From Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? Robert Kuttner. 2018. Kindle online sample. Section 1.

From introduction:

In the past few decades, the wages of most workers have stagnated, even as productivity increased.

Social supports have been cut, while corporations have achieved record profits.

What is going on?

According to Robert Kuttner, global capitalism is to blame.

By limiting workers’ rights, liberating bankers, and allowing corporations to evade taxation, raw capitalism strikes at the very foundation of a healthy democracy.

CAPITALISM SHOULD SERVE DEMOCRACY AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

One result of this misunderstanding is the large number of disillusioned voters who supported the faux populism of Donald Trump.

Charting a plan for bold action based on political precedent, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? is essential reading for anyone eager to reverse the decline of democracy in the West.

….

From book sample:

A quarter century ago in the glow of postcommunist triumphalism, many were predicting globalization would link democracy with capitalism in a splendid convergence.

Instead, we are witnessing a primitive backlash against both the global market and liberal democracy.

In the United States, the rise of Donald Trump revealed broad disaffection with both economics and politics.

The British vote to exit the EU reflects a comparable spasm of right-wing populism.

ULTRA-NATIONALISTS WHO REJECT BOTH THE EU AND THE DOCTRINE OF LIBERAL TRADE ARE NOW THE SECOND OR THIRD LARGEST PARTY IN MUCH OF EUROPE, and some are in government.

…

Democracy itself is under siege.

This upheaval is occurring not just in nations with weak democratic roots such as Turkey, Hungary, Egypt, and the Philippines, but in the democratic heartland—western Europe and the United States.

AUTOCRATS ARE USING THE FORMS OF DEMOCRACY TO DESTROY THE SUBSTANCE.

This ultranationalist reaction is compounded by resentment of immigrants and refugees, as well as resurgent racism.

…

The fundamental driver of these trends is THE RESURRECTION OF HEEDLESS, GLOBALIZED CAPITALISM THAT SERVES THE FEW, DAMAGES THE MANY, AND BREEDS ANTISYSTEM POLITICS.

Though the turn was abrupt and extreme, the mass frustrations have been brewing for decades, under the noses of elites.

…

My purpose in writing this book is to connect the dots between the rise of right-wing populism and the fall of a social contract that once served the broad citizenry in Western democracies.

The story has five key elements.

First, the postwar era was exceptional in the history of capitalism.

It was THE RESULT OF A FORTUITOUS CONVERGENCE OF EVENTS THAT CONSTRAINED FINANCE AND SHIFTED POWER TO ORGANIZED WORKERS AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS.

In the aftermath of World War II, having learned the bitter lessons of the 1930s, enlightened leaders built a mixed economy whose broad prosperity would reinforce support for liberal democracy and reduce the risk of war.

…

The postwar social contract, with national variations, demonstrated a social form of contained capitalism could be successful economics.

In that era, the economy grew at record rates even as it became more equal.

This was true throughout the West, suggesting common, systemic dynamics were at work.

But THAT ERA HAS GIVEN WAY TO ONE ALARMINGLY LIKE THE 1920s, AND WITH SIMILAR REPERCUSSIONS.

A decent political economy is still possible, but it will again require an exceptional politics.

…

Second, contrary to a lot of commentary blaming the loss of secure livelihoods on such factors as trade, technology, and the shift from manufacturing to services, nothing in the structure of the late-twentieth-century economy compelled a reversion to an unregulated nineteenth-century market.

This was a political shift.

THE ECONOMIC TURBULENCE OF THE 1970S OPENED SPACE FOR ELITES TO WEAKEN DEMOCRATIC COUNTERWEIGHTS TO CAPITAL, SUBSTANTIALLY USING GLOBALIZATION AS THEIR INSTRUMENT.

The resulting policies were perverse for efficiency as well as for equality.

…

Third, the dominant role of the US during and after World War II is central both to the creation and the destruction of a decent economy.

In the early 1940s, America was in a rare progressive mood.

The global institutions created in 1944, when American power was preeminent, were intended to allow both the US and its allies in Europe to build mixed economies in the spirit of the New Deal, insulated from the speculative power of private finance.

When AMERICAN GOVERNMENT TURNED BACK INTO AN ALLY OF FINANCE BEGINNING IN THE 1970S AND CONTINUING EMPHATICALLY IN THE 1980S, ITS GOALS FOR THE GLOBAL SYSTEM ALSO REVERSED.

Fourth, today’s version of globalization is profoundly antidemocratic.

On one flank, GLOBAL TRADE AGREEMENTS NARROW THE SPACE FOR NATIONAL POLICY AND WEAKEN GOVERNMENT’S ABILITY TO HOUSEBREAK CAPITALISM.

On the other flank, the popular revulsion against the results of globalization is elevating antidemocratic leaders, parties, and ultranationalist sentiments.

The rise in terrorism and in fear of aliens, in a parallel dialectic, promotes domestic support for anti-foreign strongmen.

Radical Islam and right-wing populism in the West are in symbiosis.

…

The fifth observation concerns the collapse of the democratic left.

Anger against market excess can go right, toward fascism, or can energize a progressive left that anchors a decent economy.

By the 1990s, center-left parties, led by Bill Clinton in the US and Tony Blair in the UK, had joined the neoliberal globalist consensus, undermining their own credibility when ordinary people decided they’d had enough.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTIES ACROSS EUROPE HAVE LOST SUPPORT AS MUCH OF THEIR WORKING-CLASS BASE HAS DEFECTED TO THE FAR RIGHT.

…

The global regime produced such tight constraints on national policy, enforced by financial markets, that even when further-left parties such as Greece’s Syriza coalition managed to get elected, they found themselves shackled by the system’s rules.

All of this muddled politics.

Today, LARGE NUMBERS OF CITIZENS THROUGHOUT THE WEST ARE ANGRY THAT THE GOOD LIFE IS BEING STOLEN FROM THEM.

They are not quite sure whom to be angry at—immigrants, corporations, the government, politically correct liberals, the rich, the poor?

…

The anger is both unfocused and inchoate, but increasingly articulated by a neofascist right.

The election of Donald Trump and the British vote to exit the European Union, neither of which will remedy the pocketbook grievances, are emblematic of this muddle.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, some commentators declared a “clash of civilizations,” as Samuel P. Huntington famously termed it—the democratic West against a barbaric form of radical Islam.

Well before 9/11, fellow political scientist Benjamin Barber’s book title Jihad versus McWorld summed it up: THE COMMERCIAL, OFTEN TAWDRY NORMS OF THE GLOBALIZING WEST PROMOTING PRIMITIVE REACTION RATHER THAN SPREADING LIBERAL DEMOCRACY.

But recent events signal something worse.

The threat to democracy is increasingly within the West.

(end of section 1)

… …

(own comments)

“Autocrats are using the forms of democracy to destroy the substance.”

Am certain the author’s solution to his perceived causes of problems is to expand U.S. federal government power and control over the successful rich and All us who might also become successful, rich, and independent.

Oll this Dem’s mish-mash is actually an obfuscation of, distraction from and reaction against the success of U.S. and worldwide growing capitalism and democracy, against dreaded widespread increased riches and happy.

The soon-attain end goal must be the world as one big U.S.A., a U.S. of the World with:

-free trade and movement of assets including people

-more capitalism and less government

-one currency

-one first language

All this with an added guaranteed basic income, a Citizens’ Shareholder Dividend (CSD).

The more artists and philosophers the better.

Not only those with luck should have the big bucks.

Start now with $100 per person and expand only as the federal government shrinks, resulting in both U.S. economy and CSD exponential growth.

Tomorrow’s mere millionaires will be the “poor” felt sorry for by oll the awful but helpful omrondle Dems and socialists.

Zei as-always will forever want to stop All those who be most active and productive, with dems’ actual goal of bringing down everyone to be equally poor and miserable and under total monopoly feudal federal governmental control.

The biggest and best expense of the CSD will be the lost political power and control among dem on-top down-looking kingly and queenly shapeless-form politicians here and everywhere.

The U.S. is the solution not the problem.

But first the American model must be improved so it will be attractive to join.

The first step is to control then reduce the power of the federal government returning power to the states, the Real Republican goal.

Countries will not want to join the U.S. if their country will be absorbed into a total U.S. federal government-dependency monopoly misery.