I have some bad news for Jake Fuentes and Yonatan Zunger. Your premise is flawed. Insofar as the media is the fourth estate, whatever checks and balances you believe to have been instituted here in the U.S. have long, if not always, been subject to the unified ruling of the fifth estate. The only distinction between then and now is that the fifth estate has entered full on crisis mode.

Unlike the fabled “constitutional crisis,” better known as the catch phrase of the month, the crisis of the fifth estate is real. By this, I do not mean to imply that the effects of the policy du jour are somehow unreal for the millions of people who do and will suffer from them. No, these are real problems with severe consequences. But there is certainly something unreal, or at least surreal, about asking people who are facing such terror to reflect on the nature of a 200+ year old document written by wealthy white men.

But this is exactly what both articles do in one way or another.

That these calls are now being forwarded by a guy whose tagline includes “Startups” and another whose includes “Forgotten History” can probably be best explained by Marx’s old addage:

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

Of course, it seems pretty clear even from Marx’s context that such farce need not be any less tragic. Unlike Marx, I lack the discipline and time to devote myself to a more concrete analysis. That is, I will not so readily “demonstrate how the class struggle in [the United States] created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.” Needless to say, I do think such a part is being played and by no less grotesque a mediocrity.

In this story, however, we are not constrained to such a single all-important (least-important) character. Rather, if it is a character at all, it is at least not the character of a single individual. Instead, we are treated to a host of individuals playing the character of the self-aggrandizing fourth estate, who, much like the first, second, and third estate seek to mask their increasing impotence by boasting of greater and greater political powers.

From where does this impotence arise?

Contrary to what Google may tell you, the fifth estate is not a poorly rated thriller about the trials and tribulations of civilian intelligence operations working diligently to expose state secrets. It is none other than the institution of capital. In contrast to other branches of government which are, in fact, wholly owned subsidiaries of capital, its laws arise not out of the conscious deliberations of its masters, but from its own historic material development.

Capital, like our constitution and contingent political forms, is riddled with contradictions. But this is not because we seek to limit its excesses and believe that through a system of checks and balances it should be prevented from doing us any harm. Instead, these contradictions are inherent to it. It cannot exist without them.

One such contradiction is found in the dual nature of the commodity. Things which are produced for exchange have both a use-value and an exchange value. But wherein, through technological development, we find ourselves capable of producing more and more use-value, the increased productive capacity as expressed through a supply boom correlates to a reduction in the value of the thing(s). The production of more with less, thus, gives rise to a bust. There is “too much value.” This reveals itself through time and market as crises of overproduction for which there is little recourse but to destroy some portion of the value created, either in the abstract through plunging stock prices or concretely through the abandon or willful destruction of some quantity of the goods produced.

In the worst instances of such crisis, one can imagine a culmination of the various sub-crises, not merely the traditional overproduction of mechanical productive forces and consumer goods, but also the overproduction of another commodity: human labor power.

Herein the full brutality of capitalism is unveiled for the world to see. No longer capable of sustaining the mass of workers which the system has brought fourth, it reacts accordingly. As expressed in Communist Left №6:

In a regime permitting only capitalist solutions, starvation is the tragic answer, and Auschwitz was simply a case of organising the death of the starving in a very methodical way: it was the solution arrived at after the concentration in ghettoes caused “law and order” and “logistical” problems.

The failure of bourgeois press to correctly discern and report on such a problem should be of little surprise. Likewise, it should not be shocking that the vast waves of new media contributors are steeped in idealized notions of political struggles between the three recognized branches of government. Rather than address what is at the root of the current political situation, we are told instead that we are “falling for a headfake,” and that we should “pay journalists to watch for the head fake.”

In this case, the “headfake” being referred to is Trump’s muslim ban which, according to our intrepid Jake Fuentes, is merely a distraction for the “shakeup” in the National Security Council. The solution (aside from paying journalists) is to focus our popular attention “less on whether we agree with what the government is doing, and more on whether the system of checks and balances we have in place is working.” That is, we should focus on re-establishing the traditional and accepted political institutions in order that we may defend against the new and emerging ones.

But what are political institutions, if not the means by which one section of society, the ruling class, mediates the conflicts and antagonisms with which that society is confronted? And from where do such conflicts and antagonisms arise if not from the actual circumstances of our lives, i.e. our increasing inability to acquire the means of subsistence? Whether those means have become limited due to drought brought on by climate change, drone bombs sent to decimate our infrastructure, or merely our inability to afford our higher education and find a job, is largely inconsequential. The increasing severity of such antagonisms always demands the increasing severity of political solutions.

As the overproduction of human labor power reveals itself to a system unwilling and incapable of sustaining it, the needs of all competing capitalist nations will trend towards increased protectionism, added restrictions on migrant labor, more severe exploitation of local labor, expansion of austerity, and more risky and provocative diplomatic relations with one another. Where such trends are bucked by popular resistance, we should fully expect to see deadlier police repression and state violence. The consolidation of political power is but one integral component of the political system’s capacity to respond to this underlying phenomenon with the efficiency needed to restore capitalism.

The role of race, religion, sex, gender, orientation, national origin, etc, as a mechanism for dividing workers and making the general situation more palatable for some, or, indeed, by getting some to actively support it, will persist. Furthermore, just as each nation has its own particular cultural and political history surrounding these divisions, so too will each nation have its own particular manifestations of fascist movements. This is not a failure of this or that government’s political checks and balances. It is a failure, again, of the capitalist mode of production.

All political systems will need to assimilate or risk external interventions.

But, if paying journalists and honoring the faces on Mt. Rushmore can’t save us, then what will? Share your ideas in the comments below.