A Powerful Economic Justice Movement Is Brewing, Even in This Dark Time

An American Democracy Movement is fighting brutal capitalism and the culture of blame.

By Frances Moore Lappé, Adam Eichen / AlterNet January 16, 2018, 2:30 PM GMT

In this tumultuous world, one thing seems certain: today’s dire threats to our democracy did not arise out of nowhere. Every culture thrives, or not, on whether its core narrative—the causation story we tell ourselves—enhances mutual gain or spurs division. And, the narrative driving today’s unfolding catastrophe feeds the latter.

It begins with a deep distrust of human nature.

Way back in 1651, philosopher Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan summed up our nature with the Latin proverb Homohominilupus, “Man is a wolf to his fellow man.” From this thought tradition, now reinforced through much of media and advertising, we absorb the notion that humans are essentially selfish, competitive, and materialistic. Yet, with this dim view of our nature, how can we possibly make society work? The dominant narrative has the answer: Just put self-interest to work.

So, by the end of the 1980s, the notion of a “free market” driven by calculated self-interest had risen to economic gospel. Influenced by 20th-century economists—led, for example, by F.A. Hayek and then Milton Friedman and his “Chicago School”—we’ve come to see the “free market” untethered from human meddling as an almost infallible law. It’s what Ronald Reagan called the “magic” of the “marketplace,” efficiently sorting out winners and losers for the benefit of all.

With help from a handful of billionaire families, this free-market ideology took hold. Since the 1970s, their funding has spread the idea of government-as-problem and market-as-solution through policy think tanks, the media, higher education, and far-right political organizing. The mindset steadily drove into private hands what had long been public goods—from the airwaves to schools to prisons—while simultaneously decimating government’s role in protecting public welfare.

Not surprisingly, trust in government has dropped to historic lows. Only one in five of us now feels such trust, down from roughly three-quarters in the late 50s.

Taking a step back, however, we can see that no market is “free.” While all markets have rules, ours has been increasingly whittled down to just one: Do what brings highest and most immediate return to existing wealth. Following Friedman’s mantra, the sole purpose of business must be maximizing profit. 

With this simple logic, wealth inexorably accrues to wealth, making quickening economic inequality a given. Since 1980, the top 1 percent of U.S. earners has doubled its share of total income. And the top one-tenth of that 1 percent did even better. Its total pre-tax income quadrupled between 1980 and 2010. Compared to Europe, America now takes the economic inequality cake.

But Americans acquiesce, since market doctrine has convinced us to view the success of the few as deserved, or at least an inevitable side-effect of what’s conveyed to us as virtually a law of nature. 

Two huge problems follow.

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https://www.alternet.org/activism/democracy-movements-fight-brutal-capitalism