In
1899 Thorstein Veblen described predation as a phase
in the evolution of culture, "attained only when
the predatory attitude has become the habitual and
accredited spiritual attitude...when the fight has
become the dominant note in the current theory of
life." After an entire century's struggle to
escape from this phase, we've suffered a relapse.
The predators are everywhere unleashed; and the institutions
built to contain them, from the United Nations to
the AFL-CIO to the SEC, are everywhere under siege.
Predation has again become the defining feature of
economic life. Our first problem is to grasp this
reality in full.
Postwar prosperity was built on a vast cut in the
cost of security and the achievement of peace in Europe
and much of Asia. The American role in the cold war
system was to provide security; for this the dollar's
role as anchor of the world trading system was our
reward. But now, with Iraq, we are seen worldwide
as the leading predator state, promoting war as a
solution rather than as the ultimate economic and
human horror. For this, many would like to see our
privileges revoked.
Corporate and financial fraud and political corruption
form the second great domain of predatory capitalism.
DeLay, Frist and Abramoff are the names in the news,
but the tone is set by the leadership--Cheney of Halliburton
and Bush of Harken Energy--a large predator and a
small scavenger, specialists in cronyism and expert
in nothing else. When predation becomes the dominant
business and political form, the foundation of capitalism
crumbles. Markets lose legitimacy, investors fly to
safety in bonds, and authentic innovation and shared
growth both become unattainable. The solution must
be not just a change of parties but a new political
class, including a new media not under corrupt control.
Then there is the predatory attack on unions and labor,
in which many economists are complicit. This is far
advanced in America and most visible today in Europe,
as reflected by the doctrine of flexible labor markets,
which claims that the conquest of unemployment requires
cutting the pay of the working poor. But there is
no history of unemployment ever being conquered this
way--certainly not in the United States of the 1940s,
1960s or 1990s. Modern Europe also affords counterexamples
of equalizing growth, from Norway and Denmark to recent
gains in Spain, as well as object lessons, most recently
in France, of the catastrophe of designed exclusion.
The way forward is a program for growth and justice
built on the needs of the working population and the
middle class. To begin with, in the United States
there must be a powerful demolition of the old political
order: We need elections where all votes are cast
and counted. The campaign against voter repression
is the essential civil rights struggle of our time,
even though most progressives don't seem to realize
it yet. Prevailing will require fundamental reform
such as the introduction of nationwide vote-by- mail
(the Oregon system). Without that, and also many relentless
prosecutions, nothing else will be achieved.
The economic commitment, in turn, must be to full
employment here, to egalitarian growth in Europe and
Japan, and to a worldwide development strategy favoring
civil infrastructure and the poor. Public capital
investment, stronger unions and a high minimum wage
should frame the domestic agenda. Overseas, crackdowns
on tax havens and the arms trade, a stabilizing financial
system and an end to the debt peonage of poor countries
should be among the priorities of a new structure.
The truths are that egalitarian growth is efficient,
that speculation must be regulated, that crime starts
at the top and that peace is the primary public good.
These truths are poison to predators and are the reason
predators have fostered and subsidized an entire cynical
intellectual movement devoted to "free"
markets made up of a class of professor- courtiers
now everywhere in view. Taming predatory capitalism
could start with breaking this econo-corporate analytical
axis, and reviving the concept of countervailing power,
first formulated by John Kenneth Galbraith in 1952.
James K. Galbraith, chair of
the board of Economists for Peace and Security, teaches
at the University of Texas and is senior scholar with
the Levy Economics Institute.
Source : http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060417/forum/4
April 3, 2006.
|