July 12, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - Identity politics
currently is in the forefront of the United States
political agenda, and things do look quite dismal in
regard to wealth, opportunity, and quality of life
of a significant number of minority workers—but this
is also the case, when we look closely, for a large
segment of the overall population of our country.
The question I see is where do we want to go and how
can we change the situation? It is quite clear to me
that the current ruling class has no intention of
giving up their ruling position without a concerted
fight. The ruling elite (the capitalist class or
rich people as a class, not individually) have
fought throughout the history of its existence—about
350 years, for its ruling position. I think the
choice for us is this:
Parity or Emancipation?
Parity is the acceptance of the current system as
long as the distribution of wealth is approximately
the same for all races and ethnic groups. What would
this mean?Using the analysis “Income Percentile by
Race Calculator for 2018”1thefollowing is presented.
Total number of White (not Hispanic or Latino)
workers –109,140,758
Total number of Black workers -20,396,139
Total number of Hispanic or Latino workers any race
-29,900,624
From this study we can find the number of workers in
various income brackets:
Number of Workers
Twenty thousand dollars income per year
is usually considered a poverty existence, with an
extremely restricted quality of life. There were
approximately 40 million workers living on an income
between zero and 20 thousand dollars per year in 2017.
If we accept parity for the races this figure would
change and assuming the same percentage for all races as
the White percentage there would be still approximately
34 million workers, in the groups considered here,
living on 20 thousand dollars or less per year. Of
course I assume that the workers who moved out of this
group have moved to a higher group and not gone into
negativity. Also we should note that 16% of the white
workers in 2017 earned more than $100,000/year, versus
7% for Black, and 5% for Hispanic or Latino. This turns
out to be 20,385,283 workers from the above groups
earning over $100,000. per year.
Achieving Parity
Proposals for achieving parity usually involve revising
regressive tax codes to more progressive codes—favoring
people on the lower end of the income brackets and
taxing the upper end of the income brackets to pay for
social benefits. This is what is being done in many
European countries that are commonly characterized as
social welfare states. Bernie Sanders and other
Democratic Socialists espouse this view. Sanders has
proposed a tax on securities trading of 0.5% to cover
various social benefits such as health care for all and
educational spending. This concept is not bad but it
neglects the fact that the capitalist class controls the
political, financial, and industrial production systems,
and possesses the overall wealth of the country. This
means that the tax laws even if initiated could be
changed at any time as has been done in the past and is
currently being done with international treaties.
So the question is can we trust the capitalist class to
maintain support for social benefits that attempt to
achieve economic parity? I think not! The capitalist
class through its control of property and wealth is
able, without democratic controls, to determine the
details of industrial production. Detroit 40 years ago
was one of the richest industrial cities in the world
and its working class had achieved a relatively high
standard of living. The owners of the production
enterprises in Detroit decided to move their production
facilities to other locations and abandon Detroit and
now Detroit is one of the poorest major cities in the
US. The wealth lost by the working class of Detroit is
probably greater than the wealth gained by upper class
in making the move, but the capitalist class has
significantly increased its wealth! Has the working
class increased its wealth? There was and is no
democratic process in the US to control the capitalists’
investment and production process to benefit all of
society. When capitalists speak of democracy they mean
the unfettered freedom of capitalists to do whatever
they want with their capital. A more egalitarian system
would have a democratic system that represented a broad
spectrum of the people living in the region, county, and
country and have some control over the economy including
industrial production. Currently the capitalist class
controls the financial, industrial and military systems.
Because of the enormous wealth of the US this financial
control extends to the world at large and allows the US
to use mafia tactics in an attempt to control foreign
economies. This necessitates democratic control of the
banking and financial systems to the benefit of all
people in the world.
Emancipation
Emancipation is any effort to procure economic and
social rights, political rights or equality for all
people. What does this mean for people? It means the
ability to live a life free of want and deprivation,
with adequate housing, nutrition, health care, and
education. That would provide people the opportunity to
achieve their full potential in society along with the
time to actively engage in cultural activities that give
them pleasure. I have been in only one country (China)
where several people told me on different occasions “ Do
you know what we think—we think that all people should
have a good life—and we don't mean just Chinese people,
but all people in the world.” This is the objective of
emancipation—a formidable task that can only be
approached through a process of continuous trials and
extensive scientific experimentation, since there is no
known path.
With this objective in mind, what is necessary in our
country in order to initiate a process that will achieve
this goal some time in the distant future? Is it
possible that the current leadership will open a path to
achieve this goal? That’s highly unlikely. In order to
proceed in some way toward emancipation the leadership
must have it as its goal, and the current elite clearly
does not. A leadership that does have this as a goal
must attempt to control the financial system, large
industry, and the military in some democratic way. This
calls for a change in the paradigm of our political and
economic systems. Xi Jinping in discussing the
difference in the origin of the Chinese government and
the Western governments said that the Western capitalist
governments originated with the overthrow of feudalism
by the business people (bourgeois) and are still
primarily responsible to the business people whereas the
Chinese Marxist government came into existence with the
overthrow of feudalists, colonialists, and capitalists
by the workers and peasants and so is responsible to the
workers and peasants.
We also must have a change in leadership whose objective
is a good life for all people. The first step is to
develop a leadership with that objective and for that we
need a revolutionary party that is committed to
scientific methods to change reality. In addition, a
massive popular demand must arise in the general
population. The revolutionary leadership must have the
ability to secure the support of the majority of the
population. With this democratic leadership, and with
the oversight of the people, decisions would hopefully
be made that benefited the broad population of people
and not a select few. We need to organize!
Howard Brand is a retired high school physics teacher
and a committed Marxist Leninist. -
hbrand566@aol.com
- Source
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