Existential Crises: How did we get here?
Existential Crises: How did we get here?
And why we'll keep developing new ones if we survive
Humanity is at a crossroad.
Climate change and nuclear annihilation are jeopardizing the very survival of the species. Noam Chomsky describes the situation, “Human beings are the only species with a history. Whether they also have a future is not so clear.” [1]
We know for a fact that at minimum profound, and quite possibly catastrophic impact to civilization and prospects for survival is guaranteed and imminent. What’s not guaranteed is our response.
There are three possible scenarios as to how this unfolds. 1) A fairly controlled one, where we urgently design and institute most of the changes ourselves, thereby minimizing the inevitable harm and eventually present humanity with a decent chance of averting catastrophe; 2) we continue down current path and nature runs its course, likely wiping out civilization and a good part of the living world along with it; 3) a mixture of the two.
Clearly, from the stand point of any rational person, the first option is the most desirable. The fact, though, doesn’t guarantee it by any measure. On the contrary. If such a choice was presented to a normally functioning individual, there’s little doubt as to what she’d choose. But society, as we shall see, isn’t rational. While intelligent on the individual level, as a society, we behave like a cancer cell.
How are we to overcome this potentially fatal flaw? Answering that all-important question requires answering another one first: How, indeed, did the only being to ever develop “higher intelligence” get to the point of facing self-inflicted demise? - the main purpose of this inquiry. I endeavor to identify the most consequential forces in the large and complex system that is the global society. Those responsible for the existential crises, among many other evils.
The process requires both a narrow and a broad view. For example, if we are to truly understand, it isn’t enough to simply blame fossil fuel companies for climate change without understanding the larger framework of which they are a part: society, markets, power structure, democracy, laws, governments, international organizations, etc.; as well as the human psyche and social relations and behavior.
POWER STRUCTURE
Who decides?
Any analysis of the causes of the climate and nuclear crises should include the recognition of two facts: 1) we humans, are the sole cause of both, and, 2) we (at least those among us who get to decide) continue to exacerbate the threats with a clear understanding of what that means for the future of the species. I’ll address what emerge as three crucial questions in the quest to avert the catastrophe and help avoid future ones: Who made (and makes) the decisions that brought us to this point? How (by what mechanism)? What informed (and still informs) these decisions?
Let’s consider them in order.
Conventional theory of modern nation-states teaches us that governments get to decide on the most important issues. For the moment, let’s assume that’s true. We’ll delve into governments a little later.
Obviously, not all governments are as powerful nor as influential. The most influential are those with either large economies, advanced science, powerful militaries, or most frequently a combination of the three. Places like the United States, Western Europe, Japan, China, Russia, Canada, Australia, etc. Developments in these countries disproportionately determine how we move around, the kind of energy we use, what we eat, how and what we build, etc. - in other words, what shape civilization takes.
All are at least partial democracies, with two outliers - Russia and China [2]. Though significant players in the contemporary period (from the perspective of climate and nuclear crises) Russia and China are players on a field set by the advancements and policies developed in the West. By this I chiefly mean Western Europe and the United States. Fossil fuels were initially turned into the engine of economies in Western Europe, led by Britain, and then the United States and elsewhere. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 show historic emissions per country and convey the “lateness” of Russia and China.
Fig 1.1
Fig 1.2
As for the nuclear crisis, China is a minor, if increasingly assertive player. It developed its nuclear arsenal as a response to atomic weaponization of others, primarily Russia and the United States. China first successfully tested a nuclear device in 1964. It currently has roughly 320 warheads, or 2.4% of the global arsenal.
Russia, though a major nuclear power with 6,375 warheads (US and Russia have around 91% of all nuclear arms), has developed its arsenal as a response to nuclear arming of the United States (USSR tested the first nuclear device in 1949, 4 years after the US) [3]. Being much poorer than the US, an expensive arms race was never in its interest. USSR, for example, offered complete denuclearization in 1952, but was ignored by the Americans [4]. In the 1980s similar moves were made by Gorbachev, again dismissed [5]. Still today, while the Trump administration has been either withdrawing from or allowing nuclear treaties to expire, Russians have been initiating talks on weapons control, but were, once again, being largely ignored [6]. At least the Biden administration extended the only remaining nuclear arms treaty - New Start.
Therefore, to get an answer to the question who decided on developments which yielded, and exacerbated fossil fuel use and nuclear armament, we should take a look at the democracies of Western Europe and the United States.
In democracies, the conventional theory continues, governments represent the views of the majority via elected representatives. Upon being elected, representatives proceed to design policy reflecting the interests of their constituents. The notion further suggests that it is the majorities in western democracies who directed their governments to take actions which resulted in the current conundrum. So far, so good. Except, this conclusion is starkly at odds with reality. Poll after poll tell us that for years, even decades [7], consistent majorities in the most influential, democratic countries of the West, are aware of the danger climate change and nuclear weapons present [8], and want their leaders to do more to mitigate the danger. For example, a 2019 YouGov [9] poll found that 55% in the US, 62% in Germany, 68% in both Great Britain and France want their governments to do more to mitigate impacts of climate change. A recent Council on Foreign Relations poll [10] reveals even larger numbers of those in favor of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons leading to eventual disarmament: US 77%, GB 81%, France 86%11. Yet, government policy on both issues is in the exact opposite direction. How so?
Governments and Anthropocene:
Despite the fact that it was the countries of Western Europe who dominated global affairs for much of modern history, it is the government of the United States that is of particular significance in our research due to its hegemony in the recent period (period since WWII) (Chomsky 2004, also see fig. 1.1, 1.2) [12]. The period in which the climate and nuclear crises markedly accelerated - Anthropocene. While the exact beginning of Anthropocene still hasn’t been settled on, the definition of Dr. Nafeez Ahmed encapsulates what it is: “A proposed new geological epoch which designates a shift to a planetary age dominated by human impacts across the geological processes of the Earth… for the first time in history, the future of the entire planet — for generations if not millennia to come — is now being fundamentally determined by the activities of the human species.” [13]
Regardless of where the beginning yard-stick is eventually set, it is uncontroversial that the period after WWII witnessed a dramatic uptick in the way humans impact the planet. Uncoincidentally, both crises reached civilization-threatening levels in this era. The first atomic bomb was exploded in 1945 by the United States, marking the beginning of the atomic age; greenhouse gas emissions did begin rising with industrialization, circa 1850, but our understanding of the problem and its exponential intensification occurred only in the post-WWII years (see Fig 1.3.). This period will therefore be our main focus.
Fig 1.3
Role of the United States
States took turns leading global affairs. Though there were many large ancient empires, Rome being a prime example, a first truly global power didn’t arise until Spain established colonies on multiple continents in mid 15th century. Its central position in the world-system (as Emanuel Wallerstein named economically and socially, but not politically, integrated supranational units) [14] went from circa 1450 till roughly the turn of the 16th century. The Dutch Republic took over until about the middle of the 17th century. Britain slowly surpassed the Dutch and remained at the helm until after World War I concluding with World War II [15].
The period that coincides with acceleration of Anthropocene witnessed unprecedented power relations. Previously unseen level of hegemony of a country, rightly named a super-power - the United States [16]. Besides the sheer size of the area it controlled, its main competitors were largely destroyed by war, including the USSR. Newly acquired domination was clearly understood by American leadership, as declassified documents confirm. High level analysts and planners, concluded in internal discussions that the US was “to hold unquestioned power, acting to ensure the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty” [17] in its large sphere of influence, the so-called Grand Area. “The Grand Area was to include the Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, the Far East, the former British Empire (which was being dismantled), the incomparable energy resources of the Middle East… the rest of the Third World and, if possible, the entire globe” [18], Noam Chomsky sums up his review of the planning, conveying the scale of US hegemony, clarity with which it had been understood, and plans to maintain and expand it to every corner of the planet. Designs initially limited only by USSR and its satellites.
What is particularly important from the stand point of our inquiry is the socio-economic system the US promulgated – capitalism. Inherited from its British colonial patron as one of the founding principles of the new country, capitalism was now to be extended everywhere in US’ newly expanded domain, and to the degree of its unprecedented domination.
Even though its power was awesome, there were bumps on the road. World War II brought, as such events almost invariably do, many new ideas and social experiments that threaten the old order. As far as American planners were concerned, capitalism with its free-market ideology based on private property and unobstructed neo-colonial exploitation of raw materials concentrated in a few hands, had to remain the only viable option both domestically and internationally. Once again thanks to declassified material, we know their attitudes toward, and lengths they went to, in order to prevent any sort of independent development from taking root (particularly one based on collective control and ownership of resources and means of production). Italian example is illustrative and a standard for post-WWII US control of domestic affairs in its sphere of influence. It was one of the first interventions during the war, beginning in 1943. While liberating the country, allied forces pushed out of the way popular-based anti-Fascist resistance wiping out their collective forms of governance and replacing them with Fascist collaborators like Field-Marshal Badoglio, the royal family, and others, in a center-right government. CIA’s covert control of Italian electoral politics continued well into the 1970s. Conveying how threatening independent development was/is to the planners, National Security Council (the highest planning body) called for a direct US military intervention in case of a popularly backed party democratically winning Italian elections [19]. In other words, democracy was OK as long as the vote went the right way – one that suited the capitalist master.
Arthur Schlesinger, Secretary of State in the Truman Administration, described how independent development is perceived in the eyes of US leadership. After the 1959 Cuban revolution and the overthrow of the US-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista, he warned of “the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hands“, which gave the “poor and underprivileged” elsewhere wrong ideas, and who “are now demanding opportunities for a decent living” [20]. The danger was referred to as the “virus” or “rotten apple” effect in internal discussions, one that had to be contained wherever and whenever it appeared [21]. Both, covert and overt influence, coercion, and violence were employed to prevent the virus from spreading and to restore or institute the conservative capitalist order under US control. The scale, scope and eventually success of such interventions against popular rule in the post-WWII world testifies to the power of the United States and the spread of the capitalist world-system. Italian case was followed by many similar and often more violent interventions. France, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Iran, Germany, China, Indonesia, and wherever else the rot emerged [22]. Economies of countries in the Grand Area had to be controlled in order to complement US imperial interests. Who, to be sure, are US corporations and their stockholders, bondholders, and managers, not the population at large or the workers [23]. A framework of international organizations was erected to facilitate the goal and legitimate the lopsided system. The United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, NATO, World Trade Organization, among others [24]. Even the much-lauded Marshall Plan was a part of the effort [25]. These far-reaching measures were considered necessary because, as Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State, said, any challenge to “power, position, and prestige of the US”, couldn’t be tolerated [26]; or as George Kennan, another top level planner added, “the protection of our raw materials” – which happen to be in someone else’s countries - needed to be ensured [27]. No threat was too small, because the virus could quickly spread to the more significant parts of the system.
The fiefdom of US-dominated capitalist world-system was unprecedented. With somewhat diminished role of the US government (US corporations still control roughly the same global wealth share as after WWII – around 50% - and lead in almost every economic category) [28], it not only persists to this day, but is expanded. Thanks to the collapse of USSR, economies of the former socialist block countries like Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, others in Eastern Europe, are now largely reformed, and included in the capitalist world-system. Even China.
Thus, in an effort to understand the decision-making process responsible for the shape Anthropocene took, including why the will of citizens is at odds with policy, we should analyze the government of the United States.
US government: origins and structure
United States Constitution, a document usually associated with foundations based on lofty democratic ideals, was primarily constructed to preserve economic and political inequality of the time by limiting democracy. It was designed by a small group of white men of property whose chief task was to protect their property and privileges from the levelling spirit of democracy – the familiar virus. James Madison, the leading framer, explained that the Constitution’s main purpose was to: “Protect the minority of the opulent from the majority”. With that goal in mind the Senate was to be the main locus of power and be populated by folks who “ought to come from and represent the wealth of the nation” [29]. John Jay, the first Supreme Court Chief Justice commented on what the end result of the Constitutional debates should be: “The people who own the country ought to govern it.” [30]
Upon hearing of Shay’s Rebellion in the fall of 1786 in Massachusetts (in the midst of an economic depression caused by the Revolutionary War, people of Massachusetts, made up largely of poor farmers, demanded of their state legislature tax and debt relief of the kind already instituted in other states), George Washington wrote that the events: “exhibit a melancholy proof of what our transatlantic foe has predicted… - that mankind left to themselves are unfit for their own government.” He concluded that what was needed was a government: “by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured” [31] [my emphasis]. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, agreed that the country should be run by the “rich and well born” [32]. Madison dreaded the unreasonable impulses for equality of the masses which he derided as: “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project.” [33] Legal historian and scholar of constitutional law, Michael Klarman, comments in his seminal work on the framing (Klarman 2016): “Constitution was a conservative counterrevolution against what leading American statesmen regarded as the irresponsible economic measures enacted by a majority of state legislatures in the mid-1780s, which they diagnosed as a symptom of excessive democracy” [34]. In the eyes of the wealthy Framers, democracy was a threat to be overcome. For if the majority, who had little or no property, got to democratically express their will, it, they surmised, would inevitably lead to some sort of appropriation of private property, reduction of privileges, and leveling of inequality – the first occurrence of the dreaded virus in the US. Framers’ fears were ominously confirmed in the first elections in Massachusetts after Shay’s Rebellion, when populist delegates in favor of debt write-offs and paper money claimed an overwhelming victory. Contempt for democracy was widespread. Klarman cites some of the sentiments at the Constitutional Convention: “Randolph told the convention that the country’s “chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our [state] constitutions.” And even Gerry agreed that “the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.” In response, the delegates wished to create a federal government that would be as detached as possible from public opinion, without forfeiting the label of “republican.” Behind the closed doors of the Philadelphia convention, the delegates outdid one another in the contempt they expressed for democracy. Gerry called democracy “the worst… of all political evils.” Sherman declared that the people “should have as little to do as may be about the government. They want [i.e. lack] information and are constantly liable to be misled.” Hamilton observed that “the voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.” … Virtually all the delegates – nationalists and defenders of state sovereignty, representatives of large states and small states, southerners and northerners – could agree upon the proposition that ordinary citizens ought not to have too great a role in governmental affairs.” [35]
And so the Framers proceeded to give the fledgling republic a Constitution rife with checks on excess democracy and lasting imbalances in power and privilege. Bicameral Parliament with a very powerful Senate where Senators weren’t elected but appointed by the House, House with a large number of constituents per representative (making the election of unknown, poor candidates unlikely) judicial review of legislation, presidential appointment of the Supreme Court justices, electoral college, the supremacy clause, executive veto power, and other mechanisms whose purpose was to prevent “wicked projects” and “democratic licentiousness” of multitudes [36].
The goal was accomplished to a remarkable degree. Perhaps even more remarkably, the system persists to this day. Irrespective of the focus of their inquiries: Congress, political parties, state or national policy, political scientists who study contemporary democratic conditions in the United States keep drawing similar conclusions – those who own the country, do indeed govern it. For example, Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens (2014) summarize: “When the preferences of the economic elites are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy…When a majority of citizens disagree with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities favor policy change, they generally don’t get it” [37]. Elizabeth Rigby and Gerald Wright’s analysis (2013) showed that “the least fortunate in society have no independent voice in the formulation of party platforms.” [38] Patrick Flavin (2012) found that “citizens with low incomes receive little or no substantive political representation (compared with more affluent citizens) in the policy decisions made by their state governments.” [39] Larry Bartels (2016) comments on what his meticulous work uncovered: “… only the most cynical critic of American democracy could be unsurprised to hear that scores of millions of ordinary Americans’ political views seem to be largely or wholly ignored in the policy-making process. This pessimistic conclusion seems to me to be of profound importance for our understanding of American democracy. Political leaders do appear to be responding to the policy preferences of millions of affluent citizens.” [40]
In addition to “responding to affluent citizens”, members of Congress are disproportionately wealthy themselves. According to analysis of the most recent disclosures of personal finances of members of Congress (May 2018), by the watchdog group OpenSecrets, more than half of all Congresspeople are millionaires [41], with a typical salary of $174,000, which is more than three times that of an average American ($51,960 in January 2020) [42]. “The fact that most policy-makers are themselves affluent, and in many cases extremely wealthy, hardly seems irrelevant for understanding the strong empirical connection between their choices and the preferences of affluent citizens... Carnes found that “lawmakers from different classes tend to think, vote, and advocate differently on economic issues.”… For example, the 2001 Bush tax cuts almost certainly owed their passage to class bias in the makeup of Congress.” [43], concludes Bartels.
Or as the Nobel Laureate for economics, Joseph Stiglitz comments: “Virtually all Senators and most Representatives are members of the 1%... when they arrive are kept in office by money of 1%, and know if they behave well they’ll be rewarded by the 1%.” [44]
Additionally, members of Congress are allowed to invest in the stock market, further aligning their interests with economic elites and the capitalist status quo; thereby creating conflicts of interest when it comes to protecting the workers, consumers, fence-line communities, and other stakeholders, whose rights are inversely proportionate to profits of capitalist enterprises and are therefore to be minimized from stockholders’ perspective.
Unsurprisingly, this arrangement has real human and environmental consequences.
For example, International Trade Union Confederation, an organization that monitors workers’ rights around the world, in its latest annual report ranked the US in a category named “Systematic violations of rights”, alongside countries like Vietnam, Oman, Botswana, and Chad [45]. No other mature democracy was in the group. The US is the only developed country without universal health care [46], while at the same time spending the most on medical care as a percentage of GDP [47], while at the same time members of Congress do have state funded health care. Americans pay, by far, the highest prices for medications [48]. Lack of environmental laws, or lack of enforcement of laws resulted in 99.7% of Americans having carcinogenic chemical C8 in their blood [49]. Likewise, 93% of Americans have glyphosate in their bodies [50], another “likely carcinogen” according to the World Health Organization. 218 million in the US drink water laced with cancer-causing chromium-6 [51]. And so on. All a consequence of corporate behavior. At the same time, corporate profits and the stock market are at record high levels [52]. Windfall in which lawmakers generously take part, under the set of rules they get to design.
Judiciary and the executive:
Let’s now turn to the other two branches of US government.
Just like the lawmakers, many presidents and judges were wealthy even before entering the government. Both, however, including the Supreme Court justices, go through a sort of filtration process before being installed in positions of power. A process which enables economic elites to select and approve potential candidates, effectively giving them veto power. What the voter eventually gets, is a false choice. Let’s review some of the features of the veto through the prism of the last two presidential races, 2016 and 2020. We’ll look into the courts later.
To run for president, one needs ever increasingly large sums of money. With the cost of around $14.4 billion [53], 2020 elections continued the trend and once again broke the all-time record set in 2016. An obvious advantage of the wealthy. The “dollar barrier” has been practically unbreachable until 2016 when the campaign of Bernie Sanders pointed to a viable alternative. It was mainly financed by millions of small donations and relied on a large number of volunteers. Even so, and in contrast to what’s commonly assumed, Sanders’ populist campaign didn’t seriously challenge the Democratic party establishment. In the end Hillary Clinton comfortably won the 2,383 delegates needed for nomination with the total tally of 2,800 to Sanders’ 1,881. But it did pose just enough of a threat early on to unveil a heavy anti-grassroot (anti-democratic) bias and highlighted some of the party filters employed at times of democratic excess. Thanks to WikiLeaks’ publishing of Democratic National Committee’s (the main financing and governing body of the party) email correspondence, we learned about how the party perceived Bernie Sanders. It was an annoyance from the outside to be dispelled with. The emails revealed that the supposedly neutral DNC (according to its charter it isn’t supposed to favor a candidate until after the nomination) actually heavily favored Clinton and that it actively worked to get her nominated. Clinton, for example, got debate questions from one of the moderators, Donna Brazile (who later succeeded Debbie Wasserman Schultz as the head of DNC), ahead of the event. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the DNC at the time, cut off access to voter database to Sanders campaign at one point, only to be reinstituted after the Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit. DNC helped fund Clinton, but not the Sanders campaign. There was an internal DNC discussion of a possible media narrative to discredit Sanders [54]. And so on.
Then we have the party’s nominating system. To secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, a candidate must win 2,383 of the 4,765 total delegates; 712, or roughly 15%, of whom are so-called superdelegates. Superdelegates are party functionaries who strongly tilt to establishment candidates giving them a big advantage. For instance, already in December of 2015, before any votes were cast in the primaries, 359 superdelegates pledged their support for Clinton, while just 8 did for Sanders. A 45-1 ratio. It isn’t known how many voters were swayed away from Sanders by the move.
To further illustrate ramifications these unpledged delegates have on democracy let’s consider the fact that Clinton lost the New Hampshire primary by 60%-38%. A landslide. Accordingly, Sanders got 15 to Clinton’s 9 pledged delegates. However, out of the 8 superdelegates in NH, 6 pledged their votes for Clinton rendering a total tally of 17 – 15 in a state where voters overwhelmingly favored Sanders. At the end of the nominating process, Clinton had 581 to Sanders’ 49 superdelegates. While she received 54.7% of the total number of pledged delegates, 92% of superdelegates went with the establishment candidate. Debbie Wasserman Schultz explained the purpose of this mechanism in an interview with CNN: “Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grass-roots activists.” In other words, they are there to protect against the old foe - excess democracy. After a public outcry, Wasserman Schultz lost her position at the DNC over the handling of the 2016 primaries, but is currently serving as a member of the House of Representatives [55]. Perhaps revealing some of the perks of service to power.
DNC emails also revealed one of the party’s main purposes (the same is true for the Republicans). In order to raise money, it sells “access” (read influence) to wealthy donors via a menu of “packages” where each package has a corresponding price and proportionate amount of “access”. Fundraising is at the core of party functions, so much so that it rewards politicians best at it with the most influential positions in government [56].
Turning now to the media barrier to democracy.
Very important ingredient in any political campaign is media coverage. All major American media are corporations owned by other corporations, or directly by the wealthy (Bernays 1933; Chomsky 2004; Chomsky 2003)57. In addition to the top-heavy management structure, ownership is highly concentrated - only 6 corporations control over 90% of all media in the United States58. Furthermore, media companies are dependent on the revenue stream from advertisers, who once again are wealthy individuals and corporations. Finally, major network managers and news anchors, folks responsible for packaging and delivering information, are extremely well compensated for their services, and are thus themselves members of the “rich and well born” class [59].
Consequently, the particular lens through which the US mainstream media presents the world and its bias favoring establishment candidates shouldn’t be surprising. Let’s take an example while sticking to the most recent elections. An outlet widely considered the most progressive among mainstream news companies (thus as far left as is allowed), MSNBC, owned by COMCAST. During the 2020 race MSNBC’s Chris Matthews expressed fear that there will be “executions in the Central Park” and that he “might have been one of the ones getting executed”, if Bernie Sanders, whose proposed policies wouldn’t surprise anyone even in capitalist Europe, became president (alluding to communist Cuba). Chuck Todd of the same network called Sanders’ online supporters “digital brown shirts”, liking them to Nazis. On the other hand, after a speech of the establishment candidate, Joe Biden, Matthews “saw a splash of sunlight in what’s been a grim Democratic tussle for president”, in which progressives Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had a strong early showing. He also warned that criticism of Biden would only lead to “even more destruction of our national unity”. An analysis of MSNBC’s August and September 2019 news reel reveals disproportionate amount of coverage in favor of Biden, as well as lopsidedly negative light Sanders was presented in. For example, of the 240 episodes in the examined period, 64% discussed Biden, 43% Warren, 36% Sanders. A full 25% of shows talked exclusively about Biden, 5% Warren, and 1% Sanders. Sanders was least likely to be mentioned positively (12.9%), and most likely to be mentioned negatively (20.7%) [60].
This is the picture on the most liberal/progressive end of the spectrum. MSNBC’s views are illustrative because the only challenge to the status quo in 2020 presidential elections came from the progressive wing of the Democratic party, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Many of whose supporters and potential supporters are likely consumers of MSNBC.
Conservative Fox News and the Republican party aren’t considered in detail because of their extreme anti-democratic and pro-capital positions surpassing even those built into the status quo. In the words of a fellow at the conservative Brookings Institution, and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Norman Ornstein, and Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution: “The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic regime; scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” That passage… framed a core part of the argument of our 2012 book.” “Today, incredibly, it’s even worse than it was.”, wrote Ornstein in 201661. GOP, together with Fox News remain on course today. Contempt for science, the poor, the environment, security, and survival of the species in service to profit reached new heights, compelling Noam Chomsky to call the Republican Party, “the most dangerous organization in history”[62].
If economic elites truly wield so much control over the government, we would expect high tolerance for money in politics (it being their overwhelming competitive advantage). Indeed, money was allowed a pivotal role in politics since the inception of the country. Another barrier for democracy. At first, money had a slightly different role than today. In the period immediately after independence, being wealthy was the only way to be seriously considered in elections. Though still true today, back then one was far likelier to be well known, well connected to the press, able to afford transportation, able to take time off work, afford education necessary to sway voters, etc. As the country developed, these privileges became increasingly accessible to others, and campaigns assumed a different character and became more expensive. The first to center a presidential campaign around public relations, and promote a candidate like advertising a product, thus requiring professional aid and raising the cost of elections, was the famous Republican strategist, Marc Hanna, the father of modern political campaigning. He commented around the turn of the XX century that “There are two things that matter in elections. The first is money, and I forget the second.” [63]
Always significant, electoral spending reached new heights recently. As we have seen, 2020 presidential elections were the most expensive ever with a cost in excess of $14 billion. Unabashed toleration of so much money in politics was a gradual process, achieved via series of Supreme Court decisions over decades, crowned by the infamous Citizens United v Federal Election Commission case of 2010 which practically allowed unlimited campaign spending, permitting the wealthy to maximize their competitive advantage over the population. Citizens United, like virtually all rights of corporations, is an example of a judge-made law. By completely circumventing the electorate, it is one of the most undemocratic features of the United States Constitution [64].
Anti-democratic character of judge-made laws is not surprising if we consider the process of appointing and confirming the Supreme Court Justices. When a life-time Justice either retires or passes away, the president appoints a replacement, who then needs to be confirmed by a simple majority in the Senate. If we consider the earlier analysis of the makeup of the presidency and the Congress, Citizens United and similar rulings by their selectees are indeed unsurprising.
Furthering the importance of money and adding to the pro-business bias of the judiciary is the cost of litigation. Another shield against democracy. The feature allows protection from lawsuits to corporations and economic elites in proportion to the size of their wealth and other resources available to afford and/or prolong litigation. Litigation is also a powerful avenue for further enhancement of privileges to those who can afford it. The use of the XIV Amendment, for example, which was intended to protect the newly freed slaves, draws a pungent picture. In the nearly 50 years after its adoption, out of 604 cases before the Court invoking the Amendment, only 5% involved African Americans, the rest had to do with the rights of corporations [65].
At the same time, there are folks who spend years locked up because they cannot afford to pay fines of a few hundred dollars. Sometimes less [66].
This is by no means an exhaustive list of barriers the 1% use to fill, run, and control all three branches of the government of the United States. But enough for our purpose of understanding where the power lies and who wields it. America’s is a system of government designed to protect the rights of private property from democracy, run by property owners or those in their service. This arrangement explains the discrepancy in popular attitudes and governmental action, the so-called democratic deficit. A phenomenon which extends to action on climate and nuclear crisis.
But why would economic elites want to prevent action to mitigate existential threats that also put their own survival at risk?
Corporations – the principal vehicle of elite subversion of democracy
Of the many features of US state-capitalism, none dominates the political, social, and economic landscape nearly as much as corporations [67]. Corporate influence on American society, its values and attitudes, is more profound and goes further back than commonly understood. Indeed, the United States was a corporation at first, an extension of British capitalism. Virginia Company, which settled Jamestown (the first “permanent community”) in the year 1607, was a corporation set up to make profit for its investors and King James. Majority of the settlers were indentured servants indebted to the company, sent to the New World to pay off their dues; while the rest were individual investors. Highlighting its primary purpose, profit, the first instructions to the settlers “were to expeditiously organize a team to begin searching for precious metals, such as gold and silver, or a passage to the South Seas… Because such discoveries were the company’s best hope to make money, the board commended a full third of the settlers to begin searching immediately” (Winkler 2018). The company’s instructions were dutifully followed, too few people remained, and too little attention was paid to clearing the land and planting crops. As a result, by January 1608, only 38 of the original 108 colonists survived. First victims of corporate pursuit for profit in the New World [68].
Soon after, when life in the colony stabilized, Virginia served as a base for plunder of Spanish commerce and French colonies in Maine [69].
Of a similar social, political, and economic structure were many of the soon-to-be-established North American British colonies whose first law of the land was their corporate charter. Massachusetts Bay Company, Roger Williams’s Rhode Island, Providence Plantations, and the Connecticut Colony, are such examples. Corporate-charter based rules deeply influenced early Americans. “Because they were also governments, responsible for overseeing the people who lived there, they {corporations} exerted a considerable influence on American attitudes and understandings about governance… The similarities between the Constitution and the original 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, for example, are striking… Just as the Constitution… MA Bay Company charter {issued 150 years earlier} begins with… We The People… The company charter then sets out, very much like the Constitution, a framework for government, complete with a representative assembly, an elected chief executive, and guarantees of individual rights.” Winkler continues, “In 1639, some settlers broke off from the Massachusetts Bay Company and set up their own colony in Connecticut… the Fundamental Orders were “a conscious imitation” of the Massachusetts Bay Company charter. The main difference was the identity of the sovereign… “we the Inhabitants and Residents” of Connecticut.” [70]
In a similar fashion, the influence of the profit seeking capitalist enterprise imprinted itself throughout the rest of the young country. Though indisputably helpful in establishing the republic, values like private property, individualism, unconstrained resource exploitation, and unlimited desire for growth were derived from and around the corporate form and became quintessentially American. Unlike anyplace else, in the United States, corporations were involved in creating the state. It seems logical to blame this peculiarity for being chiefly responsible for what Moisey Ostrogorski, political scientist and sociologist described as “Of all races in an advanced stage of civilization, the American is the least accessible to long views… Always and everywhere in a hurry to get rich, he does not give a thought to remote consequences; he sees only present advantages… He does not remember, he does not feel, he lives in a materialist dream.” M. Ostrogorski, 1902 [71] Americans, of course, aren’t innately different from other people. It is the level of saturation of American society with corporate norms and values in which we should look for the reason for such behavior.
Corporations quickly started growing and gaining ever more rights and power in the newly established republic. Though always powerful, they were initially quite restrained by today’s standards. State-issued charters granted them special privileges for only a certain period of time after which they were to be dissolved. To qualify for a charter, they had to serve a public good. Over the years, however, via series of judicial decisions, utilizing expensive lawyers and ideologue justices, corporate rights expanded tremendously. Today, corporations can invoke rights under the Commerce and Contracts Clauses, as well as under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments [72]. In practice that means they can exist in perpetuity, have limited liability from legal responsibility, protection from search and seizure, right to privacy, the right to get involved in elections, and the right to equal protection under the law among other prerogatives.
At this point it is important to remind ourselves what corporations are and who do these rights extend to. Corporations are legal fictions whose purpose is to maximize the return on investment (profits) for their owners (stockholders and bondholders) and managers, and a vehicle for protection and enhancement of the power and privileges of the same group via the corporate form.
By bestowing special privileges on some, the rights of everyone else diminish and democracy is effectively curbed. Thomas Paine criticized English corporations on exactly these grounds: “It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few” [73]. It is worth remembering that at the time of Paine, neither corporate rights nor their reach can remotely be compared to that which they enjoy today. The fears public figures of the time had, (including some of the Founding Fathers who were concerned about the threat corporations posed to their own privileges), about the rising power of corporations and the increasing challenge they posed to the limited republic of their era, have fully been realized, and far surpassed by today. While corporations initially owned their existence to state charters and were controlled by the government, they grew so large and powerful as to reverse the roles today.
Robert A. G. Monks, expert on corporate governance, a former member of the Reagan administration, describes big business power and its influence in the United States as “The financial power of American corporations now controls every stage of politics – executive, legislative, and judicial”. He refers to contemporary corporate-state relationship as “capture”, which he defines as: “Capture exists when the government becomes the expression of the business interest, not when it is subjected to business interest… when business interest subsumes the government and business purpose becomes the government purpose.” (Monks 2014) [74]. Completing what John Ralston Saul calls “corporate coup-d’état in slow motion” [75]. Among a myriad of examples validating their claims, one of the most graphic is perhaps the 2016 leak which revealed how Citi Bank got to nominate most of Barrack Obama’s cabinet in 2008 in the wake of the financial crisis, in exchange for giving him a late financial campaign boost which helped get Obama elected [76]. It is no secret how it all played out. The banks got bailed out, executives paid themselves bonuses for crashing the financial system, while the average American lost 40% of her wealth [77].
Having overwhelmed and permeated so many aspects of American society, and by extension that of the rest of the capitalist world-system, corporations merit an in-depth look at their values, motivations, and actions.
Corporate culture and motivation
Corporations exist to maximize profits for their owners (stockholders and bondholders) and managers, no matter the human and environmental collateral damage, and to shield them from as many repercussions as possible in the process [78]. Combined with their economic power and government capture, corporations operate in an environment with enormous pressures on CEOs to cross the boundaries of law and ethics. Particularly tempting when their main product line’s profitability is threatened. Corporate record is replete with examples.
Let’s take, for example, the tobacco companies. A slew of lawsuits in the 1990s brought to light internal documents of biggest firms and with them motives and logic of top corporate management. Beginning in the 1950s, their own research discovered several negative health effects of tobacco use. The studies showed high addictiveness of nicotine, toxicity of cigarette smoke, and a link to several forms of cancer. The findings were kept secret. Moreover, the newly acquired knowledge was used to increase sales in a nefarious way. Among other findings, it was uncovered that radioactive elements found in tobacco had high correlation to lung cancer. The firms were aware of an inexpensive technique to remove the dangerous ingredients from cigarettes, but decided not to incorporate it in the production process because it also reduced nicotine content, which would make cigarettes less addictive, therefore negatively affecting sales. As the time went by, and smokers’ death toll kept rising, government and other independent organizations financed their own research. It confirmed what the companies already knew. To counter the threat of negative publicity, tobacco manufacturers sponsored their own pseudo-science, kept aggressively advertising, caused confusion about the safety of cigarettes, and extended preventable dying. In the 2006 ruling in United States vs. Phillip Morris, judge Kessler of District of Columbia wrote: “In short, [the companies] have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted”. Even after being ordered to terminate misleading advertising, the practice continued. The companies calculated likely fines and concluded it was still more profitable not to comply.
Disregard for laws and human well-being extends beyond US borders. In the wake of revelations of adverse health effects of smoking, many countries increased taxes on tobacco in the early 2000’s in an effort to protect the health of their citizens. Higher taxes raised the price of cigarettes and markedly decreased the number of smokers; profits were threatened. To circumvent the measures, tobacco corporations engaged in smuggling with the help of organized criminal. Black market exploded in size. The illegal trade also served as a laundering mechanism for drug money, and yielded profits on levels that rivaled the trade in illegal drugs [79].
Let’s proceed with almost random cases.
Chemical industry, led by DuPont, knew for decades that PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) or C8, one of their most profitable products used in Teflon, Gore-Tex, and hundreds of other products, is extremely toxic, causes numerous health issues like ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, thyroid disease, testicular and kidney cancers. In-firm studies further concluded that C8 accumulates in the organism and that adverse effects occur at relatively small concentrations. The findings were kept secret. Though the company knew of its toxicity for decades (PFOA was introduced in 1950s and studied from the beginning), the public had to wait until 1999 and the case of a local farmer whose cows mysteriously died on a property near DuPont’s West Virginia plant. The case sparked a series of independent studies involving C8 and confirmed what the company knew for a long time – the substance was extremely dangerous. Aware that an official response was inevitable, DuPont set out to increase its already heavy regulatory clout by assembling a team of former officials to help coopt Environmental Protection Agency, the main regulator. Among others, DuPont enlisted two former deputy administrators at the EPA (No. 2 position at the agency), and William Reilly who led the EPA from 1989 to 1993; a member of DuPont’s board of directors at the time. All examples of the “revolving door” mechanism of government capture. Additionally, a consulting firm (Weinberg Group) was hired to manage the PR situation. Court documents reveal a memo in which the Weinberg Group proposed what DuPont’s response to the crisis should be (an advice DuPont followed). In the words of the investigative journalist who closely researched the case, Sharon Lerner: “The memo bragged that the company had long experience in managing chemical PR crises. “Beginning with Agent Orange in 1983… we have successfully guided clients through myriad regulatory, litigation, and public relations challenges.” Weinberg’s proposal included using “focus groups of mock jurors to determine the best ‘themes’ for defense verdicts,” retaining “leading scientists to consult on the range of issues involving PFOA so as to develop a premium expert panel,” and efforts to “reshape the debate by identifying likely known health benefits of PFOA exposure by … constructing a study to establish not only that PFOA is safe … but that it offers real health benefits.”” A series of steps that closely resemble tobacco industry’s playbook, laid out in a fashion that suggests Weinberg used similar approach in other cases.
In the end, EPA fined DuPont $16.5 million. Less than a day’s worth of sales of the C8 division.
In a closed high-level meeting in 1984 in which they discussed whether to continue the production of PFOA due to the health harm it is causing, DuPont executives revealed their logic: “None of the options developed are … economically attractive and would essentially put the long term viability of this business segment on the line”. In fact, from that point on, DuPont increased its use and emissions of the chemical by a factor of 4, betting that somewhere down the line the company would somehow be able to “eliminate all C8 emissions in a way yet to be developed that would not economically penalize the business”, as an executive wrote in his 1984 meeting notes. While conscious of probable future liability, they did not act with great urgency in regards to the potential legal predicament they faced. If they did decide to reduce emissions or stop using the chemical altogether, they still couldn’t undo the years of damage already done. As the meeting summary noted, “We are already liable for the past 32 years of operation.” Human and environmental consequences never entered the equation as anything more than cost. Due to long-term, widespread use of the C8, a recent study found that 99.7% of Americans have PFOA in their blood. Today, DuPont is facing more than 3,500 personal injury claims. The company spun off the production of the chemical into a separate company called Chemours. A move many decry as an attempt to avoid settlement and to socialize cleanup costs.
Zooming out a bit. Besides the previously described revolving door, government capture by the chemical industry extends to law. For example, EPA doesn’t have the right to ban an unsafe chemical from entering the market in the United States. Under the extremely high standards set with the help of the industry and only after a product enters the market, it is up to the EPA, not the companies, to prove that a chemical is toxic, which takes years, often decades, and most likely never. The result is that there are around 84,000 chemicals currently on the market, of which just around 1% got tested for safety. Additionally, the minute toxicity testing that actually occurs relies on the data provided by the manufacturers.
Quite telling is DuPont’s reaction (memo sent to the EPA) after EPA’s (somewhat independent) Science Advisory Board, designated Teflon as a “likely human carcinogen”:
” In our opinion, the only voice that can cut through the negative stories, is the voice of EPA. We need EPA … to quickly (like first thing tomorrow) say the following: Consumer products sold under the Teflon brand are safe”. EPA complied.
Eventually, as a part of the deal with regulators, DuPont stopped producing C8 in the United States in 2014. It then moved its production to China [80].
A look across industries uncovers a similar picture.
Automobile manufacturers have a history of deliberately neglecting issues with safety features. For example, GM president famously refused to install safety glass in its cars because it was too costly and GM was not, in his words, a “charitable institution”. In the 70s, Ford’s Pinto model was discovered, by the company, to have an exploding gasoline tank in rear-end collisions. Since the assembly line was already being retooled, production continued. Court documents reveal what informed the decision: “The $11 repair to fix the defect on all Pintos would have cost the company $137 million, compared to 180 burn deaths, 180 burn injuries, and 21,000 burned vehicles which would have cost only $49.5 million —assuming $167,000 per death and $67,000 per injury”. Saving the company $87.5 million [81].
In the wake of the two crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving Boeing’s MAX 737 in which 346 people lost their lives, suspicions about the plane’s design prompted a Congressional inquiry. The recently published report describes, once again, a recognizable pattern. In a rush to make profit, the company knowingly placed a deadly product on the market. Approval of the faulty plane was achieved with cooptation of the Federal Aviation Association, the agency tasked with ensuring public safety in aviation [82].
Therefore, when we learned in 2015 that ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and other oil majors knew since at least the 70s that continued use of their product will alter Earth’s climate with deleterious consequences, but decided to keep the findings secret, and continued with production and promotion of fossil fuels, leading to the current crisis, we were simply witnessing standard corporate playbook designed to protect profits at all cost. Financing “counter-science” to deny climate change, intense public relations campaigning, government capture, cold cost-benefit analysis, all fit the bill. It should be just as unsurprising that the US government knew since at least 1965 and the Johnson environmental report, but kept quiet and proceeded to subsidize and expand fossil fuel use [83].
From capitalist corporation’s, and its owners’ perspective, fossil fuels are no different than cigarettes, C8, faulty cars, painkillers, or planes. The future and society at large are to find ways to deal with any collateral damage. Thus, it doesn’t enter the equation, only profit does.
Whistleblower testimonies and comments by executives on their companies’ culture corroborate the conclusion. Here are some examples.
Sherron Watkins {Enron whistleblower} described the company’s ethos leading to the famous scandal: ”Enron’s unspoken message was, ‘Make the numbers, make the numbers, make the numbers-if you steal, if you cheat, just don’t get caught. If you do, beg for a second chance, and you’ll get one.’” [84]
Former Citi Bank CEO, Chuck Prince explained the decisions one is forced to make as a CEO, by the structure of the competition in finance in particular, and business in general, even with the knowledge that the whole system may collapse (statement made just before the 2008 housing crisis): “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.” Time journalist rightly concluded:” his account amounts to quite an elegant explanation of why financial bubbles persist.” [85]
Eileen Foster, whistleblower, former executive VP in charge of fraud investigations at mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, told 60 minutes about mortgage fraud leading to ’08: ”From what I saw, the types of things I saw, it was, it appeared systemic, it wasn’t just one individual or two or three individuals, it was branches of individuals, it was regions of individuals.” [86]
A former executive with JP Morgan Chase, again a whistleblower, Linda Altamonte, reflected on her interaction with the senior management as she highlighted illegality of a deal they proposed. “When I pointed out that the deal was super illegal, their response was for me to just sign off on it and let it go through so they could post the earnings that year. If it caused a problem the following year, so be it. They had bonuses to earn now, and any potential prison terms were the future’s problem – and the future would probably have a way to deal with them” [87]
Former Wells Fargo CEO, John G. Stumpf, in a testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee, didn’t think opening 2 million accounts under unsuspecting customers’ names, and then charging them ghost fees on the same was a “scam” as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) called the ploy. A former Wells Fargo employee commented on the daily pressure coming from the top during the cheating period: “He [a manager] would say: ‘I don’t care how you do it – but do it, or else you’re not going home.” [88]
CBS CEO, Les Moonves rationalized the move to give the notorious climate change denier, Donald Trump, valuable air time for free. One of the most important factors in his 2016 presidential election victory (which in turn significantly exacerbated the climate and nuclear crises). “Good for us economically. Circus, of presidential campaign and the flow of political advertising dollars… may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say … So what can I say? The money’s rolling in, this is fun … I’ve never seen anything like this and this is going to be a very good year for us…It’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going” [89].
Ostrogorski seems to have been correct. Particularly when it comes to describing values and motivations of the most powerful in American society - corporate CEOs, stockholders, and the government.
Quite disturbing, but how widespread is the US capitalism’s reach and logic? Does it seize at the border?
Transnational Capitalist Class – the power brokers and the beneficiaries
Capitalist system has produced incredible levels of inequality. The latest report by Oxfam tells us that the 2,153 of the world’s billionaires own as much wealth as the poorest 4.6 billion people. Or, 0.00003% own as much as the bottom 60%. According to the World Bank, in 2018, 3.4 billion lived on less than $5.5 a day, with the figure likely to exceed 4 billion in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic; that’s well over half of global population living in poverty. In the US, the richest 6 families own as much wealth as the poorest 50%, or roughly 165 million people. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, made $13 billion in one day in July of 2020, while millions lost their jobs or had to take pay cuts during the pandemic. That’s $1,625 billion per hour if he worked a 40-hour week [90].
Exactly the outcomes we would expect in a system devoted to protecting property and privileges of the few, and to limiting democracy - one that succeeded in its purpose. Precariousness for multitudes, incredible wealth for those at the top. Folks whom recent studies gave a descriptive name - the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC); as they are neither fragmented nor limited by national borders. Their global character and reach are a testament to the scope of the success of designs of US’ WWII planners and those that succeeded them. Here’s how Leslie Sklair (2001) describes the TCC. “A new class is emerging that pursues people and resources all over the world in its insatiable desire for private profit and eternal accumulation. This new class is the Transnational Capitalist Class, composed of corporate executives, globalizing bureaucrats and politicians, globalizing professionals and consumerist elites.” [91]
The sociologist, Peter Phillips (Phillips 2018), dove into the workings and makeup of the TCC, whom he also calls the global power elites. “Capitalist power elites exist around the world”, he begins to describe the “several hundred thousand millionaires and billionaires” representing around 0.01% of the population, those who make the TCC. He then quotes David Rothkopf in identifying a “superclass” inside the TCC. “Deeper inside the TCC is what David Rothkopf calls the “superclass” … Rothkopf argued that the superclass constitutes 6,000-7,000 people, or 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream/private jet-flying, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world-people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid.”. However, he recognizes the domination of old capitalist states (led by the US). “They are 94% male, predominantly white, and mostly from North America and Europe. Rothkopf claims that these are the people setting the agendas at the G8, G20, NATO, the WB, and the WTO. They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military, the academy, non-governmental organizations, spiritual leaders, and even shadow elites. (Shadow elites include, for instance, the deep politics of national security organizations in connection with international drug cartels, that extract 8,000 tons of opium from US war zones annually, then launder $500b through transnational banks, half of which are based in the US.)” [92]
Phillips further cites studies and data that show high interconnectedness of transnational corporations through personnel, mutual investments including in each other, and common ideology. At the heart of this super-corporation are what he calls “giants”, 17 asset management firms with at least $41 trillion under their management, run by 199 people who sit on their boards. Their reach is thoroughly global. Phillips explains how they operate and to what end: “The global Giants’ corporate boards meet on a regular basis to encourage the maximization of profit and the long-term viability of their firm’s business plans… they arrange for payments to government officials, conduct activities that undermine labor organizations, seek to manipulate the price of commodities or engage in insider trading in some capacity, they are in fact forming conspiratorial alliances inside those boards of directors”, with US firms dominating the landscape [93].
Besides cooperation on the business side, the 199 have close ties to governments, in which many either served or currently hold positions [94].
The breadth of international organizations TCC controls according to Phillips, is breathtaking. “Both David Rothkopf and William I. Robinson discuss the importance of transnational institutions serving a unifying function for the TCC. Our research shows that the WB, IMF, G20, WTO, World Economic Forum, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Bank for International Settlements, Group of 30 (G30), and International Monetary Conference serve as institutionalized mechanisms for TCC consensus building, and power elite policy formation and implementation. These international institutions serve the interests of the global financial Giants by supporting policies and regulations that seek to protect the free unrestricted flow of capital and debt collection worldwide. The WB, IMF, G7, G20, WTO, Financial Stability Board, and Bank for International Settlements are institutions controlled by nation-state representatives and central bankers with proportional power/control exercised by dominant financial supporters, primarily the US and European Union countries” [95].
Furthering class consciousness and values, the TCC tend to go to same schools, they are members of same organizations, attend same seminars, and tend to intermarry.
Overwhelmingly hailing from the US and Western Europe they are the decision-makers we set out to find in the beginning.
Nuclear weapons and capitalism
Connection between the narrow focus on profit and toleration of the threat nuclear weapons pose is slightly more obscured but follows the same logic and is in pursuit of the same goals thus far discussed.
Possessing a massive arsenal of the most destructive weapons ever created is indispensable for maintaining the heavily lopsided post-WWII global order favoring the TCC.
In the 1995 study by the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), planners explain that “US “deterrence statement”, must be “convincing” and “immediately discernable”, and should have available “full range of responses,” primarily nuclear weapons, because “unlike chemical or biological weapons, the extreme destruction from a nuclear explosion is immediate, with few if any palliatives to reduce its effect”… “That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project.” It is “beneficial” for our strategic posture if “some elements may appear to be potentially ‘out of control’ “... Nuclear weapons “seemed destined to be the centerpiece of US strategic deterrence for the foreseeable future,” the STRATCOM report concludes... It is perhaps of interest that none of this elicits concern or even commentary.” (Chomsky 2000).
NATO alliance is a linchpin in that structure, serving multiple purposes. It is an international intervention force, tasked with ensuring compliance and providing stability for capital markets. It is also a medium for sales to American weapons manufacturers; device which at the same time helps control member states. Alliance members are required to spend 2% of their GDP on defense; money which chiefly goes towards purchasing US-made arms. Additionally, the need for member countries to have compatible weapons systems and to coordinate military activities means increased dependence on, and involvement of US personnel in their internal affairs. This arrangement extends beyond Europe to places like Japan, Australia, and South Korea. It allows for a level of control of potentially serious rivals like Germany and Japan whose independent military development would jeopardize US hegemony. Underlying this setup is the “protection” that US nuclear weapons provide to NATO members and other military allies. Without it, the structure would collapse. Additionally, nuclear weapons expenditures serve as a kind of economic pressure lever that can put a serious strain on rival nuclear states; those outside of Washington’s direct control, who also have the ability to resist conventional military threats - mainly Russia and to the lesser extent China. The US is uniquely well positioned to weather additional spending due to the relative size of its GDP and its controlling position in the global economy [96].
Domestically, maintenance and particularly the recent modernization of the nuclear arsenal are a bonanza for arms corporations. Announced in 2016 by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Barrack Obama, the project is expected to cost over $1.25 trillion, and markedly increase the threat of nuclear war [97]. A familiar non-concern when security is pitted against profit. The cavalier attitude towards possible annihilation is jarring and reveals domestic forces that oppose reduction of the arsenal, not to mention its complete elimination (which majority in the US want). For example, Union of the Concerned Scientists’ 2020 report investigated a long-known fact that the land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) are obsolete. Advances in technology improved the submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) whose deficiencies early on justified having ICBMs on a hair-trigger alert. The same advances made ICBMs more vulnerable to attack rendering them unnecessary and actually dangerous due to their potential as targets. The fact they are still on a hair-trigger alert is significantly increasing the likelihood of launching an attack as a mistake or in response to a false alert. Retiring them would seem an easy decision if primary concern were security and survival. The report did address why ICBMs persevere and why they are not only surviving, but being modernized. “Although many security experts have concluded there is no military reason to continue to deploy ICBMs, the United States appears unlikely to retire its ICBM force anytime soon. Political barriers—having nothing to do with security—stand in the way: senators in the ICBM Coalition greatly value the jobs and economic benefits the Air Force bases that host ICBMs bring to their states, the Air Force is loath to give up a major weapons program, defense contractors are eager to build a new ICBM system” [98].
A similar situation, involving missile defense, helps further demystify the “political barriers”.
Missile defense is still drawing money from Congress despite its highly questionable usefulness and destabilizing character. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists explains why we continue to fund the program. “All told, the United States has spent more than $300 billion for missile defense… Even under artificially easy tests conditions, the most modern missile defense system meant to protect the United States mainland has failed more times than it has succeeded often in highly scripted tests… None of them proved feasible for defending against an all-out attack… even the semblance of a US defense, however ineffective, pushed the Soviets to improve their offense, resulting in an arms race… Over the years, the contractors have made generous contributions to the campaign coffers of lawmakers of both parties to keep the funds flowing. It has especially targeted members of the House and the Senate Armed Services Committees, which authorize funding for defense programs, as well as and members of the Appropriation Committees, which control the purse strings… over the last 10 years the defense industry as a whole spent more than $20 million each election cycle in contributions to individual candidates and political action committees, and hundreds of millions of dollars per year on lobbying… Today, support in Congress for missile defense is so strong that only a wave of intense public pressure could alter the situation.” [99]
For the sake of profit and domination, the world has lived in the shadow of annihilation since the end of WWII. Former chief commander of US Strategic Command, the person in charge of the nuclear arsenal, Gen. Lee Butler, thinks we survived thus far thanks to: “some combination of skill, luck and divine intervention—probably the latter in greatest proportion” [100].
MOTIVATION
Roots of self-destructiveness
“Keep in mind that the ruling class can be self-destructively mad; not just pretending!”
Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower and a former Rand Corporation military analyst, warned the, at the time, Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, during his negotiations with power elites in 2015, while they were curbing excess democracy in the small European country [101].
Indeed, upon reflecting on the record of Ellsberg’s ruling class, Phillips’ global power elites, Transnational Capitalist Class, or Madison’s “more capable set of men”, we detect a selfish, myopic, covetous, irrational, extremely powerful, and a highly destructive strain of behavior. One among whose many negative consequences are the climate and nuclear crises. A set of questions arises from the conclusions. Besides real-life examples we went over, does any academic research support the conclusions listed above? If so, are the TCC naturally, personality-wise, inclined that way, or is the environment to blame? Perhaps both? How do they compare with others? Let’s check in reverse order.
Studies inquiring into behavioral differences between the more and less affluent folks indeed uncovered interesting distinctions.
Upper-class individuals are likelier to cheat in an experimental game setting in order to increase personal gains (Aquino et.al. 2009) [102]. They are also likelier to break traffic laws, lie in negotiations, take valuables from others, and have a positive opinion of unethical behavior at work (Piff et.al. 2012) [103]. Elevated status brings ease of access to resources and with it less dependence on others resulting in a more self-centered social cognition and behavior (Piff, Keltner 2009) [104]. Besides being less cognizant of others, the affluent are worse at identifying others’ emotions (Kraus, Cote 2010) [105], more disengaged in social settings (Kraus, Keltner 2009) [106], less altruistic (Cheng et.al. 2010) [107] and less charitable [108]. Lack of concern for the welfare of others was linked to strengthening of unethical impulses (Haidt, 2003) [109] and greed (Wang & Murnighan, 2011) [110].
Those who put high value on money are more asocial, and are likelier to experience mental stress if they also cherish family, due to dissonance in valuing money and family (others) at the same time - two opposing sets of values (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002) [111]. The affluent have a more positive view of greed (Piff et al. 2010) [112]; people motivated by greed are found to be likelier to forsake ethical principles (Shklar JN, 1990; Wang & Murnighan, 2011, Steinel, De Dreu, 2004) [113]; positive valuation of greed was a robust predictor of unethical behavior. Greed also has a strong linear correlation to education in economics (Marwell, Ames 1981; Frank, Gilovich, Regan 1993; Wang, Malhotra, Murnighan, 2011; Ghoshal 2005; Folger, Salvador 2008) [114]. Positive change in attitude towards greed occurred even after taking a single economics course. Upper-class individuals are likelier to be exposed to economics courses and for longer periods of time. Economics students are likelier to view interactions with others transactionally, through cost-benefit analysis, and are prone to assuming others will cheat in social, economic, and other transactions, leading to more self-centered behavior, nearly matching that of Homo Economicus (fully self-consumed, no regard for others) (Frank, Gilivich, Regan 1993; Carter & Irons, 1991) [115].
Culture was also a factor. Affluent families tend to transfer materialistic values and goals to their children (Bourdieu 1984) [116], which then translate in the choice of schools, professions, and circles of friends with similar values who in turn further reinforce and perpetuate those attitudes (Fraley, Griffin, & Roisman, 2012; Kelley & De Graaf, 1997; Gneezy, 2005; Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008; Schauer & Zeckhauser, 2009; Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004) [117], in what at that point become class standards and class awareness. A phenomenon we have seen in the formation of the TCC. Differences in larger groups - tribal (Henrich et al. 2005) [118] and national, were also detected. Americans, for example, stand out among all nations in how high they value individualism [119].
Quite an indictment from the academy. But far from a complete picture.
At this point it may be tempting to conclude that those who make it into the economic elite are inherently different and more prone to materialism and selfishness, which would explain differences in attitudes and behavior just described. However, a series of studies which tested for priming “regular” people, produced some sobering results.
In a random sampling of subjects, even the subtlest of primers towards positive valuation of greed, material goods, and power, yielded unethical and self-absorbed behavior. For example, a study found that mere presence of money in the room led people to cheat (Gino, Pierce 2009) [120]. When made to think about and write three benefits of greed, those who had acted ethically and had held negative opinion of greed up to that point, exhibited similarly unethical behavior as those who thought greed was good to begin with (Piff et. al. 2012). Hearing a short statement about benefits of selfishness led to positive valuation of greed (Wang, Malhotra, Mugnighan 2011) [121]. Similar change occurred after subjects played a single game of Monopoly. Even after just being exposed to a screen saver with pictures of cash, people turned noticeably more self-absorbed (Mead, Goode and Vohs, 2008) [122].
Besides money and greed, similarly potent in negatively changing “regular” people, was the influence of power. Placing random subjects in positions of power was found to quickly and radically alter their behavior (Domhoff, 2012) [123]. Power increased stereotyping (Fiske, 1993; Goodwin, Gubin, Fiske, & Yzerbyt, 2000) [124], dehumanization of others (Gwinn, Judd, & Park, 2013; Lammers & Stapel, 2011) [125], and infidelity (Lammers, Stoker, Jordan, Pollmann, & Stapel, 2011) [126]. Those given more power in experiments soon started failing to perceive the perspective of others, condemned cheating while cheating themselves (Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan and Galinsky 2009; Galinsky et al. 2006; Lammers, Stapel and Galinsky 2010) [127], distanced themselves from others, and objectified them for personal gain. Interestingly, those with less power quite quickly became more differential, avoided expressing their true attitudes, and suffered impairments in their thinking abilities (Keltner, Gruenfeld, Galinsky, and Kraus 2010, Smith 2006; Smith, Jostmann, Galinsky, and Dijk 2008) [128]. William Domhoff gives credence to the old saying: “Power tends to corrupt, with absolute power corrupting absolutely”. (Domhoff, 2012).
We can, therefore, draw some crucial conclusions about the human nature, valuation of material goods (greed) and positions of power. Valuing material goods and power, something the affluent are more likely to do, leads to increase in immoral, asocial, destructive behavior. While dispositional (personal) attribution does play a role, a stronger correlation appears to exist between the intensity and the length of positive priming via the environment for these values (both cultural and structural) and the consequent pathological social behavior.
It is very much worth noting that none of the studies cited examined the very top of the wealth and power pyramid, the 0.01%, or the TCC (notoriously difficult to do). Some researchers deduced economic status of subjects simply based on the value of their vehicles (e.g. Piff et al. 2012). Others used similar means. Therefore, the studies that did involve wealth considerations, generally measured attitudes of folks only somewhat more affluent than the average, and in settings only mildly more conducive to positive valuation of greed. Nothing nearly approaching the environment at the very top of corporations and governments. It is reasonable to expect that TCC as the elite group would exhibit additionally amplified socially malignant behavior, thanks to and in proportion to their outsized wealth, extremely materialist culture which they inhabit, the power they enjoy, as well as the length of exposure to these primers. However, even if future studies of the 0.01% were to show no significant difference in the degree of asocial behavior between them and “regular” folks primed for greed, theirs is immensely more consequential in view of the power governments, and especially corporations wield.
We’ve already seen what court records, executive statements, and whistleblower testimonies reveal about the profit-obsessed corporate culture. Let us take a look at the academic record.
Corporate culture
Corporations do profoundly imprint their culture on employees as well as the society (Frank et al, 1993; Wang & Murnighan, 2011; Kets de Vries & Miller 1986; Fu et al. 2010 ) [129]. Additionally, US law mandates maximization of shareholder return (Winkler 2018), while the extremely financialized economy centered around quarterly reports highly favors that those returns be in the short-term (Daguerre 2014; Murnighan 1991) [130]. Pitting firms against each other in an intense competition for investors’ money (Peetz, 2019; O’Connor, Priem, Coombs and Gilley 2006) [131]. Further exacerbating the pursuit for short-term profit are the options-based structure of CEO pay (DeYoung, Peng, Yan, 2013; Martin & Davis 2010) [132], and the average chief executive tenure which is only 4 years in the US. CEO domination over corporate boards and ultimately corporate decisions further facilitates achieving the goal (Northrop 2013; Monks 2014; Khanna, Kim, Lu, 2015) [133]. Given this priming structure, unethical corporate myopia shouldn’t be surprising. Ethics and profit maximization are, indeed, confirmed to be inversely proportionate (Jain 1999; Shaw 2012) [134].
What all this means in practice we have seen via examples tobacco, chemical, aeronautical, auto, and other companies provided earlier in the text. Or as Emily Northrop generalizes via a hypothetical example (Northrop 2013): “Consider a firm that has an unprecedented accident that generates some toxic solid waste. One of the firm’s options is to pay a considerable sum to treat this waste in a way that is consistent with government environmental regulations. A second option is to illegally dump the waste and pay a relatively small fine that the firm knows it will be assessed… a for-profit firm may… decide to treat the waste… a firm committed to maximizing its profit will necessarily decide otherwise. It will carefully weigh the cost… It will elect to dump the waste and pay the fine.”
We can now begin to understand that when the TCC and their corporations destroy the environment, poison people, or modernize the nuclear arsenal, they are doing what very likely others would under the same set of incentives. Our self-destructiveness is right under the surface waiting for the right conditions to be expressed.
The psychology of greed
As the studies have shown, positive valuation of greed stands out as the principal reason behind unethical behavior of subjects. Its central position requires further analysis.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines greed as: “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed” [135]. The “excessive desire” could be for anything. Psychologist Neel Burton explains in more detail: “Greed is the disordered desire for more than is decent or deserved, not for the greater good but for one’s own selfish interest, and at the detriment of others and society at large. Greed can be for anything, but is most commonly for food, money, possessions, power, fame, status, attention, admiration, and sex”. It is a very powerful urge which is “primitive and democratic”, and characterized by certain outcomes. “Deception is a common outcome of greed, as are envy and spite. Greed is also associated with negative psychological states such as stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and despair, and with maladaptive behaviours such as gambling, scavenging, hoarding, trickery, and theft. By overriding reason, compassion, and love, greed loosens family and community ties and undermines the bonds and values upon which society is built” [136].
Psychologist Leon F. Seltzer adds that greed is a powerful addiction which, by definition, can never be fully satisfied and confirms that it is characterized by pathological behavior: “of all the things one might be addicted to, nothing tops the greed-laden pursuit of wealth in its audacity, manipulativeness, and gross insensitivity to the needs and feelings of others. Not to mention its extreme, short-sighted, irresponsible covetousness. Ask a multi-millionaire or billionaire so afflicted… and you’ll discover that their “mega-fortune quest” really has no end point.” According to Seltzer greed addicts “aren’t in the professions of creative arts, but in business {my emphasis}: entrepreneurs, investors, speculators, lenders, CEOs. And most often their successes contribute little or nothing to society. Rather, their undertakings are cunningly contrived to transfer money out of the pockets of others and into their own. Exceedingly competitive and aggressive, they’ll take ruthless advantage of every opportunity to turn a profit—and not shy away from turning against others in the process” [137].
At this juncture it is worth bringing up the influence business, (Seltzer’s term for what we’ve been calling corporations) and business values wield over the US and other governments and international institutions.
Greed, the inordinate desire for more, clearly lurks in us all. It is part and parcel of being human. Whether we’d like to admit it or not.
Or as Freud said, “The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who in the face of all his experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?” (Freud 1934) [138].
From Benjamin Franklin’s angle: “There are two passions which have powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money” [139].
Bertrand Russell recognizes four main desires of man, “acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power”. Which he sees as quite encompassing and powerful. “All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle“. Moreover, the four desires are “infinite… can never be fully gratified, and… would keep him {a human} restless even in Paradise” [140].
CONCLUSION
Some of the worst, most destructive human behavior arises as a consequence of the innate, inordinate desire for assertiveness (domination, aggression) or greed. Manipulativeness, insensitivity to others, selfishness, aggression, covetousness, short-sightedness, lying, cheating, violence, murder, genocide, ecocide. The vice lurks in us all. While personal predisposition does play a role, evidence seems to suggests that the environment – prevailing organizational and societal values - are more consequential in awakening, and exacerbating it.
Evidence further suggests that we have high sensitivity to negative stimuli - even the slightest positive primers towards greed can alter our behavior. Capitalist institutions and states take this priming to an extreme. The most powerful collective entities in the world, corporations and governments, led by those in the United States, filter through folks the best at feeding their “inordinate desire for more” and install them as leaders. They lavishly reward greedy behavior, glorify it, and spread the idea that it is good to be greedy throughout the rest of society, to the expense of ethical, altruistic behavior. Among the collateral damage of this state-capitalist system of human character flaws, profit-oriented institutions, subservient governments, and their prevailing unethical values are climate change and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The destructiveness of this nexus became so obvious that it is concerning even the gatekeepers of capitalism.
“Corporate greed exploded beyond anything that could have been imagined in 1990” – Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, 1979-1987 said in 2010 [141]
“An infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community”, because “the avenues to express greed have grown so enormously”, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, 1987-2006 [142]
The 0.01%, those who run the greed-based capitalist world-system, undergirded by the corporate form, untrammeled movement of capital, and unobstructed access to resources - what is often called the free market - may indeed end history if left to their devices.
Even Karl Polanyi agrees: “{Free market} could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.” [143]
What I laid out is a framework through which, I believe, much of what is wrong with society, including the existential crises must be understood. It should be applied not only to the solutions for the threats of climate change and nuclear annihilation, but also to a future social arrangement designed to control the instinct for domination and aggressiveness; thereby preventing an otherwise inevitable rise of the next existential crisis. In that vein, structures of extreme accumulation of power, massive governments and corporations must be dismantled and democratized.
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