Always has, and always will.
The superwealthy always seem to win in the short run, but they and all the rest of us lose in the long run. The rich do what they do with a predictablility that is driven by the logic of greed, but the rest of us let them because deep down we want to be them because they are life's winners. They are successful, and everybody wants to be successful. People who care about more important things or define success in other terms, well that's their choice. But it's probably because they don't have the drive, the ambition, and the intelligence to get rich. They're really losers who don't want to admit it.
Americans glorify the greedy by calling them ambitious and spunky, and they perceive anyone who isn't as shiftless, lazy, and deserving whatever misfortune is his lot. And so these Americans, most of whom are not rich, cannot bring themselves to fight the rich because by some bizarre collective Stockholm syndrome they identify with those who hold them hostage. The rich are the winners, the successful ones. They, as hostages, are the losers. And so these Americans come to accept the viciousness of the rich as the virtue that they lack. No decent American would say it, but deep down, whether they consciously recognize it or not, they believe that "Greed is good."
And that perception of the nobility rather than the viciousness of the wealthy–these 'aristos', these 'optimates', these 'best people'–will continue until we devolve into the inevitable cycle of violent unrest and violent suppression that is the consequence of allowing logic of greed to drive our politics and define success.
America doesn't know what it is anymore; it has lost its idealistic narrative thread. There has always been a viciousness in the American national character, but it was balanced by a robust sense of decency and fairness. But whatever is left of the latter in the political and economic spheres is a kind of tattered memory. And so by default American politics has become driven by the interests of the superwealthy.
The churches used to provide some counterbalance to this American celebration of getting rich, but they are weak and lack credibility except on the far right. But the fanatical religiosity of the nation's right wing has nothing to do with the spirit of Christianity; it's a cargo cult, a Ghost Dance movement, driven by defeated, frightened people obsessed with fantasies of apocalyptic destruction and deliverance. And Liberalism is a spent force–too tied to a now-bancrupt Enlightenment rationalist imagination of reality, and its ranks are filled with sellouts and impotent whiners. The country just does not have the spiritual resources to resist the passionate intensity of the greedy, and so things will just have to cycle out the way these things do.
And so for want of a more compelling narrative, we will continue to revert to the plutocratic historical norm until we're motivated to remember our best selves and retrieve what we've lost. I have no doubt it will happen, but not in my lifetime. The journey back will be painful, but at least interesting. There will be soon enough a clarity we don't have now about about who the good guys and bad guys are. We will come to see the logic of greed for the ugly destructive thing it is.
***
The superwealthy always dominate their respective societies, and the richer the society, the more they dominate the power structure, and the more they use that power to grab for themselves as much as they can. America is no different from any other of history's rich societies. We hear a lot about the "republics" of ancient Greece and Rome and how they were superior to the tyrannies of the barbarians, but those republics were plutocracies. Fifth-century Athens was a bizarre, really bizarre, exception, but the Roman Republic, especially after the Punic Wars, was an unbalanced plutocracy, a wholly owned enterprise of the few hundred superwealthy families in the Senatorial class.
They didn't care at all about the "Republic"; they cared only about their own group prerogatives, and jealously guarded against any one of their group who thought outside the box, e.g., about the broader public good. It wasn't love for the Republic that motivated Caesar's assassins, but a love of their own plutocratic privilege. Caesar diluted those privileges by adding provincials to the Senate and by promoting the political interests of the Populares, the party of the plebs. The Populares,for a good part of the mid first century BC, were for good reason a violently unruly, angry mob because of social conditions created by the greed and short-sightedness of the plutocratic ruling elite. Any rich guy with half a brain saw that it was in his enlightened self interest to redress the imbalances created by the the stupidity and greed of the plutocrats.
Caesar in the mid-first century BC and the Gracchus brothers of the century before were kind of Bobby Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, or Teddy Roosevelt figures: rich guys with mixed motives. They were egoists who loved power, but also intelligent enough to understand that the self-serving, short-sighted policies of their superwealthy class were destroying their respective societies. The greed of the superwealthy always makes a mess of things, and these rich guys emerged and tried to redress some of the imbalances.
In Rome they were destroyed, but in America, until recently, they were actually pretty successful. They pushed back against the superwealthy and ushered in an unprecedented era of broad-based prosperity in the mid-20th century. But the superwealthy on the Right, marginalized as cranks during this period, couldn't stand spreading America's wealth like that. And they used their wealth and power to gradually take the country back. And the rest of us stupidly let them. Everything changed after 1980.
Until then America always had such rich-guys-with-mixed-motives who found ways to push back when the superwealthy were stupidly and shortsightedly grabbing everything for themselves. Not anymore–not any that seem capable of making a difference. But most of the rich will always stupidly and blindly do what they do, and if the rest of us just let them, then we probably deserve what we're going to get–a mess, with all the violent unrest and turmoil that comes with it. What goes around sooner or later comes around.
It won't be boring.
P.S. Digby references an historical essay by Philip Agre that explores this theme from a somewhat different angle. It's an interesting read.
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