Double Movement

An entrepreneur once told me that business and commerce can be summed up into a singular concept, namely, that business and commerce is all about convincing another person to put the dollar which is in their pocket into your pocket. But as mentioned before, government is much different than ordinary business and commerce, in the sense that government compels ordinary people to give up the dollar which is in their pocket at gunpoint rather than effort and persuasion. Plus, when consumption makes up more than two-thirds of an economy as it does in the United States, it demonstrates that the system is designed through both psychological and material means in such a manner that the consumer is essentially the servant of the producer, whereas traditionally and theoretically, the producer is supposed to serve the consumer. Likewise, whereas the government is traditionally and theoretically supposed to serve the people, a certain whole-of-government policy means that people have become the passive tools and servants of the elites in the United States. 

In sum, the basic nature of both economy and society in the United States can be summed up by a concept known as “Double Movement.” This concept was contrived by a 20^th century European economist named Karl Polanyi. In essence, Polanyi argued that there is a push-and-pull between two countervailing forces in both the economy and society. For one, there is the “marketization” and dismantling of traditional government protections and services at the hands of private capital. And on the other hand, there are ordinary people who push back against “marketization” and are seeking greater social protections and services through government as a response to the predations of private capital. It must be noted that the pushback against “marketization” is a bipartisan phenomenon which transcends partisan and ideological differences. Such predations of private capital against regular people in recent years have been the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, as well as a handful of hegemonic wars. Hence, the idea of a “class war” and so forth relates directly to this concept known as “Double Movement” and in turn the whole idea of a “class war” can be described and explained by this concept. 

As a result, “Double Movement” suggests that the American state is not an autonomous actor who can balance and regulate corporate and popular interests, a reality which was best demonstrated by what occurred during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. As Stefan Eich wrote:

“Instead of an autonomous sovereign state taking charge of a crisis, those enacting the bailouts came from the very same Wall Street-to-Washington networks as those sitting on the other side of the table as recipients. If this was an act of sovereignty, who precisely was sovereign – the American people or Wall Street? Whose interest did the state pursue? In its quest to restore faith and confidence in the financial system, even the most benign elements of the American state found themselves hostage to the ‘financial franchise.’”

It follows that the basic business and task of people like Joe Biden, CNN, and others in Washington is to turn lies into truth and truth into lies. The art or perhaps even the science of propaganda and how it is used as a tool by certain elements of the elite to brainwash and control regular people will be the subject of the next blog article.