Stagnation inexorable?

To many, the parasite class's victory in Wisconsin this week was all about Citizens United -- the new power of big money, completely unfettered, to manipulate the political process (as the saying goes, "The Republicans did not steal this election -- they paid good money for it!").  Others blame a lack of resources and commitment from the national Democratic party to a fight where the enemy had all the out-of-state help it needed.  To me, it exemplified the "divide and conquer" (to use Walker's own phrase) tactics which have served the parasite class so well for decades -- by keeping working people divided against themselves on whatever basis is available (white vs. black or, as in this case, non-unionized against unionized) they can keep those working people fighting each other over the crumbs instead of seeing their common interest.

There's value in all these perspectives, but we also need to be looking at the unexamined assumptions about reality which form the backdrop against which these battles take place.  This article from The New Republic will show what I mean:

.....at a time when resources flowing into state coffers are limited and demands on the public sector are rising, the salaries and benefits of government workers are bound to come under pressure.....

.....Curbing wages and benefits rather than services is often the most attractive political choice.....

.....As defined-benefit pensions and generous health insurance plans have become scarcer in the private sector, the more generous plans in the public sector have become especially vulnerable politically. Workers in the private sector..... are unwilling to pay higher taxes to sustain better benefits for public sector workers than they themselves enjoy.....

.....Those days are over, and the risks of depending on the good will of hard-pressed middle class taxpayers are becoming more apparent.....

Notice the backdrop assumption:  we 99% had better get used to fighting over an ever-diminishing supply of crumbs because we've entered an era in which that's all there can be.  Something must be cut, it's just a question of what. Stagnation and decline -- shrinking government revenues, shrinking or stagnant incomes for the non-wealthy, ever-more-meager pensions and other benefits, cuts, cuts, cuts -- those things are just there, they're an inexorable fact about reality or about the present era or whatever.  Our thinking has been carefully framed to avoid considering or even imagining that those trends are, in fact, the result of policies designed and implemented by specific people with the specific aim of bringing about precisely this result -- that, in fact, it doesn't have to be this way at all.  The article does cite the intensity of international competition, but it is possible to succeed in that competition while defying the laissez-faire paralysis of "inevitable" stagnation for the 99%.

The enemy has convinced us that, even if we can fight, the fight must be waged within a context of overall decline because that's the only framework that can possibly exist.  In fact, the framework is of their own construction, and the barrier to replacing it with something else exists mainly in our own heads.