In My View

The America we don’t know

A young American political science researcher, in Kolkata these days to look at the changing Left politics in India, has charged me with great dereliction as a researcher, analyst and a writer. She has charged me with being “value laden” in the way I look at the USA and a failure in correctly reading the objective reality of the country. My new friend would have walked out of a perfectly agreeable meal, had I not smoothened her frayed temper with some alcohol, all paid for by me.

But the charge is too serious for me to douse it in alcoholic fumes. And I am aware many of the hapless readers on whom this column is regularly inflicted might hold the same view as tha ,of my friend. So I take this opportunity to clarify my position on the United States of America. They can be defined as three broad precepts. Each of them would be elucidated here:

(1) The USA has moved far away from the vision of the Pilgrim Fathers who landed at Massachusetts after braving a tortuous crossing of the Atlantic, imbued with the notions of European enlightenment. Their notions were embedded in the American Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the new nation and the American Bill of Rights.

I argue that the seeds of their beliefs, to be buried by the later generations, were implanted at the moment the first settlers had chosen a Bishop as their first governor. That had opened the door for what America would become in the way its religious beliefs shaped its societies and cultures.

(2) Free enterprise capitalism has eaten away the vitals of the nation. It has created an unstated and unacknowledged class system that militates against the basic tenet of the so-called “American Dream” - based upon the belief of equal opportunities for all to achieve economic and social mobility.

I argue with evidence how the decks are loaded against the largest mass of people in America to rise to the same riches and well being depicted by the media, who are in cahoots with the Capitalists. This image management ensures that Capital never falls short of Labour, as immigrants pour in, enticed by the pull of the ‘American Dream.’

(3) The American dichotomy seen in embracing aggressive individualism on the one hand; and encouraging communitarianism on the other is, reflective of its crisis of confidence about the role of the State. While the individual does not find a reason for the State to interfere in its affairs, it still needs the collective for support in crises.

I argue that this phenomenon has made Americans apathetic towards seeking Systemic changes even in moments of great turmoil like in the present.

Moralist idealism had remained the high-water mark of the vision of the New World that the founders of America had sought to propagate. But as Giovanni Arrighi, a leading political-economist and sociologist has suggested the early American settlers were not any different from the dynastic or oligarchic capitalist rulers who ruled their previous homelands.

Lacking in the geo-strategic advantage of a “continent-sized island” – nestling between two mammoth oceans – the European rulers’ commanded capital to gain overseas territory; or commanded territory to gain overseas capital. The American settlers conducted the same process internally.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, the “natives” had to be “removed” to make way for its “own people.” And all that was not just an exercise in crafting lebensraum as the German territorialist rulers expounded. But as Arrighi notes, Max Weber relating Franklin had stated that the latter was in favour of relentless “economising” in Massachusetts so that “more and more” money could be earned.

All this was to be done with an evangelical notion of making the world a better place. Reinhold Neibuhr was a proponent of ‘realism’ in the US politics. He was a pastor and a theologian His worlview was expressed in these words, “The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”

Slavoj Zizek, one of contemporary times’ most influential philosophers has recently contributed in a book which details how the triumph of political conservatism in America since the 1980s has paralleled the growth of Christian evangelicalism. Hillary Clinton has been quoted as saying to have plans of carrying a copy of the American Constitution to White House if she’s elected as the US president.

Walking from a night-club a few months ago on a wintry Washington evening, I was discussing with a young American colleague of the East West Centre, Hawai’i, poverty in America. She had actually spied on me chatting up a ‘home-less’ (beggar for us Indians) outside the club. Her reaction was a classical exposition of how average Americans saw poverty. She said that the poor people don’t want to work hard; because they were sure of getting regular meals from the Church charities.

A study on the same subject by some American foundations like the Annie E Casey Foundation and the Northwest Foundation draws a picture of utter despair. According to one article, if the current poverty line in America for a family of four is raised from $ 20,000 to a more realistic $ 40,000, the total number of people below poverty would rise to 90 million.

A recent Brookings Institution study under the rubric of its Economic Mobility Project, also favoured by the ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation and American Enterprises Institute has noted, “Many Americans are even unconcerned about the historically high degree of economic inequality that exists in the United States today, because they believe that big gaps between the rich and the poor and, increasingly, between the rich and the middle class, are offset by a high degree of economic mobility.

Economic inequality, in this view, is a fact of life and not all that disturbing as long as there is constant movement out of the bottom and a fair shot at making it to the top. In short, much of what the public believes about the fairness of the American economy is dependent on the generally accepted notion that there is a high degree of mobility in our society.”

This study has concluded that, “All Americans do not have an equal shot at getting ahead, and one’s chances are largely dependent on one’s parents’ economic position.”

One final thought is expressed by the other poverty study that has been quoted here. In a search for solutions to the menace of poverty in the USA, it says, “Private enterprise produces employment wages and wealth, but our public structures are what facilitate the conduct of business, providing framework necessary for markets to thrive. Key public systems also help protect people against the risks of a free-market economy and provide the infrastructure for economic opportunity such as public and higher education systems, tasks that are beyond the purview of any individual.” Gosh! It even says Adam Smith was wrong when he held “that public interest is nothing but the sum of private interests; that government is not a partner in prosperity but antithetical to it.”

I hope my young friend would not call me value-laden in my judgment. I hope she buys me a few.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with the Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in