It’s Easy to Support a Welfare State, but is it Possible While America is an Empire?
In an imminently unsurprising turn of events, 5 Americans, a Serbian, a Russian, and a Haitian national were arrested in Port Au Prince over the weekend. The men were in possession of automatic weapons, pistols, drones, communications equipment, and the other accoutrement of your workaday intelligence agency malefactor.
Being that Haiti is currently experiencing a wave of protest and unrest over the alleged corruption of top government officials, including its US backed President, it’s no shock that a group of heavily armed men driving vehicles without plates would tell the police they were on a government mission. In light of the fact that most of those arrested have been identified as employees of various US based private security firms, no two from the same outfit, it seems likely our friends at the CIA or one of their sidekick agencies are at it again.
In an equally unsurprising turn of events, yesterday, Bernie Sanders announced he would once again seek the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. Releasing a platform that includes Medicare for All, free 2 year college and means tested free 4 year college, a $15 an hour minimum wage, and the Green New Deal.
Since Joe Biden hasn’t committed to run polling puts Sanders at the head of the pack going in to the 2020 race. With policies and a record further to the left of any other candidate, a base of enthusiastic supporters, and an incumbent President loathed by a majority of the population it seems there’s a very real possibility of a Sanders presidency.
You may – or may not – be wondering what an intelligence operation in Haiti and Sanders’ run for president have to do with each other. Regardless, it’s not what you think. A common belief amongst the radical left is that social democracy in the mode that Sanders advocates is compatible with the maintenance and perpetuation of empire, and that wouldn’t be incorrect. The two ideas are perfectly capable of coexisting, and in the past may have even been complimentary. But, in the context of the American Empire in the 21st century the question shouldn’t be if the ideas can coexist, but if the material reality even makes it possible for them to coexist as more than just ideas.
To interrogate this question, let’s take a look at two of the common arguments used both for and against Sanders’ policies viability within the mainstream discourse.
How Will We Pay For It?
One increasingly popular and common argument used when promoting social democratic reforms is a response to questions of how will we pay for it? It’s a question that’s been endlessly frustrating for the nascent and historical left in the United States, especially in the age of neoliberal austerity. The most common responses involve one of two arguments; Nobody ever asks how we pay for war, and invocations of MMT or Keynesianism.
Both arguments, at their core, strike at deeper questions than most people realize, and one offers a surface level answer for the other. The truth is, we already have a loose fiscal and monetary policy with regards to the military, and it has its roots in one of our earlier imperial wars, Vietnam. During that war, due to the massive expenditures, the US unilaterally ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold, and began a program of essentially forcing foreign governments to purchase US treasuries to both debt finance the military and resolve the balance of payments problems it caused.
This is why countries like China and Japan today hold more than $6.2 trillion dollars in US debt. With Russia, the EU, China, and many others already formulating alternatives to US financial imperialism due to US military imperialism, the day is coming when the USD’s status as the world reserve currency, and the foreign debt financing it enables, will come to an end.
The primary reason massive deficit spending on the military is possible is because US military imperialism enables US financial imperialism. One is not possible without the other, and the very same forces that will oppose sticking it to Wall Street will oppose sticking it to the Pentagon and vice versa. Like any ecosystem the two are so hopelessly intertwined as to be inseparable.
The idea that cutting military budgets, taxing the rich, and deficit spending will pay for social democracy is itself a contradiction. The very mechanism that allows for massive debt financed deficit spending would necessarily need to be undermined to devote that spending to such programs.
Many on the left would argue this is why social democracy and empire would go hand in hand in a US context, and that may have been true in the past. But at this moment only ever increasing military budgets in the service of declining empire situated in a world of increasingly multi-polar financial power can preserve such a system.
If there’s less debt to be had to finance its maintenance, it’s unlikely or perhaps impossible that the cost of domestic social programs could be feasible. This is to say that it seems incredibly unlikely at this moment that social democracy and imperialism, materially, can coexist beyond rhetoric.
What About Capital Flight?
One prediction that’s been garnering attention with the possibility of a Sanders presidency is a capital strike or capital flight. The idea being that the promise of higher taxes and onerous social obligations would result in mass migrations of money and capital to tax havens and foreign shores. One aspect of this that’s commonly overlooked is why it’s even possible to begin with, and the answer again lies with imperialism.
The majority of contemporary tax havens from the Caymans to Bermuda or Panama were once themselves imperial colonies, and in many ways remain so today. Their viability as states are predicated upon providing a friendly location for foreign capitalists to stash their money away from the prying eyes of tax collectors and impoverished domestic populations in return for bribes, aid, and a host of fringe benefits for their elites.
The imperial tools used to impose austerity globally, such as the IMF and the World Bank often, intentionally or not, push countries to play this role, as foreign capital investment and loans would soon dry up if they weren’t so pliant.
Perhaps the only way eliminate the wealthy’s ability to take their ball and go to Panama is by eliminating the ever present threat of financial or military destruction that’s used to enforce those country’s own domestic austerity. If there were more viable alternatives to supporting their own economies, they very well may be less tolerant of the global elite using them as a stash house, and the US population might finally be able to bring its own elite to heel.
Why This Matters in 2020
Re-evaluating the possibility of imperialism and social democracy’s coexistence in America is of the utmost importance, not just for the revolutionary and radical left, but for your typical Sanders supporter as well. Even if one could disregard the moral imperative that is anti-imperialism and focus solely on myopic self or national interest, it very well may be impossible to construct even a 20th century style welfare state without dismantling the American Empire.
The financial and imperial interests of the United States are so inextricably linked that addressing one necessarily requires addressing the other. In years past – at the height of US imperial power – such reforms may have been possible without taking imperialism into account (not that it was a good thing), but the contradictions of an empire that must consume itself to perpetuate itself have become so extreme it may no longer be materially possible.
This of course raises further questions as to the very viability of social democracy itself in the absence of empire, but that’s another question, already better debated elsewhere.
If nothing else, I hope this question helps people understand that without tackling the question of US imperialism there is no healthcare. There is no green new deal. There is no free college. There’s no stopping climate change. There’s almost no hope. So if you’re a Sanders supporter, it’s incumbent upon you to push the imperial question to the fore during this election season, and push Sanders to account for it. Even if it’s just for the free stuff.
Jean Krill is is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His writing navigates the many disparate visions of a radically better future.