By Stephen P. Pizzo,
Raconteur-at-Large
Those of us who have been life-long
liberal/progressives have long complained about the influence of
money and vested interests in politics. It’s our meme, what the dogmas of “trickle-down economics” and tax cuts are to
the conservative camp. (Never mind that decades of data show's
neither actually works...)
But conservatives have something that
does work, and its worked for centuries. It's what makes the Koch
brothers and their ilk such successful bulwarks against much needed
change. This tool, or weapon, if you will, is well described by
Francis Fukuyama in his book, The Origins of Political Order.
“Any institution
or system of institutions benefits certain groups in a society, often
at the expense of others, even if on the whole the political system
provides public goods like domestic peace and property rights. Those
groups favoted by the state may feel more secure in their person and
property, them may collect rents as result of their favored access to
power, or them may receive recognition and social status. Those elite
groups have a stake in existing institutional arrangements and will
defend the status quo as long as they remain cohesive. Even when
society as a whole would benefit from institutional change, such as
raising taxes in order to pay for defense against an external threat,
well-organized groups will be able to veto change because for them
the net gain is negative.”
It is probably a
good time now to point out that Fukuyama wrote these lines in the
chapter of his book entitled “Political Decay.” He
calls this stage of a political evolution, “stable dysfunctional equilibrium,
since none of the players will individually gain from changing the
underlying” status quo they have no intention of allowing change to happen, no matter how dysfunctional that renders governance:
“...the fact
that societies are so enormously conservative with regard to
(preserving existing) institutions means that when the original
conditions leading to the creation or adoption of an institution
change, the institution fails to adjust quickly to meet the new
circumstances. The disjunction in rates of change between institution
and the external environment then accounts for political decay...”
This, he writes, is a naturally
occurring accretion of power into the hands of fewer and fewer within
a state. And the more powerful the few become, the easier it is for
them to defeat demands for change from the many below them:
“This kind of
collective “action-failure" is well understood by
economists....entrenched interest groups tend to accumulate in any
society over time, which aggregate into rent-seeking coalitions in
order to defend their narrow privileges. They are much better
organized than the broad masses, whose interests often fail to be
represented in the political system.”
The results of this disproportionate
sway over the political apparatus can be seen today in the
dysfunction in Washington. Though “dysfunction” is actually a
misnomer. It would be better called “mandated dysfunction.” What we are seeing is not a failure to act, but a mandate
not to act. That mandate being enforced by the handful at the very
top of the domestic fiscal mountain. They have no need for change,
since everything is working just fine for them. In fact, the only
thing that threatens “their thing,” as the Mafia called their
rackets, is change. Change is enemy. So it is to be stopped dead in
its tracks wherever it tries to emerge.
Besides the obvious and growing
disparity in distribution of wealth, this condition risks more than
human suffering. With climate change beginning to wreak havoc around
the globe, the elite see any shift to alternative solutions as direct
threats to their long-established and still profitable enterprises.
So the very existence of our species may
depend on figuring out ways to unsaddle these overlords of the status
quo:
“The ability of
societies to innovate institutionally thus depends on whether they
can neutralized existing political stakeholders holding vetos over
reform.
Opportunity does eventually emerge to
do just that when this process of power-accretion moves from the
“dysfunctional equilibrium,” to unstable dysfunctional
equilibrium. But then the choices get a bit unsettling for most progressives.
“The stability
of dysfunctional equilibria suggest why violence has played
such an important role in institutional innovation and reform.
Violence is classically seen as the problem that politics seeks to
solve, but sometimes violence is the only way to displace entrenched
stakeholders who are blocking change. The fear of violent death is a
stronger emotion than the desire for material gain and is capable of
motivating more far-reaching changes in behavior.”
And therein lays the rub. Liberals and
Progressives tend to eschew violence as way to solve social problems.
And we are proud of that, and rightfully so. Violence is one of those
“shove all the chips on the table” moves. One can never be certain it
will turn out to their advantage. It may go the other way, making the
oligarchs even more powerful, more oppressive. So instead, we try reason.
Which leaves us with a
dilemma:
“It is not
clear that democratic societies can always solve this type of problem
peacefully...This means that the burden of institutional innovation
and reform will fall on other, nonviolent mechanisms... or that those
societies will continue to experience political decay.”
And that, my friends, is why the
One-percent continue to win;-when push comes to shove, we don't shove
back hard enough.
