The Illusion of choice: Conservatives, Liberals and the real Washington Consensus

As a British citizen I can’t really imagine our two main political parties going at each other on fundamental moral issues such as abortion, the use of torture, gay marriage or the death penalty. In recent decades, the Conservatives have become more ‘liberal’ and cosmopolitan on such matters, in public at least. Heck they even listen to ‘rebellious’ pop music chums. Not so in America. Conservatives and Liberals over on the other side of the pond often have egregious, emotive debates about just such topics and the polarisation seems extreme at first glance. But we all know appearances can be deceptive. Dig a little deeper and it’s quite easy to see that those on both sides are dancing to the same tune. 

I’m not talking about the fact that pernicious patriotism and war-mongering have proved just as high up Obama’s list of priorities as Bush’s. I’m not even talking about Obama’s frankly embarrassing u-turn on Guantanamo Bay. The crucial similarity between Conservatives and Liberals is that they both concur with the somewhat aptly named, ‘Washington Consensus’. This is basically an economic outlook which favours neoliberal policies both at home and abroad. It encompasses free-trade, open markets, heavy privatisation, de-regulation and generally low taxes for the super-wealthy behind the facade of job creation. In the American context, the domestic and international components of these policies are often contradictory.

As the beacon of free-market capitalism, successive US governments of either orientation have been keen to roll out this model to the ‘developing’ world (hereafter let’s call it the two-thirds world as two thirds of the world’s population lives here and it has no history of colonialism or racial inferiority attached to it). With the help of institutions such as the IMF, WTO and the World Bank, the US is willing to offer economic aid to struggling nations, particularly in South America and Africa. All they have to do in return is open up their markets to foreign investment, adopt a model of free trade and ensure that their labour movements don’t kick up too much of a stink. This invariably leads to the exploitation of the natural resources of the two-thirds world country involved with a hand-full of indigenous middle-men getting rich in process; a fact lauded as proof of progress. Or worse, as was the case in Bolivia, where the water system was privatised by US company, Bechtel, in the name of ‘efficiency’. They increased the cost prohibitively leaving thousands without running water and with little improvement in the service.

At home on the other hand, both Republican and Democratic governments are happy to renege on the ‘free-trade’ policies they so forcibly promote abroad, often engaging in protectionism to help domestic industries, the most notable being agriculture which gets considerable subsidies. Regulation and taxes on corporations are kept to a bare minimum with the bogey-man of capital flight, that is, big business moving their operations abroad and taking their jobs with them, used to justify such policies. The reason that capital flight is even possible is thanks to the very same ‘Washington Consensus’ policies being adopted over the last 30 years in the first place.

It would be easy to claim that Conservatives and Liberals in the US are fairly indistinct because ultimately they are both mercy to the market and other economic forces and are therefore severely restricted in what they can do. This is a traditional, economically determinist, Marxist analysis that asserts that the economic determines the political. In fact it is much more complicated than that simple one-way causality. A more sophisticated analysis would be to say that economic, political and cultural forces in society are involved in a symbiotic relationship, each complementing and affecting the other in myriad ways. This relationship is unbalanced though, quite heavily towards the interests of capital so that the politics in the US never call into question the underlying economic system and the hegemonic culture similarly reifies the status quo.

This analysis allows for degrees of variation in the political and cultural spheres but due to the imbalance this always tips in favour of capitalist interests. Essentially, the preferences of corporate elites (economic), members of government and the state (political) and the mass media (cultural) all interlock and share a common interest in maintaining the status quo that keeps them all in positions of privilege and power. Not only that, they also run in the same social and professional circles; business and government ‘experts’ speak on the news, ex-government officials get on the boards of large companies and corporate elites are handed positions in the government apparatus by their friends in congress. Ultimately the media, big business and both Conservatives and Liberals share the same broad class interests. One only has to look at the last Presidential campaign to see that both sides represent the interests of capital, with a combined expenditure of roughly $2.4 Billion, with the more ‘Liberal’ side actually spending more than their more ‘Conservative’ counterparts. 

The pretence of democracy in America, and much of the ‘One-third World’ is a major facet of the dominant capitalist ideology and culture; it placates the masses by giving them the illusion of choice. This is combined with the constant cultural reification of the status quo in the media, another illusion of choice defended by the logic of supply and demand. These illusions keep the general populace compliant, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, so successfully that many will virulently defend the system that oppresses them. The purely cosmetic differences between Conservatives and Liberals in America help give credibility to the illusion of choice but make no mistake, those on both sides want things to stay the way they are on the issues that really matter. They want the rich to keep dominating the poor and the poor to keep thanking them for being such benevolent leaders. The real Washington Consensus then, is between corporate elites, politicians and the media at the expense of everyone else and the sooner we realise this the sooner we can wage a proper fight back...

From Apathy to Activism: as Easy as ABC?

For at least the last two-decades, British politics has gone through a malaise. Notable exceptions, such as the million-strong demonstration against the Iraq War aside, the period has been something of a political dark age; far removed from the turbulent battles of the 1980s or the explosion of free expression in the 1960s. Public appetite for all things political has dried up; treated with indifference at best and unmasked contempt at worst. And this is by no means an exclusively British phenomenon. It seems to be an inherent feature of so called ‘Western Democracy’ that politics is treated with abject apathy by the vast majority of the population.    

Ruminations on the causes of this widespread lethargy have been the life works of many a political thinker, but few explained the phenomenon with greater clarity and insight than Antonio Gramsci, an Italian philosopher imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist State. It was his belief that the continued success of late capitalism and the concurrent inertia of working class movements could be explained by a process he termed hegemony. The hegemony of the ruling classes means that subordinate groups actually consent to their own exploitation. The reason for this consent lies in the effectiveness of bourgeois culture and ideology which is built upon the premises of insatiable consumerism, profit over people and the illusion of democratic choice.

These tenets of consumer capitalism saturate all aspects of everyday life, oozing from the pores of mainstream art, literature and film and reinforced constantly by the mass media. This is a fluid process which absorbs dissident elements, commodifies and nullifies them before amalgamating them into the status quo. This hegemony is so effective that the majority in these societies internalise elite interests as their own and they become ‘common sense’ unquestionable truths. The few who can see through the malaise rightly treat the political process with suspicion or apathy: for all major political parties are but puppets to the invisible hand of the market and indistinct from each other in all but name, colour and logo.

It is wrong for those on the true left to bemoan the apathy of the masses towards ‘big P Politics’ because given the circumstances it is a perfectly rational and intelligent choice. To engage the masses with politics we need to reconfigure what is meant by politics, make it relevant to the masses and demonstrate that it can produce real life benefits in local communities. What follow are three steps that must be taken to reinvigorate the general populace in their thirst for politics:

A) A)   Focus on politics in local communities, by local communities:   

Politicians are out of touch with normal people and few believe the official political processes really represent them. Progressive forces must shed the cloistered confines of Party Politics and take democracy back to the grass-roots level. For too long the left has abandoned working class communities to extreme right wing groups such as the British National Party (UK), Tea Party (USA) and The Front National (France) who are willing to get their hands dirty and engage with these communities. Local groups that are independent of the state are a great way of opening up lines of dialogue within communities.

Social centres and squatted spaces can be used to host events which will aid integration and rather than being overtly political, work more effectively when gently promoting a shared responsibility for the local area, a sense of mutual benefit and community spirit. The wider the appeal the better, family friendly events can be interspersed with workshops or performances that would interest young adults and so on. Decisions should always be taken democratically and it is important community members have a sense of ownership in whatever the group may be. A shared sense of purpose and realistic goals are useful but community groups must remain versatile and able to adapt to changing needs and membership. Whilst the focus should be local, thanks to the internet such groups and centres can share ideas with similar groups in communities both nationally and internationally, creating a loose, decentralised network of progressive forces, free from hierarchical power structures.

Putting the community at the centre of our understanding of politics should be an effective gateway to wider debate and discussion about the bigger political questions globally, even amongst sections of the community who have been apathetic towards such concerns in the past. Whilst this idea is all about the community providing services for itself outside of the state apparatus, it should not be confused with the top-down, back-door privatisation of David Cameron’s “Big Society”.

B)  B)    Make political protests have a wider appeal

Whilst work in local communities must be the bread and butter of any progressive movement, it cannot truly succeed without demonstrations of the power and unity of such movements in the form of protests, marches, occupations and strikes. Such events are essential both for demonstrating the will of the people and galvanising the members of the movement. With the mass demonstrations across the Middle-East and North-Africa these are certainly exciting times for bottom-up peoples’ movements. In Britain, the student protests seem to have awoken much of the youth’s dormant political consciousness.

The success of the student protests lies in the appeal they have had to the younger generation, not just University students but school kids as well. What self-respecting teenager wouldn’t want to skip class to take to the streets, chanting and listening to music with their classmates and thousands of others? The group UKUncut are becoming well known for their creative and engaging protest actions which vary from comedy bail-ins in high-street banks to hospitals set up in chemists and story-telling outside tax-dodging retailers. Capturing the imagination of the wider public and making protests accessible and entertaining is vital to broadening the movement.

Organisers of protests, especially in the ‘Western’ world need to be acutely aware that the protest-goers of today have multiple identities and protests must be varied and dynamic to reflect this. Gone are the days of card-carrying socialists and virulent feminists; I for one am an Anarchist-Communist-Feminist who is also very concerned about the environment and much more in-between. A healthy combination of marching, chanting and music along with less traditional forms of protest such as occupation, direct action and artistic expression can all come together to create a protest movement as diverse as its participants.

C)    C)  Make Your Own Media and Contribute to the Counter-Culture

If Gramsci was right and the continued prosperity of capitalism and concurrent political apathy of the masses is due to the success of the hegemonic culture then we need to fight fire with fire. It is essential that we use our creative outlets to propagate a counter-culture to the mass-produced, glossily packaged and pro-capitalist mainstream. If you are an artist question accepted aesthetics; a film-maker tell a story of resistance; a writer use humour to poke fun at the establishment; a journalist give a voice to the voiceless; a musician make music for the revolution! The richer and more diverse the counter-culture becomes, the alternative it presents will seem more tenable.

The mass media is owned by the state and big businesses and as such it is of little surprise that it reinforces their interests, not only in the stories it does tell but also in what is left out. Thanks to technological advances more average people now have the means to record and disseminate their own media and it is essential we make the most of the tools available to us. Writing a blog on current affairs or uploading a video taken on a mobile phone of police brutality may not be seen by millions like the circulation of the top media outlets but the more widespread alternative media becomes the better. Websites such as Indymedia provide a platform for ordinary people to give their own eye-witness accounts on what really happens at events and allows the people to decide what is newsworthy. When these accounts are corroborated it is frightening, if unsurprising, to see the amount of distortion and lies that are disseminated by ‘respected’ outlets such as the BBC and CNN. Even if you do not have the will or the means to be a content producer, you can contribute by posting links to good articles (like this one!) or footage on social networking sites and helping to spread the message.

Whilst capitalist hegemony is at times an overwhelmingly daunting enemy in the battle for the hearts and minds of ‘the masses’ there is certainly good reason for cautious optimism. The sea of mass movements sweeping across the Middle-East and North Africa, along with the torrent of civil unrest at austerity in ‘the West’ certainly seems to suggest the tides are changing. Whilst we face a different challenge in ‘the West’, if we employ a combination of the three suggestions I have posited I am confident we can begin to make progress. Noam Chomsky says: “You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions”, so use this as a starting point. Think of ways that you can implement the ideas suggested on a personal level and spread the message: local solutions, global solidarity!