In our political debate, we like to use terms like “liberal” and “conservative” to describe the views of individuals, groups, legislation, judicial decisions, etc. Our two parties, Democratic and Republican, are thought to stand for certain ideas, values, and beliefs, rooted in some kind of principle—a foundational philosophy that serves as the wellspring for all other ideas.
For example, people would probably say that this blog is liberal. The writer is a Democrat. Rachel Maddow is liberal. She is a Democrat. Rush Limbaugh is conservative. He is a Republican. For most of America, this labeling makes sense, and in our country, there has always been a place for both conservatives and liberals, for Republicans and Democrats…and their principles.
As a person who follows politics fairly closely, I’ve noticed something recently—especially given my zeal in eviscerating Republican talking points. First, consider these recent Republican positions on specific issues: adamant that the federal debt needs to be dramatically reduced, voted for privatizing Medicare into a voucher system, voted for the Paul Ryan budget that contained massive tax cuts, refused to approve a nuclear treaty or extend unemployment until Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts, refused to allow a tax increase on millionaires, refused to end billions in subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies, virulently opposed to the Affordable Care Act which is projected to reduce the federal deficit, opposed to the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, refused to approve a war powers resolution to allow action against Libya to go forward.
What is so strange about this list? Well, for one thing, just about every position is 180 degrees from that of President Obama. But it is only context that tells us that. However, if an alien were to read this list of Republican positions 3,000 years from now, the very simple truth they would conclude is that there is almost nothing tying these positions together—there is no simple, underlying philosophy that can explain these positions.
In this sense, the modern Republican Party has committed one of the great human sins: politics without principle. Conservatives simply do not adhere to any real set of political values anymore; instead, they choose the route that is most politically expedient, and run with it.
Even consider their most championed cause: tax cuts. What is their position, as we all know? Cut taxes no matter what. But wait, what about the deficit? That issue has been foisted upon us with about as much grace as a 16 year old boy begging his girlfriend for sex. The deficit is an urgent, terrifying problem, we’re told. If we don’t fix it, we’ll become Greece, we’ll become Spain, we’ll become Japan! And because the deficit is such an awful problem, we should…cut taxes?
Surprisingly, that is exactly their answer. Paul Ryan’s budget, voted for by every Republican in the House, contained huge tax cuts. And look at every presidential candidate—they all want to cut taxes! So on the one hand, we are told that we have a very serious deficit problem, and on the other, we are told that the answer is to cut the primary source of revenue, or credit, for the government.
Now, some of you might be saying, “well, they always do believe in cutting taxes—they do that no matter what. Isn’t that principled?” No, it is not principled. A principle is a belief in a higher purpose, a balanced position based on reason and logic. The dictionary defines a principle as: “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.”
In this sense, a principle involves more than just a directional policy, such as cutting taxes. A person could say they believe in very low taxes, but if we are to take the Republicans seriously, they seem to believe in having no taxes, which amounts to believing in anarchy, since any government must have some source of revenue to operate. Moreover, it is absurd to argue for both cutting the deficit and taxes—these are mutually exclusive ideas. A principled position would either say that it is more important to cut taxes, or that it is more important to pay down the deficit, depending on that person’s beliefs about the role of government. Thus, the Republican position of believing in tax cuts in perpetuity is absent of principle. Instead, it is something they put out as a major plank in their platform because tax cuts are popular.
Worse is their most hallowed position: opposition to abortion, or pro life. We are told, by Republicans, that abortion is murder, that the fetus is a human being and has the right to live, regardless of the mother’s, or family’s wishes. One would assume then, that Republicans care deeply about human beings, that they would be stalwart supporters of schools, health care, and programs like WIC, that provide support for women and their children. But this is not the case. Republicans recently have fought to make huge cuts to schools, have aggressively opposed health care reform, have made deals and are currently attempting to make more that would cut funding for WIC and other programs. At every turn, Republicans oppose having a social safety net that helps people survive, whether it is unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, etc. So while they want the government to be involved in deciding whether or not abortions can take place, they don’t want the government to be involved in helping at-risk people survive—a clear lack of principle.
It is precisely this lack of principle that is going to kill them in the 2012 election. How is Romney going to attack Obama for his health care plan when he passed its predecessor while he was governor in Massachusetts? How are Republicans going to argue for more tax cuts when they’ve spent every second between 2010 and 2012 howling about the deficit? How are they going to argue they value education when Republican governors everywhere have been busting unions and forcing massive cuts to teacher salaries and education budgets? How are they going to say on the one hand that they are opposed to ousting Gaddafi, and on the other, argue that it is important to keep troops in Afghanistan?
The only way they get away from these issues is if this concept is absent from the debate. From now on the Democrats need only one message: Republicans are a party without principle. As such, they are unfit to govern a country built on one: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Protectors of the Bourgeois
First, let me say this: get out of the stock market. Now, I am not a financial analyst, nor am I licensed to hand out financial advice, but I’d get out if I had a choice. The market is going to tank because the Republicans aren’t going to agree to raise the debt ceiling. Or, if they do, it will be because president Obama will have once again completely capitulated to their demands (as he is wont to do) to cut social programs so deeply that the U.S. economy will be crippled going forward. Either way, I don’t see how this is going to end well for financial markets. Add to that, the fact that there is basically no oversight of the same banks that failed in 2008 because the Republicans refuse to allow the creation of the consumer financial protection bureau, to be headed by consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, and you might start to realize what really deep shit we’re in. Get out. Sell your possessions. Run for the hills.
I had intended to write today to prove that the Republican party was fascist. Indeed, they do carry some of the same characteristics, such as a belief in corporate power, a belief that government should protect industry at all costs, and a belief that government should create and maintain a military industrial complex (in which the function of the military is combined with the corporate interests of industry). However, to suggest that Republicans are fascist wouldn’t be quite correct. The fact is they are manifesting themselves defenders and protectors of the bourgeoisie, as described by Karl Marx: the owners of the means of production. Now don’t all the sudden be afraid because I mentioned Marx—Americans have a way of being ignorant morons when it comes to this subject because we’re so brainwashed to believe that anything involving Marx, socialism, communism, etc. is automatically an attack on our way of life.
What is unfortunately lost when we relinquish ourselves to such cowardly childishness is that we lose Marx’s tremendously valuable historical perspective. In the beginning of his most famous work, The Communist Manifesto, Marx makes this statement:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and surf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes (473, 474).”
In other words, what Marx is saying is that society tends to form itself into two different classes—one class that owns, another that serves—and that because of this dynamic, these classes naturally stand in opposition to one another; an opposition that ultimately results in the destruction of that social structure, for better or worse. The key is what follows: “In ancient Rome have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations (474).” Thus, Marx argues that each society had “gradations” that stood between the two ultimate class divisions—essentially, that each society had a middle class, and that this prevented, or mitigated, the antagonisms that existed between the two polar classes.
The next leap Marx made is where he miscalculated, though what he said is no less true, especially in regard to modern society: “the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into the two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat (474).”
Marx, writing in 1870’s, had not anticipated the fact that capitalist society would, and did, break itself into precisely the “gradations” that had preserved the order of earlier societies. Between the base proletariat laborer and his industry-owning, bourgeoisie master were doctors, teachers, lawyers, journalists, engineers, and other educated gradations that served, in a way, the needs of both classes. Later, there would be unions, as well, that buoyed the wages and prospects for many laborers, and in conjunction, programs such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc., that all served to create further gradations, blurring the line between the proletariat worker and his bourgeois employer.
Still, in the end, it cannot be denied that the two classes exist, and they exist in opposition—their interests are completely divergent. Whereas the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production, want to pay as little for wages as possible, the proletariat, the laborer, wants wages to be as high as possible. It is only the existence of the middle class, the various gradations between that make a peaceful and stable society possible: with no middle class, the dynamic between the bourgeoisie and proletariat necessarily dictates both covert and open class warfare. This struggle between classes has only one ultimate end, as Marx correctly observes: “in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
Thus, the Republicans represent not fascism, but the bourgeois class; the bizarre twist is that they seek in rhetoric, policy, and action, to de-cleat the gradations so necessary to prevent open class warfare. They propose to privatize institutions like Social Security (Bush after ’04 victory) and Medicare (current Republican budget plan), in essence taking programs created to insure the working class a decent life in old age when they can no longer work, and gifting them back to the owners of the means of production, in this case, banks. They continue to attack and destroy unions, especially teacher’s unions, which are institutions that provide wage earners with some power based on their collective labor, allowing them to earn a decent living. And on the other hand, they use all of their political power to protect ownership: lower taxes for business and the very rich, subsidies for industries as prosperous as Big Oil, tax shelters for businesses that move their jobs overseas, all the while fighting tooth and nail against consumer protections, business watchdog agencies, and benefits for the very poor and unemployed.
When taking this view, the Republicans very nakedly stand against just about every single institution of government or society that has acted to defuse class tensions between worker and owner, poor and rich, proletariat and bourgeois.
This is precisely why I believe Republicans won’t raise the debt ceiling, and it is also why they don’t care whether the U.S. or world economy goes in the tank as a result: it may hurt business some, but in the end, the owners of the means of production will still maintain ownership—they’ll be OK—they’re rich, and to boot, they’re captains of industry. Meanwhile, everyone else will be knocked down, desperate, fragile, and vulnerable. What better way to destroy political organization by the working class? What better way to drive down wages? Worse, they know that the only chance they have to beat Obama in 2012, and thereby maintain power for the bourgeoisie, is if the economy is in horrible shape.
So, as I said, if I had any money in the stock market, I’d get out now. The Republicans are going to try to destroy our economy, and they may well succeed.
I had intended to write today to prove that the Republican party was fascist. Indeed, they do carry some of the same characteristics, such as a belief in corporate power, a belief that government should protect industry at all costs, and a belief that government should create and maintain a military industrial complex (in which the function of the military is combined with the corporate interests of industry). However, to suggest that Republicans are fascist wouldn’t be quite correct. The fact is they are manifesting themselves defenders and protectors of the bourgeoisie, as described by Karl Marx: the owners of the means of production. Now don’t all the sudden be afraid because I mentioned Marx—Americans have a way of being ignorant morons when it comes to this subject because we’re so brainwashed to believe that anything involving Marx, socialism, communism, etc. is automatically an attack on our way of life.
What is unfortunately lost when we relinquish ourselves to such cowardly childishness is that we lose Marx’s tremendously valuable historical perspective. In the beginning of his most famous work, The Communist Manifesto, Marx makes this statement:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and surf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes (473, 474).”
In other words, what Marx is saying is that society tends to form itself into two different classes—one class that owns, another that serves—and that because of this dynamic, these classes naturally stand in opposition to one another; an opposition that ultimately results in the destruction of that social structure, for better or worse. The key is what follows: “In ancient Rome have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations (474).” Thus, Marx argues that each society had “gradations” that stood between the two ultimate class divisions—essentially, that each society had a middle class, and that this prevented, or mitigated, the antagonisms that existed between the two polar classes.
The next leap Marx made is where he miscalculated, though what he said is no less true, especially in regard to modern society: “the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into the two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat (474).”
Marx, writing in 1870’s, had not anticipated the fact that capitalist society would, and did, break itself into precisely the “gradations” that had preserved the order of earlier societies. Between the base proletariat laborer and his industry-owning, bourgeoisie master were doctors, teachers, lawyers, journalists, engineers, and other educated gradations that served, in a way, the needs of both classes. Later, there would be unions, as well, that buoyed the wages and prospects for many laborers, and in conjunction, programs such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, etc., that all served to create further gradations, blurring the line between the proletariat worker and his bourgeois employer.
Still, in the end, it cannot be denied that the two classes exist, and they exist in opposition—their interests are completely divergent. Whereas the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production, want to pay as little for wages as possible, the proletariat, the laborer, wants wages to be as high as possible. It is only the existence of the middle class, the various gradations between that make a peaceful and stable society possible: with no middle class, the dynamic between the bourgeoisie and proletariat necessarily dictates both covert and open class warfare. This struggle between classes has only one ultimate end, as Marx correctly observes: “in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
Thus, the Republicans represent not fascism, but the bourgeois class; the bizarre twist is that they seek in rhetoric, policy, and action, to de-cleat the gradations so necessary to prevent open class warfare. They propose to privatize institutions like Social Security (Bush after ’04 victory) and Medicare (current Republican budget plan), in essence taking programs created to insure the working class a decent life in old age when they can no longer work, and gifting them back to the owners of the means of production, in this case, banks. They continue to attack and destroy unions, especially teacher’s unions, which are institutions that provide wage earners with some power based on their collective labor, allowing them to earn a decent living. And on the other hand, they use all of their political power to protect ownership: lower taxes for business and the very rich, subsidies for industries as prosperous as Big Oil, tax shelters for businesses that move their jobs overseas, all the while fighting tooth and nail against consumer protections, business watchdog agencies, and benefits for the very poor and unemployed.
When taking this view, the Republicans very nakedly stand against just about every single institution of government or society that has acted to defuse class tensions between worker and owner, poor and rich, proletariat and bourgeois.
This is precisely why I believe Republicans won’t raise the debt ceiling, and it is also why they don’t care whether the U.S. or world economy goes in the tank as a result: it may hurt business some, but in the end, the owners of the means of production will still maintain ownership—they’ll be OK—they’re rich, and to boot, they’re captains of industry. Meanwhile, everyone else will be knocked down, desperate, fragile, and vulnerable. What better way to destroy political organization by the working class? What better way to drive down wages? Worse, they know that the only chance they have to beat Obama in 2012, and thereby maintain power for the bourgeoisie, is if the economy is in horrible shape.
So, as I said, if I had any money in the stock market, I’d get out now. The Republicans are going to try to destroy our economy, and they may well succeed.
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