.
In the following article, Dr. Norman D. Livergood does not make
any mention of ideologies or “-isms”. He does not mention Zionism or the Jews
on Wall Street.
If you read this blog,
you know a fair bit about these things already. You know of the now not-so-hidden-hand
of the greedy bankers and their Zionist connections, support, etc to both
Israel and the White House.
You know the Jews run most of it and, if not them,
the Christian Zionists pick up most of the slack
What Dr. Livergood does is concentrate solely on money and the
growing rift between rich and poor and how we the people are being driven to
extinction by corporate greed.
.
"The money printing is lifting the cost of living of the
median household, of the typical household in the US. Mr. Bernanke is a murderer;
he's a murderer of the middle class and the working class." ~ Marc Faber,
Editor of GloomBoomDoom Report
"Any city,
however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other
of the rich; these are at war with one another; and in either there are many smaller divisions, and
you would be altogether beside the mark if you treated them all as a single
State." ~ Plato, Commonwealth IV
.
We're engaged in
life-or-death class warfare whether we recognize it or not, a vital struggle
between the capitalist class and the working class.
The persons on the right side in the image above ~ members of the
capitalist class ~ have declared war against us ~ the worker class (represented
by the images on the left). Capitalists are busy swindling, oppressing, and killing
workers worldwide.
1. The two classes at war
with each other can be delineated in several ways:
2. By wealth: the class
of the rich 1 against the class of the
poor
3. By ownership: the
capitalist class (owners of the means of production) versus the working class
By ideology: the class of
those for government by men against the class of those for government by law
By intelligence and culture: the class of the ignorant and
barbaric (image right) against the class of the intelligent and refined
Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour
As a Middle-Class
Household Makes In Over 47 Years
"Just take a look at
the latest reports on what the top hedge fund managers haul in. In 2010 John
Paulson led the list with a record $4.9 billion in personal earnings. That's a
whopping $2.4 million an HOUR. Here's a factoid to make you wretch: It would take
the median US household over 47 years to earn as much as Paulson pocketed in
just 60 minutes. And, every hedge fund manager pays a lower tax rate than the
average family. ~ Source
In this essay, we'll first explore class warfare in terms of the
struggle of moneyed oppressors against the working
class. We'll then examine class warfare in terms of the struggle of the class
promoting ignorance and despotism versus the class advocating truth and wisdom.
We'll identify ourselves as members of a newly-defined class or type that
advances freedom and understanding.
Are Financial and Political Leaders Suffering Economically Like
the Workers?
"US corporations
took in $1.659 trillion in the third quarter [of 2010], breaking records going
back 60 years, according to a Commerce Department report. On November 30, five
days after the Thanksgiving holiday, unemployment benefits will expire for 1.2
million workers due to Congressional inaction. By Christmas and the New Year,
this figure will swell to 2 million. The fate of these workers and the several
million children who depend on them, tossed out without cash income into the
worst job market in seven decades, is of little consequence to the millionaires
and multi-millionaires who populate Congress." Source
THE WARFARE OF THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR
“If there’s been class warfare in this country, my class won.” ~
Warren Buffet
This very day the enemy
class will:
.
Returning American
veterans are committing suicide at the rate of 120 a week, a CBS investigation
revealed on 11/15/07; the toll of military suicides in
2009 was the worst since records began to be kept in 1980.
2. Maim more American
soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Before
3. Drive more people
insane
.
Of the 1.6 million Iraq
and Afghanistan veterans, 38% of Army and 50% of National Guard service members
have been diagnosed with mental illness. (2007 Pentagon report)
4. Slaughter additional
Pakistani, Afghan, and Iraqi children and adults and medically uninsured
American children and adults
5. Endanger unemployed
and homeless persons ~ some who've lost their homes because of economic cannibalism by the
capitalist class
One out of every 4
American veterans is now homeless!
6. Commit crimes (financial, military,
political, and social) and go scott free, while workers are imprisoned for
legally protesting or for any infraction of the law.
7. Perpetuate the economic dictatorship of the
Federal Reserve System as the financial arm of the demonic cabal.
8. Persist in the
strategy of reaping huge profits from illegal wars
THE
JOBS CRISIS IN AMERICA
Andre
Damon,
May 30,
2011,
www.wsws.org
Amid
the worst mass unemployment in the United States since the 1930s, states
throughout the country are cutting benefits to jobless workers. Arkansas,
Michigan and Missouri have already implemented cuts to unemployment payments,
and Florida, Pennsylvania and South Carolina are preparing to do so.
Michigan
and Missouri have cut the usual 26 weeks of state-financed unemployment
payments down to 20. The Florida state legislature, meanwhile, has passed a law
that would cut benefits to as low as 12 weeks, depending on the official
unemployment level in the state.
These
vindictive and punitive measures ~ which threaten jobless families with
destitution ~ are part of an ongoing drive by the ruling class, led by the
Obama administration, to eliminate every social gain won by the working people
of America.
They
come at the same time as government austerity measures, the closure of schools,
cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and the layoff of hundreds of thousands of
government employees on both the state and federal levels. The ultimate aim is
to create conditions in which millions of people have no access to even the
most basic government assistance, to create such levels of economic desperation
that workers will take any job, at any wage.
Whatever
the talk of an "economic recovery," the jobs situation is disastrous.
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia had official jobless rates of 9
percent or more in April, while real unemployment is much higher. There are
currently 24 million people in the United States who either want to work but
can't find it, or are working part-time involuntarily. This figure is larger
than the populations of Chile or the Netherlands, and is twice the population
of Cuba.
Some
5.8 million US workers have been out of work for over 27 weeks or more.
Economists estimate that one million people lost all federal unemployment
benefits last year after being unable to find work for 99 weeks. Nearly two
million people total are among this group of "99ers."
The
portion of working-age people who are employed is 58.5 percent, the lowest
level since 1983.
This
means that the transformative effect of women entering the labor force over the
past two-and-a-half decades has been fully counterbalanced by the disastrous
rise in unemployment. The employment-population ratio for men is at its lowest
level in records dating back 40 years, and no doubt longer.
In
another period, such conditions would have been treated as a national scandal,
and the political establishment would have felt some obligation to take
government action. On January 11, 1944, as the United States was wrapping up
the war in Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave an address to Congress, in which
he proclaimed that the political rights guaranteed in the American Constitution
had proved inadequate, requiring an "economic bill of rights."
The
first of this "Second Bill of Rights," said Roosevelt, was that to
"a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or
mines of the Nation."
Roosevelt's
proposal was dead on arrival. American capitalism proved incapable of
eradicating poverty and unemployment, even in boom years of the postwar period.
But for decades afterwards, American politicians gave lip service to the
concept of full employment as a basic goal of domestic policy.
Unemployment
insurance was introduced in some states in 1932 and expanded throughout the
country in the 1930s, in response to the Great Depression. This was part of a
general program of social reform driven in no small part by fear within the
ruling class of social upheaval and revolution. Roosevelt himself was speaking
only a few decades after the Russian Revolution.
The
entire direction of American policy today is toward the elimination of whatever
remains of the reforms of the postwar period, including unemployment benefits.
The political establishment has abandoned even the vaguest suggestion that
people have the right to a job.
This
past week, the administration released the centerpiece of its new
"jobs" policy ~ a program of corporate deregulation to eliminate
existing constraints on corporate profit. The extra profit, Obama claimed, will
be used to hire workers. This under conditions in which corporations are
sitting on the largest cash hoard in history, refusing to hire, waiting for
wages to come down even further.
The
cause of this transformation is to be found in the transformation of American
society. The industrialists of Roosevelt's age were people who largely made
their money from the productive process. But in the past two decades, under
conditions of economic decline, the American ruling class has split its
attention between dismantling domestic industry and creating the giant Ponzi
scheme that toppled in 2008.
The
American ruling class has pursued a policy of deindustrialization, with banks
flourishing to the point where, by the late 2000s, finance and real estate
generated 40 percent of all corporate profits.
The vast
increase in the wealth of the financial aristocracy over the past three decades
has been bound up with this process. Now, three-and-a-half years after the
beginning of the recession, not a single social program or measure to alleviate
unemployment has been introduced. Instead, the economic crisis has been seen as
an opportunity to throw back the conditions of the working class a century.
Obama,
in his 2010 State of the Union address, pledged to double exports within five
years. The only way this will be possible is through the reduction of wages to
the point where they compete with those of the developing world. The driving
force in this transformation is high unemployment, which is forcing workers
throughout the country to accept lower and lower wages.
These
conditions are not unique to the United States. In all the major capitalist
countries, the ruling class has embarked on a program of austerity aimed at
forcing workers to pay for the economic crisis.
The
right to a job, with a livable income, is a basic social right. Indeed, as the
program of the SEP states, "the right to employment is the most basic of
all," as "without a steady, good-paying job, it is impossible to
satisfy all other needs." The fight of workers to realize this right,
however, brings them into conflict with both the Democrats and Republicans, and
with the capitalist system that they defend.
The
Socialist Equality Party calls for a public works program to ensure a
high-quality job for everyone. There is no lack of work to be done. The social
infrastructure of the US lies in ruins. Roads and bridges are in a state of
disrepair, and the public transportation system is unreliable where it exists
at all. As the most recent bout of tornadoes has revealed, millions of people
live in ramshackle mobile homes that leave them exposed to the elements. The
country's levee and flood prevention system are so archaic that entire cities
can be inundated with water, like New Orleans was in Hurricane Katrina.
To
implement such a program requires not only the seizure of the wealth of the
financial and corporate elite, but the transformation of all the major
corporations and banks into publicly owned enterprises, under the democratic
control of the working class.
Should you hate these
obscenely wealthy unprincipled persons who are killing working-class people
without compunction?
No, it's not necessary or
advisable 2 to allow yourself to get
into a hating mode in relation to them.
Should you wake up to the
fact that they're murdering us and fight against what they're doing ?
You bet! They're able to
devastate the poor because we're not awake enough to realize what they're doing
to us. We must wake up and start fighting this civil war if we want to save our
very lives.
While at least a billion
people on the planet subsist on the equivalent of a dollar a day or less, the
concentration of wealth among a handful of people at the top has set new
records. Forbes magazine listed a record 946 individuals and family units worth
$1 billion or more in 2007, an increase from 793 in 2006.
The combined wealth of
these billionaires also reached record levels ~ a staggering $3.5 trillion, an
increase of 35 percent in just one year, due largely to resurging stock prices.
Why don't working-class
people recognize that they're being murdered by the criminal cabal that seized
power in 2000 and retained control through election fraud in 2002 and 2004?
.
American Constitutional
freedoms have been decimated
"All communities divide themselves into the few and the
many. The first are the rich and the well born, the others the mass of the
people . . . The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge and
determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share
of government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second." ~ Alexander Hamilton,
Treasury
Secretary of the U.S.
.
Neocons and their Democratic party co-conspirator members of the
enemy class like to claim that a term such as "class warfare" is only
used by those they brand as unpatriotic, extremist liberals, with the
implication that ordinary Americans don't believe there is a class war.
.
Actually, Americans are waking up to what's happening to the
country ~ as illustrated by the 2006 elections. In polls asking if Americans
believe our nation is divided into "haves" and "have-nots,"
about 50% now answer Yes. Some awakening is taking place, because that same
poll question in 1988 resulted in 71% of Americans rejecting the
"have" ~ "have-not" notion while only 26% saw a divided
nation.
The fat-cats don't like people using phrases like "class
warfare," because it makes too apparent the decimation of the working
class by the vulture capitalists. On February 17, 2008, a Washington Post
editorial said: "We thought we'd heard the last of class warfare and populism
when former North Carolina senator John Edwards bowed out of the [presidential]
race."
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton found it expedient ~ given the
unacknowledged economic depression staring the working class in the face ~ to
try to sound like progressives, pretending to be defenders of people facing
home foreclosure and unemployment. Fortunately, there are also genuine
progressives courageous enough to speak of the reality of class warfare in
America and throughout the world.
.
"The controversy stemming from the arrest of prominent
African American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home on July 16 has
dominated the media for a week. It has afforded another opportunity to pose
race as the decisive social division and to obscure basic class realities,
including the unprecedented assault on the living conditions of the working
class being carried out by the Obama administration." ~ Source
The cabal would like
American workers to believe that "race war" is the only
"war" raging in America ~ that there is no "class warfare"
whatsoever going on. Unfortunately, treasonous members of all minorities ~ including
racial minorities ~ have joined with the capitalist class in open battle
against workers of their own minority groupings.
Though working-class
Americans are somewhat awakening to the fact that they're being destroyed by
the vulture class, there is still no genuine understanding as to what they must
do. Many are still allowing themselves to be taken in by the cabal myth that we
have a genuine two-party system.
At least since the
American presidential election of 1868, the financiers who've ruled this
country have hand-picked the presidential candidates in both the Democratic and
Republican parties most of the time (Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy
were two notable exceptions). Whichever party wins, they
have their puppet in power.
The entire federal
government ~ with very few exceptions, such as Bernie Sanders ~ is controlled
by the plutocratic junta that is trying to destroy working-class Americans.
It's difficult for us to
grasp the full significance of the cabal's control over both political parties,
as well as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government,
along with military and religious groups.
.
We assume that conditions
for American workers will inevitably improve by just electing new leaders ~ as
some foolish people thought was happening in the 2008 election.
"The budget agreement reached
between the White House and congressional Republicans late Friday [4/8/2011]
night puts the Obama administration's stamp of approval on a reactionary
program of cutting spending on vital social services for working people, the
elderly and the poor, four months after a similar bipartisan agreement to cut
taxes for the wealthy. The result is a vast redistribution of wealth upwards,
from working people to the millionaires and billionaires." 4
The takeover of the
American government by a plutocratic elite occurred during the Constitutional
Convention conspiracy in 1787. Of the fifty-six men who had signed the
Declaration of Independence in 1776, only six of those attended the Federal
Convention in Philadelphia where the specially selected delegates secretly
concocted a plutocratic structure of government.
Exactly the same economic
conditions that exist now in 2011 were present in America in the early decades
of the twentieth century. Given the Robber Baron environment, the nation was
just waiting for a financial catastrophe.
"When
business in the United States underwent a mild contraction, the Federal Reserve 5 created
more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve
shortage. The Fed succeeded, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world
in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled
over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom.
Belatedly,
Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally
succeeded in breaking the boom. But it was too late ~ the speculative
imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp
retrenching, and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result,
the American economy collapsed."
You might think that such
an honest, straightforward arraignment of the FED's blunder would have been
written by a socialist extremist. It was actually penned by Alan Greenspan and
appeared in Ayn Rand's journal, "The Objectivist."
After the FED's 1920s
abortive attempt to save the vulture capitalists from their own excesses, the
1929 Stock Market Crash burst on the scene. Since the FED's efforts to save
them had failed, the economic power-brokers and financial institutions were forced
to face the horrible monetary predicament they had created through their
illegal conspiracies, non-transparent commercial dealings, and monopolistic
practices.
The American people
recognized that the Great Depression had been brought on by the lack of
regulation of predatory capitalism, so they set up agencies such as the
Securities and Exchange Commission and put control ordinances into place.
The only US presidents
who demonstrated some independence from the historic US criminal elite ~ and solidarity
with the working-class ~ were Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham
Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR essentially saved American vulture
capitalism from its own robber-baron excesses.
The conditions which led
to the 1929 financial crash in America are back again, but the New Deal
remedies of the crisis are no longer possible in the changed conditions that
the criminal cabal has created.
You can see just how
completely conditions have changed if you look carefully at the recent housing
bubble and its foreclosure aftermath,
beginning in 2001 and still being played out today. All the regulations that
were put into place in the New Deal era have been slowly eroded until now the
financial looters have completely free rein to plunder hapless investors and
consumers.
So, when US banks, hedge
funds, and financial institutions recognized in early 2007 that they were in
trouble because of their predatory practices, the Federal Reserve System bailed
them out to the tune of over $72 billion.
Over the past three
decades, the Federal Reserve has created a series of liquidity 6
bubbles:
In the 1980s excessive
liquidity resulted in the stock market bubble which ultimately collapsed in
1987.
Beginning in the 1990s,
the FED's excess credit produced a second speculative bubble in stocks ~ which
burst in 2000.
When that bubble burst,
the Fed pumped in even more liquidity, which went into the real estate market
and fed an even bigger speculative bubble; in 2009 its unraveling finally began
to be seen and acknowledged.
In response to the 2007
world economic crisis caused by real estate mortgage scams of diverse kinds,
are hapless private investors being assisted in their foreclosure crises?
Fogeddaboudid!
Central Banks in the US,
Japan and the European Union have poured over $20 trillion into private banks
hoping to save financial institutions caught in the housing bubble/subprime
mortgage scam and provide new liquidity. But the banks won't fund totally
non-transparent real estate investment instruments, so the central bank
liquidity is once again going into world stock market exchanges.
In 2009, the Treasury Department
and the Fed spread the lie that the economy had rebounded.
On the contrary, within
the next year the next huge leap in subprime mortgage payments collapsed the US
economy even more!
Greenspan is pretending
that the Fed is attempting to rein in excess liquidity once they recognize the
error of their ways. However, Ben Bernanke, the new FED chief, says he sees
"reining in" as a mistake and that he will never restrict liquidity.
All he will do is print more dollars and bailout the banks, hedge funds, and
financial institutions, dropping the money from helicopters.
All the current criminal
excesses of the financial markets are precisely the same as those of the 1920s,
as Robert Kuttner made clear in his
testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, on October 2, 2007.
The vulture capitalists
are beginning to realize that worldwide conditions of economic anarchy and
corruption may soon wake people up and lead to their demanding regulation of
financial institutions to stop their cannibalistic practices.
"The current
financial crisis is a wake-up call for modern-day central banking. The world
can't afford to lurch from one bubble to another. The cost of neglect is an
ever-mounting systemic risk that could pose a grave threat to an increasingly
integrated global economy. It could also spur the imprudent intervention of
politicians, undermining the all-important political independence of central
banks. The art and science of central banking is in desperate need of a major
overhaul ~ before it's too late." ~ Stephen S. Roach, Chairman, Morgan
Stanley Asia, "The Failure of Central Banking," Fortune,
September, 2007
Roach and the other
predator capitalists realize the danger of "imprudent intervention of
politicians, undermining the all-important political independence of central
banks." So, instead of allowing things to get out of their control ~ as in
1929 ~ they'll do everything they can to retain their "independence"
~ unfettered power to continue their
cannibalistic carnage.
In their efforts to
retain power no matter how bad conditions get, we have to be ready for any
calamity or con-game, such as the current ObaMessiah scam.
Ed: It is my gut feeling
that the Great Depression was much more a purposefully manufactured scenario
and land/money/power grab than the author writes. Whereas he gives the
impression that matters ran wild on their own, I believe the entire situation
was far from “accidental”.
The Only War Is the Class War
Our first offensive in
the ongoing class war is to arm ourselves with deep understanding of what's
going on in the world and throw off the stupefying myths and delusions that
predator capitalists have encouraged us to swallow.
Contrary to their
propaganda, Robber Baron capitalism is NOT the only economic system available
to us.
We don't have to accept
vulture capitalism as part of the fabric of reality.
"Consider the wisdom of economist John Maynard Keynes: The
rich are tolerable only so long as their gains appear to bear some relation to
roughly what they have contributed to society. Think of it as proportional and
justified economic success. This can be tolerated by poor and middle class
people if they believe the economic system is fair and properly rewards those
who work harder or have better capabilities. But truly obscene economic rewards
angers people.
“When most prosperity and wealth is unfairly channeled to
relatively few Upper Class people, it is only a matter of time until fuming,
resentful people in the Lower Class decide enough is enough and revolt. Perhaps
violently, if the political system remains controlled by the Upper Class."
~ Joel S. Hirschhorn, "Economic Armageddon is Coming," OnlineJournal.org,
Apr 26, 2007
We must face the hard
realities of our present world, no longer buying into such illusions as
"the invisible hand of the market" or "we must wage a continuing
war against terrorism."
Armed with penetrating
comprehension of the forces at work in our world, we must begin a potent and
dynamic offensive against those who are murdering us: the lawless plutocratic
monsters who have seized control of world political and economic systems.
The class struggle is the
key liberating force of our time
~ as in every era.
Class struggle isn't
simply our fight as workers against capitalist oppressors;
it's the ageless warfare
of enlightenment against ignorance,
freedom against despotism.
Class warfare includes
all the individual and collective struggles of exploited people
throughout the world against all aspects of
our abuse, impoverishment, and murder.
Class warfare involves
the struggle for working-class power outside of and opposed to capitalist exploitative
political, economic, and social structures.
"The struggle of the people in opposition to the privileged
class that controls the state; this is the dynamic factor in our national
development, the theme and meaning of our history."
"We cannot
understand the role of the people in history unless we also understand the
historical illusions which misrepresent history in order to serve the interests
of privileged classes. Thus culture must be studied as a weapon in the struggle
of classes.
"Cultural history
emerges in its truth and grandeur when it is seen as an unceasing struggle
between the oppressor and the oppressed. This is also the link between the
present and the past. The long battle against the oppressor is not ended. Man
has not yet become the full master of his own life, of the conditions of his
social existence. ~ John Howard Lawson, The Hidden Heritage, 1950
As we've seen, we cannot
depend on the Democratic Party in our struggle against oppression ~ since most
Democratic leaders are members of the oppressor class. Whereas in earlier
decades we could look to labor unions as allies in our struggle, union leaders have devolved into
capitalist co-conspirators and labor brokers.
Unions exist to negotiate
the sale of their members' labor power to employers, to keep working people in
line, and limit the scale of working-class action against corporations.
Unions divert the
discontent of union members into harmless channels. They keep workers passive
spectators in the events that most affect their lives.
We must understand that
the state is the mechanism the ruling class uses to maintain its monopoly of
violence (police, military, economic, propaganda) over the working class.
Every contemporary
government in the world ~ with the partial exception of Chavez's Venezuelan
government ~ is a repressive apparatus defending capitalist property relations.
Contemporary states are
not socially, politically, or economically neutral institutions or tools that
the working class can use to better themselves. The day when we could expect a
Franklin Delano Roosevelt to appear as the head of our state and bring in
genuine populist reforms is long gone.
Like it or not, we must
recognize that electoral politics is a psychologically sophisticated scam
deluding voters into thinking they have a real say in how they're governed
within the fantasy of a two-party system.
In the present police
state environment in America, the supposed right to vote is intended to keep us
mystified, divided, and passive, and is amazingly effective in keeping us from
taking effective action against capitalist predators.
Another of the
ideological fantasies we must utterly reject is the socialist swindle that
workers worldwide will somehow miraculously rise up, form themselves into a
coherent alliance, and confront the capitalist class.
Oppression by plutocratic
and tyrannous powers does not magically unite people into an effective combat
coalition. The number of working-class Americans without health insurance is
now 46.6 million, according to the Census Bureau. More than one in 10 American
children are uninsured. Being a member of such oppressed groupings does not
automatically unite you with the others.
Having a common enemy
doesn't mysteriously create a united front.
Every day in Congress,
plutocratic leaders of both parties promote or vote for tax breaks for the rich
or billions more for war profiteering corporations, while at the same time cut
programs for working families like insurance for poor children, student loans,
food stamps, veterans benefits, home heating programs for the elderly, Medicaid
and Medicare. But the victims of these predatory programs do not automatically
form into a united phalanx to do battle against the capitalist class.
What is clear is that we
cannot hope for remedy from oppression by using the current institutions and
processes that our enemies use to delude and murder the working class:
The political, economic,
and social structures of the state
A political party,
whether the Democratic Party or a third party
The election system, which
was totally subverted in 2000 by a coup d'etat and in 2002 and 2004 by fraud,
and which resulted in a capitalist-class puppet being elected in 2008 who is
continuing apace the oppressive measures that have been put in place over the
last one hundred years
.
In July, 2010, a brouhaha erupted when a federal
civil servant ~ Shirley Sherrod ~ revealed in a public video that she had
awakened to the fact that the problem in America is not white versus black but
rich versus poor.
"That's when it was revealed to me that, ya'll, it's about
poor versus those who have. . .
"Well, working with
him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who don't,
you know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic.
And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people ~ those
who don't have access the way others have."
Right-wing reactionaries
jumped on her, claiming that she had said she deliberately refused to help a
white person in the course of her duties. Because of this, the Obama
administration fired her. When the full video was played, it was clear that she
had said just the opposite. The Neanderthals had attacked her for being very
clear about class warfare in America!
The Obama junta was
forced to offer her job back to her.
The New Class
As we participate in the
perennial struggle of the truth against ignorance, we can't allow the accident
of our birth in the working class to define us. As we've seen, being a member
of the laboring class or one of the oppressed does not, in itself, create class
solidarity. Genuine group cohesiveness can only be created by intentional
allegiance to common values and common goals.
"I believe in aristocracy. Not an aristocracy
of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive,
the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and
classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between
them when they meet.
They represent the true human tradition, the one
permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. On they go ~ an
invincible army. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People ~ all
the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail.
Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to
utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese
Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip
through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the
room, their temple is the Holiness of the Heart's Imagination, and their
kingdom is the wide-open world." ~ E. M. Forster
If our ongoing warfare against ignorance and oppression is to
result in a genuine commonwealth where the good of all members is served, we'll
have to take the long view and begin working toward entirely new institutions
and structures. We must see ourselves as members of a new class; not just
workers opposed to capitalists, not just the oppressed against the oppressors,
but those engaged in lifelong personal self-transformation and seeking ultimate
Higher Awareness.
.
Genuine engagement in this new form of class warfare can only
begin when a small enlightened group of persons
~ having suffered under an oppressive form of rule and having prepared
themselves for self-rule ~ create a new community.
This new society will arise
out of the ashes of our present culture, led by advanced persons who have
freed themselves from all alluring myths and illusions, looked reality squarely
in the face, and begun the long, hard effort to lay a solid foundation for a new commonwealth.
"In other societies, as a general thing, a member of the
upper class is not supposed to make the accumulation of wealth his
master-concern, or expected to be particularly good at it. His ancestors are
supposed to have stolen enough in the first instance to enable him to rub
along, merely taking care of what he has and devoting himself to other
pursuits.
"The complete bankruptcy of intelligence exhibited in these
representative pronouncements from our upper class should make a clean sweep of
the notion so often advanced to account for the low level of our general culture
that our best minds nowadays go into business. They do not. They do not go
anywhere. There is nowhere for them to go.
"Our society has made no place for the individual who is
able to think, who is, in the strict sense of the word, intelligent; it merely
tosses him into the rubbish-heap; while picking out the stupidest millionaire
in sight and placing him in the White House to the accompaniment of a deafening
fanfare of adulation for his almost superhuman abilities.
"Intelligence is the power and willingness always
disinterestedly to see things as they are, an easy accessibility to ideas, and
a free play of consciousness upon them, quite regardless of the conclusions to
which this play may lead. Intelligence, therefore, while not precisely
incompatible with success in accumulating wealth, is unrelated to it; hence it
is disallowed by our Philistines." ~ Albert Jay Nock, "Our American
Upper Class," Harpers Magazine, 1932
NOTES:
1 I'm
distinguishing the class of the "rich" as those who make more than
$250,000 per year or whose assets total above 1$ billion. If you're in that
"class," you won't find this essay of interest. If you're not in that
class, you may still consider yourself "rich" if you make more than
say $150,000 per year. However, you should be aware that persons outside the
"rich class" as designated here have historically and recently
been clear victims of the billionaire class ~ as in the current home
foreclosure cannibalism in which even millionaires became "sacrificial
animals."
2 Unlike the first Americans who fought militarily to win their
freedom against British oppression, it would be idiotic to use violence in our
present struggle in this class war. The demonic cabal (a group of wealthy thugs)
controls armed violence (military, intelligence agencies, police) in the United
States.
And, as we've seen in such foreign incursions as Afghanistan,
Iraq, Kosovo, the Persian Gulf and Panama and domestic incursions such as Waco
and Ruby Ridge, it doesn't hesitate to use violence against anyone it brands as
an enemy. Individual attacks against the power structure are not only futile
but against the very principles of our class struggle for an improved social
order.
3 Nick Beams, "The historic
decline of the United States and the eruption of militarism," The World
Socialist Web Site, WSWS.Org, 2/12/07
6 Liquidity: Funds made available
through the FED lowering interest rates for borrowing money or outright loaning
of money to financial institutions during moments of crisis
7 A recent
study by Harvard labor economist Richard Freeman shows that the integration of
China and the former Soviet Union into the world labor market has resulted in
the global labor force available to capital increasing from about 1.46 billion
to around 2.93 billion.
