We live in a politico-economic system I call participatory fascism (a term I borrowed from my dear friend and former Ph.D. student Charlotte Twight). This is a system characterized by a vast interpenetration of powerful private persons and institutions and the institutions that compose the state. A revolving door permits frequent exchanges of personnel between the government and the ostensible private sector, and an elaborate collection of ceremonies and procedures gives the public a superficial opportunity to avail themselves of what is loosely described as due process -- hearings, announcements, warnings, testimony, trials, appeals, and so forth, enough to employ an army of lawyers. This systems common denominator is that in each area where an iron triangle or other arrangement entrenches the interplay of legislators, bureaucrats, and affected parties, the general public interest is effectively sacrificed to the narrow interest of those whose hands control the levers of state power. Although many Americans describe this abominable setup as the best possible one -- democracy in action, they call it -- practically everyone recognizes many serious problems, and some recognize that unless particular practices are altered, the entire system may ultimately destroy itself by its inability to take adequate account of the general interest and the longer run. So proposals for reforms come forth regularly. In general, progressives propose to reform the system by -- you guessed it! -- strengthening its fascist character by means of subsidies to favored enterprises, public-private partnerships, regulations and tax changes aimed at jiggering the industrial structure, and a thousand other similar interventions. Conservatives likewise propose to reform the system by -- you guessed it! -- strengthening its fascist character by means of subsidies to favored enterprises, public-private partnerships, regulations and tax changes aimed at jiggering the industrial structure, and a thousand other similar interventions. In short, neither progressives nor conservatives propose to do anything except prop up the existing, ultimately ill-fated system of participatory fascism. Yet together the progressives and conservatives control all the systems commanding heights, and thereby they possess the power to fend off the only kind of change that holds any real hope in the long run -- the abandonment of the whole setup and the termination of all attempts to bully and exploit people by wielding state power. I estimate the probability that this true solution will be seized as being so tiny as to be negligible. Therefore, the future can be only one course of events: a slow deterioration into a ruined shambles. What cannot be sustained must and will stop. What will happen along the way, much less at the end of this miserable path, is anyones guess. May God have mercy on us.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 18:23:31 +0000
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