Michael Parenti: Democracy For the Few

Distributed by Wadsworth
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“…The Parenti text challenges students, perhaps for the first time, to critically assess the dominant pluralist paradigm; that it invites students to consider the ubiquity of politics in their lives; that they confront the struggle and inevitable conflict between democracy and capitalism, which is usually ignored.” —Christopher A. Leu, California State University, Northridge

“Years after they read it, some students have remarked that it was the most important book they’ve read in college.” —Michelle Brophy-Baermann, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Pt.

“Parenti is more readable than Noam Chomsky, and more serious than Michael Moore.” —Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University

The study of politics is itself a political act, containing little that is neutral. True, we can all agree on certain neutral facts about the structure of government and the like. However, the book that does not venture much beyond these minimal descriptions will offend few readers but also will interest few. Any determined pursuit of how and why things happen draws us into highly controversial areas. Most textbooks pretend to a neutrality they do not really possess. While claiming to be objective, they are merely conventional. They depict the status quo in implicitly accepting terms, propagating fairly orthodox notions about American politics.

For decades, mainstream political scientists and other apologists for the existing social order have tried to transform practically every deficiency in our political system into a strength. They would have us believe that the millions who are nonvoters are content with present social conditions, that high-powered lobbyists are nothing to worry about because they perform an information function vital to representative government, and that the growing concentration of executive power is a good thing because the president is democratically responsive to broad national interests. The apologists have argued that the exclusion of third parties is really for the best because too many parties (that is, more than two) would fractionalize and destabilize our political system, and besides, the major parties eventually incorporate into their platforms the positions raised by minor parties (which is news to a number of socialist parties whose views have remained unincorporated for more than a century).

Reacting to the mainstream tendency to turn every vice into a virtue, left critics of the status quo have felt compelled to turn every virtue into a vice. Thus they have argued that electoral struggle is meaningless, that our civil liberties are a charade, that federal programs for the needy are next to worthless, that reforms are mostly sops to the oppressed, and labor unions are all complacent, corrupt, and conservative. The left critics have been a much needed antidote to the happy pluralists who painted a silver lining around every murky cloud. But they were wrong in seeing no victories, no “real” progress in the democratic struggles fought and won. Democracy for the Few tries to strike a balance; it tries to explain how democracy is incongruous with modern-day capitalism and is consistently violated by a capitalist social order, and yet how democracy refuses to die and continues to fight back and even make gains despite the great odds against popular forces.

Contents

Preface

Partisan Politics
Beyond Textbooks
The Politico-economic System
A Constitution for the Few
Class Power in Early America
Containing the Spread of Democracy
Plotters or Patriots?
Democratic Concessions
Rise of the Corporate State
The War Against Labor
Favors for Business
Pliable Progressives and Red Scares
The New Deal: Hard Times and Tough Reforms
Wealth and Want in the United States
Capital and Labor
Capital Concentration: Who Owns America?
Downsizing and Profiteering
Inflation, the Profit-Price Spiral
Monopoly Farming
Market Demand and Productivity
Desirable Unemployment
The Hardships of Working America
Poverty in Paradise
The Human Costs of Economic Injustice
Institutions and Ideologies
Corporate Plutocracy
Ideological Orthodoxy
Corporate Rule and Ruin: Some Examples
Left, Right, and Center
Public Opinion: Which Direction?
Democracy: Form and Content
Politics: Who Gets What?
Welfare for the Rich
Federal Handouts to Corporate America
The Billion Dollar Bailouts
Taxes: Helping the Rich in Their Time of Greed
Unkind Cuts, Unfair Rates
Deficit Spending and the National Debt
Some Hidden Deficits
Health and Human Services: Sacrificial Lambs
The Poor Get Less (and Less)
Social Insecurity: Privatizing Everything
A Sick Health System
The Health Insurance Racket
The "Socialist" Medical Menace?
Buyers Beware and Workers Too
Creating Crises: Schools and Housing
"Mess Transit"
The Last Environment
Toxifying the Earth
Eco-Apocalypse
Pollution for Profits
Government for the Despoilers
An Alternative Approach
Unequal before the Law
Crime in the Suites
Big Crime, Small Punishment (Usually)
Class Law: Tough on the Weak
The Crime of Prisons
A Most Fallible System
Sexist Justice
The Victimization of Children
Racist Law Enforcement
Political Repression and National Insecurity
The Repression of Dissent
Political Prisoners, USA
Political Murder, USA
The National Security Autocracy
CIA: Capitalismís International Army or Cocaine Import Agency?
Watergate and Iran-Contra
Homeland Insecurity
The U.S. Global Military Empire
A Global Kill Capacity
Pentagon Profits, Waste, and Theft
The Militaryís Hidden Diseconomies
Economic Imperialism
Intervention Everywhere
Global Bloodletting
Who Governs? Elites, Labor, and Globalization
The Ruling Class
Labor Besieged
Unions and the Good Fight
How Globalization Undermines Democracy
Mass Media: For the Many, by the Few
He Who Pays the Piper
The Ideological Monopoly
Serving Officialdom
Political Entertainment
Room for Alternatives?
Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections
Democrats and Republicans: Any Differences?
The Two-Party Monopoly
Making Every Vote Count
Rigging the Game
Money, A Necessary Condition
The Struggle to Vote
The War Against Imaginary "Voter Fraud"
Shady Elections
Pale Democracy
Congress: The Pocketing of Power
A Congress for the Money
Lobbyists: The Other Lawmakers
The Varieties of Corruption
Special-Interests and Secrecy
The Legislative Labyrinth
Incumbency and Term Limits
Legislative Democracy Under Siege
The President: Guardian of the System
Salesman of the System
The Two Faces of the President
Feds vs. States
A Loaded Electoral College
The Rise of Executive Power
The Would-be Absolute Monarch
The Class Power Context
The Political Economy of Bureaucracy
The Myth and Reality of Inefficiency
Deregulation and Privatization
Secrecy and Deception, Waste and Corruption
Nonenforcement: Politics in Command
Serving the "Regulated"
Public Authority in Private Hands
Regulation and Business Ideology
The Supremely Political Court
Who Judges?
Conservative Judicial Activism (Early Times)
Circumventing the First Amendment
Freedom for Revolutionaries (and Others)?
As the Court Turns
Conservative Judicial Activism (Present Day)
Democracy for the Few
Pluralism for the Few
The Limits of Reform
Democracy as Class Struggle
The Roles of the State
What Is to Be Done?
The Reality of Public Production

Democracy For the Few

Ninth Edition