neuburger | But note in the first quote above the even larger problem Hudson identifies: How can the West maintain living standards while also de-industrializing and impoverishing the 99%?
He answers it, indirectly, by talking about how the inflow of money from Europe and other U.S.-dominated countries like Japan keeps the rich in cash:
European economic shortages are a huge benefit to the United States, which is making enormous profits on more expensive oil (which is controlled largely by U.S. companies, followed by British and French oil companies). Europe’s replenishment of the arms that it donated to Ukraine also is a boon to the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose profits are soaring.
But the United States is not recycling these economic gains to Europe, which is looking like the big loser.
None of those profits is going to the people. Only the living standards of the “One Percent” are propped up. (By “One Percent” I mean the upper 10%, a group that comprises our actual oligarchs, plus all those well-paid souls who keep that ship afloat and its engines running.)
Which leaves us with the original question: How will our wealthy keep control if they keep impoverish voters? Hudson’s answer, implicit in a piece written earlier is stark:
“The alternative to democracy is oligarchy. As Aristotle noted already in the 4th century BC, oligarchies turn themselves into hereditary aristocracies. This is the path to serfdom.”
In the same piece he adds, “All this sounds like Rome at the end of the Republic in the 1st century BC.”
People make facile comparisons of modern America to the end of the Roman Republic — without fully realizing that at the end of the Roman Republic, the Republic did end.
So how will our oligarchs do it — maintain control while impoverishing the governed? There’s really only one answer — by ending the republic, both its fact and pretense.
There may be other ways, but I can’t think of them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment