Chapter One - 1

Introduction

    I don’t know nearly enough about political economy to write a comprehensive theory, treatise or textbook about it. So, what follows is none of the above. I think I do know enough to write an introduction to this vast and complicated subject so that the informed citizen or college undergraduate can gain some fresh and/or deeper insights into what is actually going on in this rapidly changing world in which we live.

     Also, I have managed to read a healthy number of books, chapters, articles and essays by some incredibly brilliant people over the years, which have helped me understand better and grasp firmly some essentials and details of this field. Thus, this book will refer to lots of them and include some of them, or parts of them, enough so the reader can see that what I’m saying is not just what I think or know. It is but a distillation and synthesis of many and varied minds and a very large database collected from many scientific and political economic sources that reflect a vast array of disciplines, methodologies and political slants. In other words, this book is my try at presenting The Big Picture that connects a lot of data and expert opinion dots.

     If some of the dots are not totally accurate, so be it. The Big Picture will not be wrong. There is no doubt that many dots are not in this book. So be that as well. To my way of thinking, it would be impossible to be all-inclusive. I’ve selected enough facts and a wide panorama of opinion to make a fairly compelling case, which I present, to the reader for his or her evaluation. I make no claim to perfection, but I think this depiction will help many readers understand much better what has happened in America from its inception to the present day and will be pretty close to what one might expect in the near and intermediate future as far as the American and global political economy may well evolve.

America at the Center of the Global Political Economy

     As the 21st century begins to unfold, only someone who is deaf, dumb and blind - or a member of some yet undiscovered, lost tribe - would doubt that the United States of America is a major, if not the central, actor in the world’s political economic present and future. So, the fact that I’ve chosen the U.S.A. as the focal point, or epicenter, of my book on the global political economy does not indicate that I’m an Americanophile or that I am America-centric. It’s just that America has become, and will undoubtedly remain for some time to come, the 4-ton gorilla in every nation’s or ethnic tribe’s living and dining rooms. So, it’s important for everyone, not just Americans, to understand how it got to be this way.

     After all, less than 500 years ago, America as such did not even exist and there were no English colonies in the Western hemisphere. As late as the end of the 19th century, America was still fighting its “Indian Wars”, struggling through major domestic depressions and economic convulsions, and haunted by its still too recent and extremely gory and vainglorious Civil War.

     Yet, in a relatively miniscule period of time, America has become what Madeleine Albright, President Clinton’s second Secretary of State, called “the indispensable nation” and what many other political leaders and scholars around the world call a “hegemon,” the world’s only remaining super-power, a “hyper-power,” “The Great Satan” or as I call it: “The Last, Lost Empire in Early Post-Imperial Times.”

     How did this come to pass? Is America sitting in the catbird seat a good thing for the world? Was it inevitable? Was it envisioned? Was it planned? How long wills this swiftly vanishing unipolar world last? Will it end in a catastrophic war (worse even than World War II) or an ecological cataclysm or some ghastly combination of both? Or will there be some as yet unimaginable peaceful transformation to some sort of post-imperial globalism?

     These questions are easy to ask, but hard to answer. This book will try to lend a hand in addressing them at least well enough to give the reader a better chance of comprehending what is occurring now and what may well happen in the near and intermediate days, weeks, months and years to come.

     There is one thing for certain, however. What happens to and in America in the next 20 years will have an enormous impact on what happens in and to the rest of the denizens of this planet...human and otherwise. There is no getting away from that truth. And there is no way to get around it. It’s been evolving in some sort of inexorable way. So, it is important to come to grips with how America began, how it evolved and is evolving, and how it has gotten so deeply entangled in the political-economic affairs of just about everyone on the face of the Earth in one uncanny way or another.

About “Laws” of Human Behavior

     As we look at how our contemporary world has developed, it seems to me that there are some universal laws of human behavior that help explain its evolution. When I use the word laws, I do not mean to say that these principles or patterns of conduct are absolutely 100% true of everyone everywhere from the Big Bang to Infinity. After all, isn’t it obvious that nothing but death is absolute in earthly material terms and that nature produces abnormalities in all life forms?

     Isn’t it so that Mother Nature loves to create mutations, which become the very seeds of growth and change? Nature also produces an amazing amount of diversity in all living cells. Such variety is necessary for adaptation and survival of all species, flora and fauna. Snowflakes are snowflakes, but no two are exactly alike. The same is probably true with leaves, blades of grass and as we all know, people. No two are exactly the same. But in everyday life we humans tend to see trees, lawns, snowfalls and groups or crowds...not all the differentiated individuals that comprise them. The same is true about societies.

     So, when I speak about laws of human behavior, I prefer to think of them as generalizations that are mostly true most of the time. OK, I’m begging the question: How much is most? Well, from my experience in life as a pretty well paid professional researcher of matters social, legal and political, I’d say somewhere around 95-98% of the time. In statistical terms, this would include all those cases that are with 2 or 3 “standard deviations from the median.”

     Thus, there are plenty of exceptions to or variations within every rule or generality that will follow. But they are just that: exceptional. The truly important thing in human and social theory is the readily discernible pattern and/or the great probability. However, it is very important to know that sometimes the exception, or anomaly, can change or even control everything (which is what chaos theory is about and is very relevant to my whole set of “laws”, as you will see).

     Thus, nothing is certain. There are laws of probability. There are many unpredictable possibilities, sometimes the improbable or unpredictable or exceptional can dominate the many, particularly in matters involving individual and social human behavior.

     In terms of a reality based theory of political economy then, it is obvious that human beings have almost never been, as some famous classical political philosophers (like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke) have asserted: alone and on their own from Day One, i.e., in some isolated state of nature. (Perhaps the rare exceptions here are stories akin to “The Wolf Boy” - but these have little influence on society as a whole.) Some of the most famous and oft-quoted among them speak of primitive existence as being akin to “the law of the jungle”, where everyone is supposedly an island of self-interest and life is “nasty, brutish and short.”

     Others look at such idealized individualism as being “born free”. From these unearthly assumptions, these philosophers constructed elaborate political philosophies and/or governmental structures that were supposed to work in certain ways. But they were for the most part wrong, and so were and are their present day legions of followers who insist on believing in such hogwash.

     While it is impossible to determine which came first, the chicken or the egg, it is not impossible to claim, as do I, that all human beings up to now have birthed to a mother (even if the process was in vitro or with a surrogate mommy). So, from the beginning of humanity’s time, just about every human who has ever lived has been a social creature, one thrust into this planet in the company of others whose immediate help has been essential for them to live through their first breaths and young years.

     All children - with the exception of “Wolf Boys” or “Bigfoots” - have had to rely on others by dwelling in social settings, and for quite a long period of time compared to many other Earthbound creatures (birds, fish, mammals,) Thus, families have forever been the most basic social grouping for humans and families have always been organized in some way to get food and shelter and to help the helpless. Families have always had to form associations of families to help one another cope with various threats to their mutual existence, i.e., extended families, tribes, and societies.

     In the most primitive, early hunter-gatherer tribes and/or societies, there was always some division of labor and some method to make decisions on when to move, where to stay, who would do what, how to deal with intruders, how to secure new areas for their convenience, who would get what for what they did, etc. These ancient social cells were the basic building block of the budding global political economy just as the discovery of the first weapon (a club) as portrayed in the motion picture “2001" was the precursor of the first international space station (presently occupied by military men and women - with an occasional millionaire tourist).

"2001" - Amazing Animation

     In fact, nuclear and extended families continue to this very day to be the first and most important socializing unit for just about everyone’s values and prejudices about all social and anti-social behavior including what kind of political and economic ways are most desirable. However, as the world has grown into agricultural and industrial variations over millennia, peoples’ values and ideas about how to organize political systems and economic systems most efficiently have become far more complex and differentiated as well.

     Nevertheless, from my point of view, there are some quintessential similarities among this wide array of political economies, what I will call “Becker’s Laws of Political Economy.” So, here they are, but remember to grant me some wiggle room.

Becker’s Laws of Political Economy

1. Either through genes, skill, family, ambition, strength, intelligence, luck or some combination of any or all of the above: Either one or a very small group of people own and control the main means of production of food, clothing, shelter, weapons, transportation and communication in every society at some level (from family to local to global).

2. This includes perceptions of authority, personal property (animals, tools, weapons, medicines, symbols of exchange and any and all things of value) and real estate.

3. This small “elite” or “privileged” person, group or class (not more than 2-3% of any group or population) owns a vastly disproportionate share of this authority and/or wealth.

4. Such people maintain control of this property by rules, law, religion beliefs and/or custom and are, or are assisted, in this control by either the appearance, threat or use of physical force (governance or government) and/or the clergy (from witch doctors to The Pope), or both.

5. These people are aware of their privileges and that they are a small number in their society and this creates a consciousness among them that they are different, i.e., superior to the masses. They tend to cluster in social, cultural and educational institutions and intermarry.

6. This wealthy class either controls the power of the government (which has a socially acceptable monopoly of legitimate enforcement power) or has vastly disproportionate influence over it, which makes them, or some part of them, a ruling class as well.

7. This small group usually gets the government to operate to and for their political, economic and/or social benefit much more than to the collective benefit of the rest of those who live in the group, tribe or society.

8. As far as money, property, status, or power is concerned as major values in almost every society those who have the vast preponderance of any, most or all over them NEVER HAVE ENOUGH. They either worry about losing any of it or they always find reasons to try to accumulate more.

9. The ruling or governing class is not necessarily homogenous in their views about everything. They have many differences of opinion, in their value system (i.e., like what is fair or just), in their personalities and in the ways they think best to achieving shared goals. In this way, they are something like an extended family, with great differences, but still family.

10. By and large, though, they all believe that the political economy from which they derive and possess so much of what is of value to them and their society is a good system, or the best system, and, at most, it only needs minor reforms, even if the system is creating tremendous disaster for the vast majority of those who live in it.

11. This does not mean that all societies are the same and that there are no important variations in political economies. All of the above laws apply to monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, and republics, as well as to socialist, capitalist and social democratic systems. Another way of putting this is that ruling elites in various societies have some important differences in value systems than ruling elites in other societies. For example, some are more authoritarian than others, some are more egalitarian. Some elites are larger or smaller than others (.5-5%). These make important differences in how the group, tribe, or society is run and the way wealth and other values are distributed.

12. Sooner or later, however, some within the wealthy and/or ruling elites become alienated from their own class, its values and the system that supports it, and they become a counter-elite (mutation) that advocates and sometimes act to support social movements designed to make major changes, i.e. revolutions, civil wars, or peaceful transformations in the way their tribe, society, country or empire operates.

13. Oftentimes, counter-elites who prevail in overthrowing or displacing traditional or established elites - no matter how different their ideologies might be from the previous system’s elite - become new ruling elites and all the above laws then apply to them.

14. There may be rare instances where the prevailing counter-elites in a revolution or transformation are a mutation and have a “democratic gene” - which is probably recessive and rarely prevails in a large social context. When this occurs, they construct a new type of society, polity or political structure that is much more democratic and egalitarian in its style of decision making and/or which truly redistributes the values of that entity to a much broader part of the population. Mostly, small groups within a larger society, i.e., utopian communes within a state, etc, accomplish these.

15. There are from time to time factors that play important roles in the lives of individuals and societies that cannot be explained by scientific human observation. Such factors may be described by some as chance, by others as luck, by others as fate or destiny or paradox, or by some as by Divine Intervention. Whatever they may be called, they all exist, sometimes together, and can confound or contradict all of the above laws.

     Alright, there they are. Keep them in mind, plus I will refer back to them throughout this book as we begin our journey through humankind’s evolution to the present time and what the future bodes or tolls for each and all of us.

     Oh, for the record, as for Law 15, I believe in them all…and I believe they have played and will continue to play a very important role in human history on Planet Earth.