Class Warfare

I wanted to expand on a response to a comment made by Eustochius to my post yesterday on Libertarianism.  He feels that what I'm describing here is too conspiracy theory-esque with the use of such words as "overclass" which suggests the phrase "class warfare"--a big no-no in polite conversation, especially with conservatives.  They don't like anyone putting a name on what many of them are themselves blatantly doing.  It's been frequently pointed out that the GOP is playing the class card everytime its operatives try to provoke red-state resentment of relatively powerless Northeastern or Hollywood liberal elites.  And it has also been pointed out how tricky this tactic is, because it distracts all the resentful red-state non-elites from what the real power elites are doing, which is shifting the tax burden on them, outsourcing their jobs, and sending their kids off to die or be maimed in an unnecessary, poorly planned war.

So class war is something the GOP has been very skillfully executing on behalf of a mix of groups that compose what I've been calling the American overclass.  The phrase "class warfare", therefore, while it may be distasteful to many readers, nevertheless accurately describes what is happening because it's been happening since humans began organizing themselves into societies. Unless the relatively weak organize to defend themselves, the relatively strong naturally seek to dominate them. Oligarchy and feudalism are just the way of the world in a fallen world if ordinary people don't remain continually vigilant and ready to fight to prevent it.

Political hierarchies form quite naturally when wealth and the power that comes with it become concentrated in the hands of a few. There is a natural tendency for those who have a lot to want even more, and, as I wrote the other day, the correct word to describe this compulsion is "avarice", but in contemporary Libertarian America, it's called "freedom".  Sleepy Americans say to themselves, "Avarice = bad; freedom = good.  Libertarianism = freedom, Libertarianism = good.  Libertarianism is for getting government off our backs.  QED: Government  = bad." 

But government is the only tool ordinary Americans have to effectively organize the power they have in numbers to protect themselves from the predations of the powerful.  The superwealthy understand that, and so it is natural that they would want to take that tool away from those who would use it to prevent them from doing as they please. Americans who buy into the Libertarian ideology of the corporate overclass, even superficially or moderately, are colluding in their own disempowerment. 

In democracies 'the people' own the government; in oligarchies the few, usually the richest, do.  Which word describes our situation today more accurately?  Is policy really being developed in the intersts of ordinary Americans?  Why don't we have a sane healthcare system, then?  Why are we fighting a war that no one wanted before the propaganda barrage began?  Why have we allowed taxes to be cut although most Americans did not see a need for it?  Do you think  that might explain why most Americans feel so dispirited when they go to the polls in national elections?  Do you think it might have something to do with voting coming more and more to feel like a meaningless ritual?

In any event, there is quite a large literature (start with old-school Republican Kevin Phillips' Democracy and Wealth) developing that documents how the top 5% or so in this country have significantly increased their wealth while the rest of the population has stagnated since Reagan became president.  It's the natural result of people who have acquired wealth and power using that power to consolidate their position by pressuring the poltical system to work for its benefit. The Clinton years  were very much a part of this progression with his ramming through NAFTA, his failure to get healthcare reform, and the loss of the House to the Republicans who essentially destroyed his capability to do anything for the rest of his presidency.   

There's no conspiracy here; it's just what you would expect to happen because it always happens, and we shouldn't be surprised or shocked that it's happening because Americans are not exempt from the human condition.  I don't think there is a secret committee representing the American overclass which meets secretly to plot its next move.  There are all kinds of very-well financed think tanks and foundations for that.  People who are very wealthy (and wealthy wannabes) naturally tend to support policies that help them to secure their interests, and they use their wealth as the source of their power to make the system responsive to those interests. What's disappointing is that the rest of us have in our complacency let them do it.

The U.S. was founded as a political organization, a republic, after a fight against the power of existing oligarchies in Britain to dictate policies that the Americans, mostly bourgeois and middling gentry, thought not to be in their interests. The founders were very concerned that this new republic not evolve into yet another oligarchy, and the most prescient of them understood that it would be continuously threatened by the tyranny of the powerful few who would seek to dominate it.

And they were right; that's what happened. To simplify a little, it was threatened first by the southern oligarchs, then by the Robber Barons, and now by the corporate overclass. And the threat was beaten back the first two times because alert, patriotic Americans  recognized the threats for what they were, and fought them. The question now is whether things have already progressed too far for a third fight to be mounted and to have a chance--I don't know.  I have my doubts because only a minority of Americans seem to have a clue about what is really happening.

This  most recent battle in the ongoing class war has been waged behind a cloud of propaganda and confusion that has made if very difficult for  many decent Americans who want to think well of their political leaders to recognize what has been happening.  God knows the corporate media isn't going to talk about it. The first set of Robber Barons were bare-knuckled captialists who felt no need to hide what they were up to and felt no compunction about doing whatever it took to run over whoever got in their way.  The current crop is much shrewder, and they have been very adept at disguising their agenda, which is nevertheless very easy to recognize by anyone who cares to look. 

My post yesterday argued that Libertarianism was the propaganda tool used by the current overclass that was an essential element in their strategy to muddle our thinking about what is in most Americans' best interests.  Hint:  It's not lower taxes. It's not the war in Iraq.  It's not the anarcho-capitalist idol, free trade. It's not indiscriminate deregulation and privatization; it's not the Medicare Prescription Plan. It's not indifference about global warming. It's not a whole host of things that Americans don't want but which has been shoved down their throat because they've allowed themselves to be conned by overclass marketing through the media it controls and naturally uses to promote what is in its best interest.

Along these lines, the right in this country has deliberately tried to make the phrase 'class warfare' radioactive so that people have precisely the reaction I'm sure many of you readers are having to it now as you read this post--it's one of those unspeakable words;  we can't talk about it, and so it seems invisible. But it's the big story that the overclass right doesn't want anybody to be telling, because it's a war that they can wage all the more effectively so long as the rest of us are sleeping while they do it.

Comments

[Tom Strong]

Powerful stuff. However, as a left-libertarian sort, I take issue with this:

But government is the only tool ordinary Americans have to effectively organize the power they have in numbers to protect themselves from the predations of the powerful.

I don't think this is really true, and as long as we progressives continue to argue this, we're setting ourselves up for a fall.

What is true is that ordinary people must organize collectively in order to resist the depredations of the powerful. But government is not the only tool through which we can act collectively - it is simply the largest and the bluntest. Unions, community development corporations, co-ops, and employee-owned businesses all offer a level of deftness that government does not have. And while unions are weak right now, the other three are strong - and getting stronger.

You might want to read some Gar Alperovitz - he's one of the few leading progressives I've seen who's onto this. You may also want to research Italy's Emilio-Romagnia and Spain's Mondragon regions - deep-red (as in Communist) zones that have embraced co-operative entrepreneurship to a startling degree. Emilio-Romagnia's social services are almost entirely provided by user-owned co-ops rather than the government - and their GDP is the highest in the country.

I think one of the big weaknesses of the modern-day progressive movement is their continued embrace of government as the solution to our problems. I think government is a piece of the solution, but small-govt. conservatives have learned how to infiltrate and subvert our old reliance on it. Progressives need to adapt. And the best way to do that is to take the forms that have made them powerful - which is to say corporations - and learn how to bend them to our own ends.

[Tom Strong]

Dang! No italics, I guess. Well, hopefully you can decipher what I wrote.

[Jack Whelan]

Tom--

I agree in principle that lower level organizational issues are the key to social health. That's where the real action should be.

I'm a subsidiarist, if there is such a word, and that means that government should only play a supporting role to protect and nurture local initiatives that benefit the commonweal. They should only rarely play the role of initiator--as in the TVA or in other kinds of programs like healthcare insurance that help to build national wealth and prosperity. I think there's a role for big government to play there, but we can argue about when and how much of that is appropriate.

In the main, I'm happy with governments that play mainly a reactive role--as in the FEMA system to deal with disasters when they overwhelm local capacity.

That's in an ideal world, but it's not the world we live in and it doesn't countenance the primary threat that currently confronts us. My concern is that Libertarians, left or right, are so obsessed about the tyranny of governments that they minimize the threat that comes from the unregulated, global corporate overclass.

These are the heroes in Objectivist (Ayn Rand) right Libertarian thinking, and they are the agents of a tyranny that promises very soon to make our lives miserable, a tyranny we are already experiencing in so many facets of our lives. And they can only be restrained by organizations equally big and equally powerful. In other words, they can only be restrained by the coordinated efforts of central governments.

The unions wouldn't have had a chance in the early 20th century if the progressives hadn't a bigger influence on the Federal level. And the same is true now. The initiatives about which you speak will be crushed as soon as they pose any threat to the vital interests of these corporate giants if they aren't protected by big government.

In other words, the local organizations should take the initiatives, but they need the protection of entities powerful enough to stand up to the brute power of corporate greed. And they can only do that when the people own a government that is big enough to protect themselves. And the GOP since Reagan has made it their mission to destroy or coopt the government so that we will not be able to use it to afford those protections, and they've justified it all the way by their appeal to Libertarian principles.

[forestwalker]

"God knows the corporate media isn't going to talk about it."
-------------------

About the media...

Why are libertarian politicians so consistently described in the media as 'moderate', as if being on the side of the Liberal/individualist extremes of both parties somehow averages out to being centrist? A year out now from showing his economic extremism, it's still the adjective of choice--even on NPR where there's usually a bit more nuance in the reporting--to describe my dear governor Arnie's political orientation. Very frustrating.

Also, the subtle and not-so-subtle pressure from both the small group of media owners and "the market" to define and limit the narrative we're presented accounts for most of the media's mendacity, I'm sure. But I also wonder whether there is not something inherent in the journalistic profession that orients them toward a libertarian viewpoint?

[Joshua]

Jack Whelan wrote: "My concern is that Libertarians, left or right, are so obsessed about the tyranny of governments that they minimize the threat that comes from the unregulated, global corporate overclass."

Most other libertarians I've met (in both the real world and the blogosphere) are mindful of this threat, as am I, but believe that the cure may be worse than the disease.

The thing about the Bill of Rights is that it was intended to protect people's rights against the government, not necessarily against other private entities. Now, I'll grant that government lost its monopoly on the ability to trample individual rights (esp. free-speech rights) a long time ago. But neither the Constitution nor any of its amendments reflect this.

Furthermore, oftentimes when this sort of thing occurs in the private sector, it is in the course of the putatively offending party exercising their own Constitutional rights. Comedy Central declining to show the Islamic prophet Mohammed, as depicted in a recent South Park episode, is a classic example of this. Yes, it sent a bad message. Yes, it amounted to stifling the free speech of South Park's creators. But to prohibit Comedy Central from doing this would violate their free speech right to control what is and is not shown on its own network, would it not?

Simply put, in the absence of a constitutional provision to hold the private sector to the same level of respect for constitutional rights as government, most libertarians aren't willing to go down that road, as all too often it leads to the messy business of pitting people's rights against each other.

[forestwalker]

Joshua said: "Simply put, in the absence of a constitutional provision to hold the private sector to the same level of respect for constitutional rights as government, most libertarians aren't willing to go down that road, as all too often it leads to the messy business of pitting people's rights against each other."

No. It is unavoidable that people's rights (or more accurately, their dignity and self-determination) are pit against each other. The libertarian solution does not avoid that messiness, it just pretends that it doesn't exist by imagining that all contractual obligations have been entered into by equally free agents. It blesses a pure might-makes-right power struggle rather than a mediated and restrained (and restraining) striving for justice by the community.

I've been a bit skeptical of Jack's thesis regarding modern corporate culture largely being a reincarnation of Southern plutocracy but reconsidering that thesis in light of this discussion has forced me to regard it with more weight. Because, God help us, Lincoln's words about the struggle then were also true of the struggle to birth the New Deal in the thirties and of the Civil Rights stuggle of the sixties. And they are no less true today:

"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names-- liberty and tyranny.

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the process by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty, and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary has been repudiated."

The libertarian dictionary is in great need of fresh repudiation.

[Matt Zemek]

Tom:

If you have managed to read the Seattle Times' series on sexual crimes committed by those in the health care profession, it becomes clear that government is the main vehicle through which necessary systemic change must occur.

We need a blend of competence and moral leadership from the people who are in charge of our government. Unless or until this happens, we will suffer.

The grassroots is important in that we all need to give a damn and be liberated enough--in time, attitude and speech--to extend this sense of moral urgency to our neighbors and rouse the populace. If we really care about our society, we'll be invigorated in much the same way the country was during the 1960s.

We, the people, must care, and in that sense the grassroots is the foundation. But in terms of where solutions will be crafted and hammered out, it is the governmental arena that is and will be the center.

Communities can and must organize, but the pressure they apply must be sustained, smart, visible and politically effective for anything to really happen. And when we talk about "something happening," that refers to government getting better.

It's misguided to think government is not a solution, given government's tremendous failures and overall incomptence. It's simply that government--through combos of legislation, smart voting and effective action--must become a noticeably improved entity.

[forestwalker]

You and Colbert are echoing each other again Jack:

Money & Politics: The Machine that Ain't Broke
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=62361

In reference to learning from the tremendous economic growth resulting from a partnered and thoroughly corrupt Chinese government and financial elite:

"Lets take a lesson from the Communists and let the Free Market do its job."

Florida Politics
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=62368

And a FL Dem with a message that, if things are not as bad as you fear, should resonate.

[Tom Strong]

Jack,

In other words, the local organizations should take the initiatives, but they need the protection of entities powerful enough to stand up to the brute power of corporate greed.

I'd say we're in agreement, then - insofar as protecting the equal opportunities of conflicting interests is a role for government that many libertarians do accept.

What I'm really trying to get at is that there's a distinction between saying "government should protect the little guy against the depredations of the strong," and saying that government should provide services such as medicare and social security through taxes (I should also say that I'm on the fence over which services really should be provided by government and which shouldn't; in that sense, I'm hardly a committed libertarian). Those services can sometimes be provided through NGO's more efficiently than through government itself. Emilio-Romagnia and Mondragon are emblematic of that.

But moreover, it's the progressive commitment to providing large amounts of services through government that right-wing libertarianism has worked so hard to undermine. Without necessarily conceding that ground, I think progressives should look harder at meeting the need for those services through other agents, while strengthening government's role as a regulator and protector of social innovation.

[Jack Whelan]

Tom--

We're pretty much on the same page. I think the only difference is that I'm more concerned about the Power balances. If we lived in a world where the largest companies did $5-!0 million in revenues every year, and where there was a real diversity of competing factions, I'd be ok with a much smaller government. I would tend toward the anarchistic side if I felt that a society with minimal government controls could find the right balances and counterbalances, and in that sense be self regulating.

But that's not the world we live in. There's this problem that seems to be an essential element in the human condition--Evil in the form of avarice and powerlust. People who have a lot want more, and if that means taking stuff away from those who have what they want, so be it. It's just not possible to mind your own business and tend to your farm. There's an army of Huns in the next valley ready to sweep down on it, raping and pillaging all the way. Or there's a rich cattleman with hired guns who wants to run over it. And right now we're facing a very serious threat from hugely powerful corporations and the superwealthy that feed off of them, and I don't see how they can be confronted and defeated when they swoop down on my little acre if there isn't some organization more powerful that is going to stand in my corner.

I know this isn't where you're coming from or what you want to encourage, but what bothers me about market-centered Libertarianism, which is what most people mean when they think of Libertarianism, is the axiom that only those who use should pay. It creates a cultural mood that undermines any sense of public spiritedness needed on the local level in order to get levies passed for schools or to build parks or improve ballfields, to devleop sane public transportation and health-delivery systems built.

These kinds of things, in response to real community needs, have to be coordinated in the political sphere, and that usually means bringing in government. The alternative is toll roads that are first class or third class for those who can't afford the better ones, private schools whose quality will depend on parents' ability to pay, private, gated playgrounds available only to those who can afford to live within the gated housing development for the superrich.

Now if NGOs of the sort you describe can develop an alternative political sphere, that's fine. But in the end, what's the difference? It's just government by another name.

[Tom Strong]

"what bothers me about market-centered Libertarianism, which is what most people mean when they think of Libertarianism, is the axiom that only those who use should pay. It creates a cultural mood that undermines any sense of public spiritedness needed on the local level in order to get levies passed for schools or to build parks or improve ballfields, to devleop sane public transportation and health-delivery systems built."

That's a really good point, and one worth considering from a rhetorical standpoint. On a basic level, I think "liberals" are close to losing this debate - but shouldn't. Because on a basic level, if the society doesn't do the things necessary for all citizens to have a fair shot at a good life, the society itself will crumble, and even those who don't use the services will have to struggle with that.

But I think we do need to rethink the debate in a way that encompasses libertarian concerns rather than just fighting them. The truly successful political philosophies do both - they fight effectively, but they also swallow other philosophies wholesale. And I think doing that may require rethinking some government services from an efficiency standpoint.

[Jack Whelan]

Tom--

"Rethinking" is my middle name. I'm all for it. There are no sacred cows, only basic principles. And my problem with Libertarianism is on the level of principle, not on the level of what works and what doesn't. Keep writing. I appreciate your perspective.

jw