The mainstream media and even Democrats have been slow to
call Mitt Romney’s deliberate falsehoods “lies.” But after
just calling them what they are, it is also important to
analyze their meaning. Lies on Romney’s scale do not
simply show contempt for the intelligence of American
voters. They show contempt for democracy, and display some
of the features of capitalist dictatorship of a sort that
was common in the late twentieth century. Mohammad Reza
Pahlevi in Iran, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, Park Hung
Chee in South Korea and P.W. Boetha in South Africa are
examples of this form of government. Capitalist
dictatorship has declined around the world in favor of
capitalist parliamentarism, in part because of the rising
power of middle and working classes in the global South.
Capitalist dictatorship has many similarities to fascism,
but differs from it in lionizing not the workers of the
nation but the entrepreneurs of the nation. Fascism seeks
a mixed economy, whereas capitalist dictatorship
privileges the corporate sector and attacks the
non-military public sector. But both try to subsume class
conflict under a hyper-nationalism. Both glorify military
strength and pick fights with other countries to whip up
nationalist fervor. Both disallow unions, collective
bargaining and workers’ strikes. Both typically privilege
one ethnic group within the nation, marking it as superior
and setting up a racial hierarchy.
One big difference between capitalist democracy (as in
contemporary Germany and France) and capitalist
dictatorship is the willingness of the business classes to
play by the rules of democratic elections, to allow a
free, fair and transparent contest, to acknowledge the
rights of unions, and to respect the universal franchise.
Businessmen in such a society share a civic ethic that
sees these goods as necessary for a well ordered society,
and therefore as ultimately good for business. They may
also be afraid of the social disruptions (as in France)
that would attend any attempt to whittle away workers’
rights. Attempts to limit the franchise, to ban unions,
and to manipulate the electorate with bald-faced lies are
all signs of a barracuda business class that secretly
seeks its class interests above all others in society, and
which is not afraid of workers and middle classes because
the latter are apolitical, apathetic and disorganized.
Sound familiar?
1. Romney’s contempt for the democratic process is
demonstrated in his preference for the Big Lie. In order
to scare workers in Toledo, Ohio, into voting for him, he
alleged that President Obama was arranging for Chrysler’s
Jeep production to be shifted to China. Chrysler
CEO Sergio Marchionne sent an email to all employees
refuting Romney: “I feel obliged to unambiguously restate
our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the
United States to China…” He pointed out that Jeep
production in the US has tripled since 2009. Romney’s
political ad containing this sheer falsehood, is
blanketing Ohio.
2. Romney backs Koch-brother-funded attempts to bust
public unions, as in Wisconsin, even
though that effort has run into trouble with Wisconsin
courts.
3. Romney supports Koch-brother-funded attempts to
suppress voting, typically through state legislatures
requiring voter identification documents at polling
booths. Such identification often costs money, so that it
is a stealth poll tax. It also requires, for non-drivers,
a trip to a state office and bureaucratic runarounds.
Voter i.d. requirements hit the poor, Latinos,
African-Americans and urban people who use public transit
hardest, i.e., mostly voters for the Democratic Party. In
some states, the
courts are questioning the laws. But in many states
they are now entrenched. Limiting the franchise was a key
tactic for Apartheid South Africa’s government under
Boetha, which was run as a capitalist dictatorship on
behalf of the white Cape Town business classes.
4. Romney’s devotion to increasing military spending and
his rattling of sabers at Russia, China, Iran, the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt (aren’t we up to about half the world
now?) are typical of the militarism of capitalist
dictatorship. His repeated pledges to defer to the wishes
of the officer corps with regard to whether to end the
Afghanistan war suggests a certain amount of Bonapartism,
where the business classes bring in the generals to make
key decisions. The problem for small authoritarian
business classes is that they are in competition for
resources with the much larger middle and working classes
and in a parliamentary system they risk being outvoted. In
order to suppress the latter’s claims on resources and
deflect any tendency to vote along class interests, the
business classes in this system pose as defenders of the
nation, thus hiding class conflict and legitimating the
diversion of resources to arms manufacturers and other
corporations. Nationalism, militarism and war, along with
voter suppression, can even the playing field for the
rich.
5. The Romney campaign’s remarks
about “Anglo-Saxons” better understanding allies
like Britain, and its support for the racist
Arizona immigration and profiling law show a
preference for racial hierarchy, with “Anglo-Saxons” at
the top. Again, many capitalist dictatorships privilege a
dominant ethnicity, as with Apartheid South Africa or
discrimination against native Chileans by the Pinochet
regime in Chile. Fostering racism is a way of dividing and
ruling the middle and working classes, of binding a
segment of them to the dominant business classes.
Obviously, the Romney version is capitalist dictatorship
lite. But its strong resemblance to the full form of that
sort of polity is highly disturbing. While these
tendencies have existed on the Republican Right for some
time, the sheer level of contempt for democracy as
demonstrated in the Big Lies, the exaltation of war, the
racial profiling, and the new extent of attempts at voter
suppression and union-busting all indicate a sharp veering
toward authoritarianism.
