HERE IS SOMETHING RELEVANT TO AMERICANS TODAY: Hedges & Wolin: Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? therealnews/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12557 Hedges & Wolin (2/8): Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist? Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig , spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. He has written nine books, including Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), I Dont Believe in Atheists (2008) and the best-selling American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2008). His book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Transcript Hedges & Wolin (2/8): Can Capitalism and Democracy Coexist?CHRIS HEDGES, PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING JOURNALIST: Welcome back to part two of our discussion of the state of American democracy and the rise of corporate capitalism, inverted totalitarianism, with Professor Sheldon Wolin. Professor Wolin, we were talking about the freeing of corporate capital, because of the Cold War, from internal democratic restraints. And that freeing saw corporate capital really make war against participatory democracy, democratic institutions. Can you describe a little bit what the process was, how they began to hollow out those institutions and weaken them? SHELDON WOLIN, PROF. EMERITUS POLITICS, PRINCETON: Well, I think you really have to start with the political parties themselves. The Republicans, of course, have never had much of an appetite for popular participation. The Democrats have had a checkered history of it. Sometimes very sympathetic, and other times indifferent. But during the 60s, and really even during the 50s as well, movement toward democracy began to take shape with the realization of the kind of voter restrictions, the most elephant elementary kind of restrictions on democracy, prevalent especially, of course, in the South, and especially involving the disfranchisement of African-American voters, so that that kind of development--and, of course, the attempt on the part of Freedom Riders and others to go into the South and try to help African-Americans organize politically and to defend their rights--created a kind of political context, I think, probably which had never existed before, in which there were fundamental arguments about franchise, election, disenfranchisement, race, and a range of related issues that simply called for a kind of debate that, as I say, had scarcely been raised for decades. And it meant that a certain generation, or a couple of generations, had had a political exposure that was truly unprecedented in recent American history, not only the Freedom Riders who went down, but practically every campus in the country was affected by it, and not only because various faculty and students went to Alabama and elsewhere, but because it became a standard topic of conversation, to learn how the movement was doing, what kind of obstacles were being met, and what we could do, and there were marches and marches and marches, so that it was a political experience that was, I think, as Ive said, unprecedented in terms of its intensity and in terms of the huge number of citizens being involved of a younger age. HEDGES: And yet, when we look back at the nine 1930s, what I think marked the so-called New Left was that it was not coupled with labor. WOLIN: No, it wasnt. No, it wasnt. The 30s were kind of a peculiar thing. I mean, it shouldnt be simply dismissed, because it did have lasting influence, because it showed, to some degree at least, that it was possible to get a progressive administration, that Roosevelt, whatever his failings and shortcomings, had shown that with sufficient popular support, you could manage to make some kind of dent in the kind of political privileges that existed in the country and help to benefit the economic plight of most people. And he did make serious attempts. It, of course, ran into all kinds of problems, but thats the nature of politics. But I dont think it can be underestimated, the extent to which the New Deal influence spread throughout the society. I think it had an extraordinary effect, long-run effect in terms of igniting ideas about popular participation and its possibilities. HEDGES: And yet it was really a response to the breakdown of capitalism. WOLIN: It certainly was. I mean, it had its limitations. But I think theres a very real question about how far the country was prepared to go at that time. Its important to remember that the early 30s--meaning by that from 1932, say, on--was not only a period of New Deal ferment; it was also a period of reactionary ferment, and that one mustnt forget such things as the Liberty League, and also, and above all, Father Coughlin, who was an extraordinary figure, someone who began as a defender of the New Deal and ended up as a bitter anti-Semite and had to be disowned--or at least throttled--by his own church, he had become so extreme. But there were a lot of things percolating in those years, and on both sides, because, Ive said, the New Deal and the liberal resurgence also would cause the reaction that I think led to a kind of permanent--I want to say permanent conservative realization that it had to develop a kind of standing set of its own institutions and foundations and fund-raising activities all the year round, not just to wait for elections, but to become a kind of permanent force, conscious conservative force in American politics from the ground up. HEDGES: And that started when, would you say? WOLIN: I would say it started with the reaction to the New Deal, which would mean in about 1934. HEDGES: And so, essentially theyre building antidemocratic institutions to burrow themselves into what we would consider the fundamental institutions of an open society--universities, the press, political parties. Would that be correct? WOLIN: Yeah, that would be largely correct, yes. They did realize that those institutions were porous and that they lent themselves to an influence of money and the influence of the kind of people who had big money. And so they waged a counter campaign. And the result was, I think, a sort of permanent change, especially in the Republican Party, because remember, the Republican Party was not a reactionary party in the early 30s, and even as late as the 1936 election with Alf Landon, who was very much a moderate--and he only won Maine and Vermont, but still he was significant--and that Wendell Wilkie was a power in the party until at least 1940, had a very important liberal wing. So it took a while for the evolution of the Republican Party to becoming the kind of staunch and continuous opponent of New Deal legislation with leaders who by and large were committed to rolling it back and to introducing conservative reforms in education and economic structure and social security systems and so on. HEDGES: Wed spoken earlier about what you term inverted totalitarianism. When did that process begin? Would we signal the beginning of that process with those reactionary forces in the 1930s? Is that when it started? WOLIN: I think in the broad view it would start back then. I think it didnt gain full steam until you had those parallel developments that involved such sophisticated public relations powers and political party organizations that were round-the-year operations, that with a conscious ideological slant and an appeal to donors who wanted to support that kind of slant, so that politics--while all of those elements had been present, to be sure, for a long time, they achieved a certain organizational strength and longevity that I think was unique to that period. And one has to remember that the 30s was a very troubled political period, because not only of the New Deal and the controversies it raised, and not only because of the reactionary elements at home, but Europe was clearly heading toward some uncertain future with Hitler and Mussolini, and then the specter of Stalin, so that it was a very, very worrisome, nervous period that had a lot to be nervous about. HEDGES: Do you have a theory as to why Europe went one way and America went another? WOLIN: Well, Im sure there are lots of reasons. One that I would emphasize is the failure of governments in that country to be able to capture and mobilize and sustain popular support while introducing structural, economic, and social changes that would meet the kinds of growing needs of a large urban and industrialized population. I think that was the failure. HEDGES: You talk in--I think its in Politics and Vision--about how fascism arose out of Weimar, which was essentially a weak democracy. And yet you argue, inverted totalitarianism, certainly a species of totalitarianism, can often be the product of a strong democracy. WOLIN: It can, in the sense that that strong democracy can do what its name implies. In the pursuit of popular ends, it develops inevitably powerful institutions to promote those ends. And very often they lend themselves to being taken over and utilized, that--for example, that popular means of communication and news information and so on can become very easily propaganda means for corporate capitalism, which understands that if you gain control of newspapers, radio, television, that youre in a position to really shape the political atmosphere. HEDGES: You write in Democracy Incorporated that you dont believe we have any authentic democratic institutions left. WOLIN: I dont. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but I think--in terms of effective democratic institutions, I dont think we do. I think theres potential. I think theres potential in movements towards self-government, movements towards economic independence, and movements towards educational reform, and so on, that have the seeds for change. But I think that its very difficult now, given the way the media is controlled and the way political parties are organized and controlled, its very difficult to get a foothold in politics in such a way that you can translate it into electoral reforms, electoral victories, and legislation, and so on. Its a very, very complex, difficult, demanding process. And as Ive said before, democracys great trouble is its episodic. HEDGES: Right. WOLIN: And that just makes it easier for those who can hire other people to keep a sustained pressure on government to go the other way. HEDGES: You talk about how democratic institutions which have essentially surrendered themselves to corporate power have pushed politics, if we define politics as that which is concerned with the common good and with accepting the risks, the benefits, and the sacrifices evenly across the society, that essentially that has pushed political life, to some extent, underground, outside of the traditional political institutions. WOLIN: I certainly think that theres something to be said for that, because I think if you look strictly at our political parties and the national political processes, you get a picture of a society which seems to be moribund in terms of popular democracy. But if you look at what happens locally and even in statewide situations, theres still a lot of vitality out there, and people still feel that they have a right to complain, to agitate, to promote causes that would benefit them. And this still remains, I think, a strong element in it. But I do think were facing a period in which economic uncertainty is such that, particularly for younger people, in the sense that we dont really know anymore, with any degree of high certainty, how to prepare young people for a constantly changing economy, so that young people, in a certain sense, who are the sort of stuff of later political movements and political support systems, that young people are in a very real way puzzled and, I think, confused, and sort of dont know where to go, and are being propelled in certain directions that dont really add up to their long-run benefit. And it starts with, I think, the secondary education, and it continues in college. The plight of liberal arts education is just extraordinary today. Its so much on the defensive and so much on the ropes that its hard to see what, if any, place itll have in the future. HEDGES: Its hard to see you in most politics departments at American universities today. It was probably a lonely position even when you--. WOLIN: Oh, yeah, because most American--most political science departments have become in effect social science departments and much more addicted to seeking out quantitative projects that lend themselves to apparent scientific certainty and are less attuned--in fact, I think, even, I would say, apprehensive--about appearing to be supportive of popular causes. Its just not in the grain anymore. And the more that academic positions become precarious, as they have become, with tenure becoming more and more a rarity--. HEDGES: Thirty-five percent now of positions are actually tenured. WOLIN: Yeah, I would believe it. I would believe it. I mean, and that becomes a problem in terms of finding people willing to take a certain risk, with the understanding that while theyre taking a risk, it wont be so fatal to their life chances. But Im afraid it is now. And it doesnt bode well, because it seems to me, in a left-handed sort of way, it encourages the kind of professionalization of politics that results in the kind of political parties and political system that weve been warned about from the year one. HEDGES: And a political passivity, which you say--you talk about classical totalitarian regimes mobilize the masses, whereas in inverted totalitarianism, the goal is to render the masses politically passive. And you use Hobbes to describe that. Can you speak a little bit about that? WOLIN: Well, Hobbes is interesting because he writes in the so-called social contract tradition, and that had been a tradition which grew up in the late 16th and 17th century. The social contract position had furthered the notion that a political society and its governance should be the result of an agreement, of an agreement by the people as to what sort of government they wanted and what sort of role they wanted to play for themselves in such a government. And the social contract was an agreement they made with each other that they would create such a system and that they would support it, but they would reserve the right to oppose it, even rebel against it, if it proceeded to work contrary to the designs of the original contract, so that that became the sort of medium by which democratic ideas were carried through the 17th century and into much of the 18th century, including the American colonies and the arguments over the American Constitution as well--and especially, I should add, in the arguments about state constitutions and government. HEDGES: And that fostering of political passivity, you have said in your work, is caused by what you were speaking about earlier, the economic insecurity, the precariousness of the position, which I think you go back to Hobbes as citing as one of the kind of fundamental controlling elements to shut down any real political activity. WOLIN: Yes, I believe that very strongly. I think if you go back way to the Athenian democracy, one of the things you notice about it is that it paid citizens to participate. In other words, they would be relieved from a certain amount of economic insecurity in order to engage actively in politics. Well, when we get to our times and modern times, that kind of guarantee doesnt exist in any form whatsoever. We barely can manage to have an election day that isnt where we suspend work and other obligations to give citizens an opportunity to vote. They have to cram a vote into a busy, normal day, so that the relationship between economic structures and institutions and political institutions of democracy are just really in tension now, in which the requirements of the one are being undercut by the operations of the other. And I dont see any easy solution to it, because the forces that control the economy control to a large extent public opinion, modes of publication, and so on, and make it very difficult to mount counter-views. HEDGES: Well, in fact, to engage in real participatory democracy or political activity is to put yourself in a more precarious position vis-à-vis your work, your status within the society. WOLIN: Theres no question about it. And thats true of, I think, virtually every activity. Its now certainly frowned upon in academic work, and certainly in public education its frowned on. And theres no effort made to really make it a bit easier for people to participate. And the intensity that economic survival requires today leaves most people exhausted. Theres--and understandably. They dont have much, if any, time for politics. So were in a really difficult situation, where the requirements of democracy are such that theyre being undermined by the realities of a kind of economy and society that weve developed. HEDGES: Which you point out Hobbes foresaw. WOLIN: He did. He did indeed. And his solution was you surrender your political rights. Yeah.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 20:27:43 +0000
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