As Such it is Criminal in Nature

After hours at work, when the crew thins out, the workplace becomes a bit casual. Towards the end of the day yesterday a short conversation cropped up between a couple of co-workers concerning the Occupation movement. The only reason I was even aware of it is that the conversation was taking place across a number of cubicles. It was despairing concern about events in Oakland, the recent murder outside Occupy Oakland, and a recent suicide at Occupy Vermont. While not openly supportive of the Occupation, the conversation showed that my co-workers are aware of what is happening around them. One of the conversationalist did concede that Oakland, California was not the safest city in the U.S.A. I consider that proof, if you will, that the Occupation is impacting people who would rather rub elbows with the 1%; the American Dream is not quite dead yet.

As I wrote, long ago,

Most people are decent. They want to live their lives within the acceptable norms of the sub-culture in which they were born. They want to assume that the political leadership, while questionable in competence, will not adversely affect them if they keep a low profile. These people do not think of doing things outside their cultural norm.

Or, to be more blunt, they want to work, collect a check, have enough to get by, get a decent beer buzz going on the weekend, and dream of what might be if they only got a decent break.

That observation raises a few questions. How did we get to a place where the American Dream is just that, a dream? And why are there thousands of people across the United States of America braving the elements to protest the current socioeconomic norm? What push the button?

All I can do is draw from my previous research:

November 2000 election has been a manifestation of a conservative revolution. To document all that has occurred since the conservative revolution is a work best suited for another time. It is sufficient within this discussion to note that it did happen, and what we have today is a result of that revolution. Cronyism, nepotism, and the stratification of socioeconomic levels are so common in today’s marketplace that they are core values within the current expression of institutional means. Whether or not this has hurt the U.S. society depends on one’s view of no-bid government contracts, security services provided through private organizations like Blackwater, corporate influences on the government at the expense of the citizens, and the return, for all intents and purposes, to the social goals and institutional means of 1902, as dramatized in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

If the loss of 100 years of progress is acceptable, then this society, and the inevitable criminality of the privileged, is nirvana. If it is not acceptable, then the conservative revolution of November 2000 needs to be viewed as a failed social experiment, and we need to address where we are heading as a nation without the posturing and name calling.

The discussion, if there is one, needs to be based on what works and what doesn’t. A critical eye needs to be cast on how we define what works. Is it good for a society that a few should amass wealth through means which are essentially harmful and, as such, criminal, even if acceptable and legal? Are there other goals in a society comprised of 300 million people who are being neglected in pursuit of the primary goal? Moreover, how do we justify that being intelligent and gifted are now liabilities.

We give lip service to intelligence and education, but define it within the narrow parameters of what the business community deems of value to the corporation. That is a very narrow pathway. They control the allocation of economic resources.

It is at this point that we need to look at the warnings of economist Joseph Schumpeter.

“Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes. Capitalism would spawn, he believed, a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the intellectual class's existence. And unlike Marx, Schumpeter did not relish the destruction of capitalism. He wrote: ‘If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently, this does not mean that he desires it.’ ”[1]

This is seen in the E.U. today. While the E.U. is still filled with innovative ideas, it lacks the will necessary to engage in the “creative destruction” (another term coined by Schumpeter) necessary to push the capitalistic system forward. As one observer put it, the E.U. is like a museum where the children can look but not touch.

Within the dialogue of what is wrong with the United States, Robert Jensen wrote that the U.S. has become a nation of the clinically narcissistic.[2]

DSM-IV describes the disorder as “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy” that can be diagnosed when any five of these nine criteria are met:

1. a grandiose sense of self-importance.
2. preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
3. believes he or she is special and unique.
4. requires excessive admiration.
5. sense of entitlement.
6. interpersonally exploitative, taking advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.
7. lacks empathy.
8. often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Narcissistic tendencies to self-aggrandize are not unique to the United States, of course. But given the predominance of U.S. power in the world, we should worry most about the consequences of such narcissism here.

If that is a valid critique, and it fits within the parameters of the mental health of the nation, then the E.U. has a very different form of the same illness. The E.U. is fixated on their “grandiose sense of self-importance” for what they were, and not who they are. They resemble the old high-school quarterback sitting in a seedy bar reminiscing about the glory days of passing the game winning touch-down as he awaits his next assignment at the local day labor agency. As the world passes the E.U. by, it dreams of what it once was.

As far as Schumpeter’s warning about the death of capitalism at the hands of the intellectual class living off the fat of the capitalistic system, his view is limited to the rising trend of the late 1940s. It is not the fat intellectual who now condemns capitalism, nor, for that matter the proletariat of Marx’s vision, but the disenfranchised of the current globalized trend.

These disenfranchised individuals do not want the destruction of capitalism, but look for opportunity to engage freely in the system. They want to express what Schumpeter called the unternehmergeist (entrepreneur-spirit) so vital in keeping capitalism alive. That spirit today, however, is caught up in providing vice as a viable service. It is lacking in vision and inventiveness.

We have a narcissistic fixation of image over substance and a predatory protectionism of that image. Our current image is that we are a productive nation.

This creates an environment where economic resources and opportunity are hampered at the local level, and where predatory competition can get out of control. This out of control predatory competition is essentially the root cause of all levels of criminal activity. The question then becomes: how do we put controls on predatory competition?

We have looked at Colvin’s coercion matrix at the extreme: constant, Coercive. While it does match what is happening in many corporations in the United States today, he does not write from a doomed perspective. He addresses the outcome of the Consistent, non-coercive environment. Colvin says, “This is a non-coercive type of control in which strong social support of both expressive and institutional needs are provided.”[3] This type of control, writes Colvin, “utilizes a combination of normative and remunerative control.”

• It produces the following social-psychological outcomes:
• Low anger.
• High self-control, based on internalization of norms.
• Internal locus of Control.
• High self-efficacy.
• Strong, positive, moral social bond.
• No modeling for coercive behavior.
• No perceived control deficit or control surplus (control balance).

And it produces the following behavioral outcomes:

• Generally non-criminal, non-delinquent.
• Strong tendency to engage in pro-social behavior ….

Pro-social behavior is not what we have in the United States today.

The idea that corporations have to be coercive in order to compete in the capitalistic system is in error. It flies in the face of basic human behavior, the known science of psychology, the facts presented in criminology, and basic common sense. Common sense, as we pretty much understand, is not common. Maybe in the business community quid pro quo is misconstrued as something for nothing, or the most amounts of labor and resources for the least amount of wages, but the human dynamic demands a certain reasonable exchange rate for services which allow survival within the economic environment. Paying someone poverty level wages, and doing all that can be done to squeeze them for basic necessities are not contained within the quid pro quo ideal. Something for something implies that the something given in exchange for services is of equal value. If corporations conspire to impoverish their employees, then the exchange is unequal and criminal in nature.

(c) 2008 Wealth, Women, and War

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[1] "Biography of Joseph Alois Schumpeter". The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty. Retrieved November 28, 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Enc/bios/Schumpeter.html

[2] Jensen, R. (2006, April 18). Diagnosing the U.S. ‘national character’: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Retrieved November 28, 2007, from http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=632&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0

[3] Cullen, F., & Agnew, R. (2006). Criminological Theory: Past to Present (2nd ed.). New York: Roxbury Publishing Company, p. 380-382