Who is elected to Washington, Westminster or Brussels is a significant but small part of geopolitics. In these capitalist social democracies (CSDs), national parliaments are subordinate to global capital. This diverse entity is comprised of giant corporations, banks, billionaires and the financial markets. It is global capital that shapes the rules governing elections and the state, albeit indirectly.
When these power relationships are threatened, ruling elites within CSDs resort to direct state control. Hence Fascist and military dictatorships rule by naked force.
In the Stalinist regimes of Russia and China, elections are sheer pretence. Capital as well as the state is ruled by a self-selecting bureaucracy. These countries are better categorised as ‘state-capitalist.’
In all cases, capital and state together represent a continuation of capitalism. But this profoundly undemocratic and problematic episode of the human story is not a conspiracy. Twenty-first century geopolitics is played out in the public domain. And of the three versions of capitalism, social democracy is the most stable and the most efficient. It is also the cleverest.
Geographical constituencies
Election of parliamentary representatives for a patch of land has the effect of diverting attention away from the absence of democracy in workplaces. Yet this is where political power lies. In for-profit workplaces, conditions of work are imposed by management. Pay is always less than the value of goods and services produced. Profits are siphoned off into the pockets of shareholders and financial markets.
Capitalist state welfare and not-for-profits provide services needed by the private sector. The state welfare sectors are also a response to popular demand and mass resistance to hardship.
Geographical constituencies also channel political demands into minor reforms.
Pluralism, but not for us
This UK term is used for the fact that major institutions are free from day-to-day state involvement. It is true that the civil service, police and legal system, military, education, state enterprises and mass media have a degree of operational independence. They are not subject to direct state interference as in authoritarian regimes. A degree of political power is therefore spread across the top echelons of these institutions.
But devotees of pluralism neglect to mention the exclusion of the great majority of society from any part of pluralist structures.
And if non-governmental institutions, like banks and other corporations, are added to the mix, pluralism extends to, say, one-in-a-thousand working-age adults (in UK, roughly 40,000). Yet the theory of pluralism is cited to support the ‘Free West’ as the pinnacle of democracy, or even the ‘end-of-history.’
Left-wing or right-wing? So, where’s the middle?
With conservatism on the right and demands for socialism on the left, the political spectrum is a valid dichotomy. It contains all the mainstream parties. Unsurprisingly, the capitalist media’s chosen fulcrum, or balance-point, is between Republican and Democrat in USA and Conservative and Labour in UK.
But none of the parties on this spectrum have anything realistic to offer on relentless war and the plight of refugees. None are able to fully acknowledge the drastic measures necessary to tackle climate change. They all duck the scandal of multi-billionaires, poverty and public debt. The ongoing polycrisis is never even discussed inside capitalist legislatures. In short, all mainstream parties accept the overarching power of the capitalist class and their financial markets.
The centrist fulcrum
To have a sensible discussion of all the problems facing humanity and the Planet in the 21st century, one must look to the so-called far-left. More accurately described as ‘far-sighted-left,’ it has a central fulcrum which can be termed ‘centrism.’
A centrist position lies between revolutionary change and reformist change. This dichotomy is, however, very different to the conventional spectrum in that all activists agree on their ultimate aims: a decent life for everyone on the Planet and freedom from the scourges of war, exploitation, oppression and poverty. There is also agreement that all progressive reforms are worth fighting for.
But there is one crucial difference on the left. Reformists rely on a straightforward accumulation of reforms as the path to a better society. Revolutionaries rely on historical precedent to reach a number of conclusions. Firstly, the capitalist class has the power to defeat isolated campaigns and strikes. Only widespread rebellion and/or a general strike can win. Secondly, this will require the level disaffection that will occur during actual collapse of the current system.
The experience of resistance and campaigning are vital preparation for this scenario. A quarter way through the century, such collapse may be in its early stages.
When capitalist social democracy breaks down
CSD employs and disciplines the working class in order to maximise the extraction of profit from its work. The capitalist state and the financial sectors form the superstructure for this exploitation. Among all the aspects of the present polycrisis, financial dysfunction is central.
For four days in September 2008, the global banking system teetered on the brink of collapse. This was triggered by the bankruptcy of a small New York bank, Lehman Brothers. Its balance sheet showed it to be in the red by a mere US$150billion. But this was just the tip of an iceberg. The World was given a glimpse of interconnected global bad-debt that ran to many thousands of billions. At its core were the euphemistically dubbed, ‘subprime mortgages’ which depended on mass home-evictions to pay dividends.
In 2008, the financial system was saved by central bank ‘quantitative easing.’ This involved printing money to buy bad debt on behalf of taxpayers. But despite some write-offs, total global debt in 2024 is much greater than it was in 2008.
Widespread suffering is the price we always pay in any crisis. But intractable polycrisis will also provide opportunities for us to set up democratic workplaces that are cooperative, environmentally and socially responsible. Nothing short of revolution will avoid unimaginable chaos over the coming decades.
Pending:
Cooperatives
Trade unions
Social classes
Parties and sects
Democratic centralism
United fronts
Bolshevik lessons
13 November 2024
DPS
987 words
One Past. Many Futures. We Choose. 