I was talking to a friend yesterday. He’s a smart guy. We almost never talk about politics, however; but the subject came up. And he mentioned that he was a centrist. He made what is, in some contexts, a valid point: that extremism in political ideology leads to catastrophe. But he mentioned Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians. (He was most critical of the last.) But that’s a shockingly small Overton window. What about communists and fascists? What about the only political group I know of that takes our economic system seriously: Marxists.

From a more practical standpoint, did the Democratic Party having complete control of Washington really lead to catastrophe? The country barely changed. Was that extremism?!

I see the situation totally different. The libertarians are irrelevant — except that they give intellectual credibility to the others. The Democrats are a center, even center-right, party in a global perspective. And the Republicans are proto-fascists. A centrist should love Barack Obama, and actually, I believe my friend does. It isn’t my intention to indict him. Indeed, he is in favor of Universal Basic Income.

What’s Water

But his extremely limited notion of the political landscape is what pretty much everyone shares in America. Let me illustrate with a story that David Foster Wallace famously told in his commencement speech, “This Is Water.” (I’m sure most people have heard the story at one point or another in their lives):

To me, capitalism is the water that we swim in. And I find it really frustrating that most people can’t see it.

Oh sure: they know the word. They think it is shorthand for freedom and democracy. The slightly more sophisticated think that it is about economic markets and the profit motive. Capitalism is none of these things. And the way that capitalism normally operates, it is the enemy of these things.

Marxists Understand Capitalism

When I was a libertarian, I was struck by the fact that it was only when I talked to Marxists that I found people who seemed to understand capitalism. Of course, I thought they were wrong in their analysis, but they understood what it was. I thought that I was very knowledgeable, of course; I thought I understood capitalism too. But the truth is that I didn’t. Because, while they saw the water, I didn’t. My study of intro economics in college, if anything, made it harder to see the water.

Capitalism is a system where ownership entitles you to profit. And I’m not talking hammers here. It’s not a question of using capital to build things. It is rather more like the fallow land across the street from me. Someone could be farming it, but instead, it is just being held by someone who inherited it, waiting until the city expands to the point where they can sell it to someone else who will build condos.

See the Water

Now, I understand the arguments in favor capitalism. And I’m not completely against it. But unlike the average American who thinks they are centrists because they don’t see the economic waters they swim in, I side with the Marxists. They see the water. And that means they are able to see beyond the water.

Each year, roughly a third of our income comes not from creating things but from owning things. A third! That’s capitalism. That’s water.

You don’t have to agree with my beliefs about capitalism. But things will only get worse as long as you don’t see that capitalism is a choice that is mandated by the government. There’s nothing natural about it. Rape, theft, and murder are natural. Getting thrown in jail for trespass is not.

Be like the Marxists to the extent that you see the water. Then we all might be able to make some progress.

Matt Bruenig is back in the land on the public intellectual, The UBI Already Exists for the One Percent. In the article, he notes that roughly 30 percent of all income in the United States comes in the form of capital. That is: 30 percent of the money made each year comes not from work but just from capitalists owning things. A total of 10% of our nation’s income is paid out to the top one percent in this form. That is: they don’t work for it; they just sit back and get checks sent to them. This is effectively a universal basic income (UBI) — except it isn’t universal; it just goes to the very richest among us.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We could just take that 30 percent and distribute it evenly to everyone in society. It is, after all, a shared resource. Bruenig compares it to the Alaska Permanent Fund, where everyone who lives in Alaska gets an equal share of the capital gains from the oil that is pumped out of the ground. So why don’t we do this more generally? Well, obviously, there are reasons. Even ask poor people and they will tell you: if people don’t have to work, they will just become a bunch of loafers and society will fall apart.

Why Do We Trust the Rich?

Bruenig is making a very limited point, “If you have a problem with this, but not the current arrangement where capital income is paid out in huge sums to small fractions of our society, then your issue is not really with passive income.” And that is certainly true. But I look at it from a broader perspective. The problem is that humans are hierarchical. And as much as we may think we have grown past the days of feudal lords, we really haven’t. Almost everyone I know believes what is the great lie of our economic system: the rich are different from you and me.

For most Americans, that means that not having to work doesn’t corrupt the rich while it does the poor. The interesting thing is that Fitzgerald, who we get that misquote from, felt exactly the opposite. He felt that great wealth hindered the rich. It’s funny that people have gotten the impression that Fitzgerald had a fascination with the rich. Have they not read his books? It’s like saying that Steinbeck had a fascination with floods and mice.

The truth is that we don’t know. If we distributed all the passive income of the US equally, each man, woman, and child would be given a bit less than $16,000 per year. I don’t think that would be enough money to cause everyone to sit on their couches and watch video games. The experience I have with people is that having a basic income to fall back on would make them more likely to take risks. We might have flying cars now if those tens of millions of poor people had been able to do something productive rather than scraping to get by.

The Problem Is Our Sociology

We have to get past this idea that the rich actually deserve their wealth. That just isn’t the way our economic system works. But I can understand why the rich believe it. What I don’t understand is why the poor are so fond of this myth. Why do poor children have poor parents and vise versa? It’s like we live in the Third Reich and believe that everything is determined by genetics. But if you really believe that Donald Trump is rich because of the genes his father gave him and not the money he gave him, you’re an idiot.

This is why I see more and more that we have to get past politics. We need to change the way we think. Our problems are sociological. If we can see the way we are as a society, the political and economic solutions are trivial.

We are less than two months away from the election for the DNC chairmanship. This year, it has taken on an over-sized importance among American liberals. The front-runner is Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison. And you would think his election would be a sure thing. He’s been endorsed by Elizabeth Warren on the economic left and Chuck Schumer on the economic right. But the whole thing has unfortunately turned into a proxy war between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton — as if we need to run the presidential primary all over again.

Jeff Stein wrote a very good overview of what’s going on, The DNC Race Has Become Another Fight Over Bernie Sanders When Dems Need It Least. As he indicates, the push to get Thomas Perez in the position shows how stupid this all is. The two men are pretty much identical ideologically. I certainly admire them both. But why is it that Ellison is not acceptable? The best example of this was how Ellison was unacceptable because the job should be full-time. But as soon as Keith Ellison said he would step down as Representative if elected, new reasons to be against him popped up. There’s clearly a more fundamental reason that Ellison is unacceptable — just not one that Democratic Party elites want to talk about openly.

Elites Don’t Like Keith Ellison

The truth is that political parties are the way that their elites want them to be. And those elites don’t want things to change. And this was always my biggest concern about Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic primary. I voted for him, of course. But I saw the complaints that Sanders supporters wouldn’t support Clinton as being more projection than anything else. That is to say: there were far more Clinton supporters who would never have voted for Sanders than their were Sanders voters who didn’t vote for Clinton.

We’ve seen this same kind of thing in the UK Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the party has been met with extreme hostility. There is a huge part of the Labour Party elite that would rather see the Tories in power than Labour in power if it were led by Corbyn. And I think we would have seen the same thing with Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party if he had won the primary.

Trump and the Republicans Are Different

And note: this is not equivalent to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. In as much as the Republican elite was ever really against Trump, it was because he was seen as (1) personally offensive and (2) unelectable. The issue was never ideological. Yes, there was a little ideological heterodoxy at first. But as soon as Trump came out with his tax plan that was a huge giveaway to the rich, the Republicans knew they had nothing to fear from Trump. The issue with Corbyn and Sanders (And Keith Ellison!) is different. In each of these cases, the liberal party is afraid that it will have leaders that are ideologically in sync with their voters. That is to say: they are afraid that the liberal party will be run by actual liberals.

The Democratic Party Is Moving Forward — Regardless

It doesn’t matter to me if Ellison or Perez become DNC chair. Actually, I’d kind of like to see Perez in the position because I want them both fighting for us in high profile positions. But it’s clear that the push for Perez is not about that. The push for him is about telling the base of the party that it isn’t in charge. Yes, Perez is as liberal as Ellison, but the more conservative elites can ignore that. Allowing Keith Ellison to become chair would be an unmistakable indication that the Democratic Party has changed and that the New Democrats are dead, after doing so much damage to the nation and the party.

But like most fearful efforts to hang onto what little power you have, the anti-Ellison campaign will likely fail. I find it annoying that we are even having this fight. Part of being a liberal is believing in democracy. So there really shouldn’t be a big effort to stop the Democratic party from representing the base. But it’s okay. I think the Democratic Party will get to where it needs to go. Eventually. Despite the wishes of too many in the party elite who represent the past and not the present (much less the future).

It’s like we’ve gone back to the days of the Cold War. Yesterday, The New York Times reported, Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking. To be honest, I’ve been skeptical about all this certainty that Russia hacked John Podesta and the DNC in order to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president. Note: I’m not saying that they didn’t do it. It’s just that it is so hard to say. Sam Biddle’s article in The Intercept is the first thing that I’ve read that has made me think that there may be some real evidence that this is the case. But I don’t much care, regardless. The truth is, I’m more angry at Julian Assange than anyone.

Think about it. The Russians are trying to affect our elections. And they have been as long as they have been around. Before that, it was the Soviet Union that was trying to do it. The United States does the same thing to Russia. I’m not suggesting that we should just accept all of this and move on. But it is certainly true that the issue is no more important now than it was four years ago. And if the Russians did have an anti-democratic affect on our presidential election, it is nothing compared to our Supreme Court and the Electoral College system itself.

Who Care Who Stole the Email?

Regardless of who stole the Podesta and DNC email, it ended up in the hands of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Overall, I’m a supporter of WikiLeaks. That’s because I’m a supporter of open government. I think the people have a right to know about 99 percent of everything the government decides needs to be classified. So I’m entirely in favor of WikiLeaks getting all this data and releasing it to the public. But that is not what Julian Assange did. What he did had almost nothing to do with open government. What he did was use the information he had as a political weapon.

Truthfully, I don’t know enough about how WikiLeaks deals with such matters generally. But as much as I’ve paid attention, they mostly do large dumps. This is not what was done with the DNC and Podesta hacks. The information was released slowly as to give it the greatest negative impact on the Clinton campaign. And it isn’t hard to see why that was: there was no smoking gun. It was all innuendo. It was one month of trickling innuendo with absolutely no payoff. That is: no payoff if you don’t count Donald Trump being elected President of the United States a payoff.

How Julian Assange Used the Email

On 7 October 2016, WikiLeaks could have simply released all 20,000 pages of John Podesta’s email messages. Instead, it released a little each day. And given the way that our media system works, that meant that every day, there was more coverage of how Hillary Clinton was a corporate tool. This was so, even while the fact that a corporate con man was running for president was largely ignored. Donald Trump defrauded thousands of students who attended his “university,” but that was just a story — not something that made headlines every day for the month before the election.

Ultimately, I can’t help but remember the old gem, “Power corrupts.” Yes, WikiLeaks is a good idea. There should be a way of getting information out to the public. And let’s not forget that Chelsea Manning first went to The Washington Post and The New York Times — neither of which were interested in what she had to offer. But when it came to these recent hacks, WikiLeaks wasn’t interested in informing the public. It’s well known that Julian Assange hates Hillary Clinton. And he used the power that he gained by doing good to swing an election.

Culpability

There are lots of people to blame for “President Donald J Trump.” And I don’t doubt that the Russian government is somewhere on the list. But at the top of my list is Julian Assange. He went from being a hero to a villain — not because Clinton lost but because he abused his power. What he did casts a shadow on everything he did before.