HOW
TWO-PARTY POLITICAL SYSTEMS BOLSTER CAPITALISM
Mainstream
economics has always privileged one debate above all others as its most
central. Should production and distribution of goods and services be private or
public, done by individuals or the state?
Mainstream economists likewise
keep aggressively projecting this question as the central debate for politics
and politicians. Such arrogant self-confidence is the other side of the insular
self-absorption that characterizes so much of the mainstream economics
"discipline."
To reproduce capitalism is to
continue the existence of that particular economic system.
On
one side of the debate are devotees of (1) private ownership of productive
resources and (2) market exchanges to connect the private owners with one
another and everyone else. They believe that private property and markets best
serve every society's economic interests - growth, efficiency, fairness and
rising mass consumption.
On
the other side are devotees of government economic intervention to correct,
moderate or offset the many flaws and weaknesses they find in private property
and markets. They believe that society's best economic interests can only be
served through such an intervention.
Most people interested in
economics and politics have long accepted (been trapped within?) these
mainstream positions as the boundaries of economic thought, research and
policy.
INTERSECTION
OF POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
However, a much deeper level of
discussion about the intersection of politics and economics exists. It concerns
economic issues ignored by the mainstream, and questions not raised but rather
swept under ideological rugs. Mainstream debates in political economy conceal
more than they illuminate. They never explore the complex relation between
contemporary politics and the reproduction of the capitalist economic system
versus transition to alternatives.
To
reproduce capitalism is to continue the existence of that particular economic
system. By capitalist system, we mean primarily the organization of work around
the relationship of employer to employee (a relationship different from that of
master to slave or lord to serf in the slave and feudal systems that often
preceded modern capitalism).
EFFECTS
OF THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM
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| Does the Pyramid still apply? |
For the reproduction of
capitalism, the two-major-party structure dominating politics has proven very
effective in most nations for some time now. While party names vary, their
common relationship to reproducing capitalism does not. Examples include the
Republicans and Democrats in the UNITED STATES, Conservatives and Labour in the
UNITED KINGDOM, Christian Democrats and Socialists in GERMANY, and so on. All
those parties implicitly endorse and support the reproduction of capitalism,
and most do so explicitly as well. The first in each pair differs from the
second only on which variant of capitalism they prefer.
Usually, one party tilts toward a
more inclusive and less unequal variant. It advocates government intervention
to secure that variant. The other party tilts more toward markets and existing
distributions of private property functioning with strictly limited government
economic interventions. The winning party adjusts government economic
interventions accordingly to alter the social mix of private and state
enterprises, redistribute income and wealth toward more or less economic and
social inequality, and so on. No matter which party prevails, factories,
offices and stores - whether private or state enterprises, whether more or less
taxed and regulated - continue to display the same basic employer-employee
organization.
The avoidance of any explicit
discussion, debate or focus on alternative enterprise organizations serves to
hide how both parties support the capitalist mode of enterprise organization.
In the laws they pass; the administrative rules they enforce; the cultural
meanings they constantly presume, endorse and reinforce for mass media, schools
etc., both parties cement the social dominance of the employer-employee
relationship that structures capitalist enterprises. They function as if that
relationship were the best humanly possible, agreed universally to be such and
thus beyond debate
THIS
TWO-MAJOR-PARTY ARRANGEMENT BOTH ALLOWS FOR DISAGREEMENTS YET ALSO KEEPS
DISSENT BOUNDED BY COMMON COMMITMENTS TO REPRODUCE CAPITALISM.
Popular disaffection from one
party's rule usually flows smoothly into support for the other. Passing
government back and forth between the parties makes the enduring capitalist
system appear to be above the fray, beyond political dispute, forever. Meanwhile ideologues, academic and
otherwise, endlessly reaffirm capitalism as the best possible economic system
for humans: something only ignorance or evil would contest or even question.
When politics then focuses on
other social issues (for example, tax rates, civil liberties, immigration,
marriage equality, austerity policies, climate change, school curricula, and so
on), their intimate connection to the needs and pressures of a capitalist
economic system is lost or minimized. How an alternative structure of
enterprises might help address those social issues in other and better ways is
excluded from political debate and struggle.
TWO
PARTY SYSTEMS TRAPPED IN THE OLD DEBATE OF MORE OR LESS GOVERNMENT
INTERVENTIONS, PRIVATE VERSUS STATE ENTERPRISES ETC.
Sometimes individuals and groups
develop public positions that take tentative steps toward questioning
capitalism's reproduction. This usually
happens when its instabilities (e.g. business cycles), inequalities (in wealth,
income, political power, cultural access), and/or social injustices focus
attention on economic policies amid deteriorating economic conditions.
In recent times, the crash of
2008, corporate bailouts, austerity policies (or, more broadly, neoliberalism)
and widening gaps between rich and poor have provoked oppositions to such
policies and conditions. Some within those oppositions reason their way toward
identifying capitalism as the systemic problem to be solved. But the "socialism" they
sometimes promote as an alternative to capitalism usually turns out not to
involve any basic change in the organization of enterprises. They remain
trapped in the old debate between more or less government interventions,
private versus state enterprises etc.
THE
SUPPRESSION OF THIRD-PARTY CHALLENGERS
When neither major party
adequately addresses an issue important to significant communities, additional
parties grow and/or newly emerge into political importance. Recent examples
include Green parties, anti-austerity parties, regional parties (e.g. in SCOTLAND,
CATALONIA etc.) and new or resurging nationalist, anti-immigration and
quasi-fascist parties (e.g. FRANCE and central EUROPE). While attacking the
two-party system around their issues of chief concern, such parties rarely
recognize, question or criticize that system's support for capitalism's
reproduction (despite occasional anti-capitalist rhetoric).
The
two parties' procedures to marginalize or suppress oppositional individuals,
groups and new small parties often - but not always - succeed.
Recently, failures occurred in
elections in GREECE, PORTUGAL and SPAIN: The long dominant two mainstream
parties suffered major losses. Government no longer passed between them but
instead to different parties or coalitions formerly marginalized or just emerging.
In FRANCE, the same outcome almost occurred in 2015 and may yet be achieved.
Electoral
dominance lost by the traditional two-party political system followed in each
case from mounting mass opposition to austerity policies and the inequalities
they both reflect and reinforce.
Three major questions now
confront the newly empowered parties and coalitions: (1) Will they sustain
their oppositions to austerity and deepening inequalities? (2) Will their
oppositions succeed? and (3) If austerity and inequalities persist, what will
happen? Will party members and leaders then go beyond those oppositions? Will
they become a party opposing the reproduction of capitalism and advocating an
alternative economic system that includes non-capitalist organizations of enterprises?
CO-OP
SYSTEM – AN ALTERNATIVE?
Tentative movement in that
direction has become visible. In the UNITED STATES, Occupy Wall Street and then
Bernie Sanders have explicitly endorsed worker cooperatives. However vague and
undeveloped, such programmatic support for co-ops is an implicit critique of
capitalist organizations of enterprise and advocacy of an alternative. The same
applies, for example, to the growing global interest in SPAIN'S cooperatively
owned Mondragon Corporation, ITALY'S large and vibrant co-op system, the
occupations of factories in ARGENTINA and the growing co-op community in the UNITED
STATES. Marxist, socialist and other left groups are recognizing slowly that
co-ops represent a seriously under-appreciated alternative to capitalist
organizations of enterprises. That recognition enables a rethinking of
strategies for social change with new political alliances and programs.
THE
ECONOMICS OF OUR POLITICS IS DEEPENING
It is no longer totally trapped
in the tedious old debate over private versus public ownership, and markets
versus planning. The 20th century was obsessed with what were two parallel
forms of that debate: (1) "capitalism versus socialism" and (2)
neoclassical versus Keynesian economics. That obsession is dissolving in the
21st century.
Instead, the economic issue now
emerging is about the relationships we want among us at work, in the
enterprises where we spend so huge a portion of our adult lives. Will they
remain capitalism's hierarchical, undemocratic relationships of boss to
underlings in factories, offices and stores? Or will we shift politics to a
social debate and struggle over democratizing our enterprises and thereby our
economy? Will democratically organized cooperative workplaces collaborate with
similarly organized residential communities to move society toward the liberty,
equality and fraternity that capitalism always promised but never delivered?
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