When Hillary Clinton supporters are confronted with the evidence of their candidate’s financial ties to dirty coal and oil, dirty finance, dirty autocratic governments, and so on, they insist that there’s nothing to see here, because no one can link any specific contribution to a specific policy outcome.
It’s missing the point. The “philanthrocapitalism” that underpins the Clintons’ viewpoint and their modus operandi is based on the idea that the policy deadlocks of extreme wealth polarization are best addressed by getting rich people to voluntarily give money to foundations, who direct it to do the good that tax-starved countries can no longer do for their citizens.
Naomi Klein contrasts this with Sanders’ approach, which is bringing corrupt wealth to heel through regulation and taxation and putting those funds back into the hands of democratically run states, who get to set their own priorities without relying on the sufferance of the one percent.
At the center of it all is the canonical belief that change comes not by confronting the wealthy and powerful but by partnering with them. Viewed from within the logic of what Thomas Frank recently termed “the land of money,” all of Hillary Clinton’s most controversial actions make sense. Why not take money from fossil-fuel lobbyists? Why not get paid hundreds of thousands for speeches to Goldman Sachs? It’s not a conflict of interest; it’s a mutually beneficial partnership—part of a never-ending merry-go-round of corporate-political give and take.Books have been filled with the failures of Clinton-style philanthrocapitalism. When it comes to climate change, we have all the evidence we need to know that this model is a disaster on a planetary scale. This is the logic that gave the world fraud-infested carbon markets and dodgy carbon offsets instead of tough regulation of polluters—because, we were told, emission reductions needed to be “win-win” and “market-friendly.”
If the next president wastes any more time with these schemes, the climate clock will run out, plain and simple. If we’re to have any hope of avoiding catastrophe, action needs to be unprecedented in its speed and scope. If designed properly, the transition to a post-carbon economy can deliver a great many “wins”: not just a safer future, but huge numbers of well-paying jobs; improved and affordable public transit; more liveable cities; as well as racial and environmental justice for the communities on the frontlines of dirty extraction.
Bernie Sanders’s campaign is built around precisely this logic: not the rich being stroked for a little more noblesse oblige, but ordinary citizens banding together to challenge them, winning tough regulations, and creating a much fairer system as a result.
The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn’t Just Her Corporate Cash. It’s Her Corporate Worldview.
[Naomi Klein/The Nation]
(via Naked Capitalism)