OCT 10, 2019 ICAS evening lecture: Does American Democracy have a Future? US Constitutional Democracy Panelist: Tag Murphy

1. US Constitutional Democracy
1789-2016?
(227 years)

2. Roman Empire
27 BC/ 285 AD
Diocletian partitions the Empire
(313 years)

3. Fujiwara Rule
794-1087
Retired Emperor Shirawakawa pushes aside
Fujiwara regents
(293 years)

4. Ming Dynasty
1368-1618
Nurhaci issues Seven Grievances against the
Ming
●(250 years)

5. Mughal Empire
1526-1707
Succession Struggle Following death of
Emperor Aurangzeb
(181 years)

6. Tokugawa Bakufu
1615-1838
Burning of Osaka by Oshio Heihaichiro
(223 years)

7. British Empire
1763-1942
Fall of Singapore to the Japanese
(179 years)

8. General (as in visible in all
Western liberal capitalist
democracies) threats to
liberal/democratic/capitalist
political order:
Success !

9. Right or Left?
Is (liberalism/capitalism) coming to an end? The
problem is, while we see it disintegrating before our eyes,
we see no successor approaching...by disintegration, I
mean an already far advanced decline of the capacity of
(liberalism/capialism) ... to underwrite a stable society.
(Liberal/capitalist) society is disintegrating, but not
under the impact of an organized opposition fighting it in
the name of a better social order. Rather it disintegrates
from within, from the success of (liberalism/capitalism)
and the internal contradictions intensified by that
success, and from (liberalism/capitalism) having overrun
its opponents and in the process become more
(liberal/capitalist) than is good for it.

10. Right or Left?
(Liberalism/capitalism) has failed – not because it
fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has
failed because it has succeeded. As
(liberalism/capitalism) has 'become more fully
itself,' as its inner logic has become more evident
and its self-contradictions manifest, it has
generated pathologies that are at once
deformations of its clams yet realizations of
(liberal/capitalist) ideology.

11. Les Trentes Glorieuses
● Labor/capital modus vivendi.
– Robust safety net financed with steep, progressive
taxation.
– Strong Unions (Factory Floor shares in productivity
gains).
– Government spends when capitalists won't.
● Free(ish) Trade, but
– Fixed exchange rates.
– Restricted cross-border capital movements/national
fortress financial systems.
– Restricted immigration.

12. Three Crisis Chains
● 1971-73 Collapse of Bretton Woods/OPEC
hikes.
– Inflation/ East Asian capital accumulation.
● 1987 NYSE Crash/Japan Bubble Economy
– Deficit spending; “Reagan Revolution.”
– Plaza Accord/MOF arrests dollar flight.
● 2008/9 Financial Crisis
– Induced by exploding private sector debt.
– Capital bailed out; labor stiffed.

13. “Fictitious Commodities”
● Money.
● Land.
● Labor.

14. End of OECD Middle Class?
(Salaried Class shrinks as Wage
Class grows)
● Free Movement of People.
● Free Movement of Technology
– Final onset of Luddite Nightmare?
● Free Movement of Capital.

15. Rise of Meritocratic
Cosmopolitan Global Elite
● Decline of noblesse oblige.
● Decay of connections to local populations:
– Tastes.
– Lifestyles.
– Religion/patriotism.

16. US Specific I
Constitutional Architecture
--Electoral College (Mischievous 22nd
Amendment)
-- Executive/Legislative Separation
Dictates Two Party Set-up.
What happens when neither party represents
working and lower middle – e.g., “wage” --
class interests?

17. US Specific: II
Health Care: Insurance Tied to
Employment
(no incentive for cost control leading to
cancerous growth of parasitic administrative
bureaucracy: hospitals; insurance co's.
Exploited class of nurses/nurse aides who do
much of the actual work)

18. US Specific III
Education
Financing at lower levels with property taxes;
no incentive for cost control at higher levels
for reasons similar to health care (users have
no choice; govt picks up tab when no one
else will/can) and with similar consequences
(cancerous growth of parasitic administrative
bureaucracies; exploited class of adjunct
faculty who do much of the actual work)

19. US Specific: IV
Ruling Class Reproduction
Elite universities engage in the educational equivalent of strip
mining: identifying economically viable raw materials in every
city, town, and hamlet, they strip off that valuable commodity,
process it in a distant location, and render the products
economically useful for productivity elsewhere...(their) students
embrace 'identity' politics and 'diversity' to serve their economic
interests, perpetual 'potentiality' and permanent placelessness.
The identities and diversity thus secured are globally
homogenous, the precondition for a fungible global elite who
readily identify other members capable of living in a cultureless
and placeless world defined above all by liberal norms of
globalized indifference toward shared fates of actual neighbors
and communities.
Patrick Deneen Why Liberalism Failed

20. Political Effects
“Liberal political education now takes places, if it
takes place at all, on campuses that are largely
detached socially and geographically from the
rest of the country – and in particular from the
sorts of people who were once the foundation of
the Democratic Party. This is not likely to
change.”
Mark Lilla: The Once and Future Liberal

21. US Specific: V
Character of Ethnic/Racial/Religious Tensions
-- “Stamped from the Beginning.”
--Reconquista.
-- Global Brain Vacuuming.

22. US Specific: VI
Dollar as the World's Money
-- By the laws of accounting, US must run a
current account deficit leading to:
-- Systematic, secular transfer of production
capacity overseas.
-- Wars that do no have to be financed.

23. Final Thought 1
“So much of leftwing thought is a kind of
playing with fire by people who don't even
know that fire is hot.”
George Orwell
“Inside the Whale”

24. Final Thought 2
“The ordinary man may not flinch from a dictatorship of
the proletariat, if you offer it tactfully; offer him a
dictatorship of the prigs, and he gets ready to fight.”
George Orwell
The Road to Wigan Pier