We've recently heard from President Obama and his echo chamber among some on the left that global capitalism, and other such nasty-sounding "-isms" are abstractions and not really worth paying any attention to. Here's a hint for the purveyors of this idea: It's not true.
Social, economic, and political systems are not abstractions; if they were, human society would be unable to function. Rather, the terms we use to define such systems describe a particular set of common, objective, and essential historical conditions which make up said system. For example, we use the term "slavery" to describe a system in which slaves perform compulsory, unpaid labor for a master who owns them as his property. Performing compulsory, unpaid labor and being owned as property are objective conditions that can exist in the real world. Thus, the word "slavery" is a sort of shorthand for a specifically defined set of objective historical conditions. This is why historians can rightly point out that slavery existed in Classical Greece, Rome, and the American South. Slavery in these three times and places might have had slightly different characteristics, but in all three there existed common objective characteristics, which we collectively refer to as slavery. In contrast, words like "justice," "mercy," "freedom," and the like defy objective definition; they are abstract ideas, and cannot in any way be defined in objective historical terms.
One might argue that different people do indeed define and use terms like "capitalism" differently. However, simply because two journalists or scholars or bloggers use a term like "capitalism" differently does not mean that it is an abstract idea. Rather, it means that one definition is correct and one is not. What is a correct definition? A correct definition of a social or economic system will contain objective, verifiable, and essential historical conditions that are common across societies of many times and places. Note that these qualities are completely absent from definitions of abstract ideas like freedom and justice.
Still, one might argue that the specific set of conditions for a particular term is up for debate, as is the case for more recent terms like "fascism". However, this does not indicate that these terms are abstractions, rather that the precise content of their objective historical definitions has not yet been established, that not all common traits have been identified. Nevertheless, each and every term such as "fascism," "capitalism," and "plutocracy" must have some kind of objective definition; if they did not, the terms would be meaningless.
Other terms such as "totalitarianism" are falsely objective; that is, that they are simply amalgamations of objective verifiable conditions common to several societies across history, but these conditions are superficial rather than essential. The notion of totalitarianism is an amalgam of similarities between state influence and control over intellectual, cultural and political life in socialist and fascist states. However, these similarities are formal, not essential; the "totalitarian" state power exercised under fascism and socialism historically were put to different uses, for different reasons, to the benefit of different classes. Moreover, if such centralized control is excercised by a non-state institution or group of institutions, then such an arrangement is not "totalitarian," giving the term an inherent ideological cant.
It really isn't surprising that a President of Obama's ideological leanings would attempt to confuse the important difference between concrete and abstract terms. Nor is it surprising that revisionist forces within our Party would wholeheartedly swallow such a line from the President they so uncritically adore.
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This post brings to to light an important tendency in the capitalist approach. This approach is to declare ideology dead and thus trying to reduce any problem and its proposed solution to a canned pragmatics type dialogue.
The whole health care shuffle going on right now is a great case in point. By leaving the social justice angle out, by scrupulously avoiding an analysis of the current system, which screws both the insured and un-insured ("If you like your current health insurance you can keep it." small print... "Yes, you can keep it with its rocket climbing deductibles, reduced coverage and half your paycheck going to pay for your dependents... Yup, you can keep it"), and then proceeding to solutions that are defined totally in pragmatic terms ( a very key pragmatic being what can be shoved through the Congressional/Washington congressional meat grinder... This is a digression, but has anybody ever noticed the large number of articles that cover the politics of passing something, versus the very small number of articles that analyze what it is that is attempting to be passed).
OK, I'm all over the map here. So briefly, by denying ideology, one can hide the existence of the class struggle by focusing on pragmatics... "There's no conflict here. We just haven't found the right experts and technology to solve these issues". This is the ideological refrain of most liberals in the Democratic Party.
All this is very nice except that what comes out of the meat grinder is a solution which contains the same capitalist assumptions as contained in the system in the first place. Thus, the Baucus Bill criminalizes the uninsured, fails to insure the 60 million that are uninsured. The Baucus Bill also protects capitalist health care by refraining from any method of cost control, and in the end succeeds in only one area, and that is to deliver roughly 60 million new and unwilling customers to the health insurance industry.
As Strannik well points out, the "isms" are a descriptive and analytic tool which allows for an understanding of how and why a society functions. Throw this tool out and you've decided to throw an objective analysis out too. This is fine for American politicians who have nothing to gain and lots to lose with a real analysis of the situation and system. The way this analysis is dropped is by very simply hauling out the "pragmatics" card and this becomes the smoke screen obscuring the real moving force in things, that moving force being the class struggle.
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