Social Inequality, Economic Decline, and Plutocracy

An American Crisis

Dale L. Johnson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319490427
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319490434
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Critical Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book aims to further an understanding of present day America by exploring counter-hegemony to the rule of capital and offering guidelines for strategizing change proceeding from the dialectic of What Is and What Ought to Be. The author analyzes neoliberal global order and its political expressions through discussions of the dominance of finance capital in the late twentieth century, the triumph of ideology, the closing of avenues to reform, the problem of the captive state, and a sociological analysis of rule by "divide and conquer." The book concludes with a look at the history of movement politics in culture, arts, economics, and politics. It resounds with a hope that challenges to hegemony can use many paths to change, of which the electoral path is but one of many fronts, in the long-term struggle for radical reform.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Money and the World It Creates
• Chapter 3: The Political Economy of Financialization and Its Consequences
• Chapter 4: Degenerative Development and Class Transformation
• Chapter 5: Ideology as the Root of Plutocratic Rule
• Chapter 6: The Ruling Class Rules by Subordinating Government to the Sway of Money
• Chapter 7: Rule by Divide and Conquer
• Chapter 8: The Ultimate Means of the Rule of Capital: Repression, Terror, and War
• Chapter 9: The Globalization of Capital and Its Ideologically Framed Policies
• Chapter 10: A Summary of Strategic Considerations
• Chapter 11: Confronting What Is to Achieve Counter-Hegemony
• Chapter 12: Some Tactical Considerations
• Epilogue: The 1960s Movement Culture
• Appendix: Movement Websites (Be informed! For private encrypted communication get Whatsapp—neither local police nor the NSA can, at least not yet, read you.)
• Index