motion,” Marxist and otherwise, predicted the system’s imminent, internally driven, demise.

But with advances in transport and communication, and with the robotization of production processes (machines making machines), it has become eminently possible. For decades now, capitalists have been taking full advantage.

How ironic that technological advances that could go far towards eliminating burdensome toil as a fact of the human condition, and that could make high living standards for all a reality, instead, under capitalism’s aegis, have just the opposite effect!

They lead to the elimination of domestic manufacturing jobs, increasing unemployment and underemployment, and they cause wage levels to stagnate or decline – not just in what remains of the manufacturing sector, but across the board.

One might think that this situation would be intolerable to too many people, and would therefore be politically unfeasible.

This is a fair expectation in the long run.  But the ready availability of cheap products made abroad and government policies that encourage the rise of public and private debt have combined to postpone the inevitable.

The days when a single wage earner could support a family are gone, but heavily indebted two wage households can still shop up a storm.

Thus cheap goods and debt servitude replaced rising wages and cultural uplift; this is the new capitalist way.

It seems to be working too, at least for a while.  Except in rare moments of lucidity, the ninety-nine percent have been lulled into thinking that nothing is terribly wrong – that the Walmartization of everything is just fine.

The Occupy movements broke through the miasma briefly.  But they are now a distant memory.  Meanwhile low wage schlock emporia, Walmarts and others, are opening up all the time.

But even with an acquiescent public, capitalism’s problems have not gone away.  Capitalists still must find ways to expand their holdings.

They can’t invest all the newfound wealth flowing into their coffers thanks to the low wages they pay overseas workers because capacity is already over-built – even in the countries to which they have exported domestic jobs.  And they can’t consume it all because they are already bursting at the seams.

But neither can they stand in place.  There is therefore only one thing for them to do with the money they have: they must gamble with it – not literally in casinos but in their close cousins, the financial markets that nowadays rule the world.

To that end, capitalists have created previously undreamed of financial instruments that, when bought and sold at market-driven prices, generate wealth in their own right; wealth that bears only the most tenuous of connections to the real, productive economy.

Finance capital’s ascendance is a response to the exigencies of the capitalist mode of production in its current phase.  But capitalists cannot financialize the economy on their own.  They need the state for that.

In the American case, this means putting all those political contributions to use – to guarantee that the state will pursue policies conducive to their interests.  This is essential because it is the state that controls how much money there is and therefore how money can make money without making goods or supplying services along the way.

The deep causes underlying the need for the financial sector to develop as it has – and, more generally, for the neoliberal turn — are economic, of course; but it was politics that gave those causes their efficacy, and it is politics that will determine what their future consequences will be.

* * *

It was the labor movement that forced a more human face onto capitalism; but financialization and globalization are neutering organized labor – by eliminating the best jobs and forcing down wages on the rest.

Capitalism has become less egalitarian and less humane as a result.

Before this process got underway, the class struggle was fairly transparent; workers produced wealth, and their distributive shares were set by struggles with capitalists over the wage rate.  The logic of the underlying system and lived experience generally coincided.

Now financial markets rule; they determine what the direct producers’ share will be.  Governments, it seems, have no choice but to accommodate to their demands.

In this sense, political power too is neutered; real power lies elsewhere — in global markets that operate beyond human control.

But this is an illusion.  Because the political order is the condition for the possibility of neoliberal rule, human beings can break free from it – by defeating it politically.

It is an old truth that bears restating: what human beings have made, human beings can undo and transform.

But that will require a new politics because the politics people everywhere nowadays regard as “normal” is part of the problem.

To think otherwise is to succumb to the biggest illusion of all.

We, in the United States, get drawn into normal politics more than citizens of most other countries because our political culture is centered around primary elections that focus on personalities and general elections that focus on the small, mainly cultural differences that distinguish our two highly polarized, semi-established political parties.

This is why, at best, our elections only ratify changes achieved in counter-systemic popular struggles waged in other venues, not in electoral campaigns.

And even that doesn’t happen often.  The civil rights legislation of the 1960s is the last clear example.

To make matters worse, our elections inevitably devolve into contests between a Democrat and a Republican – each wedded to the existing order.

It needn’t be that way in theory, but our duopoly party system has become so thoroughly entrenched that, in practice, it can hardly be otherwise.

At the national level, some of our politicians are corrupt, some are only feckless, but all of them are beholden in various ways to nefarious pressure groups and moneyed interests.  In a country that regards campaign contributions as Constitutionally protected forms of free speech, it could hardly be otherwise.

There are, of course, members of the political class, even at the national level, who are thoroughly decent and who undoubtedly mean well; it is better that they hold office than that the others do.  But there is little that even the best of them can do to keep things from getting worse, much less to make them better.  The way forward is not through them.

An Obama who really was what Obama seemed to be to the liberals and “moderates” he fooled five years ago would have been a major improvement over the Obama we got.   Such an Obama, possessed of the political capital the real Obama squandered, might have succeeded, for example, in getting genuine universal health insurance through Congress.  He might have diminished America’s pernicious “exceptionalism” to that extent.

But even the Obama liberals imagined would only have been able to mitigate some of the worst aspects of the political economic order that globalization and financialization have afflicted upon us.

To do better than that, what we need is a politics that leaves contests between Democrats and Republicans to those who cannot or will not transcend the horizons of the electoral circus; a politics that targets the conditions that make the neoliberal policies both parties support possible.

Until we make that happen, the Age of Obama will continue to be the norm, no matter who wins next time.  Then, in the future as in the recent past, things will only get worse.

ANDREW LEVINE is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).