Democracy for the rest of us: A strategy guide to transform the US plutocracy into a democracy

By Perry Krasow

From the preface:

A democracy is a system of government by the eligible members of a nation, typically through elected representatives.
If the majority of these elected officials do not represent a nation's citizens, if instead they chiefly represent the interests of one affluent class, that nation is not a democracy.
In the United States, the wealthy 1 percent, and the wealthier 0.1 percent, pay for the campaigns of the vast majority of the candidates in Senate, House and Presidential races.
As a result, these candidates, once elected, serve that elite group. Our representatives are in fact political servants of this class. This is only one method of legalized bribery where the elite funnels money to politicians.
If the rich control the decisions of our government, they are our rulers, not co-equal citizens. A political system controlled by a wealthy elite is a plutocracy.
The United States is not a democracy; it is a plutocracy.
The purpose of this book is to transform the US plutocracy into a democracy.

The results of such a system is that corporations damage the environment through global warming, pollution and habitat destruction. They cause opioid deaths in the tens of thousands, sell commercial airplanes that they know have dangerous technical faults causing thousands more deaths, hire thugs to murder international labor organizers and rainforest activists, and numerous other assaults on the people. They periodically crash the US economy through irresponsible investment devices, then use our taxes to bail them out. They are able to commit these offenses because the government, which is meant to protect its citizens, is controlled by them and refuses to effectively regulate their activity.

The richest 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. They have reduced their taxes from 70 percent to 37 percent over 35 years, leaving our children with a debt of 23 trillion dollars. As they become wealthier, the rest of us become poorer as our well-paying jobs are replaced with less lucrative ones. They encourage division to keep us fighting for scraps rather than uniting to demand that our government represent us and prevent corporate or class misconduct.

In our America, the Senate is dominated by members of the 1 percent. Presidential candidates are billionaires or, with few exceptions, backed by billionaires.

But we can claim our government from the plutocrats. We have the tools given to us by the authors of our constitution, the intelligence to organize in our defense and the numbers of citizens to accomplish our objective. We are the 99 percent. This book will show you how to awaken democracy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098306366

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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-09830-635-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09830-636-6

Dedication

To my wife Janet, whose love and organizational skills have informed my life and work. To my mother Alice, who has pushed me to write something for my entire life. To my son Julian, who always presents me with new books and new ideas. May he and his generation someday inherit a democratic nation.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

PART ONE: The Problem

Plutocracy in the United States

The Players: 1 Percent, 0.1 Percent and 99 Percent

Doing Business, Making Money, Causing Harm

PART TWO: Foundational Principles

Unity

Nonviolence

Grassroots Activism

PART THREE: Organizing for Change

The Basic Elements of Comprehensive Strategy

Gathering Activists and Working Together

Generating Campaign Ideas

Tools for Determining the Steps of Campaigns

The Communication & Education Team

Fundraising

International Democracy or Global Oligarchy

After a Campaign

How Victory Will Happen

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

Resources

Preface

A democracy is a system of government by the eligible members of a nation, typically through elected representatives.

If the majority of these elected officials do not represent a nation’s citizens, if instead they chiefly represent the interests of one affluent class, that nation is not a democracy.

In the United States, the wealthy 1 percent, and the wealthier 0.1 percent, pay for the campaigns of the vast majority of the candidates in Senate, House and Presidential races.¹

As a result, these candidates, once elected, serve that elite group. Our representatives are in fact political servants of this class. This is only one method of legalized bribery where the elite funnels money to politicians.

If the rich control the decisions of our government, they are our rulers, not co-equal citizens. A political system controlled by a wealthy elite is a plutocracy.

The United States is not a democracy; it is a plutocracy.

The purpose of this book is to transform the US plutocracy into a democracy.

Introduction

When compassionate people sense a problem, they want to jump in and fix it. This is especially true with a social injustice. We’re human. We see a child suffering with cancer caused by some corporation dumping toxic waste near her home and have an emotional reaction. Many activists want to rush right out and protest. We want the pain to go away and act to make that happen. And maybe that’s the right thing to do. However, it cannot be all that we do if we want to create a change.

Sensing that there is a problem and reacting is not enough. Simply reacting to negative stimuli is what a jellyfish does. Its effect is only momentary. If a shark tries to eat a jellyfish, the latter reacts by moving away. That action may be momentarily necessary, but it does not rid the ocean of sharks. After protesting, or emailing our local representative, or making a donation, another problem appears next to the previous one, and we react again. Continually reacting does not fix anything. Even if we stop that first corporation from dumping toxic waste, there are thousands of others doing the same thing in someone else’s neighborhood. We need to address the root cause and develop a campaign to fix that cause.

There is a pattern of thought that makes some activists effective. First, they see a problem in the context of their political environment. Second, they evaluate that problem from different angles to determine a plan of action that addresses the cause. Third, they act according to that plan. But it doesn’t end there. After the action, they re-evaluate the problem in the political environment. They examine what has been changed by their action. They reflect on what worked and what did not in their approach. They come up with a new plan of action and act again. This cycle of seeing the problem in context, evaluating to determine a plan of action, acting and then re-evaluating continues until there is an acceptable conclusion.

There is a multiplicity of possible successful methods. People are creative, and their problem-solving skills are profuse. The cycle I present is one common way to success for some activists. Later, I will insert the planning of campaigns into the evaluation/re-evaluation phase of this cycle. For now, I will use this cycle to illustrate how this book is arranged.

Part One is about seeing the problem we face in the political environment of the United States. It will examine who (the plutocrats) and what (the corporations) we are up against. It will elucidate the tremendous damage that is caused by having unregulated capitalism unleashed upon our nation and the world.

Parts Two and Three encompass the evaluation and action phases of the cycle. They discuss how we build the foundation of a formidable movement to advance democracy through unity and grassroots organizing and fix the problem. Part Two presents some foundational principles. Part Three is about strategy. It presents tools specific to organizing a grassroots movement, methods of coming up with campaign ideas and ways of executing effective campaigns.

The fourth phase of the cycle, re-evaluation, can only come after this book is read and a movement created. I do not wish to disparage the efforts of those who have come before me with similar goals and opposition. There are groups and organizations working separately on the problems of elite control of our government and corporate malfeasance. They are brave and committed. Unfortunately, they are disparate and lack a cohesive approach. Some do not see the connection between themselves and other organizations against plutocracy. Most do not have a systemic understanding of the forces against them. As a result, they lack a systemic solution. When a movement has formed and action has been taken, then we can look back upon our results and re-examine for the future.

While my planning of this book has been methodical, I do not expect it to be used by a reader in one particular manner. My guess is that most readers are interested in challenging plutocracy and creating a democratic alternative. Despite that, there are going to be some readers from other progressive movements who are exploring strategic alternatives to freshen their resistance to oppressive forces. If any of my suggestions further their efforts, I am thrilled. There is a possibility that some supporters of plutocracy or conservative causes are reading this to find out what the opposition is doing. If that’s the case, they’re too late. Reading to find out what progressives are already doing means that those favoring democracy are acting and the regressive forces are trying to catch up. Even among readers who favor democracy over plutocracy, there is a range of differing personal experience. Correspondingly, there will be a range of personal approaches to the book. Some will read cover to cover. Some will skip around. The book is designed to be picked up at any chapter or any part and read for content without confusion. Do as you wish. It’s your book and your movement.

Some notes on language used in this book. I use the pronouns she, her and hers to represent the universal pronoun. It is a countermeasure to the traditional and sexist assumption that he, him and his are universal. This occasionally means that I will be found referring to a corporate criminal as she. This is only grammatical. I don’t believe that women are more likely to be criminals than men.

For those readers who are new to activism, I’d like to clarify the difference between activist and organizer as used in this book. Activist is a general term for an individual who works to create political or social change. Organizer is a specific term for a kind of activist who plans strategy, builds organizations or makes decisions. Organizers usually participate with the rest of the activists in carrying out the plan. In a movement, being an activist who carries out the mission or an organizer who plans the mission is a choice one makes depending upon how much time one can contribute. All organizers are activists, but not all activists are organizers. There is no hierarchy of value between these two roles. People have limits on their time, and we need both. If someone reads this book and is motivated to join an existing group where they can support a cause without planning its campaigns, their associates will be grateful.

Regarding the definitions of oligarchy and plutocracy, an oligarchy is a political system where a country is ruled by a small elite. There are different forms of oligarchy. Three common examples are aristocracy (rule by a self-defined class of nobles), theocracy (rule by religious leaders) and stratocracy (rule by a military cadre or dictator). In the United States, our form of oligarchy is a plutocracy, or rule by the wealthy. While the ideals of the US Constitution define this country as a democracy, we are functionally and historically ruled by the rich.

Finally, when I refer to us, our movement and we, I mean you, me and those who are willing to work for democracy. I try to use you only when I am providing instruction. This is not a passive read. My aim is to inspire you to become involved in this mission.

PART ONE:

The Problem

Chapter 1

Plutocracy in the United States

You probably already suspect that what we have been told since we were children is wrong: the notion that the United States is a fair and equal democracy. It’s not true. Our government is in the hands of a wealthy elite that makes the rules and has political servants to implement those rules. If we live under a set of laws and decisions dictated by an elite, with minimal or no say in the direction our country takes, then we do not have a representative government based on political equality.

This lack of equality has caused tangible damage to our country. The wealthiest Americans have been able to get their tax rate reduced from 70 percent to 37 percent over a period of thirty-nine years.¹ This has increased the national debt from $908 billion in 1980 to over $23 trillion in 2019.² Our environment has suffered the depredations of corporate greed. Our citizens have had their labor exploited. The world has experienced criminal abuse at the hands of multinational corporations. More on this in Chapter 3.

This doesn’t mean that individual Americans can’t create a nice life for themselves. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has been prosperous enough to have a relatively large, comfortable middle class and a sustained working class. There has not been enough hunger or homelessness to make the population rebel. Sure, middle class and working class jobs are disappearing. The middle class is shrinking. The gap between rich and poor is growing as we lose domestic jobs to repressed workers overseas and the elite gains more capital in the global economy. China is overtaking the United States as the world’s largest economy, while the response of our super-rich is to abandon us and become more global in their economic outlook. But there is still enough of a cushion where, if we play by their rules (which means we work very hard, have some luck and can purchase enough education in the right field), we could carve out decent livings. It’s not as good as the future our parents had to look forward to, but it could be enough to meet our needs.

Still, we will have to accept that, without effective political resistance, we have little voice in government. Most of the politicians are not on our side, and the people with real money don’t care about us. The federal government does what the rich want it to do, and we are not living in a politically equal system.

The wealthy of our country are aware they would have a rebellion on their hands if they instructed their political servants to overtly repress constitutionally protected oppositional speech. Consequently, they are selective about the extent to which they challenge freedoms and are careful that those challenges do not affect too broad a swath of the US population. For example, when our elite became concerned that a protest was going to shut down the 1999 World Trade Organization conference, they didn’t prevent the First Amendment right of the people to peaceably assemble. That would have worried too many people. Instead, they made sure that the authorities created a no protest zone.³ While this was still a violation of freedom of speech, its application was limited to a group of protesters and they were able to lie about its intent. As a result, this effort did not lead to widespread mainstream objection but at the same time served the objective of limiting the constitutional rights of the protesters. In this manner, plutocrats control the political process and still have the general population believe that they live in an uncompromised democracy.

China. In addition to concerns about political freedoms, consider this: China is rising economically. This situation will negatively impact the lives of US citizens. No one in our government is advocating for us or sounding alarm bells. This is because the plutocracy they serve is doing great financially and has more in common with China’s elite than it does with us. As a result, there is no organized plan to compete with China. In contrast, China has a centrally controlled economy. In fact, the elite of the Chinese Communist Party are themselves a rich oligarchy masquerading as communists while profiting off of domestic businesses. Their leaders are intimately involved in the planning of China’s economic ascendance. This means we may do okay financially. Our kids will do less well. Our grandchildren even less well. This downward trajectory will continue until American workers are as poorly paid and mistreated as any workers anywhere in the world. We will be accepting whatever scraps of currency the corporations throw at us. Like our overseas counterparts, we will have no power, since global businesses will simply move operations to different shores if we complain too loudly.

According to the House Committee on Ways and Means, in the decade between 2004 and 2014, forty-seven major US corporations moved their industrial operations to overseas venues.⁴ This trend will harm the rest of the world as much as it harms our workers, because it will reduce our leverage to resist the elite. At present, we still have the ability and position to challenge our plutocracy. Once our economy tumbles far enough, this will no longer be true. It won’t matter what we say. Americans will be competing with each other for fewer jobs, and workers will have further diminished power in the world.

In addition, a dictatorial Chinese oligarchy will control the largest economy and have the loudest global voice. In our current worldwide scenario, where the United States is the largest economy, multinational corporations roll over the rights of workers and the well-being of communities and the environment. Unregulated companies carve a path of destruction, because compromised governments refuse to intervene. But imagine a world where China, a nation without any sense of democracy, calls the shots. The Communist Party already tells companies what to do. In addition, party bureaucrats have shown little conscience regarding the preservation of their environment and the limiting of greenhouse gasses, or the honoring of workers’ rights.⁵ Their totalitarian example will create an even more brutal new normal, further endangering lives, ecospheres and freedoms worldwide.

If US plutocracy and China’s impending hegemony are not acceptable outcomes, then we have some work to do together. We are going to have to apply ourselves to twin tasks of personal economic survival and political change. It won’t be easy. There is no guarantee of success. However, we have an advantage: the US elite comprises an infinitesimally small portion of the population, at most 1 percent. We are part of the 99 percent. If we and enough of our class strive to change the political system, we will win.

The change we seek does not require a fundamental change in our system of government, just a broadening and balancing of power between the classes, so that individual voices count equally. This is a reform. We do not need to overthrow our government. We don’t need to cave in to plutocratic demands. We can steer a rational middle course between those extremes in the direction of the achievable. This will allow us to remain thoughtful, humane and true to a set of reasonable improvements.

Sure, in any conflict there are sides. The wealthy already see themselves as a side against us. We, therefore, need to organize as an opposition. This does not require a fight to the death, but it will require undying commitment. We will need to persist with reasonable goals that will correct some deficits in an otherwise potentially functional democracy.

The personal qualities required to build democracy are patience, persistence and passionate commitment to freedom. We cannot expect immediate gratification. This will not be a short ride. However, the process itself will be personally liberating. Saul Alinsky, a Chicago-based community organizer with a gift for organizing local communities, wrote about radicals who are committed to the fight, committed to life.⁶ The two were inseparable to him. The battle for justice, peace and equality is that way for most lifelong activists.

Social activism is an empathic dedication to the people and the planet. Working on an issue connects us to the whole of humanity, the way religion does for some individuals. It is a promise that we will help. It is as ethical a commitment as following religious precepts. This commitment is perhaps even more personal for us, because the ethics we are committed to are ones that we have arrived at through personal discovery rather than through unquestioned belief. We weren’t born activists. We journeyed here, going through a unique evolution of inner self, transforming who we are, creating unique people with changed values in the process. These values are ours, arrived at through effort and experience.

However, the journey is not yet over, because our lives are not yet over. Some of us will step in and out of work for change as we feel moved to do so. Some will remain involved even after a goal is attained and begin looking for the next goal. Whichever course one chooses, the rest of her personal journey involves carrying her discovery, living from it, improving herself and her world on the basis of it and bringing her vision for humanity into being. Even if we do not live to see our vision made manifest, we will find fulfillment in knowing that we carried ourselves and our movement further along towards greater freedom. Transforming ourselves, transforming the world through our actions—that’s the journey.

Chapter 2

The Players: 1 Percent, 0.1 Percent and 99 Percent

The scope of our conflict is that a small privileged number of our fellow citizens have successfully accumulated more wealth, privileges, resources and power at the expense of a vast majority seeking to obtain a livable share of resources and political equality. One could argue that this situation has been a problem in civilization since 4000 BC when the first known king was established in Sumer. However, the United States repudiated the privileges of kings and aristocrats at its founding. The wealthy of the United States may have stepped into that vacant position at the top. Despite that, the idea of a class hoarding the wealth and power, in a society that deliberately overthrew a monarch with those privileges, runs counter to the democratic intentions expressed in our constitution.

The One Percent is a convenient, if imprecise, designation for the economic