President's Message
Commentary from Tom Kersten, Demos' President
October, 2007
Many of us now find ourselves in a nation that seems completely foreign to us. As the corporate economy or “GNP” has greatly expanded and become more of a global force since the fall of the Soviet Union, many corporations now generate worldwide revenues that exceed that of many nation states.
The political consequences of this trend have become very evident. On the GOP side, a new generation of “Goldwater” conservatives have taken over the party and advocate a complete privatization of the U.S. economy including areas that were traditionally reserved as public services such as education. Moderate Republicans have been forced out of the party for the most part. This was started under the Reagan and first Bush administrations and is now being completed under Bush II.
A strong neo-conservative element advocates using the superiority of the American military to force these super-capitalist ideals, which they confuse with “Democracy,” on to the rest of the world – especially in the Middle East where much of the world's dwindling crude oil supplies reside. Even much of the American military in now being privatized with the hiring of private “security” firms like Blackwater.
On the Democratic side, a small group of conservatives got together after the election of President Reagan and decided that for the Democratic party to survive it would have to compete for the corporate political funds that were pre-viously reserved primarily for Republican candidates – the DLC (Democratic Leadership Conference) was born.
The new DLC wing of the party which has brought us candidates like Clinton and Gore, take a more pro-corporate stance on most issues. It was Clinton who brought us NAFTA – a free trade agreement that was a bonanza for the global corp-oratist crowd.
Consequently, we are left with two parties that largely represent the global corporate interests that now dominate global trade. This has had both good and bad consequences. While we have all benefited as consumers and investors in the “new world” capitalist order, many have lost ground economically as real wages have stagnated.
We have all lost a large measure of political influence over national and local public policy formation. Public policy itself may soon become irrelevant as most major decisions will originate in large corporate board rooms. Our transition from “citizens” of a republic to consumers and investors in a supercapitalist state will be complete.
See Supercapitalism: the Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life by Robert Reich.
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