Recently I wrote a couple of posts about how the Anglo-American hegemony established after World War II has been in steep decline in recent years. (1 & 2) Over at CounterPunch the always worthwhile Walden Bello provides us with a similar analysis:
But what overdetermines the current crisis of the hegemon is that it is not just economic but also ideological and political.
The British Marxist Paul Mason has argued that with the triumph of neoliberalism and financialization in the global North, solidarity and a sense of community based on economic class and a shared middle class lifestyle among workers was replaced by an individualized identity as consumers, as market players in a society of seemingly shared prosperity but where rising income was increasingly replaced by rising debt as the mechanism of economic pacification.
Having exchanged their class identity for that of consumers in the market, their loss of even the latter owing to the 2008-2009 crisis left them ideologically vulnerable, particularly when it came to their commitment to the liberal democratic belief in universal equality. Even before the financial crisis, many workers had already been feeling psychologically threatened by the gains of the movements for racial and gender justice, and their descent into economic insecurity was the final step in their rightward radicalization.
What the volatile combination of economic crisis, ideological vulnerability, and Donald Trump has done is to make legitimate if not respectable an anti-democratic core belief that has been transmitted generationally, communally, and subversively. This is White Supremacy, which is now informally the ruling ideology of the Republican Party.
Finally, to the political crisis. I don’t think there would be many who would object to our characterizing American liberal democracy as being in crisis.
...
To repeat, what distinguishes the crisis of the hegemon today from the 1980s is the fatal combination of severe economic dislocation, deep ideological disaffection, and profound political instability. Global hegemony is difficult to exercise if, in addition to falling behind on the economic front, the hegemon is also nearing civil war and a significant sector of the society has lost faith in the liberal democratic ideology that legitimizes its global economic primacy.
That is where the United States is today.
So, how does it feel to be a member of a society in decline? Did you subscribe to the moronic "Russiagate" conspiracy theory? Do you shrug your shoulders at Liberal/Democratic assaults on constitutional rights while shrikeing about Conservative/Republican ones? Do you believe the absurd official narrative about Russia in the Ukraine? Are you a shameless hypocrite?
Then you are contributing to your own society's decline.
2 comments:
What a collection of stupid notions. No the United States was never a Capitalist Republic in your sense. Of course, Capitalism was built on slavery and the "Republic" part of the US was a thin cover for an Oligarchy of Rich White Educated Slavers.
And don't give me this nonsense about Biden and Russia or the constitutional assaults by Democrats.
Sheer bullshit.
Bye.
It's a "republic" in that it isn't a monarchy and in that it's laws are written by representatives of the electorate.
I have often referred to the USA as an "oligarchy" as well.
Yes, slave owners were once a big part of that oligarchy. But they were eventually defeated by the capitalists.
I don't know what you meant by "Biden and Russia" so I can't respond to it.
If you want to pretend that Obama didn't preside over mass surveillance and kill-lists, or that Biden wrote the blueprint for the "Patriot Act" as well as the "anti-crime" bills that led to increased police power and mass incarceration then you're an arrogant, ignorant shit-head and I hope to fuck you do stay away from my blog.
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