Maine’s Statehouse Paintings, Continued

Main’s Statehouse Paintings, Continued

My reaction to the painting and the reason it brought the Soviet Union to mind was that the painting was predominantly gray. Though the population was fed and everyone was employed, I always felt that from a distance at least, life in the Soviet Union looked gray, not bright, colorful and joyous. We need to be careful not to devolve into what on the outside appears to be a two party system but in fact there is only one. I already see some movement in this direction. Politicians are relying on more and more money for the privilege of representing us. There have been two activities in recent times that worry me. First is the all out attack from the right on public sector unions. Currently there are two major groups with divergent interests investing in politicians. They are unions and business. If unions lose their influence, there will only be one major force remaining. The second thing is that the influence of that force has been greatly increased by the Supreme Courts ruling on Citizens United v. F.E.C. which gives corporations the status of citizens, granting them the right to free speech and essentially removing any limits on the amounts they can spend to influence elections. For democracy to survive, the government must represent the interest of all its people and corporations, though owned and operated by people, are not people. Corporations are a means to that end and not an end onto themselves. If our two party system has two parties only nominally, we will not be unlike the former Soviet Union politically. The corporations, through their contributions to political campaigns, will select the politicians we will vote for. The “push and pull” of political dialog will disappear as will the systems ability to self-correct.

The second problem was economic. In the Soviet Union, the government literally owned the means of production and the distribution of labor and with that, the role of government as a mediator between commercial and social interests is nonexistent. I am not sure to what extent the contribution of this absence to the dysfunction is recognized. In the free market systems used in the industrialized west there are three distinct entities. Two are the buyer and seller, at tension in every transaction and the third, a government whose role is to make sure that neither one is unfairly disadvantaged and the transactions, if not serving the common good, at least do not cause damage to the society. What happens in the socialist (by my accepted definition) economic case, with government owning the means of production and distribution, there is only one entity and this important mediator needs not exist. If our two parties dissolve into one listening only to the voice of corporations, the role mediator will also cease to exist and then who will remain to make sure that in the commercial transactions societies interests are advanced? Though in principle we will remain a capitalist state, but the boundaries between corporations and government will melt away and we will start to look and act more like a state whose means of production and distribution are under the control of one entity. We will not call it socialism and to placate the populous, statues will be built, pictures painted and songs sung glorifying individualism, entrepreneurship, and the accumulation of great wealth. Our paintings will look predominantly gray with isolated patches of garish color in the faces of a few. As the worker’s paradise was a myth, so will the entrepreneur’s become one if we continue on the path we have embarked on. It will be ironic if we are pushed into this position not by the left but by the right in their attempt to prevent socialism.

TO BE CONTINUED