Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy

Jeffrey Sachs opines about Understanding and Overcoming America's Plutocracy.

Despite the results of the recent mid-term elections in the USA, Sachs writes that:

The evidence is overwhelming that politicians vote the interests of their donors, not of society at large. This has now been demonstrated rigorously by many researchers, most notably Princeton Professor Martin Gilens. Whether the Republicans or Democrats are in office, the results are little different. The interests at the top of the income distribution will prevail.

Emphasis Mine

Sachs is beguiled by the illusion that the Capitalist State can be bent to the will of the people, even though he has evidence clearly before him that it serves the interests of the Capitalists. Thus, he moans about the recent trend of politics in the USA.

Sachs hopes that the people will rescue the Capitalist State from itself:

Is there a way out? Yes, but it's a very tough path. Plutocracy has a way of spreading like an epidemic until democracy itself is abandoned. History shows the wreckage of democracies killed from within. And yet America has rallied in the past to push democratic reforms, notably in the Progressive Era from 1890-1914, the New Deal from 1933-1940, and the Great Society from 1961-1969.

All of these transformative successes required grass-roots activism, public protests and demonstrations, and eventually bold leaders, indeed drawn from the rich but with their hearts with the people: Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Yet in all of those cases, the mass public led and the great leaders followed the cause. This is our time and responsibility to help save democracy. The Occupy Movement and the 400,000 New Yorkers who marched for climate-change control in September are pointing the way.

Emphasis Mine

The three (3) periods cited by Sachs do, indeed, correspond to times of great radical movements: rise of radical trade-unionism (IWW, CIO); communist revolutions in Russia, Italy, Germany, Hungry, Romania; Youth Revolt and the Anti-Vietnam movement. All of these periods called into question the validity of the Capitalist system. Under such an existential threat, the Capitalist State responded by granting sufficient reforms in order to drain these movements of their momentum.

Though hugely unpopular with the ruling class, those leaders saved the system from itself. Sachs is calling for popular movements to be again subverted by the ruling class in order to save the system.

Barak Obama was supposed to be such a leader. His modest reform of affordable health care is unlikely to last as long as his presidency. He will leave no legacy. Richard Nixon left a far greater reformist legacy than Obama will leave.

Sachs has forgotten the largest mass mobilisation in history occurred in February 2003 (almost twelve (12) years ago)—ten (10) million people marched against the war in Iraq. And yet the war went ahead again.

The ruling class know that the workers are defenceless and leaderless. That is why they are so blatant in their attacks.

Until the workers expand their consciousness to see that the Capitalist system will always have it for them, these crises will continue.