During my university days in the early 1970s, a radical description of American democracy was that it comprised two wings of the same ‘Property Party of America’. The two wings differed marginally in their approach to managing the economy. It was claimed that with the Republicans there is recession and with the Democrats there is war. The recession would be the result of an erroneous world view that capitalism self-corrects. Democrats, on the other hand, believed that demand had to be pumped to save the economy and the surest way to do it would be to keep boosting defence expenditures and playing endless war-games.
Over the decades, despite a large number of changes in the world economy and technology, the United States of America has remained a democracy. The rule of law and a reasonably effective social safety net had ensured that the ordinary citizens felt safe and included in the prosperity of the economy. There were checks and balances to the use of arbitrary power. There was also accountability through a vigilant media and, of course, the electoral process. On the flip side, the US has remained involved in international conflicts, almost continually, since Korea and Vietnam — be it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine or the Middle East.
The last few decades have seen a gradual shift of old-world, twentieth-century industries away from the mainland US, job losses, disruption in communities, and social and economic uncertainty. This was the era that saw the sweeping information-communication revolution, the digitalisation of the US, and the spectacular rise of companies like Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Google and Amazon, to cite a few examples. New, glamorous and high-paying jobs were created, mainly for technology-savvy college graduates. The US continued to be perceived as the land of opportunity. Hence the surge of immigrants who want to enter it legally as well as illegally. The legal entrants are well-educated, young, intellectually bright and hard-working. The illegal immigrants come looking for low-skilled jobs, are not well-educated, and are slower to integrate with culture and society. Along with all these changes, American society has become more and more unequal in terms of wealth as well as income. About a couple of decades ago, according to the well-known scholar, Thomas Piketty, the top 20% of US citizens possessed 84.8% of the national wealth while the bottom 40% of the population possessed only 0.3% of the wealth. Economic inequality had thus reached outrageous levels.
A number of changes in the structure of capitalism are worth mentioning. In a capitalist system, both financial capital and labour are inherently mobile. However, realpolitik has ensured that while capital is freely mobile across the world, labour movement is restricted and highly controlled. Illegal migration takes place precisely because of the control over the economic necessity of labour movements. Capital, however, moves with ease.
The second change is the ballooning of economic inequality to extreme levels. Wealth begets more wealth, but in today’s world it is financial wealth that begets financial wealth. Avenues for investments in brick and mortar are lower than ever before. In economies like the US, much cheaper and, in many cases, technologically superior products are now available from China and other developing countries.
In such a situation, anger and frustrations mount easily. Those hurt in the great movement of capital in the twenty-first century have not been compensated. Foreigners and college-educated Americans have benefitted from the great transition. Immigrants and foreigners, those who took away jobs and livelihoods, are the natural enemies of Americans. Anger is no less severe on those who protect immigrants and foreigners. Change is difficult because the electoral process throws up more of the same in terms of legislators and policymakers. Unlike in many other nations, the discontented in the US do have a social security cover that prevents them from worrying about their next meal.
In open democracies like the US, there is limited scope for bringing about substantive change. Often, even the need for articulating what kind of change is desirable gets stifled and silenced. The new age of financial capital cannot allow this frustration to simmer for long. The anger has to be allowed to vent; yet it cannot be such that it disrupts capital accumulation of the new generation of information-technology billionaires. The ambience is thus ideal for shifts to the extreme political Right with strong shades of fascism. The cultural fabric of White America is heavily based on rugged individualism, self-centred goals, and worship for wealth-making by any means. Hence, in the US, a persona with elements of xenophobia, successful wealth-making, and anti-intellectualism — Donald Trump is an example — is ideally suited to provide the nation with charismatic leadership. He is seen as a messiah who will solve everything and make America great again.
In the new age of wealth-making, only a limited few have access to the ways and the means of accumulation. An overwhelming majority gets left out. Hence, tight political control is needed through an authoritarian State. Laws that allow checks and balances for preventing arbitrariness in the exercise of power need to be deleted from the statute books. Nations — China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Brazil, India and now the US — that are doing reasonably well in terms of wealth-making at the aggregate macroeconomic level are moving Right with leaders exhibiting autocratic tendencies. Most European nations are restless as well and political shifts are discernible. Democracy, as was observed in the twentieth century, is on the back foot across the world. Dissent is directed against immigrants, foreigners, and an educated ‘liberal’ elite.
Liberal democracy was needed during a more participatory, broad-based phase of capital accumulation. It is now redundant. What is required is a controlled and reasonably docile citizenry busy with social media and cell phones. Or, if there are populations brimming with rage, as in the case of the US now, their anger needs to be directed towards the Other, the elites who think differently.
We are very likely to see Trump and Co allowing the MAGA movement to engage in cathartic violence. The powers that be have promised to break laws. Checks and balances will become considerably weakened. Political opponents and dissidents will be harassed and persecuted. Foreigners and immigrants will live in terrible apprehension of retribution for having entered a foreign land. Guns abound in the nation. The use of weapons will become more frequent and more targeted. On the economic front, inflation will get aggravated if Trump slaps tariffs on imports across the board. Jobs will not sprout from the ground suddenly.
Capitalism needs, at every stage of its growth, control over labour in particular and society in general. Hegemony is sometimes built through persuasion and at other times through violent control. When such changes happen in countries like China or Russia, it is relatively soundless since they take place behind walls of silence. In the great democracy of the US, everything is a spectacle. The whole world will see the establishment of renewed hegemonic control. Let there be no mistake: a new, more macho, Big Brother is here to stay.
Anup Sinha is former Professor of Economics, IIM Calcutta
