Central to that decline is something else you'll never see in this election – the pauperisation of the working class.
A fear of pauperisation is vital if people are to be persuaded not to reject whatever zero-hours contract or minimum-wage-plus-humiliation job they are offered, and there is no greater cause of fear than not being able to feed yourself or your children.
Dislike of the way communist states constrained ordinary people's lives led me into undercover work, but witnessing mass pauperisation and cynical opportunism in the 1990s bred my disillusionment.
The pauperisation of huge parts of the developing world through so-called globalisation, the earth-shaking effects of war, repression, separatist violence and counter violence, the allure of the filthy rich west viewed from the dustbowls and rubbish-tips of shantyvilles outside our fortress, are creating a swell of millions of would-be immigrants.
Capitalist restoration brought in its wake mass pauperisation and unemployment; wild extremes of inequality; rampant crime; virulent anti-semitism and ethnic violence; combined with legalised gangsterism on a heroic scale and precipitous looting of public assets.
Instead, as Jon Snow's compelling TV documentary Hidden Iraq underlined this week, they have seen the physical and social destruction of their country, mass killing, tens of thousands thrown into jail without trial, rampant torture, an epidemic of sectarian terror attacks, pauperisation, and the complete breakdown of basic services and supplies.
Faced with such grim economic prospects, thousands have voted with their feet, preferring the uncertainties of a new life abroad to pauperisation at home.
It pays tribute to a class of people that, although exalted under Mao as a revolutionary vanguard, has constantly to face the threat of pauperisation.
"Pauperisation is a fact even though there is global growth," he says.
