by Ron Horn.
In the midst of widespread political corruption, never-ending wars, and financial collapse, we will be presented with solutions that really do very little to solve these crises. Some are presented by well meaning people and some are likely to be presented by capitalist political operatives to ward off any real changes to their governing system. This morning I notice two postings on the internet offering such solutions which I firmly believe will do nothing to essentially change the system. They only seek to fix the existing system which I believe is inherently flawed.
The first one is illustrated by the Story of Stuff cartoonist in their latest video, "The Story of Citizens United vs. FEC", which claims that we can fix things by passing a Constitutional amendment that reverses the legal status of corporations as citizens.
The narrator in this video presents a very narrow view of the problem as being simply the passage of a recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to directly contribute to political candidates. This is total nonsense. Actually, one could argue that this Court decision was good in that it made transparent what has been opaque since the 1886 decision to recognize corporations as people, and before that, what was completely hidden by the role of big financiers and corporations that were key players in a new ruling capitalist class.
The narrator misses the huge picture of a class of people that has inserted itself in all areas of society to further their interests: the Executive Branch with the secrecy of the CIA and strengthening of the office which can now engage in war operations without the consent of Congress, all sorts of police state operations set up under the Patriot Acts, the control of all major media, the insertion of key members of the ruling class in educational institutions, in NGOs, their control of the Federal Reserve, etc. The list is endless. This only illustrates what a ruling class is: a class of people who rule over society for their class interests. To do this, they must rule all important subsystems of societies.
The second posting from Positive Money (UK) advocates a fix to bank lending. At least they see their proposal as only fixing the debt crisis; but it seems to assume that there is no governance crisis, that the current systemic crisis occurring all over the world is due only to profligate loaning of money by the major banks who engage in fractional reserve lending.
Such narrow proposals can detract activists and encourage them to go down blind alleys. They are based on very limited views of societies which, in their view, are essentially "democratic". Thus, all that is needed are more limitations and regulations on corporate power.
