The Economic Crisis: CEO Effigies and Continuing Anomie

   Our public and private reactions to the economic crisis have been almost as interesting as the economic issues themselves. It now appears clear that the primary psychological reaction to the crisis is anger at the bloated incomes of leading CEO's, especially of those CEO's who head companies that have, or will have, received bailout money. One almost imagines the effigies of bank presidents being dragged through the streets while onlookers beat them with brooms and little boys set them alight with their father's lighters.  Who cannot but wish that these unrepentant men (and, yes, they all seem to be men, which adds another layer of spite to the issue) would be disgraced, made pariahs, thrown out by angry stockholders, reduced to poverty, and perhaps even prosecuted under some unknown laws for bad morals and worse behavior.

   But, alas, we are even less knowledgeable about who these villains are specifically than were angry onlookers in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then, at least, there were only a handful of these men, and many of them were prosecuted in trials that kept a large, impoverished public entertained. Today, these are more anonymous figures, scattered among hundreds of companies. And, of course, most of today's over-payed CEOs have operated within the law. The most we can hope in our modern culture is that Michael Moore will make a movie about them, and that Larry King will live long enough to replay Moore's contempt for them again and again.

   The fact is that we live in a popular culture today that still clings to the pretense -- at some out-of-date, traditional morals level -- that public exposure equals permanent disgrace and humiliation, when everyone should know that all it means is increased celebrity for the offender. In fact, the tabloid, popular magazine ethos (and this includes Newsweek, Time, etc.) will love the fodder that the anti-CEO movement will provide. We all know that each story, each chapter, each saga will play out like the narrative of Brittany Spears sad life -- bad behavior followed by a confession of sins, followed by a six-day rehab in the Bahamas, followed by redemption.  And, hey, if this sorry and frayed pop culture narrative fails, CEOs feeling the heat can just build a mansion somewhere in the Caribbean or South America and never have to listen to anything other than ocean waves and the groveling entreaties of their villa's servants.

   Hating CEOs, or waiting for their repentance, is a feeble way to spend our time. If we want to get at them, we can legislate tight standards of pay and remuneration for any persons heading publicly traded companies and banks.  We can demand restitution of the Securities and Exchange Act of the Depression (and the closing of loopholes in its administration). Better yet, we can work at those things that will improve the wages and benefits of working people, especially in regard to union organization and power (as was done in the Great Depression). We can demand health care reform and the return to fixed benefit pensions, instead of the insane, Las Vegas style 401k plan method (e.g., improve Social Security, which, by the way was enacted in 1935). We can demand a greater democratization of our political culture, which also occurred in the Great Depression.

   The only thing that will unfold like it did in the Depression is the anticipation that things will soon get better.  There were upswings of confidence in 1930, 1934, and 1938, all of which were swiftly brushed aside with an even worse, even deeper, economic crisis. We are already looking forward to a rebound in 2010 (and, maybe that will even happen; more likely we'll be disappointed, and predict a future date for the sun to shine).

   What will not happen is the mythic rising of ordinary people as was depicted in John Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath." Even that film alludes to how neighbor did not help neighbor, and how community failed. If anything, the Great Depression resulted in even more private lives. More people bought radios which they could huddle around in the privacy of their homes and more money was spent on gasoline than one would have thought, in order to escape the realities of one's existence (including the neighbors) for a brief ride in the country and more people spent money to see escapist movies. (One of the ironies of our current crisis, as I see it, is that television prices have plummeted, when in fact, more people will be buying new ones as a means to escape the realities of today's crisis; well, I never did understand supply and demand, I guess).

  If anything, we live in a culture even more defined by anomie than in the 1930s. Karl Marx's ideas about alienation seem meager in relationship to the stark loneliness we have produced in modern prosperous times. Harder times will not change habits of privacy deeply ingrained over several generations of North Americans. I am not likely to act in concert with neighbors who I do not even know (despite my efforts to know them), and who are not likely to say "hello" or even look me in the eye as I pass their porch. If we are to create community, or accomplish collective action, it is only going to occur over the internet, through blogs, podcasts, political action groups. Why? Because the internet preserves relative anonymity while providing enormous potential for democratic power. My oldest son pressed this vision of the internet on me many years ago, when it first emerged, and I am now a believer in the significance of the internet as our first and best source for community and democracy. If we want to preserve community, we have to preserve the open channels of the internet. If we do not use the internet wisely as a tool for democratic solutions to our current capitalist "crisis" (and, by the way, Marx rightly pointed out that capitalism loves to use "crises" to defeat its opponents and reformers), we might well discover how anomie adds up to despair more than freedom.