The following is an excerpt of a presentation given at a PSL meeting on Aug. 6.
Communists pay especially close attention to economic trends,
because we know they have a major impact on politics. Some recent statistics
are worth considering. Taken one at a time, each of these statistics could be a
shocking snapshot of our society; they could each be considered unjust. But if
you put all these snapshots together, you get something more than a picture;
you see a whole story unfolding, a process of long-term decline for U.S.
workers. These include:
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- 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live
paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in
2007;
- The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States
now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth;
- 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed
their planned retirement age in the past year;
- Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in
2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008;
- Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough
additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975;
- More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed
are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying;
- For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million
Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects
that number to go up to 43 million in 2011;
- Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United
States are living below the poverty line in 2010—the highest rate in 20 years.
We all know more or less how the United States was founded
in practice: as a colonial settlement that expanded and waged war on Indigenous
peoples to acquire land, and then brought over millions of Africans in chains
to work that land. It was founded primarily by the use of force. But beyond
force, the country also has a founding idea—or what could be better called a founding
myth. And that myth is that we are in a country where anyone can make it.
The Declaration of Independence states “that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It
was a last-second revision that made the phrase come out like that; initially
it read “life, liberty and property.”
The idea was that everyone had a natural right to work hard and acquire
property; that without property you could never really be free, independent or
happy.
This myth had some basis if you were a white man. In most of
Europe, centuries of feudalism and the beginnings of capitalist agriculture
meant that there was little unclaimed and available land. Small farmers were
pushed off their land by big landowners. While major class confrontations over
land also took place in America, it was, by contrast, a land of opportunity
where a much higher proportion of white men—the only ones qualified for citizenship—could
actually own a small farm and possess property.
The
myth of the United States was that the opportunities and availability of
property meant that this country did not have permanent social classes as in
Europe. If sharp distinctions did develop between rich and poor, these
distinctions reflected the natural abilities of the individual.
Of course this myth conveniently overlooked that in much of
the country it was the hard, unpaid work of slaves that made property and
prosperity possible for white men who previously had little. Likewise, the
opportunities to pack up and move West—which remained possible until the
closing of the frontier in the late 19th century—were created at the expense of
the continent’s Indigenous peoples.
Those
times are past, but these founding myths have been sustained decade after
decade. We have been taught through the media, pop culture and the school
system that this is still the country where “anyone can make it.” We are still
supposed to celebrate and worship the rich for their accomplishments. We are
told they deserve every penny, while poor people lack drive, ambition or
“personal responsibility.”
Again, there has been a material basis for some people
believing the myth. The super-exploitation and extreme impoverishment of the
workers and peasants of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the
Middle East, in addition to this country’s industrial monopoly and
technological domination, made possible a temporary rise in living standards
inside the colonizing states.
Then after World War II, when the U.S. government faced the
competition of the Soviet Union and its expansive social safety net, the labor
movement was strong and the country’s industrial production was unrivaled. The
government initiated programs that fostered the concept of the middle class
such as low-interest loans for white industrial workers to become homeowners
and send their children to universities.
These
developments fed the belief that better-paid white workers can succeed in the
system—that they are in fact not workers at all, but “middle class.”
This
ideology, with all its inherent prejudices, has been particularly strong with
certain sectors of the population. The “white collar” sector of office workers,
educators, administrators and salespersons expanded in the 1950s and 1960s when
U.S. imperialism developed a dominant position in the global economy and world
finance. Many of these “professionals” had family members who had
worked in factories, but they could look back and say: “Look at what
America allows, the American Dream is possible if you work hard. I have a life
of relative comfort compared to my parents, and my children will have it even
better.”
But
now during a deep economic crisis, it is precisely these middle sectors that
are realizing how little they have: how the banks really own “their” homes, how
their 401(k) retirement plans add up to very little, how the moment they lose
their jobs everything else will crumble, how paying college tuition can wipe
out life savings and create huge debts, how a medical emergency can sink them
into bankruptcy.
As
the living standard of this sector plummets, they will be looking for answers.
They will question the established politicians and may become more open to a
radical critique. But they can also become more open to a reactionary, racist
critique—this is what right-wing sectors of the ruling class will use to
deflect attention away from themselves and the contradictions inherent in capitalism.
The right will point to immigrants, talk about high taxes
and promote a racist image of Black “welfare mothers” so as to target the most
vulnerable sectors and play on this country’s long-established racist
traditions.
So
while the erosion of “middle class” living standards highlights the country’s real
class divisions, building a class-wide fight back is not an automatic process.
We will have to confront, with ever greater urgency, divide-and-conquer
tactics. This means talking directly about Wall Street as the real enemy,
talking directly about socialism as the only answer to capitalism’s ills and
proving in practice how working people of all nationalities can benefit by
struggling together on the same side of the barricades.
