The quoted material, below, is from "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History Of Ancient Rome" by Michael Parenti. As a historical background, Caesar can be identified with Populares ("favoring the people", singular popularis) who were aristocratic leaders in the late Roman Republic who relied on the people's assemblies and tribunate to acquire political power. They are regarded in modern scholarship as in opposition to the optimates, who are identified with the conservative interests of a senatorial elite. The populares themselves, however, were also of senatorial rank and might be patricians or noble plebeians.
The populares addressed the problems of the urban plebs, particularly subsidizing a grain dole, and in general favored limiting slavery, since slavery took jobs from poor free citizens. They also garnered political support by attempts to expand citizenship to communities outside Rome and Italy.
Read carefully and replace the word "optimates" with "conservative" and I ask whether this sounds exactly like the current political situation in the United States. I should send this to Rick Snyder.
"But ideology is not merely a promotion of class interest. The function of ideology is precisely to cloak narrowly selfish interests, wedding them to a more lofty and capacious view of society. This helps explain why the optimates' ideology carries such a familiar ring today; it contains the standard mystifying tenets of all ruling propertied classes throughout the ages. These might be summarized as follows:
"First, and foremost, the oligarchic clique represents its own privileged special interests to the general interest. Cicero laid the groundwork for future generations of elite propagandists when he argued that the well-being of the Republic and the entire society depended on the well-being of the prominent few who presided so wisely and resplendently over public affairs, and who high station gave proof of a deserving excellence.
"Second, ruling-class protagonists warn that such things as doles [welfare for the poor], rent caps, and debt cancellations undermine the moral fiber of those indigents who are the beneficiaries, pandering to their profligate ways at the expense of the more responsible and stable elements of society. [How often have you heard conservatives rail against welfare for the poor but, at the same time, argue tax cuts/subsidies must be given to businesses or the wealthy?]
"Third, the ruling elites maintain that redistributive social programs deliver ruinous costs upon the entire society. There is not enough land for small farmers to be resettled, not enough funds for grain doles or public projects that would employ hard-up plebs. No notice is taken that there is always enough money for war and massive public subsidies to the wealthiest stratum.
"Fourth, when unable to openly attack popular reforms that bridle their own overweening greed, the oligarchs attack the reformers and their motives. They portray mass agitation not as a righteous resistance to economic injustice but as 'class war,' the work of unscrupulous, unstable, self-aggrandizing, power-lusting demagogues who, in Cicero's words, 'inflame the passions of the unsophisticated multitude,' but really do not have the people's interests at heart." [Notice how conservatives have accused President Obama of being a socialist or how conservatives often claim Obama's supporters are not educated. For example, despite lies related to health care reform, the majority of Americans, in very polling instance, favored the public option. Worse, more extreme conservatives use the divide and conquer routine wherein they pit one group against another by using wedge issues like equality for LGBT folks or irrational fears related to immigration.]
Next, let's revisit taxation; the importance of understanding conservative fallacies related to taxes cannot be stressed enough.
In 2008, Larry Beinhart wrote an article regarding conservative "fog facts" about taxes. Using two completed sets of data, historic income tax and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rates in the United States, Beinhart concluded: High taxes correlate with strong economic growth. The four periods of greatest economic growth in United States history, by pretty much any measure, are:
a) World War II (1941 - 1945) - The top tax rate varied from 88 to 94 percent
b) Postwar under Truman and Eisenhower: The top tax rate bounced around from 81 to 92 percent.
c) The Clinton years: Clinton raised Bush's [George Herbert Walker] top rate of 31 percent to 37 percent and then to 39 percent.
d) The first two administrations of Franklin Roosevelt (1933 - 1940). When Roosevelt came into office, Herbert Hoover had already raised the tax rate in 1932 from 25 to 63 percent. Roosevelt raised it again in 1936 to 79 percent.
Conservatives have spent a lot of time and used a lot of ink trying to prove the New Deal did not end the Great Depression. Regardless, the economy grew 58 percent from the time FDR came into office to when the United States entered World War II.
The bottom line here, according to Beinhart, is that tax increases create economic growth whereas moderate tax cuts are followed by stagnant growth. One need to look no further than George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent to prove the point.
Furthermore, contrary to conservative claims, the wealthy do not create jobs nor does increasing military expenditures create jobs. The best way to create jobs is a combination of investment in home construction and tax cuts targeted to working middle class families and the working power who spend money that, then, fuels economic growth.
Related to the middle class, I'll say a word here about unions and union membership. The right spends a great deal of time and money bashing unions and union members. I'll expand on this in a later email; however, research data that show a clear relationship between falling unionization rates, stagnating wages and increases in equality and poverty. This is true in all countries. Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicates that "countries with high levels of union density or collective bargaining coverage are much more equal than countries with low union density."
"Gaps between higher-paid and lower-paid workers are lowest where union density is low, and bargaining is either centralized or closely coordinated. For example, the top 10% of male full-time workers earn at least 4.6 times as much as the bottom 10% in the U.S. compared to 3.7 times as much in Canada, 2.9 times as much in Germany, and just 2.3 times as much in Sweden. High union density also narrows pay gaps between women and men, and between younger and older workers. By narrowing pay gaps, unions counter poverty and make family incomes much more equal than would otherwise be the case."
As I have stated previously, in several articles, it is pure hypocrisy for the right wing to oppose collective bargaining for workers and, at the same time, support collective lobbying by pro-business groups such as the National Manufacturers Association or the Chamber of Commerce.
Now, we will move on to the conservative fascination with Ayn Rand. One cannot underestimate the impact Randian thought has had on the conservative movement in the United States. Her best known books are Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead that offer moral and intellectual justification for regressive policies causing great pain for working families.
In Rand's worldview, the world is made up of a few virile, virtuous "producers" and, what Rand described as "parasites" [read working class Americans] who feed off their labor. Rand claimed it was producers who created wealth and make a better world. Rand believed these economic supermen should be free of societal obligations including any responsibility to pay taxes; she claimed this was the apex of morality.
However, if one more deeply examines Rand's philosophy, one can easily discover a large segment of the conservative movement is following the dictates of a sociopath. How so?
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand's superhero is John Galt. This is where it gets interesting. In the 1920s, when Rand was creating her philosophy, she became enthralled with an American real-life serial killer named William Edward Hickman who, 1927, gruesomely killed and dismembered a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker. Rand's early works are filled with glowing, even worshipful, praise of Hickman.
The obvious question is why did Rand admire Hickman so much. She wrote, "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should." She gushingly wrote Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.' The stunning part is Rand's gushing description of Hickman is found, virtually word for word, in her description of Howard Roark, the capitalist superhero of The Fountainhead wherein Rand wrote of Roark, "He was born without the ability to consider others."
It is extraordinary that the United States is, perhaps, the only western democratic country where, as described by journalist Mark Ames, "conservative elites openly exhibit distaste for the working poor." Ames believes this can be attributed to the popularity of Rand among conservatives. In fact, the Library of Congress found that Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book in the United States after the Bible.
Ames goes on to say "When you hear politicians or Tea Partiers dividing up the world between 'producers' and 'collectivism,' just know those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie. And when you see them taking their razor blades to the last remaining programs protecting the middle class from total abject destitution -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- and bragging about how they are slashing these programs for 'moral' reasons, just remember Ayn's morality and who inspired her."
Care to see Randian philosophy enacted into law. One need look no further than Jan Brewer, Arizona governor, who in 2010 signed into law a budget that eliminated the Children's Health Insurance Program thus denying health care to forty-seven thousand low-income children in Arizona. To make matters worse, she proposed increasing the state's sales tax which is an extremely regressive tax that falls disproportionately on working people.
Sources:
1) Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (New York: The New Press, 2003) pp. 192-193.
2) Joshua Holland, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2010), pp. 95 - 97, 230 - 231, 27 - 29
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