Surviving Capitalism (Not) : "We are the 99%," but the 1% Buy Elections, Reports Show

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

"We are the 99%," but the 1% Buy Elections, Reports Show

Click here to access article by Brendan Fischer from The Center for Media and Democracy.

The New Yorker reports on a conservative multimillionaire's successful efforts to buy North Carolina's elections, and a report from campaign finance reform groups describe how an elite group of donors have laundered unlimited contributions to presidential campaigns.

The points made in this article are probably obvious for many politically aware people, but still there are many Americans who naively believe in the capitalist version of democracy which, of course, is designed to hide the real truth. There has never been a genuine democracy in the US or any other significant country simply because the capitalists have ruled the world since the land owning aristocratic class lost the world to this new class back in the 17th and 18th centuries.

During the latter class wars this new class used democratic rhetoric to enlist the support of working people and farmers to aid them in their class war against the aristocracy. After victory they were saddled with these democratic principles and have had to maintain a fake version to assuage the yearning of working people for the real thing.

In the early history of capitalist rule they very carefully limited voting to owners of property. They gradually extended voting rights to other populations only under considerable pressure and after they mastered the arts of election management through their money and their control over all sub-systems in societies.

Any system is by definition a "group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole." Think of capitalists as the central nervous system of society. After winning their wars, they became the central nervous systems of their particular societies.

As a class controlled social system under the control of substantial owners of economic property, capitalists have inserted their influence and control over all other subsystems: education where indoctrination of market values is always present and history is always presented from their point of view, media where news is shaped to reflect the interests of the governing class, the legal system where laws are made and/or interpreted to support their interests, and the electoral system where two capitalist parties control who runs for office and who gets elected by funneling money and resources to those who best serve their interests.

This liberal article focuses only on elections and only superficially.