CONNECT
Nationalism vs. Capitalism
Published: Saturday 21 July 2012
Guess Which One Wins?
Part I - Two Ideologies There are two very powerful, and fully internalized ideologies in today’s America: one is nationalism and the other is capitalism. Nationalism
Pope John Paul II once remarked that "pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one." Whatever else you might think of this Pontiff, he makes a good point here–and one applicable to the U.S.A. American politicians never tire of telling us that ours is the greatest nation on earth and, for the world’s sake, we must aggressively (often by war) expand our freedoms, as well as our general culture, to the ends of the earth. Actually, this is a message that has been repeated for two hundred years and "its dominion" here in the "land of the free" is manifest. For many citizens, this assumption is one of the primary reasons we invaded Iraq, are hanging on in Afghanistan, and swear eternal loyalty to the Israelis. It is probably the case that American political and civic leaders invoke God and national manifest destiny more than those of any other nationality.
Capitalism
This is the world’s prevalent economic system. It is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods and services for profit. Wage labor is an important element on the cost side of the capitalist ledger. So are things like safe working conditions and worker benefits. The capitalist impulse is to minimize costs in order to maximize profit. Left to themselves, capitalists will pay workers (white collar or otherwise) the lowest possible wages and deny or minimize other benefits. They will ignore worker safety and deny any responsibility for worker health. The only reason these important aspects of the work place prevail is because of the pressure put upon the capitalist system by unions on the one hand, and government regulatory agencies on the other. If you want to maximize the probability of economic breakdown, just destroy all effective government regulation of the economy and outlaw unions.Part II - Ideologies at odds Nationalism and capitalism are quite different ideologies, yet somehow Americans have conflated them. Take a list of what are considered the best things about Capitalism: equality, achievement, freedom, growth and even happiness, and then compare them to a list of things considered the best about America: equality, opportunity for personal growth, freedom, a longer and fuller life. What do you know! They’re almost the same. This is odd and not a little illogical. Why so? Well, consider the fact that these ideologies operate in opposition one to another. And do so right out in the open. Here is a good example. On 11 July 2012, Fred Grimm, a columnist for the Miami Herald wrote a piece entitled "This column was made in the U.S.A." In it he notes that "last year the Wall Street Journal surveyed employment data from a number of the nation’s heftier corporations...and found that while they were cutting their domestic workforces by 2.9 million over a decade, they had hired 2.4 million people overseas." What sort of jobs are being exported by American corporate executives with, one assumes, the approval of their largely American stockholders? It turns out that they are not just your mundane factory floor jobs. They also include the work of: accountants, radiologists, architects, mortgage banking officers, computer technicians, and journalists (outsourcing the writing of local news stories to underpaid reporters in places like the Philippine). As the Wall Street Journal noted, this has been going on for a while now. Back in a 12 January 2004 edition of the Harvard Business School’s online publication, Working Knowledge, James Heskett told us that "arguments based on accepted [those accepting are not named] macroeconomic theory generally come down in support of the free exportation of jobs." But then Heskett quoted Brad Leach’s observation that "the real question is how to deal with the disproportionality of this impact: the broad, shallow, positive impact on product prices versus the narrow [sic], deep, negative impact on individuals."In other words, American capitalism has been sticking it to American nationalism, at least to the extent of destroying a minimum of 2.9 million jobs over the past decade. Is this an example of capitalism promoting achievement, or growth, or happiness? Certainly not for those 2.9 million American ex-employees. So just how could American corporations, the executives and stock holders of which are, one assumes, loyal and patriotic Americans, do such a thing?Part III - Capitalism WinsWell, it would seem that nationalism has met its match. It has been overwhelmed by that which lies at the heart of capitalism: profit. Thus, consider a hypothetical American corporation A which makes socks in town X and has done so for a hundred years. At some point corporation A finds itself confronted with competition from cheaper socks made abroad and allowed into the U.S. by the millions of pairs because of laws placed on the books by free-market American Senators and Congresspersons. These foreign socks are being willingly purchased, instead of A’s more expensive domestic brand, by red blooded American consumers. So the executives of corporation A face a serious problem. It does not take them long to figure out that if they move out of town X, where the labor costs are relatively high, and relocate to some foreign country with no unions or government regulations, their labor costs will go down and their competitiveness and profitability will go up. But to do so will destroy the economic basis of town X and the lives of its patriotic citizens who have loyally served corporation A for generations. So what do you do? Well, just ask the residents of all the defunct textile towns on the U.S. east coast from New England to the Carolinas. Very few entrepreneurs or their customers are going to admit that such issues as cost, profit and price are more important than every one of those things listed as the best of capitalism and nationalism. No, they will just ignore the distinctly second place status of equality, freedom, doing your best, growth and happiness, etc., and they will pretend that the economic destruction of workers’ lives is an unavoidable consequence of commonsense business. Blame it on the natural laws of macroeconomics if you must. When the time comes for Mexican or Chinese or Indian workers to organize and achieve regulation of their industries so as to obtain decent wages and benefits, their lives in turn will be ruined as their employers run away to other places with lower labor costs, fewer required benefits and lower corporate taxes. For when it comes to the so-called commonsense demands of business, profits are more important than life itself (though not the financial well-being of the investors). Part IV - Coping Mechanisms I think that a growing number of Americans, witnessing the long running exportation of their livelihoods, do sense that the ground is moving under their feet. A 19 November 2011 New York Times op-ed by Charles Blow entitled "Decline of American Exceptionalism" reports that a Pew Research Center poll found that just 49% of Americans agreed with the statement "our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others." That was down from 60% in the year 2002. It is hard to see your culture as superior when so many jobs are being shipped abroad. Yet, if we can extrapolate out from the Pew poll, nearly half the nation still seems to manage it. How do they do it? Here are some suggestions: 1. Displacing a sense of powerlessness. Whether you are the victim or it is your neighbor, one just doesn’t know what to do about the situation. But it helps to believe that, even though jobless, you live in a great country, the power and traditions of which assure that you are better off than some worker in an Indonesian sweatshop turning out upscale Nikes. Holding on to that thought, many of the displaced buck up and start looking for other, usually less lucrative, work. Some of them may also take to beating up their kids or spouses when frustrations of the job search run high. 2. Dealing with cognitive dissonance. One has two contradictory concepts in one’s head at once (the U.S. is the greatest show on earth vs. too many of our jobs are being exported, contributing to the fact that a lot of us are getting poorer) and it is uncomfortable. So one naturally tries to reconcile the problem. For instance, you can tell yourself that the dichotomy is temporary and will disappear after a period of economic adjustment. Or, this is a great opportunity to get retrained for a position better than the one you just lost (ignoring the fact that the effectiveness of retraining programs is now being called into question). 3. The phenomenon of volunteering. For those who have lost their jobs but retain enough of a pension or savings to live on (usually an older crowd approaching retirement age) they can take solace in the world of volunteers. Actually, this is a pattern of work which allows a lot of non-profit, and some for-profit businesses as well, to get free labor. So the worker ends up doing for free what he or she should rightly be paid for–particularly in an avidly capitalist society like ours. It is a cockeyed sort of situation, but it does allow many older, displaced workers, to salvage some self-esteem even while they are exploited. Part V - Conclusion Most often our lives are too narrowly focused to allow us to understand the larger economic and political forces impacting us. We know our local area, we know the work we do (or did), and we know what those in leadership positions tell us. But all of this knowledge turns out to be inadequate when we are hit by debilitating social change. Then, most of us feel helpless and passively resign ourselves to what we consider fate, or perhaps God’s will. We are trained from childhood to behave like this. Remember temper tantrums? When our children throw them they soon learn that it doesn’t work. As adults we seem to have carried over the lesson. Relatively small numbers of us do occasionally loudly protest our situation, but with rare exceptions what do we learn? It doesn’t work. Perhaps we should try harder. The ideals of capitalism, so ardently believed in, turn out to be false except for (as the current saying goes) the fortunate 1%. And those of nationalism? They too are drilled into our heads from childhood. But, alas, they cannot substitute for one’s supper.
ABOUT Lawrence Davidson
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.
ldavidson@wcupa.edu
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1 comments on "Nationalism vs. Capitalism"
August 09, 2012 6:57pm
The USA...United State of Amnesia...
The cognitive dissonance is really a fundamental break in the psyche of the Collective Conscience of the people of this country called the US of A.
For decades especially after the Second World War the US was a nation of invention and production and the middle class, the worker bee, enjoyed a fair amount of prosperity, a good and decent wage, retirement, benefits, home ownership, good education and we showed the world what we were capable of and then some...It was never meant to be that way....
When the founding fathers drafted the Constitution and the preamble of which the first word was WE...
By their behavior WE did not mean the Natives, or slaves or even women, this is offered in fact by their behavior not an opinion. Or else why would such a country need an ERA Equal Rights Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, women's suffrage, or the laws that gave them the vote?
This Nation was conceived in liberty for those few who owned property and enjoyed the status of wealth. The pledge of allegiance states "to the republic..." It was not then or is now democratic, or else why would there be an electoral college? When the founders knew full well the average citizen had not the where with all to decide such an important undertaking. They must have been on to something, even now the voting records show a poor turnout, citizens who want it all, but give nothing to support the country that has provided them with so much, until now…
They did such a good job of writing history that they covered up the massacre of possibly more than a million Natives, even if it were only a few hundred thousand, or tens of thousands, and the relegating the survivors to concentration camps, called reservations , does that make it any more just, "We the people in order to form a more perfect union establish justice...." or easier to swallow? The WE in the preamble certainly did not include those unfortunate souls. The history glorified the pilgrims and made them national icons, when in actuality they never would have survived their first winter had it not been for the Natives, who incidentally believe we are all related. Would Illegal Immigrants even been an issue if the Natives had enforced their borders?
"God's will" the same god who was used to justify "Manifest Destiny" the doctrine of the WASP's, White Anglo Saxon Protestants, who believed it was their god given right to do with this country as they pleased? That god? Those people? Well they have done exactly what they mandated and what was prescribed by the founders, just because the majority does not enjoy the benefits of liberty as the one percent does, does not mean the minority is afflicted with amnesia. They seem to know full well what the mandate is and pick every bone to get er done.
The US is defined as a great country because of the jobs it has? How many of those jobs were taken over by freeing the slaves? Slavery built the infrastructure of the south, how has their sweat equity worked out for them?
The US citizen has been programmed, indoctrinated, white washed into believing we are the superior culture, yet we believe ours is superior because of what, exactly? Because the media has told us so, because our warped version of history has placed in the collective conscience that we are somehow superior to other cultures, those who have been around for thousands of years? A bit arrogant don't you think? Eradicating the Natives, nuking Japan, polluting the planet, overthrowing the Iranian democratically elected president and installing the Shaw.
“ Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq (Persian: مُحَمَد مُصَدِق, IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɣ] ( listen)*), also Mossadegh, Mossadeq, Mosadeck, or Musaddiq (16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967), was the democratically elected[1][2][3] Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 when he was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the British MI5 and the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
An author, administrator, lawyer, prominent parliamentarian, he became the prime minster of Iran in 1951. His administration introduced a wide range of progressive social and political reforms such as social security, rent control, and land reforms. [4] His government's most notable policy, however, was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC) (later British Petroleum or BP).[5]
Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the United States CIA at the request of the British MI6 which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh.[6]
While the coup is commonly referred to as Operation Ajax[7] after its CIA cryptonym, in Iran it is referred to as the 28 Mordad 1332 coup, after its date on the Iranian calendar.[8] Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death.” Wikipedia et al.
Then supporting the Mujahedeen, against Russia in Afghanistan, then perhaps morphing them into Al-Qaida, Pinochet in Chile, Noriega in Panama, Saddam in Iraq, Korea, Viet Nam, and let’s not forget our nemesis in Cuba, Castro who had survived eight or nine presidents here. Btw did you know Cubans have a longer life expectancy, have fewer incidents of SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, than the US? Are these the acts of a superior culture? Even a civilized one? Really? And I only named a few incidents off the top of my head…
When the real history of the US is one of blatant terrorism, the eradication of cultures and civilizations that existed here for tens of thousands of years. Destroying a way of being in the world not of it and how many medical remedies were lost because the Shaman’s and Medicine Men were the first to be eradicated? Cultures which revered the earth and looked upon it as something to protect, not something to be owned, a people who were stewards of the earth. All that is the history, if you are going to replace something is it not far wiser to replace it with something better not worse? Is North America better now than it was before 1776? Before 1492? The planet is actually becoming a cess pool and that is definitely a result of the technologies WE develop, and the choice to take our manufacturing someplace where they have no regard for the planet. Conscious choices all of them, yet the average Joe runs to wally world to buy things, most of which we do not need and are non repairable, just replaceable.
The situation is that the WE the people have been at their craft, making money, for so long, while filling our heads with grandiose notions about what a superior culture we are that it has finally got to the point where there is nothing left for the WE to feed on so they feed on themselves.
Karl Marx said capitalism would never work, and the WE knew it so they programmed Joe to believe Socialism was Communism, pretty much the way they have described Capitalism as Nationalism, another case of Amnesia anyone?
WE are the first country to demand regime changes in any other country WE fix our gaze on, spouting democracy and all of its tenants, which are only lip speak to real issue and that is one of whatever WE want whenever WE want it, and the temper tantrums WE throw if WE even hear anything which sounds like NO, which they have confused with KNOW.
The people of this country have been raped, pillaged and plundered just like the rest of the world, because we are a superior culture and have god on our side. WE have run this game down on the entire planet and now there is nowhere else for US to go, so home it comes. It comes home to all of us who did nothing while the aforementioned atrocities were being committed on the rest of the planet. Voting records show US that “we” are not a representative anything, we have abdicated our responsibilities as outlined perfectly in the Constitution, we have not behaved like good citizens, setting aside time for the issues at hand, instead we buy toys, video games, entertainment anything to keep that feeling from creeping in that something is amiss. That cognitive dissonance when you know what’s right, yet you do not act on your convictions, or even explore them, when you listen to or watch the news and come away feeling like your mind has just been wiped.
Our forefathers were men of stature and prominent figures in their time, because they made building a country their top priority, and the citizens of the US by and large take it all for granted. The men of the time of this countries inception were on the brink of being hung for treason, they knew it, yet they persevered. Until every citizen in this country is standing on that brink the status quo will never and has no reason to ever change. It is the way it is because it is what “we” have always settled for, elections are the lesser of two evils or the evils of two lesser, and it matters not.
I believe this is exactly the country the founders envisioned, it has the hope and promise of greatness, but that lies in the hearts and minds of the citizens. The road map is clear, the vision crystal, it has not failed us, we have failed to live up to the promise, we have not the courage to stand up and make it what it was designed to be. Those who have stood up and made it what it is have done so with their own self interests at heart, there is no judgment here, it is what it is. That is exactly how it was conceived and if it is to be anything other than what it has become it is up to us to define what the word WE means….
Those other inferior cultures, the Greeks, the Sumerians, remember those guys? Cradle of Civilization, who brought us higher math, The Orientals, Japanese and Chinese, cultures spanning six thousand years and WE have the audacity to impose our vulture culture of capitalism on them? Do you suppose WE could do that without our technology and military? Do you think any culture who has been around for thousands of years would adopt much from a culture who does not even know its own short history, without the use of force of course? Our Louisville slugger foreign policy has put upon the world and its peoples such a trauma that it might not ever recover. The economic downturn, collapse is more appropriate as the system is not sustainable, a federal reserve that has nothing to do with government, a FCC,SCE,FDA,FBI,CIA, and all the other alphabet soup organizations, were only instituted to insulate the people from the very institutions they were conceived to watch over. Unbridled capitalism is a disaster happening as we speak. Crony Capitalism only hastens the demise. Perhaps it’s the WE who believed in Manifest Destiny their god and its dogma of being raptured off the planet before Armageddon begins are the architects of this “great culture” and they are only doing their part to usher in the prophecy, because they believe they have an out….How’s that for cognitive dissonance?