The Poverties of a Decaying System
Printer-friendly version
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
New data on poverty testify to the bankruptcy of U.S. corporate party politics. The most successful years in the fight against poverty are 40 years behind us, while the future promises nothing but decline. Neither Democrats nor Republicans offer even the slightest reason to hope for an economic turnaround. However, “there’s really nothing wrong with the world that a social revolution can’t fix.”
The Poverties of a Decaying System
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“This crisis of capitalism will be full of drama.”
A preview of new Census figures indicates that poverty in the United States will likely soon reach the highest levels in 50 years. Now, some of you optimists out there are saying: Well, there’s nowhere to go but up. Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily true. What I think is so depressing to many people about this particular historical juncture, is that there is absolutely nothing on the economic horizon on which even optimists can pin their hopes. There are no new industries on the verge of some huge explosion, no scientific breakthrough just around the corner. With education costs soaring, people can’t even hope to study themselves out of hard times.
It’s not a good time to be a child, because there is nothing sadder than growing up around adults who have themselves lost hope that our world will become a better place. It’s not a good time to be middle-aged, knowing that the Golden Age was 40 years ago, when the proportion of Americans in poverty was the lowest ever: only 11.1 percent. It’s expected to hit 15.7 percent under a president elected as an agent of Hope and Change.
But actually, there’s really nothing wrong with the world that a social revolution can’t fix. The fact that the two corporate political parties have no ideas worth listening to, simply means that the Democrats and Republicans can no longer even pretend that they can serve the 1% and take care of the rest of us at the same time. There’s no need to despair – just direct your political energies, elsewhere.
“The intricacies of speculative hyper-capital become moot when you remove the speculating class.”
In times of crisis – and capitalism is in terminal crisis – political decisions may come more easily. In recent months, we have experienced two “scandals of the century” – the mortgage robo-signing debacle, and the unfolding Libor rig-the-whole-world scheme. If these actually were scandals of the century, we could look forward to 200 straight years of clean banking. However, when systems are in collapse, they produce an accelerating cascade of crises and scandals and emergencies of all kinds, each arriving more quickly than the last, and with greater severity. Like the old song said, We’ve only just begun. This crisis of capitalism will be full of drama. At the end of the story, we either get rid of the capitalist class or they bring the whole planet down with them. Along the way, the political choices get easier as the crisis becomes more acute. The Lords of Capital will make the process even simpler by their behavior; they’ll get meaner as their universe implodes.
One thing we do know: the Lords of Capital will never go broke, in the way normal people understand it. That’s because they don’t own things the way the rest of us do. Otherwise, how could there be hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives in a world that is only worth $75 trillion a year. Who owes what to who, and where did it come from? The intricacies of speculative hyper-capital become moot when you remove the speculating class.
Once the Lords of Capital are no longer the lords of anything, humanity gets another shot at rational development of the species and the planet. That’s the idea, anyway – to make a world in which its always a good time to be a child.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialise correctly.
- Login or register to post comments
Email this page- Printer-friendly version
Comments
Yes. A good time for a social revolution.
My 20s were the 1960s. We thought everything was possible. I kept waiting for another decade like that, with the young being activists and taking a lead, but the closest it seems was the hope starting with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, in recent year plus. Yes, it's time for social revolution. Good to have that point in the midst of the listing of capitalist collapse, as we duck the falling rubble, like scaffolding that falls down in NYC. One small example of the cockamamie way of it and real estate in NYC now: most of us are renters. There is a Rent Guidelines Board, all 9 members (I think that's the number) appointed by the Mayor, including 2 so-called representatives of renters and a couple of appointees supposedly to represent the general public, but from finance, etc. The rare one who opposes the wishes of Mayor B., gets removed (not the 2 reps for renters who are lonely votes every year as the guidelines come up with increases for those ever dwindling apartments with some small legal protection from rent gauging.) Here's the example of cockamamie: there's a "poor tax", an extra $40. month for people going to sign a new two year rental lease after Oct. 31, if they are lucky enough to have a rent of less than $1,000.a month. Ponder that. Penalty to renter who is low income, working class who might still have a rent lower than $1,000. a month.
My 20s were the eighties.
What I remember as being most important about that era, politically and economically, was that for any aware person it had to be obvious that humanity had reached a decisive point in history. Humanity clearly had technology so powerful, and a global organization so strong that we didn't need to fear any disaster, or dread any lack of resources. We had it all. We could choose our future. I think this was what Carter was trying to get at in his 'malaise' speech. Humanity had reached a point where it could choose it's future, and that meant it had to choose its future.
Well, obviously now, three decades later, we can see what turn humanity took, and who guided it. Basically, the banksters, and their 1% accomplices, pushed us down a road into hell. They have created a neo-feudalist world in order to serve what appears to be a transhumanist agenda. They rigged globalism, they rigged the media, they rigged the political system, they rigged academia, and - what is often not acknowledged - they rigged the opposition, using NGOs, owned/controlled activist organizations, and foundations, etc..
It wouldn't be a bad way to describe the last fifty years to say that the hope of the sixties was betrayed by the cynicism of the eighties, which in turn has given way to the choking darkness of the last decade. Now what?
The way forward we need is the same as it has been for over a century. We need a unifying populist movement. We need to be able to construct a political philosophy that is able to speak to the needs and concerned of the vast majority of people, while articulating a narrative that explains convincingly to folks how we got to where we are, and how we go forward. If we can put the right political philosophy together with the right narrative, we could unleash a (truly) progressive wave in America and the world that is waiting to happen. The energy is there. The need is there. The vision is not yet there.