Let’s compare billionaire capitalism to other challenges our people have faced: fascism, communism and radical Islam. What’s different about billionaire capitalism?
First, few people are explicitly saying that billionaires should have most or all of the wealth in society, and all of the political power. Yet the other three totalitarian movements we have met and defeated were quite clear about their beliefs and goals.
Second, no billionaires are willing to die to advance billionaire capitalism. They believe in their cause, but not with the same passion and commitment as an SS tank commander, or a KGB agent, or an ISIS suicide bomber. Only where their narcissism is so strong that they believe in their own immortality are they willing to take risks that tens of millions of ordinary people took in WWII.
Third, there are few non-billionaires who genuinely believe in the goals of billionaire capitalism. There are those—like bankers in the Bahamas or Putin’s tailor—who believe that billionaire capitalism is good for them personally, but only a small minority buy into the goals. Yes, there are libertarians who say that they believe in the methods of billionaire capitalism—tax cuts, elimination of public education, old-age pensions, unions and the minimum wage—but they ignore the fact that these methods will result in a society that would make Nicaragua look like Denmark. In other words, they deny that the goals are in fact the goals.
So why is billionaire capitalism on the march, why has it shown so much power in the world since 1980? Billionaire capitalism has the distinct advantage of camouflage—it appears (in Russia) as Russian nationalism, in Saudi Arabia as Moslem piety, in the US as resistance to social change. Billionaire capitalism is the cuckoo of modern politics, laying its eggs in the nest of others. This camouflage works so well that people fail to see that Trump and Kushner are drawn to Russia and Saudi Arabia largely because of a shared ideology, which is pretty obvious when you think about it. (Part of the ideology is that those in power should acquire wealth for themselves and their supporters, of course.)
But our defense against their camouflage is that I am writing this essay, and you are reading it. A partial understanding of billionaire capitalism clarifies one’s thinking to a remarkable extent. For example, the following article can’t be properly understood without some insight into billionaire capitalism:
If you understand billionaire capitalism, you know this group will almost certainly go nowhere. “The rule of law comes first,” says Professor Orin S. Kerr. But of course it does not—the concentration of wealth comes first, and Trump’s disregard for the rule of law stems from his (correct) understanding of this basic truth of our times. No matter what, the concentration of wealth comes first.
An alcoholic may speak convincingly of the transcendent power of romantic love and of human dignity; he may quote Shakespeare and Euripides and Yeats, but despite all his fine words, alcohol always comes first. And it’s just like that with billionaire capitalism: all these exquisitely educated Federalist Society lawyers believe they live in a world that Madison and Jefferson created, but they are profoundly deluded. And if they doubt that, all they have to do is propose a 1% tax on billionaires to improve education—a measure certainly consistent with Madison’s and Jefferson’s vision—and see what happens to their grant money and their careers.
They are welcome to their federalist and aristocratic pretensions only so long as they defend, directly or indirectly, the continuing concentration of wealth. And they dimly recognize this:
Conservative critics of the Trump administration have been reluctant to speak out, Professor Kerr said, adding that the new group hopes to change that. “There are a lot of people who are concerned who are keeping quiet,” he said.
That silence may be rooted in careerism and fear of retaliation, Professor Adler said.
“This administration, in nominations, is not interested in people who have been critical of it,” Professor Adler said. “There is a belief that there is an element of vindictiveness in the administration that casts a shadow.”
Careerism? Goodness, what sort of careers are we talking about? Careers as judges, perhaps? Law professors? Federal prosecutors? Or lawyers who hope to make partner in conservative law firms?
It sounds like they are describing a system already partly corrupted—and Trump couldn’t have done this all by himself, either.
And anyway, the “rule of law” does not exist in a vacuum. It can only “come first” if the laws are generally regarded as legitimate by the people. But laws enacted by a minority party that rules by gerrymandering, voter suppression and collusion with Russia cannot be seen as legitimate or even useful, as Republican Congressional candidates found in the last election when they attempted to run on the tax cut they passed in late 2017. The American people rightly viewed this as just another giveaway to the very rich. Even Republican voters didn’t want to hear about it.
The people saw a major act of Congress as a scam. That’s what loss of legitimacy looks like.
And coming back to the weakness of billionaire capitalism, that’s a key point. It wants to take over institutions that have legitimacy—like the courts, Congress and law schools—but it inevitably destroys that same legitimacy. The Federalist Society is part of the effort to take over the courts and the law schools, but they have to sell that effort as something idealistic, as getting back to the original intent of the Founders. So they put on their powdered wigs and talk about the rule of law and individual rights, and it means nothing, basically. The individuals may be sincere enough, but the Federalist Society’s purpose is to further the concentration of wealth through a takeover of the courts and law schools, and there will be no dark money to support any tut-tutting about Trump putting children in concentration camps or suppressing the investigation into Russian attacks on our elections.
And of course there will be reprisals. Like every unjust system, the Billionaire State must rely on force.
The ceiling of potential public support is another weakness. Billionaire capitalism wants to rule like Nero, but it cannot say publicly that the 400 richest families in this country should own almost everything and rule autocratically over what’s left, because no one outside those families and their support staff (judges, politicians, pundits), are in favor of that. To say “we are the 99%” is an understatement—1% of the country is 3.3 million people, and the billionaires would be extremely lucky if 250,000 people truly supported their agenda. Their very objective—the extreme concentration of wealth and power—makes it impossible that many people would be drawn to their movement through rational self-interest.
Therefore, the billionaire movement has to talk about their usual grab bag of issues: race, gayness, feminism, guns, abortion, immigration, etc. Their political movement is beginning to resemble a jalopy built from scrap parts—as soon as they fix one thing, something else breaks. They abandoned a nationalistic foreign policy, which used to be a mainstay of conservative politicians, because that would mean confronting Russia and Saudi Arabia which are brother billionaire regimes—and also because a strong military consumes large sums money that should be concentrated in the hands of the few. (Trump isn’t bought in on reducing military spending, because he believes that projecting strength is vital to his political appeal). They abandoned gay marriage because public opinion turned against them, and they wanted to abandon immigration because it was alienating Hispanics, but they had to bring it back to keep the rage alive. Which, as we saw with the Kavanaugh hearings, is never far from the surface.
The fact that they sometimes abandon an issue and shift their attention elsewhere is evidence of both weakness and strength. The weakness part is easy to explain: they are like someone who keeps adjusting their grip on a tool because they are unsure of their own strength or skill. By contrast, neither Putin nor the Saudis change focus in this way. They may project their power differently (in the Crimea, in Yemen), and they may pretend to loosen control (as with women driving cars in Saudi Arabia), but their propaganda line is generally stable. They don’t jettison entire important issues, the way the Republicans did with gay marriage.
But it is also a strength to be able to move with changing tides. Or to return to the cuckoo analogy, if there are no blackbirds in the neighborhood, they will lay their eggs in robins’ nests instead.
With all the advances they’ve made since 1980, do they feel triumphant? Secure? Based on how aggressively Russian oligarchs, Chinese billionaires and Saudi princes move money out of their home countries it appears they do not. A number of small countries, including Cyprus and the Caymans, have built their economies around this phenomenon, and the real estate markets in some Western cities—London, Vancouver—have been significantly affected. And like an iceberg, most of this process is probably invisible. In 2015 I read that a fall in the yuan was attributed to wealthy Chinese moving money out of the country…once they get it out, they usually convert it to some safe currency like the yen, the dollar or the Swiss franc, and a lot of people doing that at once will drive down the value of the yuan relative to other currencies. That is a lot of money smuggling, to affect international exchange rates.
They may fear other billionaires, or they may fear the people, but in either case this phenomenon betrays a lack of confidence in the stability of billionaire regimes. The idea that Putin, for instance, has tens of billions of dollars squirreled away overseas—as the Panama papers indicate—is revealing.
I wonder where he imagines he would find refuge, if the Russian people drove him out? Does he have a condo in Tuscaloosa?
But in confronting the billionaire movement, all we can do is follow the advice of Cyrus the Great, when he said that the duty of a man is to “draw the bow and tell the truth.” We must struggle, and we must clearly state what we struggle against.
The Socialist Investor 