Peasantry Redux

    “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy” –James Madison.

    I used that quote in another blog discussing my view on the trampling of The Fourth Amendment and the rise of the omnipresent surveillance/security state. Mr. Madison was particularly prescient in his fear as evidenced by the subject matter I chose to address. But later it occurred to me that not only should he have cited the quiescent reversion to submission to overbearing authority and dominance of the state which the distraction of events and disturbances might engender; but he should have also recognized the danger of an even more ancient and insidious foe supposedly excised by the exodus from the Old World – the peasant mentality.

    For a brief shining moment this nation boasted as its best virtue the fact it had a large prosperous middle class. It was a level of social egalitarianism attributed not just to capitalism, but to the ability of the people to exercise an unalienable right to craft their culture to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. To my mind this process reached its best expression when the labor movement finally forced acknowledgement of labor’s partnership in any economic enterprise, and caused the distribution of profits to reflect labor’s integral role in the triumvirate of investment that brought profit into being –intellectual capital, financial capital, and labor. Eliminate any of the three and there is no economic enterprise. And I contend it was this enlightened recognition that created our dynamic economic engine and egalitarian sociological transformation, leading to what was once an unparalleled standard of living across a broad society.  The creation of the middle class as the jewel and identity of our society was a studied intellectual and attitudinal process [not the fortuitous benefice of an indifferent “Invisible Hand”] which revoked the old class-based rectitude and socioeconomic order of stratified, predetermined superior economic rights and privileges once imposed by the political and martial power of the ruling class, which traditionally sandwiched an insignificant middle class between an ascendant upper class and a massive powerless peasantry. It could be said the expansive and inclusive U.S.  middle class represented “a more perfect economic union”.

    When did our middle class begin to decline in size and prosperity? I believe it began when capitalism was redefined and misunderstood as “good greed”, and opposition to that extreme hypothesis was mislabeled as “socialism”. That these errors gained cultural acceptance I attribute to anti-intellectualism now seen as a practical virtue, even in institutions of higher learning which have refashioned themselves as corporate trainers rather than as classical educators,  and the ubiquitous corpo-social “message” portraying the growing disparity of wealth distribution as a “natural” phenomena rather than a process significantly directed by selfish human calculation and systemic manipulation.

    But what is capitalism?

          “Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

         “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve ‘the common good.’ It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in   the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.” — AYN RAND

         “Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights. Politically, it is the system of laissez-faire (freedom). Legally it is a system of objective laws (rule of law as opposed to rule of man). Economically, when such freedom is applied to the sphere of production its’ result is the free-market.”

    Now I ask you, how does collective bargaining, or compensation which includes health benefits and pension funds etc. conflict with capitalism? Nowhere in the theory of capitalism, to my knowledge, is there a prescription mandating how profits must be distributed. If as The Supreme Court says, “Corporations are people”, then one corporation is one person. And if capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights, why cannot a Union, a similar collective of people organized to advance an economic goal, as is a corporation, be considered a “person”, and why shouldn’t that ”person”, “consonant with man’s rational nature” negotiate with the other “person”, the corporation, for more equitable distribution of the proceeds of the economic enterprise to which his contribution is as necessary and valuable as any other contribution? Such a negotiation is not “socialism” in either form or substance. It is not contrary to principles of the free market. It is, in fact, a noble part of the free market.  It is capitalism bought into with different currency.

    Consider these scenarios. If an “individual” actor paid $400,000 stars in a movie that grosses $500 million dollars, is it “socialism” to demand $10 million from the “person”, the corporate studio, to act in the sequel? If a baseball player arrives on a team that usually fills a third of available seats at home games, and his production causes the team to start winning and filling the stadium, is it “socialism” to bargain for a new contract that reflects his contribution to increased team profit? Why then would the “person” of a union negotiating with the “person” of Walmart Inc. for a living wage from “his” $409 billion dollars of profit be either “socialism” or an affront to capitalism? By definition it wouldn’t be.  Why then do so many now think it is “wrong” and dangerous to negotiate their rightful interests with Walmart?

    Further, why would middle class people, say of the Tea Party, demonstrate against their own interests by serving as commandos to break their natural ally, Unions, when corporate profits are soaring, the cost of living is increasing while wage levels remain stagnant for thirty-plus years, and volunteer to serve as a firewall to protect the wealthy from a small tax increase when there is well publicized documentation that the wealthy, under the current tax scheme, are getting richer and the middle class poorer? Do they know what socialism actually is? Do they know the correct definition of capitalism? Or have they been brow-beaten with false definitions, false equivalencies, and a false sense of their place in the economic design to finally submit and remount the peasant’s mentality and accept it as their economic fate to simply endure what they’re given – and like it? Why would Walmart’s hundreds of thousands of $8.00 per hour employees resign themselves to the fact that a few people break off billion dollar chunks of profit culled from the comingled efforts of many, others break off tens of millions, others millions, others hundreds of thousands, and others distribution of unearned dividends, while they, the Walmart employee’s most incongruous return for their labor is poverty? If this acquiescence to economic futility isn’t classic peasant mentality, I don’t know what is.