(I wrote this in 1992, when Perot was leading in the polls,
before he withdrew from the presidential race, and then later re-entered it.)
I.
For those who may not be following the news, I think it would be helpful to begin by explaining who Ross Perot is. He is a wealthy businessman who is at this moment (that is to say, at 9:49 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time, on June 13, 1992) campaigning for the office of President of the United States.
II.
It may also help to repeat the definition of "fascism" presented previously, in Letter 47. My apology and excuse for presenting there and repeating here a dissenting view of the proper use of that term contends that my way of speaking is more useful, and that it more truly reflects the basic structure of social reality: Fascism is the authoritarian form of capitalism.
III.
Capitalism can be democratic or authoritarian. Socialism so far has only been authoritarian [if it has existed at all] - unless one counts as socialist the halting steps in a socialist direction which have sometimes been taken by democratic countries like Great Britain, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, and Costa Rica.
IV.
[Wallerstein holds that socialism has not existed at all. He argues for a conceptual scheme in which there is now only one economic system, global capitalism. He joins those who hold that it is impossible for there to be a socialist nation-state in a capitalist world. Parts of the world controlled by leaders with a socialist ideology, such as the former Soviet Union was and China still is, are necessarily, whether they think of themselves that way or not, subsystems of a capitalist world-system. (Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System. Three Volumes. New York and San Diego: Academic Press, 1980 ff.)]
V.
The governments of nation-states in our global system tend to follow a cyclical pattern, in some ways similar to the cycle of democracy and tyranny described by Plato in Book VIII of The Republic. As Plato observed, there is a tendency toward democracy everywhere, because most people enjoy being free to pursue their own pleasures in their own ways. This tendency is, however, especially strong in capitalism, a system Plato would have had to live 1800 years longer to see, because individual liberty is enshrined in the laws protecting property and enforcing contracts which make capitalism possible.
Plato noted that liberty tends to degenerate into chaos, and to succumb to tyranny. In recent times this ancient recurring pattern, in which tendencies toward greater freedom alternate with authoritarian periods, is best conceived in terms of modernity's central institution: the economy. When democracy becomes incompatible with prosperity, capitalism tends to become authoritarian.
VI.
The United States has so far to some extent been an exception to the general rule. I say "to some extent" partly because democracy may never have been sufficiently incompatible with prosperity in America to test the rule. And partly because I remember the conversations of people I knew as a child who considered "that man, that unspeakable man" (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) to be no less a dictator than Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or Juan Domingo Peron. That is to say, the USA has been privileged, due to having until recently a vast frontier as an outlet for discontent and to other factors, and the USA has also been authoritarian at some places and at some times.
All in all, I think the apparent exceptions can be explained, and it can be laid down as a general rule: where economic necessity appears to require it, democratic capitalism will yield to authoritarian capitalism.
VII.
In my conceptual framework, anti-Semitism, black shirts, swastikas, massacres of gays and lesbians, ethnic strife, youth rallies, brown shirts, gas ovens, torture, anti-democratic ideology, ostensibly pro-democratic but functionally anti-democratic ideology, xenophobia, fervent patriotism leading to the killing of fellow-citizens defined as unpatriotic, racism, the takeover of the government by the military high command, charismatic leadership, Nietzsche's philosophy, mob psychology, hate, Volkswagens, flag-waving, para-military civilian death squads, master race theories, state-planned economies, doctrinaire laissez-faire economics, military expansionism, psychotic leaders, mass mental illness, and cults of personality are not essential to fascism. Force is. Further, it is essential that in order to destroy democracy fascism mobilizes ideas and passions of some kind or other - which ones it mobilizes varies from case to case.
Fascism's great success: it makes capitalism work. Otherwise put: it overcomes the economic stagnation to which capitalist nation-states are periodically prone, while leaving property rights and class stratification intact.
VIII.
Fascism is to be blamed for anti-Semitism and other evils it brings even though it does not always bring the same ones (Mussolini, for example, was not anti-Semitic, and indeed in his early agitation in the Italian Tyrol was anti-German.) In an atmosphere of force, of suppression of rights ("totalitarianism"), and of mobilization of passions it is certain that there will ensue some great evil or other.
IX.
Since Ross Perot is a busy man, he is not likely to find time to read my thoughts about him. But one of his many supporters may see these pages, and the supporter, identifying with her or his supportee, may take offense. Protest as I may that I believe Perot's intentions are good; that I attribute to him not the slightest sympathy with fascism; that I am not even a liberal, much less one of those liberals who are all-too-quick to call conservatives fascists, she or he will still ask, "Why mention Perot and fascism in the same breath ? What do the two subjects have to do with each other ?"
X.
But since I have not yet said anything about Perot, it would be proper until more evidence is in to give me and him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I will reason as follows. First premise: History shows that when a capitalist society - or any society - is in trouble, it tends to suppress rights and to be governed by force. Second premise: American capitalism - and global capitalism - is now in deepening trouble. However, there are nevertheless grounds for this conclusion: Ross Perot is the man who can beat the historical jinx; he can make the economy work while respecting rights. By building trust. By consensus. By persuasion.
What I actually will say farther on will be less simple and less sanguine. The thought that Perot might be the man who could inspire a democratic self-cure for America's economic and moral ills serves to mark the upper limit of a best-case scenario.
XI.
The President of the United States, whoever he may be, will be tempted to use force, or to let others use force, in order to get results. Whether Perot is more or less able than others to resist temptation I do not know; I do have reason to believe that he is an unusually appealing spokesperson for common sense. The phenomenon of a candidate without party affiliation leading in the public opinion polls testifies that Perot's message and personality coincide with what millions of voters are thinking and feeling. I believe that common sense is ready to believe that the United States is entering a time in its history when unusual measures must be taken, and one of my reasons for this belief is that it is implied by what Ross Perot has been saying with such great effect.
XII.
Typical of Perot's commonsense realism and talent for phrase-making are these remarks:
"If the Germans, Japanese, and Arabs ... lose confidence in our country, and we can't sell short-term debt, not only does the music stop, the party's over and the ballroom got burnt." (*)
--on CNN's "Inside Business" show, Jan. 5, 1992
"We Americans have evolved from a tough, resilient people, willing to sacrifice for future generations, into a people who want to feel good now - at any price - and let the future take care of itself. Put more directly, we have become credit junkies, shooting up huge sums of borrowed money on a government and personal level - looking for another high."
--quoted in The Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1987
"The 80s is the decade that we gave away our industrial lead and acted totally irresponsibly in wrecking some of our big corporations through leveraged buyouts. We felt affluent because we were living off borrowed money. We've got to clean up the deficit, clean up the drugs, clean up the justice system, clean up industry. But right now it's like Lawrence Welk music: It's just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. And nobody will fix it before it breaks."
--quoted in Time Magazine, Jan. 1, 1990
"We now expect life to be so extraordinarily good to us that we must be paid $20 an hour for a job that you could train a monkey to do --or we think the world is being unfair."
--quoted in The Saturday Evening Post, April 1983
I do not believe that I have quoted Perot out of context or selected passages unrepresentative of the main tendencies of his thoughts. Behind his words these presuppositions can be discerned:
1. The economy is not working.
2. Important among the causes of its failure are character faults, e.g. softness.
3. The economy can be made to work.
XIII.
If I were an economist, I would be a pessimist.
XIV.
A recurring theme in Perot's common sense thoughts is that if only the economists, the lawyers, and the accountants would get out of the way and leave the job to the engineers, the mechanics, the technicians, the shop floor workers, to the people who know how to do things, real things, physical things, not just how to move pieces of paper - then our problems could be solved. Such thoughts overlook the fact that we live in a world where circulation dominates production, where the purpose of production is sale. The office governs the shop. Underestimating the domination of use and production by exchange is not just an error of Perot and of common sense; it is also an error made by Karl Marx and other highly sophisticated left-wing theorists.
(Some of these remarks, like the one here on "circulation" will not mean much to the person who reads only this Letter without studying the series of which it is a part. This Letter standing alone is intended to convey a sense of why I think common sense is not an adequate social theory; but I do not want it to stand alone. Because I do not want destruction without construction. Hence I include a few pieces virtually meaningless in themselves but hopefully meaningful as part of the larger constructive pattern.)
XV.
Another theme in Perot's thought is that the public does not yet know how bad things are. He portrays irresponsible leaders who know better, or should, as trying to lull the public into a false belief that recovery and normalcy are on their way. Given these beliefs, one might ask why Perot wants to be President. If he wins the election, he will probably be in office when the shit hits the fan. The public will in all likelihood blame him for the disaster. I conclude that Perot is not motivated to go into politics by a desire for glory, because it follows from what he believes that whoever wins the race he is now running in is more likely to be hated than to be thanked.
I fully agree with the implicit and sometimes explicit message of Ross Perot, that the public does not yet realize how bad the USA's standing in the international economy is, nor does it realize how much impact the eventual reckoning will have on the standard of living of the American people. If the reader agrees too, then in what follows here we can regard these gloomy prophecies implied by Perot's message as premises established.
XVI.
I am sorry but I do not believe that it is even possible for the USA to regain its post World War II industrial pre-eminence. That was a result of the destruction by war of Japanese and European industry, and of industry never having been built elsewhere. Those days will not return.
If, nevertheless, the USA is going to try, not perhaps to become pre-eminent but at least to become competitive with Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan - and Ross Perot for one is hell-bent on trying - then it will require as a minimum:
a. that Americans work harder,
b. that Americans work at wage levels in line with those set by the international marketplace,
c. that Americans work smarter, with higher skill levels, and
d. that Americans save more.
I'm sorry again, but I do not believe it is even physically possible to meet these four conditions (especially b and d) with America's way of using its environmental resources - with our high energy consumption per capita (twice that of Europe and Japan), with our preference for free-standing houses over apartments, our preference for automobiles over mass transit. But even if it were physically possible, one would need to ask questions like these about whether it is culturally possible:
1. To what extent are American minds and souls ready to accept voluntarily the austerity and discipline that is "economically necessary" and to what extent will adjustment to "economic necessity" be accomplished by coercion ? More realistically: what forms will coercion take ?
2. Will Americans be distracted from coping with "economic necessity," and will bitterness and hostility grow, because of issues concerning race, gender, abortion, drugs, crime, police brutality, corruption and/or sex in high places, homosexuality, and fraud ?
XVII.
Concerning the first of my two cultural questions, Perot is in an unusually good position to use persuasion, because he was not born rich and can credibly say he knows from firsthand experience what life is like for ordinary people; because he drives a 1984 Oldsmobile; because he has taken the lead in condemning the high salaries of corporate executives; because he asserts that he, a wealthy man, should be taxed more, not less. My premises here are that voluntary compliance with austerity is more likely to be forthcoming where there is a perception that sacrifices are equitably shared, and that a leader willing to make sacrifices himself will help to create such a perception.
XVIII.
Historically, it has been typical of fascism to reject the normal political parties and to turn to a strong leader backed by the business establishment, whether covertly (as in the case of Olivetti's secret financing of Mussolini) or overtly (as in the case of Chilean chamber of commerce backing of General Pinochet). The Perot movement is independent of the traditional parties, but it does not fit the fascist pattern. Perot is not financed or endorsed by business interests; he is instead all by himself a one-man establishment.
XIX.
In any case, the pattern by which capitalism undergoes its periodic adjustments is itself changing. There is an international trend toward accomplishing by democratic means what has come to called "structural adjustment" (the phrase used for IMF-sponsored austerity programs, of the type which will now need to be imposed on the former Mr. Big, the United States). More, rather than less, democracy sometimes goes with adjustment to economic reality, supplanting the traditional resort to force. Indeed, one way to read the coming of democracy to the former Soviet Union is this: the managerial elite became convinced that radical structural adjustment was needed, and to compensate the masses for the loss of job security, subsidized housing, and low food prices, they gave the masses freedoms and rights.
XX.
There are infinitely many gradations along the axis defined by brute force at one pole and Habermas' Kantian ideal of the forceless communicative society at the other. On the whole most nominally democratic regimes manage to impose what "economic necessity" requires without entirely abandoning their claims to govern by consent - although in cases like Marcos' Philippines and Fujimora's Peru the veil becomes thinner and thinner until it disappears. It seems to matter little to the poor whether capitalism is authoritarian or democratic; the chances for poor people winning an election against a modern multi-media blitz, backed up by thinktanks and academic brass well-armed with free market ideology, are not any better than their chances for winning a war against a modern army.
XXI.
How much force and how much consensus will be used to achieve structural adjustment to economic reality depends partly on whether the leaders believe in consensus. Perot does. "Now, I haven't spent my life up there in politics, but I know how to get things done, and you don't get things done by giving orders. You get things done by building consensus." (Interview with David Frost, PBS, April 24, 1992) But another theme in Perot's thought is a strong emphasis on getting results, and it is conceivable that there will be times when consensus-building fails to get results.
XXII.
America's future is austere when viewed through the lenses provided by what I am calling "common sense" and "economic realism." I have suggested that it is likely to be dangerous, as well as austere, by pointing out that it has not been uncommon for nations with problems like those I expect we will have to go fascist.
XXIII.
Common sense tells us that if we are very fortunate, then Ross Perot, or some other candid patriot, will unite the country around the measures we need to take in order to become competitive internationally again. Through consensus and through democratic processes the people will agree to cut back public services, to put unnecessary employees out on the street, to work harder for less, to save more. Crime, despair, and outrage will be contained. The economic forces tending to widen the gap between rich and poor will operate unabated, but the rich will become more public-spirited and will curtail their conspicuous consumption. The power of the labor unions --what little is left of it - will decline still further. Pensions and public assistance for the needy will be exiguous, but somehow people will cope. Private charity will expand. In a more distant future, after America rebuilds its industrial base, prosperity may return. Best of all: self-imposed discipline will be good for the national character. Illicit sex will fall; virtue will rise.
XXIV.
The morning paper says that Ross Perot is spending today at a hotel in Los Angeles behind closed doors with several hundred of his supporters, planning his California campaign. Here, ninety-five miles to the north, a middle-aged woman sitting on a sidewalk near the Cafe Bianco holds a dog on a leash with one hand and with the other hand a sign reading, "Will Work for Food." I am sitting in front of a half-finished cup of apple-cinnamon tea worrying about whether what I am writing is too bitter, too sarcastic, too obscure. I wonder whether I am setting the right tone for people who want to make a constructive contribution to society.
This difficult task I am having so much trouble with is defined by my relationship to the candidate 95 miles to the south. He is in common sense, while I am outside. I do not believe that "economic reality" is really real. I believe it can be sidestepped, transformed, intelligently reconstructed. I believe the world needs not a new economics, but a new philosophy.
XXV.
Perot is not someone who just talks about helping the poor. He gives money for food and shelter for the homeless and for battered women. I do some similar things in a smaller way; I take homeless people to the McDonald's near the Bianco. They prefer Big Macs to apple-cinnamon tea. I try to practice law pro bono one hour for each hour I am paid for, and to spend a dollar on someone with no income for each dollar I spend on myself. Balancing my books in this way I call socialist accounting. Perot, however, is a registered Republican. We do similar things, he on a large scale, I on a small scale; he presumably as a step toward making capitalism work - or perhaps from simple charity; I as a step toward transforming common sense to build a culture of solidarity - or perhaps from simple charity.
XXVI.
From my agreement with commonsense economic realism, of the sort that points out that a nation or a person cannot continue indefinitely spending more money than it takes in, and from my depiction of the commonsense cures for the evils seen by common sense as - even on best-case scenarios - not anything to look forward to, the reader can probably already surmise that I do not believe capitalism works, considering it as a global system and with full awareness that there have been and are enclaves of prosperity within it. Not in its democratic form, not in its authoritarian form.
XXVII.
If socialism has not worked either, it may be because the socialists have believed mistaken philosophies. Karl Marx, for example, was, I think, mistaken when he wrote at the end of his Critique of the Gotha Program that only when the forces of production have grown so much that they allow for general prosperity will it be possible to live according to the religious principle, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." (See Acts of the Apostles 2:45) It seems more likely to me that we will share our talents and resources not when we are rich enough to afford to do so, but when we learn to share.
XXIII.
Allow me to address a suggestion to that man in Los Angeles, or to anyone else with any degree of influence who may be listening. Instead of trying to make ourselves internationally competitive, we could learn to enjoy our relative poverty. We could ride bicycles and eat lentil soup. We could plant more trees; it hardly costs anything to plant a tree. You can dance and play basketball for nothing, if you have a few friends. If we could learn to use properly the small amount of wealth remaining to our nation, it would be fun.
XXIX.
Deceptively simple phrases like "learn to share," imply developing new institutions and new thinking. A viable culture, one with good sense, as distinct from common sense, does not yet exist, at least not here and now. We have to build such a culture word by word, symbol by symbol, act by act. Common sense gives no satisfactory answers to our problems because the mind of our civilization is not structured to ask the right questions; so we need to learn to ask the right questions, accommodating our thoughts to the problems we encounter, frustration by frustration.
(*) The quotations from Ross Perot are from the book, Ross Perot in his Own Words, edited by Tony Chiu. New York: Warner Books, 1992.
