Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States

321 Pages·2013·1.91 MB·English

by  Charles Derber

sociopathic society
OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES DERBER
Marx’s Ghost (2011)
“By using a time capsule technique to bring back Karl Marx to the 21st century, Charles Der-
ber engages him in an illuminating taboo-shredding conversation about economies, workers,
corporations, and governments. Derber opens minds, challenges facile assumptions, and liber-
ates conventional inhibitions.”
—RALPH NADER
Greed to Green (2010)
“There’s no way to solve climate change without also shifting, in profound ways, our idea of
what constitutes success and growth and progress. This is the right book at the right—and
crucial—moment.”
—BILL MCKIBBEN, author of The End of Nature and creator of the
student-based “Step It Up” campaign to cut carbon emissions
and of 350.org, today’s leading climate change movement
The Wilding of America, 4th ed. (2006)
“The Wilding of America holds the glass up to our time, and one winces at the likeness.”
—JACK BEATTY, Atlantic Monthly and On Point political analyst at NPR
Hidden Power (2005)
“Hidden Power is the must-read book of the year. Buy three copies, at least, because you’ll
want to share a few with friends, and will never want to part with your own well-marked-up
copy.”
—THOM HARTMANN, best-selling author and host of Air America
Hidden Power was selected as one of the top three current events books by the Independent
Book Publishers Association.
Regime Change Begins at Home (2004)
“Derber provides a penetrating and compelling analysis of why this particular regime’s days
are numbered.”
—JULIET SCHOR, author of The Overworked American and Born to Buy
People before Profit (2003)
“Professor Derber’s impressive analysis is an important contribution to the ongoing world-
wide debate about globalization.”
—SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY
The Pursuit of Attention (2000)
“Competition and individualism in America are fresh topics in his hands, and he works out a
theory of great interest.”
—RICHARD SENNETT, author of Hidden Injuries of Class
and The Corrosion of Character
Corporation Nation (2000)
“A work of generous imagination … and a sober plan of action for Americans committed to a
truly just and equitable social order.”
—JONATHAN KOZOL, author of Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities
Power in the Highest Degree (1990) coauthored with William Schwartz and
Yale R. Magrass
“An excellent guide to understanding the system of Mandarin capitalism . . . and its wide-
ranging human consequences.”
—NOAM CHOMSKY, author of Perilous Power (2006)
sociopathic society
A People’s Sociology of the United States
CHARLES DERBER

Paradigm Publishers
Boulder • London
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any
media or form, including electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or informational
storage and retrieval systems, without the express written consent of the publisher.
Copyright © 2013 by Paradigm Publishers
Published in the United States by Paradigm Publishers, 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder,
CO 80303 USA.
Paradigm Publishers is the trade name of Birkenkamp & Company, LLC,
Dean Birkenkamp, President and Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Derber, Charles.
Sociopathic society : a people’s sociology of the United States / Charles Derber.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-61205-437-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Avarice —United States. 2. Acquisitiveness—United States. 3. Violence—United
States. 4. Capitalism—United States. 5. Values—United States. 6. United States—
Social conditions. I. Title.
BJ1535.A8D47 2013
306.0973—dc23
2013021151
Printed and bound in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the
standards of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials.
Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers.
17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5
contents
Foreword by Noam Chomsky vii
Preface xi
Part I Sociopathic Society
chapter 1 An Anatomy of Sociopathic Society 2
Part II Sociopathy and the New American Dream
introduction Sociopathic Individualism and Everyday Life 29
chapter 2 The Good Man Fills His Own Stomach:
All-American Crimes and Misdemeanors 31
chapter 3 Conversational Narcissism and Sociopathic Talk 50
chapter 4 Newtown Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg 60
Part III Sociopathic Capitalism
introduction Is US Capitalism Antisocial? 63
chapter 5 Capitalist Crises and Capitalism against Society 65
chapter 6 Manufacturing Surplus People 78
chapter 7 The New Robber Barons 96
chapter 8 Sins of the Corporate Regime 108
chapter 9 Romney’s “47 Percent” Blunder Reveals the
Hidden Heart of His Agenda (with Yale Magrass) 127
chapter 10 Sociopathic Globalization 132
chapter 11 Kochamamie Democracy 149
Part IV War and Sociopathic Foreign Policy
introduction Sociopathy and Empire 153
chapter 12 American Empire and Its Moral Big Stick
(with Yale Magrass) 155
v
vi Contents
chapter 13 The “Wright Problem” (with Yale Magrass) 181
chapter 14 What Does It Mean to Call McCain a “War Hero”
Candidate? (with Yale Magrass) 183
chapter 15 When Wars Come Home (with Yale Magrass) 185
Part V Climate Change as Sociopathy
introduction Violence against the Earth 189
chapter 16 How Capitalism Causes Climate Change 191
chapter 17 Hurricane Sandy, Climate Sociopathy, and the
Infrastructure Crisis 202
chapter 18 Consumerism as Sociopathy 205
Part VI Fascism: The Ultimate Sociopathic Society?
introduction Sociopathy and the Far Right 209
chapter 19 Fascism Lite 211
chapter 20 History’s Magic Mirror: America’s Economic Crisis
and the Weimar Republic of Pre-Nazi Germany
(with Yale Magrass) 229
Part VII Alternatives and Activism
introduction Beyond the Sociopathic Society 235
A. New American Values and the New America 237
chapter 21 Women’s Values and a New America 238
chapter 22 Capitalism: Big Surprises in Recent Polls 249
chapter 23 The New America Is Not about Identity Politics 252
chapter 24 The Democracy Deficit Is the Real Deficit
(with Paul Shannon) 255
B. Alternative Systems 259
chapter 25 The UN, the Barbershop, and Global Democracy 260
chapter 26 Alternatives to Sociopathic Capitalism 272
chapter 27 Will the World Be Ruled by Money or Human Rights? 282
C. Activism and What You Can Do 285
chapter 28 What You Can Do Now 286
chapter 29 From Bowling Alone to Bowling Green 291
Notes 304
Credits 307
Foreword
Noam chomsky
A prominent theme in current policy discourse is “America’s decline” as power
allegedly shifts to the rising giants China and India. The range of opinion,
and the common concerns, are revealed very well in the year-end editions of
the most prestigious of the US establishment journals, Foreign Affairs, the
journal of the Council of Foreign Relations. In December 2012, in bold face
and oversize letters, the front cover read, “Is America Over?” The lead article
called for “retrenchment” in the “humanitarian missions” abroad that are con-
suming the country’s wealth. Less than a year later in the same journal, the lead
article questioned whether retrenchment is the right policy or whether the US
should continue to reign worldwide in the interests of global peace and justice.
True, the world is not exactly pleading for Washington to carry forward
its campaign of disinterested benevolence, particularly the Global South, its
main target since the US replaced Britain as global hegemon after World
War II. But there is a simple response to such objections, the one given by
the British Foreign Office at the war’s end, when it recognized that “the
economic imperialism of US business interests is quite active under the cloak
of a benevolent and avuncular nationalism, which is attempting to elbow us
out.” As officials ruefully observed, US elites believe that “the United States
stands for something in the world—something of which the world has need,
something which the world is going to like, something, in the final analysis,
which the world is going to take, whether it likes it or not.” And they had
the power to try to compel the world to “take it.”
Among US elites, little has changed, as the debate between the two ex-
tremes illustrates. Nevertheless, by now the decline in US power that began
a few years after the war has become a matter of serious concern as global
power has become diversified—though despite the relative decline, the United
States faces no competitor for global domination in the foreseeable future.
Ignored in the debate over “America’s decline” is the fact that it is to a
large extent self-administered, beginning in the 1970s and escalating sharply
under Reagan and his successors. In the 1970s the economy was substantially
redesigned, shifted to financialization, with radical changes in the nature
vii
viii Foreword
of banks along with no less radical growth in their scale. By 2007, on the
eve of the latest crash, for which they were largely responsible, the financial
institutions earned about 40 percent of corporate profits. They were quickly
bailed out under the government’s too-big-to-fail insurance policy—the
TARP bailout that received so much attention was the least of it—and by
now the major banks are bigger and more powerful than ever, while bonuses
are munificent and the perpetrators are immune.
Production did not cease as finance moved to a dominant role. It was
sent offshore, to places where labor could be more harshly exploited and
environmental concerns of the kind introduced under Richard Nixon—the
last liberal president—could be ignored. By now corporate profits across the
board are enormous.
The term “redesigned” is appropriate. The reshaping of the economy was a
choice by those whom Adam Smith called “the masters of mankind,” who are
“the principal architects of [government] policy” and pursue their “vile maxim:
All for ourselves and nothing for anyone else.” Other choices were possible, and
still are. What the masters selected was a version of the neoliberal policies that
have been harmful if not disastrous to the general population almost wherever
applied. The same was true, not surprisingly, in the United States. Through this
period economic growth continued (though more slowly than before), but the
profits went overwhelmingly to a tiny sector of super-rich while for the major-
ity, real incomes stagnated and declined. Concentration of wealth has reached
historic peaks and is far greater than in comparable societies. The more general
consequences are found in a recent study of the OECD—the organization of
the rich countries—which found that the United States ranks twenty-seventh
out of thirty-one countries in social justice, despite the fact that it is the richest
and most powerful major country in history, with incomparable advantages.
Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power, hence
legislation and administrative decisions that accelerate the vicious cycle in the
financial sector that creates what a director of the British Bank called a “doom
loop,” with recurring financial crises, each more severe than the last. We are
now advancing toward the next one. There were none before the redesign of
the economy, when New Deal regulations still were observed. Among many
other deleterious effects is the shredding of democracy. By now control of
government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while
the large majority “down below” are virtually disenfranchised. The current
political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from
democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy
is significantly influenced by the public will.
Even without reading the conclusions extensively documented in the lit-
erature of professional political science, the public is of course not unaware of
these developments. To mention just one illustration, a recent poll finds that
“just 11% of adults believe Congress is a good reflection of the views of the
Foreword ix
American people.” The poll didn’t ask, but most people probably understand
that Congress is very sensitively attuned to the concerns of the tiny fraction
of super-rich and the corporate sector.
The results of the neoliberal era are reviewed in a recent publication of
the Economic Policy Institute, which has been the major source of reputable
data on these developments for years. It is entitled Failure by Design. The
study points out that the failure, while real, is class-based. For the designers
it is a spectacular success. And as the study also points out, the term “design”
is entirely appropriate.
What has been in progress is a kind of sociocide, to borrow a term that is
normally used for the destruction of societies under military occupation or
imperial rule. In this case the sociocide is self-administered, but as the global
economy is taking new forms, that does not matter for the masters as much
as it did in earlier years.
The real shift of global power is not from the United States to China but
from the servants to the masters, worldwide. The developing picture is aptly
described in a brochure for investors produced by Citigroup, the huge bank
that is once again feeding at the public trough, as it has done regularly for over
thirty years in a cycle of risky loans, huge profits, crash, bailout. The bank’s
analysts describe a world that is dividing into two blocs: the plutonomy and
the rest, in a global society in which growth is powered by the wealthy few and
largely consumed by them. Then there are the “non-rich,” the vast majority,
now sometimes called the global precariat, the workforce living a precarious
existence. In the United States, they are subject to “growing worker insecurity,”
the basis for a healthy economy, as Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan ex-
plained to Congress while lauding his performance in economic management.
The masters labor to undermine those parts of government that benefit
the population, but concealed in their antigovernment rhetoric is the demand
for a very powerful state, one that caters to their interests. These are basic
contours of current political life—such as it is.
In this lucid and informed study, Charles Derber breaks through the
necessary illusions and shows how the United States is being turned into a
“sociopathic society,” with control concentrated among intertwined economic,
political, and military elites and reflections of its sociopathy rippling through
every social stratum. But he also shows that there remains real hope that
mass mobilization by currently fragmented social movements can reverse
the sociopathic impetus. As he documents, a majority of the US population
embraces progressive values. This is a force that can be mobilized to stem
the sociopathic tide, if it develops a clear understanding of alternatives at
home and abroad and works with existing movements while building new
ones such as Occupy Wall Street.
Derber’s judicious book is an important step toward fulfilment of that
urgent agenda.