Power Full

“Levers of Power – How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It,” by K. Young, T. Banerjee and M. Schwartz, 2020

The essential point of this sociological study is to refute the idea that U.S. politicians or public opinion are the key ‘levers’ that left mass movements need to focus on in order to get substantive change.  Quoting MLK, they argue that “…because really, the political power structure listens to the economic power structure.”  Their notion is grounded in the dominance of corporate capital in the U.S.  So they argue for constant pressure and disruption against corporations and key state entities like the military and police, not pleas or votes for politicians or pleas to the media.

Their analysis focuses on the Obama years when financial ‘reform,’ health ‘reform,’ and climate change were the 3 major issues.  These processes were controlled for the most part by corporate and Wall Street power.  In the first, the Dodd-Frank rules omitted certain significant options like nationalization, then ‘capital ratios’ and oversight were watered down, then later challenged and are now acceptable to a hugely-profitable and larger Wall Street.  In the second instance regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) the same process happened, with a public option or single payer being ruled out.  Costs were unconstrained, with shortfalls covered by government funding for the poor.  Now even the individual mandate has been overturned.  Millions remain without coverage while prices continue to go up as health care corporations reap massive profits.  In the third, not enough corporate entities supported climate mitigation of any real kind, so the bill failed completely, endangering everyone. As part of this Obama’s Paris Climate Agreement was completely voluntary, accepted all forms of energy and was even an undershot.

The author’s exception to this sorry practice during those years was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) when disruptive soldier lawsuits and gay personnel losses forced the Joint Chiefs of Staff to send DADT on its way.  However DADT did not have a direct economic rationale, unlike the others, so capital had no real problem with it.

The authors address Trump’s 2017 corporate tax bill, which was endorsed by the whole corporate world and passed with bipartisan support from both parties.  At the same time Trump's attacks on the ACA were blunted, as the HMO health industry objected.  His support for the coal industry also fizzled, as other corporate ‘green’ sectors opposed it, as did Wall Street.  In the latter two cases Trump had broken ‘the corporate compromise’ usually necessary to govern for the whole capitalist class.  This is similar to his selective tariff decisions, favoring some capital sectors over others.

Citizens had little to do with any of this.

CAPITAL STRIKE

What powers do the financial elite’s have?  The most important, and the one most ignored, is the many faces of the ‘capital strike,’ a term the authors justly bring back into focus. This occurs any time businesses threaten to lay off employees, close factories or locations, move to other countries, stop lending, stop coverage, threaten to raise prices or interest rates, continue to keep their cash hoards overseas, stop investing, move their money or otherwise stop functioning.  The authors repeatedly point to the trillions in cash U.S. corporations are not investing as part of a coercive capital strike to get their political way.  The money instead finds its way to investors, stock buybacks or higher CEO compensation, accelerating inequality.  So pro-capitalist politicians like Obama are always trying to improve ‘business confidence’ to avoid capital strikes. This translates as preserving profits by any means necessary – cutting regulations, stopping or lessening enforcement, watering down proposals, lowering taxes, allowing business to police itself, letting ‘the markets’ work, etc.  Bourgeois and reformist politicians can’t help it because capital calls the shots.  Police use this same method when they threaten city councils with the ‘blue flu’ or engage in a work slowdown of some sort unless they get their way.

Hmmm... the Money Power is organized.

The most familiar elite control method is campaign spending and lobbying politicians, as industries ‘buy’ politicians.  But added to that is the power to be invited ‘to the table’ in some quiet backroom before bills are introduced in Congress.  This results in corporations sometimes writing the drafts themselves.  The public and the ‘democratic’ Congress ‘stakeholders’ are not invited or outnumbered.  Even the word ‘stakeholders’ is really a cover for one particular stakeholder.  A common practice among both Obama and Trump is putting corporate employees into government jobs, ensuring the relevant corporations or the military get a friendly reception.  This is seen in the many Wall Street and business appointees both parties came up with.  By the way, Barney Frank of the 'draconian' Frank-Dodd law is now a bank director!  The Republicans have amplified this method into a direct government department-wrecking operation.  If corporations have remaining differences after a bill passes, they can get less or no enforcement through endless deep-pocket lawsuits or threats of lawsuits.  They can cajole Congress into defunding government entities that regulate them, such as the EPA, NRLB or OSHA. Lastly they can just ignore the laws that impede profits and pay the small fines.

DISRUPTION

While a tiny minority, capital has the most power over bourgeois politicians, so the politicians almost always bow to their wishes, Democrat or Republican.  According to the authors, the only exception is when the ‘people’ intervene directly from the left.   This means pressure on business sectors or government entities in the form of powerful strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, civil disobedience, lawsuits, occupations, riots, sabotage, even guerilla war - various forms of what the authors call ‘disruption.’  This happened during the 1930s and 1940s through successful hard struggles by the labor movement. Without years of strikes, sit-downs, slow-downs, sympathy strikes and general strikes, the pro-union Wagner Law would not have been enforced or obeyed by U.S. capitalists.  The authors include the fronts against the criminal Vietnam War by Vietnamese peasants and workers and U.S. soldiers, which disrupted the U.S. economy. Tet destroyed the myth of U.S. military invincibility while U.S. soldiers ultimately refused to fight, breaking the back of the whole armed forces.  The civil rights struggles in the U.S. South led by black activists disrupted Southern businesses to such a point they had to drop Jim Crow.  

'34 Teamster Strikers Level Hired Company Thug

You will note the authors limit their analysis to the U.S., which is a flaw I’ll get into.

The authors analyze the actual steps before the Wagner Act, ACA, Dodd-Frank or climate bills became law, and it is not anything like Schoolhouse Rock or even sausage-making.  It is worse and worth reading.  Proving their point on the Vietnam War, they cite Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Senior Advisory Group’ made up of the ‘wise men’ – corporate leaders from across the economy.  On March 26^th, 1968, based on the Tet Offensive, the ‘wise men’ told Johnson to pull out of Vietnam.  On March 31^st, 5 days later, Johnson announced on TV he would not seek further office and would deescalate the war.  A more direct money connection could not be found, as the military wanted to continue the occupation of South Vietnam.  It tried and failed for another 7 years through ‘Vietnamization” but the ‘wise’ capitalists had spoken.

The authors look at the concept of the ‘corporate compromise’ in which different capitalist economic sectors are brought together in agreement.  These monied disagreements are the basis of most ‘conflicts’ in bourgeois politics.  They point out that when different capitalist factions are occasionally at each others throats, (most of the time they are not) it leaves an opening for progressives to take advantage of.  I might add it is not by joining one side or another, but by pushing their own transitional demands through the breach.  The authors cite an neo-liberal Clinton-era rule that all decisions by the government must pass a ‘cost benefit’ analysis (CBA) – meaning if firms lose profits due to a CBA, the rule cannot be enforced.  This has disemboweled, among others, many environmental rules passed during the 1970’s Nixon administration.

ENDLESS MASS PRESSURE?

Now the caveat.  At bottom this is sort of an anarcho-syndicalist approach, which asks for ‘continuous mass pressure’ as the only way for the left to institute change. For instance they attribute the victory in Vietnam to aggressive local cadres of the NLF exclusively, not the NVA, nor Soviet or Chinese support.  ‘Continuous mass pressure’ is actually very hard to maintain, which is why they can only cite 2 successful periods in 90 years in the U.S.  Anyone familiar with movements, especially watching the present upsurge of spontaneous anger against the police and institutional racism will see that without it being organized or ‘institutionalized’ in some real national way, the movement will come up short.  It can achieve some local changes in some cities and some statues will end up toppled - and that is it.  A large number of people might be learning a revolutionary lesson, which is a significant granular step, but that is not quite the same thing.  Here in Minneapolis, the Democratic Governor and Mayor of Minneapolis, the ‘black’ police chief and some liberal black nationalists all passed a mild reform that falls far short of ‘defunding’ the police, let alone abolition.  The pressure here has lessened and the liberals have triumphed so far.

On the political front, given the U.S. has not had a mass Labor or Populist Party for many years, they discount all political action.  Supporting Sanders in the primaries or running candidates on a left/ labor/ populist platform or forming a Labor or Populist Party are all ignored.  They also refuse to promote revolutionary organizations or unifying left fronts, which is typical of academics.  The subtext is that all that can be done is pressure elites spontaneously.  They admit that having pro-capitalist politicians and government appointees in government is one of the avenues of power for corporations – so wouldn’t the opposite be true?  This strategy worked in Europe for many years, institutionalizing social-democratic welfare states in Scandinavia and much of Europe on the backs of the power of mass Labor, Communist or Socialist Parties.  In this analysis their American exceptionalist slant is showing.

In a way, the authors ignore how class struggle functions.  Quantity turns into quality – a mass movement – but if you do not consolidate this quality and solidify it for the next stage of the fight with the bosses, you slide back to the prior quantity – no movement.  Without a transitional program of anti-capitalist, capital-limiting demands that increase proletarian power, a sufficient independent organizational plan or organizations, a strategy of using all tactics and even the end-goal of overturning capital, the cycle will repeat.  “Endless pressure” ends. The authors do point out that every single actual step forward, even the most significant, can be overturned or ignored by the capitalist class, who control social power in the long run.  Nothing is safe until Frankenstein truly meets his maker.  The image of two Sisyphusian monsters wresting for eternity seems to be their actual process, an idea out of Greek mythology, not dialectics.

At any rate, a very useful book that shows you exactly how the Congressional ‘sausage’ is made, focusing on the actual sausage-making dominated by capital under several administrations, especially the doomed fake progressive Obama.  It does not correspond to the illusion of ‘democracy’ we learned in junior high school.

Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box upper left:  “Yesterday’s Man,” “Griftopia”(Taibbi); “Russia, Snowden, Stoli & the Gay Movement,” “The Populist’s Guide to 2020”(Ball) “Listen Liberal” (Frank).

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

August 31, 2020