Culture War Economics

How did America end up with a far right Christian fundamentalist Supreme Court that has already overturned women's right to have an abortion? Could this be the end-result of the red versus blue culture war? I believe it is.

If, after reading this post, you think me guilty of class-reductionism, you're right. I'm a Marxist after all and agree for the most part with his analysis and criticism of capitalism, and the class struggle resulting from the private ownership of the means of production. Criticizing capitalism is a lot easier today than it was even just 30 years ago, especially after the global economical meltdown of 2007 / 2008 and Bernie Sanders' meteoric rise in the 2016 and 2020 American presidential election campaigns. Citizens are not waking up to capitalism's built-in flaws when they see the rich get richer in normal times, but begin to get suspicious when they see that gap growing even faster during economic crashes. How can it be that billionaires double their wealth during a pandemic in which everyone else has to tighten their belts?

This growing gap and the resulting growing discontent among the 99 percent is responsible, in my mind at least, for a resurgence of class-consciousness among the working class, it shines a bright light on the class struggle described by Marx. Most people however are not familiar with the dialectical and historical materialism on which Marx's criticism of capitalism is built, and their implications for not just economics, but society as a whole, including its culture and politics. Maybe Michael Parenti explained this best in "Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism":

Marxists understand that a class society is not just a divided society but one ruled by class power, with the state playing the crucial role in maintaining the existing class structure. Marxism might be considered a "holistic" science in that it recognizes the links between various components of the social system. Capitalism is not just an economic system but a political and cultural one as well, an entire social order. When we study any part of that order, be it the news or entertainment media, criminal justice, Congress, defense spending, overseas military intervention, intelligence agencies, campaign finance, science and technology, education, medical care, taxation, transportation, housing, or whatever, we will see how the particular part reflects the nature of the whole. Its unique dynamic often buttresses and is shaped by the larger social system -especially the system's overriding need to maintain the prerogatives of the corporate class.
_{source: Michael Parenti - "Blackshirts and Reds" (PDF)}

A culture is shaped by its methods of producing and distributing goods and services, and these methods are always maintained and protected by its leaders and rulers, that's the simple summary. Since we left behind the primitive communism and egalitarian lifestyle of our hunter-gatherer tribal past, all human societies thought it normal and "natural" that one man or a small group of men ruled over the rest, and that they got most of the wealth produced by the masses, whether they were chosen by God or naturally gifted. But then the Enlightenment struck, backed by a better scientific understanding of physics, biology and astronomy; we saw that we're in fact all the same and should all have equal rights, equal power in making decisions. Thus democracy was born, almost simultaneously with free market capitalism.

What Marx did was essentially this: he exposed capitalism as just another way to maintain the same class divisions we've had since the neolithic age, since we've been able to produce more as a society than we need to survive as a society. Ever since we've been able to produce more than we need, the "more" went into the hands of the few who owned the means of production, regardless if it's a farm, some land or a factory. And democracy has never functioned as intended because of the persisting class division. Originally the terms "left" and "right" were derived from the literal side of the room occupied by the traditionalists and progressives in the French Parliament after the French Revolution. To the right of the speaker sat the traditionalists who wanted to maintain most of the powers invested in the king. And to his left sat the ones who wanted to strip the king from most of his powers. To this day, this is the defining difference between the political left and right, so it's no surprise that the move backward in time, a flight back into history to a time when traditional values and hierarchies still reigned supreme, is represented by the political right wing in all western countries.

This division between left and right becomes a problem for the political left in a capitalist society. Capitalism is not the same as feudalism, there are no lords or kings, but it does maintain the same kind of hierarchy. This was very clear during modern capitalism's early days, in the Gilded Age, and is becoming clear again now that the gap between the extremely rich and powerful and the rest has grown beyond any reasonable proportion. The political left has lost its credibility since they've given up on fighting capitalism and capitalists. Ever since "taxation" and "regulation" have become dirty words on the left side of the political spectrum, they've lost their ability to truly do something meaningful for the working class.

Now that they've given up on fighting the true cause of the most fundamental class-division, a cause that's described perfectly in Marx's materialist criticism of capitalism, the political left had to turn to other methods of gaining support. And, to be honest, the political right has had this problem from the beginning as they've never wanted to crush the old hierarchy. So the left started focusing on other issues: race, gender, the climate and all the other "culture war" issues. And the right gratefully accepted that challenge, even took the lead in the enraging culture war debates on the public square. There's almost no true political left anymore; when was the last time a politician proposed true economical reform without being ridiculed with words like "the markets won't like that" or "the market won't allow that" or "who's going to pay for that"?

With the polarization of society centered around cultural issues instead of the far more impactful economical injustices, and with the overwhelmingly strong reactionary response of the political right to the political left's misguided move to social justice over economic justice, America is now burdened with a far right Christian fundamentalist Supreme Court, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come. Anyhow, please watch the below linked video where Marxist professor Richard Wolff explains all this much better and much shorter than I'm capable of.

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