Blaming “Corruption” Hides The Realities of Systemic Power
During a recent video segment with Jimmy Dore, Movement for a People’s Party (MPP) founder Nick Brana said the following:
“Kyle [Kulinski] has made the ridiculous argument that it doesn’t matter what party you run in and you’re elected in, you are equally likely to be corrupted — it’s just some quality of Washington that corrupts people. As if being in a corporate party, the Democratic Party, where the leadership is corporate and you depend upon them for your committee assignments and to remain in power and to not get primaried, where you depend on them for all of that, is the same as being in a non-corporate party where you don’t have any of those incentives. That is an insane argument, that is just laughably wrong.”
The only thing that may be “laughably wrong” here is Brana’s apparent (mis-)understanding of politics under advanced capitalism. Ironically, Brana spends the next video segment bashing Kulinski for “not understanding power,” when Kulinski’s assessment of corruption, at least as characterized by Brana, was actually in the right direction — somewhat surprising given Kulinski’s typically “social democratic” politics. Brana then essentially ends the segment daring folks to present arguments why there shouldn’t be an independent party a la MPP, making the broad implication he alone is correct.
Let’s investigate Brana’s comments a bit to be understand capitalism today and how it should inform our political strategy. There are essentially three major claims here that need addressing: the “insane” argument that getting elected is corrupting no matter who you are; the implication that getting elected to Congress as an independent is gaining “power” to resist corruption; and that an “independent party” is simply one that doesn’t take corporate money. It turns out, all three of these points are interrelated and come from a misunderstanding of capitalism and, more broadly, the State.
Corrupting A More Detailed Analysis
First, Brana laughs as he confidently states that it is “insane” to believe that someone from a non-corporate party could be corrupted once elected and serving in Washington.
Blair Taylor, with the Institute of Social Ecology, previous wrote about seven major myths that many leftists believe about capitalism. These are ideas that, on the surface, seem to describe or even explain the failures of capitalism and the two-party duopoly political system — but once a deeper analysis is performed, the ideas don’t hold up to scrutiny and can even cloud understanding of the root causes of social crisis.
One of the main myths explored by Taylor is the myth of greed and corruption. Simply, it is the belief — and the language used by the left typically reflects this belief — that elected officials become motivated by greed and a desire for money and power after becoming elected, and as a result, become corrupt in the pursuit of even more money and power. While no doubt greed can exist, these myths obscure the reality that the capitalist system is able to place immense pressure on folks to change their behavior even if they haven’t “sold out” or are otherwise in pursuit of personal interests. There’s social pressure, there’s pressure to get re-elected (not even necessarily because of expectation of money but because of a sincere if misguided belief that “if I don’t personally keep this seat, someone worse will win”), there’s gaslighting that tells folks the way Congress works right now is the “only” way to be “serious” and make change, and much more beyond simple greed. Folks can want to do the right thing but still find themselves under immense pressure to be less radical.
Relatedly, many on the left have “often substituted a critique of corporations in place of a critique of capitalism,” according to Taylor. In other words, when Brana scoffs at the idea that a “non-corporate party” could in any way be corrupted or influenced, he is engaging in a sort of reductionism that tries to reduce a large problem to a smaller, more manageable one — namely, he ignores the vast forms of power and control of the capitalist system in favor of looking only at corporate money in elections.
“Don’t rely on big corporation donations” is an easier goal than entirely removing oneself from capitalism, and easy goals are often chosen on purpose for several reasons. Rejecting corporate donors from campaigns can set an “easy” goal one can hype up and celebrate, despite the fact it does little on its own to change the system itself; it also avoids the fact that corporations and wealthy donors in general can still influence politics in many ways beyond campaign contributions, as we briefly hit on above. Yet, there is something more subtle at work here — by deflecting to corporations, capitalism itself can avoid inspection and critique. However well-meaning, many on the left in the US have lived under decades of capitalist propaganda, and are not yet ready to separate themselves from that paradigm. This form of anti-corporate politics is not merely an attempt to set easier first goals, but rather an attempt at avoiding the hard questions about capitalism and what sort of system should come after capitalism. Possibly, such politics could even be disguising sympathies with some aspects of capitalism (or at least, what they believe capitalism to be), or, alternately, concerns about alternatives (perhaps due to heavy anti-socialist propaganda in the US for a good century or more).
While Brana is quick to call out “the establishment,” he has not been so keen on calling out capitalism as a whole; the People’s Party platform is not anti-capitalist, often referring to many “market-based reforms,” while Brana and others have made it clear they do not want to be a “leftist” party and are more interested in a message that can appeal to the right-wing (even 2020 Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins’ attempts to reach out to them were rebuffed as being “too socialistic,” perhaps a reference to Hawkins’ Eco-Socialist Green New Deal).
In fact, much like incomplete analyses substitute “the corporations” for capitalism, “the establishment” is a substitute for the capitalist nation-state itself. Perhaps before we continue discussing Brana’s claims, it would be good to take a moment to talk about the State.
The Modern State and Capitalism
“The State” is somewhat difficult to define, in part because of the shifting forms it has taken in history. Many authors have attempted to analyze the history of the State; Murray Bookchin, for example, discusses the formation of the State as part of the history of the rise of hierarchical forms of society in several books, including The Ecology of Freedom. A contemporary analysis comes from Eric Laursen in the book The Operating System which describes the State from the point of view of a computer’s operating system that tries to set parameters on what “acceptable” operations are for software.
A short working definition for the purposes of this essay could be: the State is the network of social institutions that claim control over a particular population, and enforce that control via monitoring, bureaucratic management, and force (police or military). The State’s primary goal is to hold on to the power it currently has, and continue to grow even more power. Neoliberal States like the US in particular have an obsessive focus on markets and liberal economics as the major source of power and need for growth, but there can be other forms of a State as well.
People with power and wealth therefore find it beneficial to work within the State institutions to continue to grow their wealth and power. All of the social, economic, religious, political institutions in the network reinforce each other and put immense pressure on institutions not aligned with the State, even if members of those individual institutions are not directly aware of nor intend to do so. In short, the State believes that there can be no human society organization outside of the State — the State is “The Law”™, no other social structures have any hope of working, and anyone outside the State is therefore a lawless extremist trying to destroy “law and order” (sounds familiar?).
In short, the State believes that there can be no human society organization outside of the State — the State is “The Law”™, no other social structures have any hope of working, and anyone outside the State is therefore a lawless extremist trying to destroy “law and order” (sounds familiar?).
We quickly can see a plausible argument (forgiving glossing over of some important historical nuance) of how party politics arises from the State. If the State’s goal is to reinforce power and prevent alternative claims to power, this implies several things. First, the State’s institutions have to reinforce capitalism, because capitalist exploitation is where many wealthy individuals derive their power. Second, the State bureaucracy allows a method for wealthy individuals to feud and dispute each others’ power without the need for bloody, violent war — so the State has adopted a bureaucracy with a court system, elections, etc., ironically as a way of protecting capitalism and the wealth of individuals today. Think of bureaucracy and bourgeois elections as a sort of “ceasefire” treaty between the wealthy. This also explains why the bureaucracy is largely indifferent towards, and unforgiving of, poor people that attempt to use the institutions.
However, the State has learned that if it goes too far, it risks a rebellion that threatens the wealth and power of the State; so, it has learned to put on a façade of democracy to appease the poor — such as allowing the courts to occasionally rule in favor of the poor, or against especially egregious instances of police brutality, etc. — to maintain the overall stability of the State. This results in the State consciously direct violence (bureaucratic “red tape”, propaganda, police, and/or military) only at the folks that criticize or reject this arrangement — exploited workers (often of different racial and ethnic backgrounds) especially when on strike, political socialists and anarchists, etc. The targeted violence allows the State to take action against folks that refuse to accept the system, while explaining to the rest that the bureaucracy “ensures” it is a fair action against those that hate “law and order” (e.g., the State). As mentioned previously, the State see itself as the sole arrangement of human society, so is constantly seeking legitimacy and an end to all opposing institutions; conversely, it must de-legitimize any opposing institutions.
To sum it all up: the State exists to protect power and wealth, which currently means protecting capitalism as we know it. To protect capitalism, it must maintain legitimacy — that is, it must get the majority of people to play along with the State institutions and bureaucracy and rules for it to continue to work. By corollary, capitalism as we know it can’t exist without a State; the institutions of the State are required to maintain capitalism in the economy and culture. Therefore, the State must continually win legitimacy for itself and capitalism, and one of the best ways to maintain legitimacy with the folks you are actually exploiting is to make them feel they have skin in the game — give them periodic elections, entertainment, and an “opportunity” to join the wealthy class, and many will accept the odds, even if tilted toward the house.
Legitimacy is everything. When people begin to feel the State is no longer legitimate, the circumstances and risks for some type of revolution to occur (creating new institutions that replace the State as it is exists today) greatly increase. Therefore, the State will occasionally show some leeway in order to maintain legitimacy — hence, sometimes capitalism itself will morph into “social democracy” and create a few extra social programs to restore legitimacy and re-earn legitimacy among the exploited. Sometimes the State is at its most exploitative and sociopathic when it is pretending to “represent” our interests and do us “favors”; that’s when you know the State is facing a crisis and seeking legitimacy to continue on with its exploitation.
It’s important to note here that an emphasis on the State and hierarchy as the root cause is much more common in anarchist and libertarian socialist critiques of capitalism, whereas classical Marxist-Leninists critiques tend to focus on capitalist economics. This is not only a difference in strategy, but an important difference in overall philosophy and vision: historically, Leninists felt they could “take over” the State and use an anti-capitalist “workers’ state” to create real communism as the next stage of society, whereas anarchists felt that any kind of State would be antithetical to establishment of a communal society, and therefore advocated a more bottom-up revolution directly from communes rather than a top-down vanguard-led revolution by a workers’ state — in other words, anarchists expected to be anti-statist just as much as being anti-capitalist. (Ironically, Marx himself shared a view of the State somewhat more similar to the anarchists than the Marxist-Leninists that use his name, but Marx’s suggestion that participating in State elections along with other issues still led to a split between the Marxists and anarchists at the First International.)
Independent Politics Means Independent of the State, Not Just Corporate Money
Now that we have developed a working view of the State and capitalism, we can revisit Brana’s claims about “power” and corruption, and his corporate-free definition of independent politics, with a fresh viewpoint.
Recall that Brana defined an “independent party” as one that refuses corporate donations, and remarked that it was “insane” to believe that candidates for elected office could become corrupted in office even though they didn’t take corporate donations. It should be clear at this point that Brana’s definition is an oversimplification in several ways; none of his remarks seem to take into account capitalism, much less the State itself. The Bernie Sanders campaign for president in 2016 and 2020, for example, proudly declared it did not take corporate donations and instead relied only on small donors — yet that refusal of corporate money did not result in independent politics, as Sanders backed off from more radical policy and ended up endorsing and campaigning for Clinton and Biden, even despite clear evidence the primary was not held fairly if not outright rigged. Brana’s definition doesn’t explain the results of the Sanders campaign precisely because it doesn’t look at the State, particularly the power and goals and history of the State.
Folks will likely debate into the future whether Sanders was a “sell out” or was genuinely afraid of a Trump victory being the worst possible thing for the country. At some point, it doesn’t actually matter whether or not Sanders purposefully directed leftists toward Biden and the Democratic Party; the point is: regardless his internal motivations, the State itself clearly used coercion to force Sanders’ hand. Through some combination of unfair primaries, unfair campaign finance, corporate ownership of most media, fake concern about “spoilers” in a “two-party system” if you start thinking independently, an electoral college that favors a few swing states instead of the popular vote, and much much more all work together to put immense pressure on any candidates wishing to work within the State. The pressure is a combination carrot and stick — the “carrot” that you’ll “get committee assignments” (as Sanders was promised the Budget Committee chair position) or other small perks within the State if you work with them on some level, combined with the “stick” that you’ll be blackballed, opposed for re-election, and essentially exiled from politics — possibly even your personal reputation ripped apart in front of the public on national TV — if you dare to cross the general wishes of the State and the ruling class. Sanders apparently had privately told folks in 2016 and 2020 that he was not considering an independent run because he “didn’t want to end up like Nader”, implying that the State propaganda and attacks against Nader as a “spoiler” after the 2000 election (despite Nader’s impressive resume of serious governmental reforms accomplishments, far beyond most elected officials!) were effective at scaring and coercing Sanders away from the idea. Motivations can be pure, yet still suck folks into ultimately supporting the status quo. Not only with Sanders, but we’re seeing this play out with other members of Congress such as AOC who no longer use the fiery rhetoric of their early campaign appearances and instead speak positively about “Mama Bear” allowing them “important” committee assignments within the State while defending changing stances on Israeli apartheid because of the pressure faced if one votes against the establishment and special interests.
Brana of course would argue that this is an effect of operating within the corporate-backed Democratic Party, and an “independent” party such as his vision for MPP could overcome this. However, a closer analysis reveals this is also extremely unlikely without accompanying systemic change. The UK Labour Party was once considerably more radical, having grown out of early socialist parties and labor unions; yet, while they are now one of the largest parties in the UK, it hardly matters as the party continues to push out leftist members and adopt neoliberal stances that the party once critiqued as conservative; after all, Labour was where Tony Blair, friend of George W Bush and supporter of the wars in the Middle East, came from (albeit, Blair ushered in the “New Labour” era of “centrist” politics, but that’s exactly the point). While Brana has been critical of the US Green Party for being too “socialistic” and “left”, the more “successful” Green Parties in Europe have often become “successful” at the expense of their more radical demands — that is to say, as they entered national office with an expectation “to govern” within the system instead of change it, they quickly found themselves shifting to neoliberal ideas to maintain support of traditional voters and political influences and win enough legislative crumbs to claim victory. Today’s German Green Party is practically unrecognizable compared to its radical roots in the 1980s when it adopted anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, “anti-party party” stances; while Germany does have a better social net and slightly “greener” policy than the US, we need to acknowledge that is an incredibly low bar as poverty still exists throughout Europe, the European economy still relies largely on colonization of the Global South, and the planet still hurdles toward climate catastrophe, an ecological crisis largely the result of US and European industrial capitalism and colonialism that continues to this day. In other words, neoliberalism and today’s “social democracy” has put a nicer face on capitalism, but society and the planet are still in an emergency situation that requires much more radical education and organizing. Adopting neoliberal “social democracy” as UK Labour and German Greens — and many other leftist parties that have gained entry to parliamentary politics — have done is not a recipe for success, but a recipe for conceding the ideological fight and joining the establishment.
What Is To Be Done?
Clearly if we are to address the climate emergency along with other ecological and social crises, we need to build a new movement. Brana correctly recognizes that much, but not the details and scope of what’s required.
With our insights above, it becomes clear that we do need an independent political movement, but with an expanded definition of “independent”. In our view, Independent Politics is not only rejecting corporate money, not only splitting with the Democratic Party, but adopting a fundamental anti-hierarchical/anti-statist point of view as a whole. We do not want to participate in the system as it exists today, and merely become the new “managers of capitalism”, but to upset the apple cart and create a new system based in direct democracy and ecology to replace the system we know today. This is only going to happen with a movement that recognizes such systemic change is necessary and the real, current goal — not just “down the road” or later on, but always at the forefront, always informing our actions each step of the way. We’re not saying this is going to happen overnight or spontaneously; a lot of preparation — which takes time — needs to go into building new social institutions and organizing for a new system, and certainly we want to agitate and try to improve folks’ material conditions as much as possible along the way. But it does mean that we’re always conscious of our goal and asking — how does any action get us closer to non-hierarchical, directly democratic, ecologically-based society? If an action is not clearly advancing that vision, perhaps it is the wrong step to take, and we should go back to the drawing board and discuss more effective actions.
I mentioned doing what we can to improve conditions today while organizing for larger social change. Naturally, a question that arises is: how does that differ from what politicians today tell us? After all, many progressive will likely say the same thing — ask Sanders or AOC about tactics, and they’ll likely say they’re disappointed at the progress so far but that they’re glad to get small wins here and there. On the surface, I agree with the sentiment, but consider the other half of my statement — we must always ask if this action is advancing our true vision. Maybe there was truly, honestly, nothing that could have been done “better” than vote on a watered-down bill as-is, because at least it makes some tweak to improve the lives for a few people. Fine, got it, no argument. But we should learn from that experience, dig deep down inside and ask what got us cornered into that action, really get constructively critical of ourselves and our organizations, and ask how we can be better prepared in the future to take more effective actions. In other words, we shouldn’t be satisfied with such forced votes — and yet we hear often from progressives about such votes as “victory” with only an ask to donate more money or help elect more Democrats (or whatever party) — more of the same strategy, instead of brainstorming a better one. This explains how progressives get stuck for decades, particularly on electoral campaigns, even as society slides to the right; the lure of even small crumbs of “progress”, even the promise of simply “keeping Republicans out of office,” keeps the wheel spinning instead of discussing how we might organize better after decades of failure.
There’s no blueprint for what to do exactly, unfortunately. If there was, global capitalism would have been dismantled long ago, when the Left in the US and elsewhere was much stronger and more organized than it is today. So I think we do need to recognize the complexity and hardship of the task before us, take a deep breath, and remind ourselves it’s OK we don’t have all the answers yet. It’s OK if we keep organizing, learning from our successes and failures, and working toward our vision. It’s only not OK when we become comfortable with the status quo and refuse to analyze, learn, and adapt.
While there’s no blueprint, I think there are some broad concepts history has shown to be fairly successful (though again, we don’t want to get stuck on any one idea because if that one idea was enough, global capitalism would have been dismantled long ago).
We must look at total liberation holistically; “political revolution” is not enough, we need psychological, cultural liberation too. In fact, it’s very likely — as anarchists have historically claimed — that political revolution won’t ever come until it is coupled with cultural revolution that liberates us from capitalist, hierarchical thinking. This is why political education is one of the most revolutionary acts you can take. Read some books and essays on lots of topics — history, philosophy, ecology, anthropology, even art — and talk with your neighbors about problems you’re facing together as a community, and how collective community action is needed to fix those problems. Learn about direct democracy and non-violent conflict resolution methods and tools. We build democracy together, in many different ways, every time we resist the status quo and celebrate diversity rather than conformity.
When we speak of building Independent Political movements, we don’t mean merely free of corporate influence or even the Democratic Party. We mean movements for political and cultural liberation. This means at least as much political education and mutual aid — not charity, but solidarity in which we learn about one another and teach one another — as elections campaigns.
Actually, probably a lot more education and mutual aid than elections. When we do participate in elections, we must think about which electoral campaigns will advance the movement and vision. Sometimes campaigns can be useful as educational campaigns, calling public attention to problems that have not yet been noticed or discussed by broader society; in such cases, raising awareness and building toward action is the real win, not your total vote count (though the neoliberals will attempt to gaslight you into believing the only way to victory is to do it “their way” and get elected). The vote count really only matters when you actually want to win elected office, so the question becomes: when does elected office matter? We’ve seen before that parliamentary politics tends to corrupt and co-opt leftist parties and movements, so with few if any exceptions (for special cases like raising awareness, etc.), we should commit to avoiding State elections — that is elected office at the national or even state level in the US. Such top-down offices tend to be extremely hard to win, utilize (and waste) a large amount of energy and resources, and even when elected, one only becomes a member of a top-down legislative body and has very little power to change much on their own anyway (as many elected progressives will tell you all the time, they can’t actually force votes or bills or do much of anything if the party fights them). Local, municipal elections are a much more interesting, different sort of beast; historically, municipalities and town meetings were sources of true direct democracy (while direct democracy is impossible within representative large-scale State structures), and often municipalities opposed State power. Cities were often the first places to legalize cannabis, officiate gay marriages, encourage women and Black people to vote and hold office, and many other “firsts”, despite objections from state and federal governments. More recently, municipalities have been leading the way at establishing the “Rights of Nature” and opposing fossil fuel expansion via local zoning ordinances. If the goal is changing the system and implementing democracy, municipal offices might make a lot of sense as a tool to institutionalize democratic decision-making processes and oppose State intervention in communities. In short, when we think of elections, we should direct most of our attention to municipalities, rather than Congressional “horse races”.
We can’t have political and cultural liberation without also liberating ourselves from economic scarcity. Decentralizing food production, growing healthy organic food, and placing it under democratic community control is essential to creating liberation and freedom. Related: let’s democratize and municipalize more than just food — also shelter, clothing, medicine, energy, and other economic necessities of life. Always consider: how we can increase our ability to handle these economic needs on our own, locally, via democratic means?
If we retreat into small community bubbles too much, however, we run the risk of becoming self-absorbed and parochial and accidentally work against liberation instead of for it. To keep ourselves grounded, we have to remain connected to larger networks of solidarity toward the same goals. While building locally, also keep connections with surround communities and even international communities and organizations. Share tips, help each other, collaborate on shared resources, and hold each other accountable to our vision and values.
Many of these ideas are essential parts of Green Politics, the political dimension of social ecology. Social ecology originates from the 1950s with Murray Bookchin who ended up a key influence and founder of the Green movement which eventually founded the Green Party. While Bookchin and especially many historical Green Parties have not gotten everything right (plenty to learn from constructive criticism and analysis), the values and ideas advanced by Bookchin and the Green remain one of the clearest frameworks of analyzing modern social and ecological crisis from a Leftist point of view. Bookchin might be a good choice for political education if you don’t know much about him; form a study group with friends, colleagues, and neighbors, and start reading. The Bookchin Reader might be a good place to start for a general overview of social ecology; The Next Revolution might be a good book to start with if you’re specifically interested in what decentralized direct democracy looks like in practice. Either way, read, discuss, and see what you can learn from it. Seek out other sources too of course, and compare, analyze, synthesize, much as Bookchin did. I believe Green politics and social ecology will continue to evolve and will form the basis of our future movements for liberation. The time is now!
