What is convergence theory? It was a hot item some decades ago, but it has almost vanished from the web. I was able to find an article about it, taken from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979):
[It is] a modern bourgeois theory according to which the economic, political, and ideological differences between the capitalist and socialist systems are gradually diminishing, leading ultimately to a merger of the two systems…. The convergence theory arose in the 1950’s and 1960’s under the influence of the progressing socialization of capitalist production caused by the scientific and technological revolution, the increasing economic role of the bourgeois state, and the introduction of elements of planning in the capitalist countries….
[J. Kenneth Galbraith] asserts that market relations must give way to planned relations in any society with an advanced technology and a complex organization of production. Moreover, he declares that the systems of planning and organization of production are similar under capitalism and socialism and views this as the basis for the convergence of the two systems….
The convergence theory has gained currency among various intellectual circles in the West. Some of its proponents are socially and politically reactionary, and others are more or less progressive. Therefore, in arguing against the convergence theory, Marxists must use a differentiated approach with respect to different proponents of this theory. Some, like Galbraith and [Jan] Tinbergen, link it up with the idea of peaceful coexistence between the capitalist and socialist countries. They believe that only the convergence of the two systems can save mankind from a thermonuclear war. However, the deduction of peaceful coexistence from the idea of convergence is completely wrong and fundamentally contrary to the Leninist idea of the peaceful coexistence of antagonistic systems that do not merge at all.
From the point of view of its class essence, the convergence theory is a refined form of apology for capitalism. Although it appears to place itself above capitalism and socialism and seems to advocate some undefined “integrated” (“integral”) economic system, it essentially proposes a synthesis of the two systems on a capitalist basis, on the basis of private ownership of the means of production. Since the convergence theory is above all a variant of contemporary bourgeois and reformist ideological doctrines, it also fulfills quite a specific practical function: its advocates attempt to provide the capitalist countries with ways to establish “social peace” and propose that the socialist countries enact measures toward a rapprochement of the socialist and capitalist economies via a so-called market socialism.
In sum, the idea of convergence was attractive to the likes of Galbraith (i.e., limousine liberals “woke” elites), the out-and-out socialists who are always with us, the one-world idealists (ditto), and the better-red-than-dead contingent. But the USSR wasn’t buying it.
The USSR’s disdain for convergence didn’t keep the United States from moving (further) in the direction of Soviet-style governance — collectivization through regulation and income redistribution. It’s in the nature of things. This is from Daniel Klein’s essay in The Independent Review (Summer 2005), “The People’s Romance: Why People Love Government (as Much as They Do)“:
Government creates common, effectively permanent institutions, such as the streets and roads, utility grids, the postal service, and the school system. In doing so, it determines and enforces the setting for an encompassing shared experience—or at least the myth of such experience…. I call the yearning for encompassing coordination of sentiment The People’s Romance (henceforth TPR)….
TPR helps us to understand how authoritarians and totalitarians think. If TPR is a principal value, with each person’s well-being thought to depend on everyone else’s proper participation, then it authorizes a kind of joint, though not necessarily absolute, ownership of everyone by everyone, which means, of course, by the government. One person’s conspicuous opting out of the romance really does damage the others’ interests….
TPR lives off coercion—which not only serves as a means of clamping down on discoordination, but also gives context for the sentiment coordination to be achieved….
[N]ested within the conventional view that government is not a mammoth apparatus of coercion is the tenet that society is an organization to which we belong. Either on the view that we constitute and control the government (“we are the government”) or on the view that by deciding to live in the polity we choose voluntarily to abide by the government’s rules (“no one is forcing you to stay here”), the social democrat holds that taxation and interventions such as a minimum wage law are not coercive. The government-rule structure, as they see it, is a matter of “social contract” persisting through time and binding on the complete collection of citizens. The implication is that the whole of society is a club, a collectively owned property, administered by the government.
But it gets worse. Convergence is happening not in spite of capitalism but because of it it, just as Marx predicted. Joel Kotkin is on the case:
Arguably the most potent, if least understood, authoritarian drive comes not from political populists but from the convergence of dominant corporations and the bureaucratic establishment. Increasingly, the West’s economy looks more like rule by corporate giantism—the giant Japanese zaibatsu, the German prewar cartels, and the big family industrial groups in Mussolini’s time….
Capitalism has increasingly lost the competitive character that shaped its ascendence. Today, its giants often collude even as they fight among themselves—like the daimyo in medieval Japan. What competition remains comes from other giants rather than from plucky upstarts. Microsoft now controls 90 percent of all operating system software. Three tech firms now account for two-thirds of all online advertizing revenues, which now represent the vast majority of all ad sales. Once paragons of entrepreneurial vigor, these firms have morphed into exemplars of “tollbooth capitalism,” and receive revenues on transactions that far exceed anything they lose in failed ventures and acquisitions.
Finance, too, has become markedly more concentrated, with the number of banks in the US down a full third since 2000 while Europe experiences a slower, but similar consolidation. Global investing is now dominated by a handful of companies, the five largest of which control over 45 percent of all assets in the US compared to under 30 percent 20 years ago. The five largest investment banks control roughly one-third of investment funds; the top 10 control an absolute majority. For the most part, these firms hated Donald Trump. This partly owed to understandable revulsion at his character, but it was also due to his hostility to China, his opposition to the cheap labor provided by immigration, and his support for efforts to break up big tech firms. They therefore united to make massive contributions to electoral efforts to remove him, a move later celebrated in Time magazine.
The dominant social media players also clearly wanted Biden in the White House. They had little trouble covering Trump’s numerous lies and misdeeds, but never censored some of the equally absurd anti-Trump conspiracies, as Greenwald pointed out. The quashing of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story by Twitter and Facebook, not to mention the social media ban imposed on Trump himself, represented a remarkable and frightening exercise of arbitrary power….
In contrast to the confrontations with Trump, the corporate elite and the Biden administration have promised to work harmoniously to control information. At US News, journalist Robert Epstein has argued that Google’s algorithms have made it “the world’s biggest censor,” creating what Jenin Younes, writing in Tablet magazine, has called “a privatized censorship regime.” As Ellie Mae O’Hagan in the Guardian put it: “If ExxonMobil attempted to insert itself into every element of our lives like this, there might be a concerted grassroots movement to curb its influence.”
In the coming years, control of information will be used to shape public attitudes about the “climate emergency,” the mindless dogmatism of which the WSJ’s Helen Raleigh has compared to Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Last year, Google announced a “crackdown” on climate policy skeptics—including well-known scientists—a policy eagerly embraced by the EPA’s director, Gina McCarthy. As environmental activist Michael Shellenberger has pointed out, there’s little appetite to be found at the major media outlets for challenging misleading statements from Biden’s energy and environmental spokespersons, another service to the current White House.
The corporate authoritarians have also started to use their financial power to promote their preferred policies. The current craze among corporate leaders, particularly the big investment banks, for “stakeholder capitalism” means the imposition of environmental race and gender perquisites on investments. This approach has the strong backing of the Administration. At the same time, PayPal now feels free to demonetize the accounts of those with “unacceptable” views on such topics as climate change, gender “fluidity,” and race. [PayPal has backed down, but it will be emboldened to reinstate its policy if the Democrats hold onto Congress in November.]
Ironically, as the most powerful media, corporate, and government officials fret about resurgent fascism, their actions echo the fascist notion of melding corporate power with the state’s objectives. Benito Mussolini wanted the state to become “the moving center of economic life.” He successfully coopted Italian industrialists to build new infrastructure and the military, while stamping out Italy’s historically militant and socialist-oriented unions. Not all big capitalists were devoted fascists, but they were careful to maintain what Mussolini called “formal adherence to the regime.” [“Three Paths to Despotism”, Quilette, October 8, 2022]
And so it goes. And it will continue unless enough Americans come to understand what is happening and go to the polls in numbers massive enough to overthrow the present regime.
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