Why is the right wing so crazy now?
It seems that conservatives are committed to stupidity. Consider environmental policy for example. Pollution is economically inefficient, so policies to restrain pollution generate a net increase in economic welfare. Those policies might also distribute the net increase away from the rich, but the cap-and-trade approach to environmental policy was carefully designed by bourgeois “free market” economists to reserve most of the benefits to the wealthy proprietors of the businesses regulated. That was why both parties supported cap-and-trade before 2008. The same is true of Romneycare. Why, then, do the political agents of the rich oppose those policies and pretend that the problems they address do not exist at all, despite evidence and the thinking of their own economists and scientists? Is it racism, just because our President is Obama? Well – not exactly.
The basic division of power in our society is between the billionaire class and the working class. On the basis of a simple head count, that looks bad for the billionaire class. The working class are the huge majority. Why then do the billionaires not just get rid of democracy? The alternative, strong-man government, has proved again and again to be worse for the billionaire class, probably because the rich are the tall poppies. Their only hope is “divide and rule.” But this is a strong hope, since the very size of the working-class majority leads to divisions within the working class. The purpose of conservative politics is to keep the working class divided, so that the billionaire class continue to hold the balance of power.
Racism, over the long term, has been the most useful issue for the division of the working class. In the nineteenth century, when people of color were still a very weak group in a political sense, conservative support for the rights of freedmen was a means of increasing the effective division between black and white workers; as the power of people of color grew, support of conservatives for white supremism became more strategic. There is no logical connection between free-market conservatism and racism – as a matter of logic they are opposed – but an alliance between them is strategic for the political power of the rich. This is also the purpose of social conservatism, which, as a matter of logic, seems to oppose both free markets and racism. But alliance with social conservatives makes strategic sense for the billionaire class. An implication is that social conservatives are not meant to win. So long as LGBT rights were a means of dividing the working class, conservatives resisted them seriously – but when they were no longer divisive, the resistance to them vanished like morning mist. A key advantage of these strategic issues is that the billionaire class has no economic interest in either side, and so pays no cost for supporting or opposing them.
So-called “free market economics” functions much like a secular religion in this political web. A difference is that, in most applications, free markets are in the interest of the billionaire class. In cases such as cap-and-trade and Romneycare, exceptions can be made. But the religious devotion to free markets, like other religions, does not admit of exceptions. Thus, conservative opposition to these policies has become a useful issue for division of the working class; but it does have a cost for the billionaire class. This, I think, has a lot to do with the disarray within the Republican Party.
More generally, the divisiveness of our political system, which everyone deplores, exists for a reason. The reason is that divisiveness is in the interest of the billionaire class. Make of that what you will.
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