[Marxism] Americans Unwilling to Face Reality

[Dbachmozart@xxxxxxx]

By John R.  MacArthur

October 16, 2008 "_Harpers  Magazine_ 
(http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003688) " -- Itâs not as though 
no one  saw it coming. Hereâs the 
economist Michael Hudson, writing in the _May 2006_ 
(http://harpers.org/archive/2006/05)  issue of Harperâs Magazine: âThe 
reality is that, although home  
ownership may be a wise choice for many people, this particular real-estate  
bubble has been carefully engineered to lure home buyers into circumstances  
detrimental to their own best interestsâ. The bubble will burst, and when it  
does, 
the people who thought they would be living the easy life of a landlord  will 
soon find that what they really signed up for was the hard servitude of  debt 
serfdom.â
 
 
Other commentators, including  Warren Buffet, said similar things about the 
derivatives market. He was  prescient, but hardly anybody listened. Americans, 
perhaps even more than other  people, have difficulty embracing the concept of 
âreality.â In part, this is  religious. America remains the land of 
infinite 
redemption where any crook can  suddenly go straight. In part, it stems from 
our turbo-charged ethos of  capitalism. This has always been the land of 
get-rich-quick and damn the  consequences. We are a nation of fantasists, and 
things have to get really bad  before a politician has the right to trade in 
hard 
truth. 
I doubt that, even now,  things have gotten bad enough. Even with all the 
frenzied commentary about the  credit crisis now choking the media (while the 
financial geniuses assembled at  the corner of Wall and K Streets scramble to 
save their hides), Iâm struck more  by whatâs not being said than what is. 
Every 
day I add to a list of critical  omissions from the debate. Where, for 
example, is the voice of organized labor?  In previous generations, we could 
have 
expected to see the president of the  AFL-CIO or the United Auto Workers on the 
sets of the major talk shows. Apart  from David Brancaccioâs _NOW on  PBS_ 
(http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/438/index.html) , I couldnât find a single TV 
program that featured  what might be called a âlabor leader.â 
Where are the alternative  candidates for president like Ralph Nader and Bob 
Barr? I was pleased to hear  that Nader, a long-time critic of the deregulated 
economy, was permitted to  appear on CNN and The OâReilly Factor after the 
second McCain-Obama debateâbut  the time for that appearance should have been 
before the House passed the  bailout bill. 
Why is the heavy financial  support for Barack Obama and John McCain from 
Wall Street off-limits for  discussion? Itâs unlikely the candidates be asked 
about that subject in  tonightâs debateâthe two parties write the rules to 
discourage tough  questionsâbut some impertinent journalist might speak up. 
If you 
canât get the  media-trained Obama to give a straight answer, why not simply 
present a graphic  contrasting Obamaâs Reno speech supporting the bailout and 
Naderâs argument  against it? 
For that matter, in its recent  take-down of Alan Greenspan and Clinton 
Administration deregulation (including  the refusal to regulate derivatives 
trading), why didnât The New York  Times mention that former Clinton Treasury 
secretaries Robert Rubin and  Lawrence Summers are principal advisers to Obama 
on the 
economy? In the same  vein, why isnât Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the 
former CEO of Goldman  Sachs, challenged on his slow response to the Fannie Mae 
and Freddie Mac  failures? 
The only serious critic  Iâve found was interviewed in Franceâs Le Monde: 
Columbia finance Prof.  Rama Cont _argues that_ 
(http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2008/09/17/si-aig-s-ecroule-toute-l-economie-americaine-est-affectee_1
096124_3222.html)  six months ago the bailout of the two  mortgage agencies 
would have cost $100 billion instead of an eventual $400  billion to $500 
billion. Who pocketed the difference, thanks to Paulsonâs  âindulgenceâ 
of his 
former colleagues? According to Cont, it was short sellers  at Goldman Sachs 
and 
hedge funds. 
Meanwhile, where are the deep  thinkers who might enlighten us in this hour 
of fear, including Karl Marx? Donât  laughâMarx had much to say about the 
so-called âcontradictions of capitalismâ  that bears re-reading today. 
Nothing he 
wrote is perfectly applicable to  subprime mortgages and the derivatives 
crapshoot. But Marxâs understanding that  unfettered capitalism, while 
fantastically productive, leads to instability by  concentrating wealth in too 
few handsâ
that a mass-production/mass-consumption  society is fundamentally incompatible 
with oligarchic control of wealthâis  something even Rush Limbaugh could 
appreciate. 
If Marx is too rich for  your blood, at least we might hear from _John  Gray_ 
(http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/john_gray) , the renegade former adviser 
to Margaret Thatcher.  Gray is todayâs most intelligent critic of 
globalization and âfree trade.â He  could explain to a television audience 
that a great 
deal of Americaâs âreal  economyâ (as opposed to an economy based on 
derivatives trading and shopping at  Wal-Mart) has already left the country for 
cheap-labor locales such the Pearl  River Delta, in China, and the south bank 
of the 
Rio Grande, never to return.  And he could describe the destruction wreaked 
upon traditional societies that  suddenly become host to outsourced American 
factories. Youngstown and Utica are  hurting, to be sure, but itâs no picnic 
either these days for the working class  in Nogales or Dongguan. 
Finally, there are the  great realist novelists, who often see more clearly 
than journalists. So far, my  Google searches have not picked up any excerpts 
from _Zolaâs novel  Money_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Argent)  being 
read 
on the nightly news. In this  brilliant chronicle of a speculative stock 
bubble, launched by a character named  Saccard in 1860s Paris, Zola cuts right 
to 
the heart of Americaâs boom-and-bust  neurosis: âWasnât such great and 
rapid 
prosperity the result of the methods for  which [Saccard] was now being blamed? 
All of this came together. If one accepted  the success, one had to accept 
the risks. When you overheat a machine, it  sometimes explodes.â
_http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21035.htm_ 
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21035.htm) 
 

 
 
âThe  great appear great to us only because we are on our knees. Let us  rise.
â

James Connolly
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