Understanding The US Political Crisis - Part 15

The Role Of The Political Superstructure

In his Letter To Bloch Engels makes clear the dialectical relation between the material base, and the political superstructure, built upon it.

“The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.”

It is fairly commonly accepted that House Republican Speaker, John Boehner, would, long ago, have reached a deal, with Obama and the Democrats, over the budget, and the debt ceiling, were it not for the pressure Republican politicians face, inside and outside Congress, from the Tea Party. Part of the reason this is a problem rests with the US political system.

The US Constitution, established after a successful revolution to overthrow the King, George III, and establish a Republic, was set up with a strict separation of powers, to prevent any particular arm of the state exercising too much power. The consequence is frequent deadlock. It means that the Executive, i.e. the Presidency, proposes legislation, which the Legislature, i.e. Congress must discuss and approve, but which it frequently will not, because, with Congressional elections, every two years, it is frequently the case that whichever party controls the Presidency does not control Congress. Even if it controls one part of Congress, as now the Democrats control the Senate, they will not control the other, as now with the Republican control of the House of Representatives.

In the UK, the government proposes a budget, which its parliamentary majority ensures is passed, and which, under the terms of the Parliament Act, the House of Lords is not allowed to vote down. In the US, there has not been an agreed budget for many years, because the various parts of the political system cannot agree. In the UK, the act of passing a Budget involves the act of financing it by taxes and borrowing. In the US, any deficit, that leads to borrowing, requires separate approval, and hence the debt ceiling.

There are other aspects of the US system that play into this crisis, and should perhaps act as a warning to British politicians. In the UK, party candidates for elections are selected by the members of the party. Although these party members will select candidates they think will be elected, they also select them on the basis of the general ethos of the party. In the US, candidates are selected in primaries. These are mini-elections, where anyone who registers as a supporter of the party, gets a vote in who the party's candidate will be. Imagine, for example, if a large number of BNP'ers or Kippers organised themselves to vote in primaries to select Tory Party candidates. That is what happens in the US. In fact, it is not unknown for Democrats to register as Republican supporters, in order to help select the most unelectable candidates, and vice versa. What makes this worse, is that because of the way electoral divisions are set up for the House of Representatives, candidates for both parties, in some seats, can be elected with thumping majorities, with 90% of the vote cast not being unheard of.

With that kind of certainty of being elected, especially in Republican areas, the more swivel-eyed members, and supporters, are under no electoral pressure to refrain from selecting the looniest of candidates, even people that UKIP would reject as fruitcakes. One Republican Congressman, for example, is reported to have recently said that nearly everything he was taught in Medical School was lies, emanating from the pits of hell! People worry about Iran getting the bomb, but these nutters have the world's largest stockpile of every kind of weapon. Currently, they have their finger poised over a huge financial bomb.

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