Class Struggle

[Bfgrn]

Past Featured Article
ELECTION 2006


Class Struggle

American workers have a chance to be heard.

by JIM WEBB

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 A.M. EST

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn't happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners' pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate "reorganization." And workers' ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246

 

[Xenophon]

Karl Marx and the Democrats: Why I hate Class Warfare
Whatever one thinks of Karl Marx the economist, there is no doubt that he was a marketing and political strategist genius. He took a flawed economic system and was able to sell it to the masses. He did it by taking advantage of two universal truths. The first is strength in numbers, and the second is that the less successful always have a natural envy and resentment of the more successful.

Thus, in the 1800's, he created a populist message that appealed to the proletariat. He told them that they were being exploited by a rigged system that favored the bourgeoise. That system of course was capitalism. In a sense he was right. Capitalism ultimately favors the few at the expense of the many. That's because capitalism forces competition, and in any competition there are mostly losers and only a few winners. It is of course this competition that has lead to most of the innovations that we enjoy today.

None of that really matters in being able to sell a principle. The proletariat may have been weak and powerless but they were plentiful. Most of them had a natural envy and resentment for the bourgeoise. Marx used both and sold a failed economic system that took over much of Europe for years.

Ultimately, what Marx did was practice old school text book class warfare. He pitted the proletariat against bourgeoise. He demonized the bourgeoise and the system that made them successful and he started a revolution. For the most part, his marketing and political strategy worked. His flawed system gained a great deal of popularity for a while. It is for this reason that class warfare is among my biggest political pet peeves. I have seen with Marx the corrossive effect that it has.

Today's Democratic party uses class warfare just as liberally as Marx once did. I see their class warfare used in four different topics: taxes, trade, employment, and health care.

1)Taxes

The phrase tax cuts for the rich is so popular in many circles that it is a part of our lexicon. Ever since they were passed, Democrats have tried to paint the tax cuts as overly favoring the wealthy. This is of course a dubious arguement for several reasons. The first of which is that it is difficult to pin point exactly what the cuts did and didn't do. The second is that the tax cuts cut each tax bracked by three percent. Thus, everyone not only got the same tax cut but the same tax cut as a percentage.

This hasn't stopped any of the Democrats from demonizing the tax cuts as advancing the interests of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor (very much like Marx once did to capitalism itself). The Democrats have effectively used class warfare to demonize the tax cuts and the wealthy by extension. Furthermore, besides reversing the tax cuts, most of the Democrats want to spend that money in very Marx like socialist ways. Here is how Barack Obama characterized it.



The Bush tax cuts — people didn't need them, and they weren't even asking for
them, and they ought to be relaxed so we can pay for universal health care and
other initiatives."


In fact, this is the mantra of the entire Democratic party. The Democrats have already targeted income taxes, capital gains, and the death tax as taxes they would raise in order to spend on numerous domestic programs for the poor and middle class. By demonizing the most successful, they can put themselves on the side of the little guy and effectively they have updated class warfare that Karl Marx revolutionized.

Full text here.

 

[Bfgrn]

1)Taxes

The phrase tax cuts for the rich is so popular in many circles that it is a part of our lexicon. Ever since they were passed, Democrats have tried to paint the tax cuts as overly favoring the wealthy. This is of course a dubious arguement for several reasons.

Paul O'Neill - George Bush's Treasury Secretary

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.

But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, Suskind writes that O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

“Cheney, at this moment, shows his hand,” says Suskind. “He says, ‘You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.’ … O'Neill is speechless.”

”It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society,” says O’Neill. “And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction.”

Did he think it was irresponsible? “Well, it's for sure not what I would have done,” says O’Neill.

The former treasury secretary accuses Vice President Dick Cheney of not being an honest broker, but, with a handful of others, part of "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" to block out contrary views. "This is the way Dick likes it," says O’Neill.

Everything came to a head for O'Neill at a November 2002 meeting at the White House of the economic team.

“It's a huge meeting. You got Dick Cheney from the, you know, secure location on the video. The President is there,” says Suskind, who was given a nearly verbatim transcript by someone who attended the meeting.

He says everyone expected Mr. Bush to rubber stamp the plan under discussion: a big new tax cut. But, according to Suskind, the president was perhaps having second thoughts about cutting taxes again, and was uncharacteristically engaged.

“He (Bush) asks, ‘Haven't we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it again,’” says Suskind.

“He (Bush) says, ‘Didn’t we already, why are we doing it again?’ Now, his advisers, they say, ‘Well Mr. President, the upper class, they're the entrepreneurs. That's the standard response.’ And the president kind of goes, ‘OK.’ That's their response. And then, he comes back to it again. ‘Well, shouldn't we be giving money to the middle, won't people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was it good for?’"

But according to the transcript, White House political advisor Karl Rove jumped in.

“Karl Rove is saying to the president, a kind of mantra. ‘Stick to principle. Stick to principle.’ He says it over and over again,” says Suskind. “Don’t waver.”

In the end, the president didn't. And nine days after that meeting in which O'Neill made it clear he could not publicly support another tax cut, the vice president called and asked him to resign.

With the deficit now climbing towards $400 billion, O'Neill maintains he was in the right.


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml

 

[balatro]

Orwell’s Animal Farm was only superficially an indictment of Stalinism.

The question is whether or not tyranny is a naturally occurring social phenomenon.

Now, the libertarian Right supposes that the absence of governmental interference in the economy would produce a sustainable “free” market. It supposes that producers in such an economy would never perceive advantage in forming the kinds of cartels that could both harm consumers financially and suppress innovation. This is a level of credulity that would make a socialist utopian cringe.

If I remember correctly, the Communist Party, unlike the Socialist Party, voiced support for Obama’s candidacy. I have no idea why a communist organization would have sympathy for a Keynesian-Corporatist party’s candidate, apart from possibly believing that candidate to be the best that an institutionalized two-party system had to “offer.”

Returning to Orwell, in any case, let me just add that a scheming elite and a docile citizenry are for democracy always a lethal combination. That’s a process that could take place under any economic system.

The economic-political hierarchy was already solidly entrenched at the time of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It subsequently was the case that the populist revolt of the 1890s and other people’s movements were crushed by the iron fist-stealth combination technique of the oligarchy’s institutionalized two-party system. Perhaps, then, it should come as no great surprise that such a system of institutionalized privilege has only grown more powerful with the passing of time.

 

[RodISHI]

Is it truly just a class struggle?

It is more a run away government full of special interest groups. They are eviscerating the country. The only ones without actual representation for them in DC are the people. The average worker has to join up with another entity which he or she does not actually agree with or support but nevertheless, they have been tossed together, in order to have some type of representation in DC. If you don't join up, you won't be represented. And all this mind you with the old adage your vote counts. What vote? The only representation we have is some special interest group, think tank guru or lobbyist. If I walk into my senator's offices it is of no effect because "as an individual we can't help you". Or I may just recieve a solicitation for a contribution to the senator's campaign fund. Which, both of these things did happen. If I walk into the governor's office with my concerns I'm told they will get back with me. That has been over six years ago and that governor is not governor anymore. He's moved on to bigger and better things like Secretary of Agriculture. I'm sure my concerns were never turned over to the new governor becuase his office ahs not contacted me either. If I go to the FBI to report a crime they tell me, "So what's the problem? You're only one individual I cannot help you." I don't know when our country decided that crimes against individuals do not matter. Do any of you know the answer to that question? When did this country forget that a crime against one individual is a crime against all? When did this country decide that only crimes against corporations count? I have been told I should not "take it personal". They did it to me personally how else can I take it? I know I am not alone here. I see it all over the web from other people and what they are going through. How do the people as individuals start counting again?

 

[wihosa]

Government "of, by and for the people " is being stolen away by the big money "contributers" to political campaigms. The financing of campaigns in this way is little more than bribes to our elected "representatives".

 

[Avatar4321]

Class doesnt exist. Pretending it does is going to do nothing but destroy this country. But then, thats the point. Divide the people and through blood and violence seize power.

What ever happened to "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal"?

This class crap defies what America stands for. Let's stop pretending these structures our enemies have created matter and truly return to the point where we are all created equal.

 

[Bfgrn]

Class doesnt exist. Pretending it does is going to do nothing but destroy this country. But then, thats the point. Divide the people and through blood and violence seize power.

What ever happened to "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal"?

This class crap defies what America stands for. Let's stop pretending these structures our enemies have created matter and truly return to the point where we are all created equal.

So do you think Jim Webb wants to destroy this country?

"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy."
President John F. Kennedy - April 27, 1961

 

[Seraega]

All men are created equal but some get to live a life of luxury while others spend their entire life trying to make ends meet. Yea... that's equal.

 

[Avatar4321]

So do you think Jim Webb wants to destroy this country?

"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy."
President John F. Kennedy - April 27, 1961

If he is going to divide people up rather than treat people as equals, then yes.

 

[Bfgrn]

So do you think Jim Webb wants to destroy this country?

"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed--and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy."
President John F. Kennedy - April 27, 1961

If he is going to divide people up rather than treat people as equals, then yes.

Webb is talking about economic inequality that has eroded the middle class. It was started by wealth redistribution under Reagan, the president Webb served as the first Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, then as Secretary of the Navy. We are witnessing the failure of "trickle down", an ideology which has no understanding human nature or power and it's abuses...

 

[Nik]

Class doesnt exist. Pretending it does is going to do nothing but destroy this country. But then, thats the point. Divide the people and through blood and violence seize power.

What ever happened to "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal"?

This class crap defies what America stands for. Let's stop pretending these structures our enemies have created matter and truly return to the point where we are all created equal.

If he is going to divide people up rather than treat people as equals, then yes.

Well, I'm sure glad its the case that everyone in the US can afford good lawyers when they get charged with a crime. And that everyone can get good healthcare when they get sick. And everyone has access to quality affordable transit options.

Oh, wait. Thats completely false. The thing that is "dividing people up" is a little thing called reality. He is just pointing out the way things are.

 

[garyd]

The only reson for a middle class erosion is that government rules and regulations at all levels of government have combined to produce a system in which housing prioces are hugely out of whack and in which it costs your employer neaqrly double what he's paying you to have you on the payroll. That's about to get worse.

 

[Avatar4321]

Webb is talking about economic inequality that has eroded the middle class. It was started by wealth redistribution under Reagan, the president Webb served as the first Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, then as Secretary of the Navy. We are witnessing the failure of "trickle down", an ideology which has no understanding human nature or power and it's abuses...

I don't know why this is difficult: There are no classes. Economic classes are merely psychological constructs made to convince yourself that you are better than someone else.

And for the record, what the hell does Webb's military positions have to do with anything? I was unaware that military service qualifies someone as an expert on economics.

Our economic problems have nothing to do with the trickle down theory. They have everything to do with government forcing private financial institutions to lend money to people who cant afford to pay them back.

 

[Quatermass]

Class conflict is a reality.

It exists in every facet of social relations and forms the foundation of all political history. This whether the masses recognise it as such, or share a comfortable delusion otherwise.

The fact the ruling and pampered elites so successfully shroud the parasitical nature of their very existence behind smoke screens, only betrays the all pervasive grip their reins of philosophical and ideological influence hold over the generations born out of the host layers of the American working class.

Smoke screens like for example, Avatar43's notion that America is 'a land of equals' and that anyone who points out the contrary must be an enemy of the fatherland; or Xenophon's reflex defence of Capitalism over the 'flawed premise' of a Marxian 'Worker's Democracy' to the backdrop of a Capitalism once more in crisis, with the spectacle of Brown and Bush / Obama shovelling great swathes of public finance endlessly into the greedy gobs of banking's financial pirates while the proletariat lose their homes in record numbers. Even the replacement of the term ‘working class’ by ‘middle class’, denoting a failure to recognise a basic element of Capitalist class oppression - the very existence of the primary group under subjugation!

A privileged class of people, vastly outnumbered by an oppressed bulk, can hold dominance, indefinitely, by cunningly controlling the belief systems of those who would if they were of a right mind, sweep them aside with the contempt they deserve.

Private control of the mass media outlets is a fundamental prerequisite for such an endeavour. No accident then that all the Worlds significant entertainment and communications networks lie in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.

Marx wrote of those who so readily internalise ideological canker from their ruling class on numerous occasions, and here in 1845, ‘The Illusion of the Epoch’


“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

The German Ideology: Chapter 1 - On Feuerbach

New York shirtwaist factory workers on strike in 1909.

 

[garyd]

And that proves precisely what? They were no more prisoners than you are. You don't like your current job get another one. Class warfare is a fiction created by the have nots to explain away the fact that they have only the most limited of marketable skills and no desire to acquire any.

 

[Seraega]

And that proves precisely what? They were no more prisoners than you are. You don't like your current job get another one. Class warfare is a fiction created by the have nots to explain away the fact that they have only the most limited of marketable skills and no desire to acquire any.

Could you be any more wrong? The have-nots are too busy working 2 jobs just trying to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. You are really clueless if you think that the working poor wouldn't give anything to be able to experience some social mobility. The fact is that in this country you're far more likely to remain in the same class to which you're born.

Understanding Mobility in America