When money and power collide, power trumps

Ezra Klein comments incisively on Jonathan Chait’s new article in The New Republic (subscription required), “Freakoutonomics”:

Wages [have] increased somewhat throughout the mid-to-late 90s, but as the supercharged growth gave way to the robust numbers of the past few years, the rich began sucking up the gains… The left has tried to explain this away as a consequence of Bush's fiscal policy. Sadly, the trends show up in pretax income also. The right has tried to explain this accelerating inequality as an unstoppable structural feature of the new economy: It's the meritocracy, or computers, or benefits, or global trade. Unfortunately, those explanations are largely bullshit. Europe also has computers, and trade, and mobility, and benefits, and has easily avoided the widening chasm we've seen. So what makes us different?

In a word, power. Or the distribution of it… We used to think the country's economic problems were about economics. At times, that's been true, It isn't now. Now, they're about power.

I’ve heard the idea bandied about that money and political power are fungible, which I’ve come to believe is largely true. Political power and money tend to show up at the same parties together because most of the time money simply means control over things (“possession is 9/10ths of the law”) and other people’s time and activities, whereas political power means formal control over the semi-rigid social systems which hold people together. In this context, they’re both just different angles for exercising influence over social processes and outcomes. But there are plenty of other forms of social control as well—for example: money, political power, religious zeal, moral authority, et al.While control over social systems is absolutely crucial, an overabundance of it in the hands of too small a group of people results in a kind of ossification. A society can become inflexible, even frangible.


Joseph Keppler, Bosses of the Senate (1889), NPR, 29 Oct. 2006 .

We need power, but the distribution of power over a variety of forms (financial, political, religious, etc.) permits for relative change. One aspect of society can shift radically while the others try just to hold thing together; or several can change somewhat while the others maintain basic functions. The greater the diversity of forms of power, the more systemically resilient is the society.

But forms of social power operate as different forms only when they’re held by different people or groups. It’s not enough to distinguish between political and financial power. Only to the extent that they’re held by different groups of people (even if their interests align often) are they effectively different. Forms of power are fungible in terms of one another to a certain extent, and that means that where people who have less money want more, they can only get it by trading on a certain balance of some other form of power. The whole point of a democracy, as I understand it, is to ensure that every citizen has at least his vote as a potential seed for acquiring greater control over his destiny.

Fighting back vs. fighting fair

Josh Marshall, blogging on the surprisingly tight Senate race in TN, comments on the recent race-baiting radio spot put out by Republican candidate Bob Corker:

Begging the refs to throw a flag in response to a vicious ad only telegraphs the message of weakness that was the aim of the attack in the first place. And in recent days not a few of you have written in to say, 'Josh, you always say Dems should not complain but hit back. So why are you turning the sites over to complaining full time about the Tennessee ads against Ford?

It's a good question. And there's certainly a tension there, if not an outright contradiction. But here's my response.

I see the two cases as fundamentally dissimilar. When it comes to GOP race-baiting, calling them out, revealing them for who they are and what is they do, is fighting back. It's that simple. The dynamics of the issues are fundamentally different.

Josh is right that Dems need to hit back, but he’s wrong that “calling out” the GOP on race-baiting constitutes hitting back. Political candidates (and parties, for that matter) who run effective campaigns have two jobs vis-à-vis their opponents:

1. Fight their opponents.
2. Make their opponents fight fairly.

Calling someone out on race-baiting is trying to make your opponent fight fairly, but it isn’t “hitting back” in the sense that Marshall means. To use an overwrought sports analogy, it’s probably useful to express a certain amount of outrage when an opposing soccer player, say, takes a dive. If the victims of a cheat won’t stand up for themselves, even if they’re not the official referees, why should anyone else?

If the complaining is the only expression of your outrage, however, then it becomes problematic. No matter how crucial the play, if the other teams gets an advantage by taking a dive, it’s still only one play. There’s the rest of the game to play, and only very rarely does one call make or break a game. If you’re outraged and you don’t play harder because you’re pissed, and because you don’t want these lying, cheating, primadonna panty-eaters to win, then you’re probably not going to win often. If a bad call, or even several, takes all the wind out of your sails, that’s a sign of psychological weakness. Let everyone know you think the call stinks, but dig in and play harder too.

It’s absolutely not enough simply to call out Corker. Ford needs to call him out yes, and in addition to that he needs to hit Corker where it hurts. (In this election, Iraq and Bush are the two softest spots on every GOP candidate’s political face.)