Read & Discuss: Democracy for the Few Chapter 1
Chapter 1 Partisan Politics
I started doing Read and Discuss on my Parenti Stuff Tiktok account in a Live format. You can watch the video for Chapter 1 here:
But I wanted to also put this out in written format in case people prefer it that way.
You can get the pdf of the 9th edition here: Democracy for the Few 9th edition pdf
INTRODUCTION:
This is the 9th edition of the book put out in 2010. Parenti first put this book out in 1974 after he was blacklisted from academia. Which came from him joining in and standing up for his students protesting the Vietnam War and, in particular, the Kent State massacre of 4 students earlier that year. He was beaten and arrested - the cops claimed he attacked them so after beginning teaching at University of Vermont a year later he had to go back for sentencing in Illinois. He then decides to just focus on writing and later lectures.
Just so you understand where my views are coming from: I recognize our economic system being capitalism with a few social Band-Aids slapped on to appease a buffering “middle class”. Those are your safety net programs that are always in jeopardy from the right. The economic system has now been inundated by neoliberalism that began first with Carter…
(From the Forbes September 2024 article “The Surprising Deregulation Legacy Of Jimmy Carter—And Why It Still Matters”:)
…and went amuck under Reagan, added a thick layer of corporatism that brought us even more so into fascism. The original asshole who coined the term fascism as both an economic and political system said:
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
Let me jump back and explain the difference between a political and economic system since this chapter gets into both:
A political system defines how a society is governed, including its laws, institutions, and processes for making decisions, while an economic system focuses on how a society organizes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Fascism as a political system is your authoritarian, ultarnationalism.
Fascism as an economic system is corporatism…neoliberalism.
When I talk about social programs, I do not consider them socialism as socialism is the workers owning the means of production. They are reforms to capitalism which Rosa Luxemburg talks about the bitterness of capitalism in Reform and Revolution:
“Fourier's scheme of changing, by means of phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a phantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less phantastic.”
She goes on to say:
“Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to say, the conquest of political power by the proletariat can break down [the] wall [between capitalist society and Socialist society].”
You can’t keep reforming capitalism because it is always going to benefit the few no matter how much sweetness you try to pour in.
In chapter 1, titled “Partisan Politics”, Parenti is establishing his thesis for the book which is that the US political system is made up to support the wealthy few over the rest of the population even though they claim democracy. And the textbooks that we learn from supports the same with propaganda and omitting the things that would hurt people’s view of them.
SECTION 1 BEYOND TEXTBOOKS
The first section is called “Beyond Textbooks” indicating that our educational system is in on the ploy to help the capitalists.
From the book itself, here is what we are supposed to believe:
But this is the reality:
In 1816 Thomas Jefferson wrote to Samuel Kercheval (a Virginia lawyer) and said that the Constitution should be rewritten every 19 to 20 years (a generation) because future gens should not be beholden to what the current or past gens felt
We do not have actual representation especially now with lobbyists being allowed to buy votes.
There were certain systems of oppression already making their way into the picture some were even heightened. The oppression of women came about with the advent of private property thousands of years before but now they effected women even more so.
Your skin color doesn’t indicate whether or not you are more likely to be a criminal it does tell us, especially in the US, whether or not you’ll be more likely to be arrested whether or not you did criminal stuff.
He addresses the main theme of the book, that being “our government more often serves the privileged few rather than the general public, principally advancing the interests of the haves at the expense of the rest of us.”
When he talks about American’s not just being “passive victims”, he is talking about how we have got nothing for the people without the people fighting for it. Everything in your life touches the political and he will show that in the next 18 chapters.
When he talks about “the process of conflict” he is tapping into communist sense of contradictions. There are those actively trying to keep the capitalist system because it benefits their class and those actively fighting against it because it hurts so many.
Section 2 The Politico-Economic System
The Politico-Economic System
Parenti brings up John Locke, the father of Liberalism which is our socio-political system, and Adam Smith, the father of capitalism which is our economic system. Both of which explain why they believe governance is just needed to protect wealth:
Parenti says, "politics and government play a crucial role in determining the conditions of our lives," emphasizing that ignoring political realities is risky. Dropping out is not the answer.
John Jay, the son of a wealthy merchant, states “the people who own the government should run it.” The word “own” their is extremely telling.
Parenti gets into how Marx’s sin was he pointed out how this power dynamic, the rich owning and ruling everything, was undesirable and exploitative. So Parenti points out how anyone that is given a modicum of power (business people, journalist, most academics) do not like to make waves.
Parenti defines power as:
Criticism: you can’t complain unless you got a full drawn out plan. Historically we know how they treat anyone with a plan. On lives I hear all the time people making this claim and also pointing out the bad things that they were propagandized, usually in an overblown fashion, that happened under a state working towards communism (as we know but I feel like it is a good time to bring up: communism doesn’t happen over night, it is a process which cannot truly be achieved until the hegemony moves from a capitalist economic one towards a communist one).
Communists understand that things are moving. We cannot make a full plan today to implement when we do get power because conditions with be different. What is good for one place may not be for another because of the stage of capitalism/feudalism they are in. However, we are constantly analyzing and looking at solutions that may work for different conditions in the places we live in.
The last point I want to make is on that last paragraph and the endnote there:
That number 3 is pointing to a note that tells you to read his book Superpatriotism. That book and statements like this are being misinterpreted by nationalists who claim they are communists. They are class reductionists which is NOT what communism is about. In all the years I spent working, I couldn’t really study theory so when I went disabled, I was a bit bummed because I was no longer considered “working class” but that is just under capitalism that I am.
Parenti and I are from eras where we pushed for community, so you cared about the people and just hated the government. Both Parenti and I were involved in the electoral politics of the US when we believed it could be changed from the inside. When Parenti talks about loving his country, he talks about actually making the country better for everyone. This plays into his messaging of trying to get people to be involved.