Friday, August 01, 2008
PROLETARIAN VS. ELITIST
What is a proletarian? If we don’t know, then citizens of this country need to be finding out. There are more proletarians among us every day, and the percentage in our population is rising.
A proletarian is a member of the lower economic class. Typically the proletarian has only his labor to offer to economic productivity. He does not own producing assets, such as factories or equipment, nor does he own much in the way of capital shares.
Although there has been a trend toward more share ownership in America, typically this is through retirement and mutual funds over which the shareholder normally has no voting control over his own assets. More of us are proletarians because wealth and income is consistently being shifted to a smaller percentage of us.
Taxes no longer serve the function of “redistribution of wealth,” as earlier economists once envisioned the role of government in a capitalistic system, because the wealthier class has gained the political power to change that to protect not only higher income but investment gains on wealth and then inherited wealth. Further, they have convinced most of us now that this is fully their right.
This trend has typically led to a kind of economic serfdom throughout the world’s history of capitalistic societies. Witness the turmoil of the last century in Latin America, where the assets (land) became concentrated among the wealthy and ordinary citizens lived in poverty.
As we have seen, such economic trends lead to revolutions, violence, and often the political outcome is not democracy, but the rule of a dictatorship of a proletarian based strong-man. We have seen this recently in places like Venezuela.
Our “more perfect union” is not exempt from historical penalties.
We know well, as far back as the French Revolution in 1789, that proletarians will rebel against an unjust economic and political system. The French philosophers wrote compelling works dispelling the divine rights of kings and the ruling nobility. These works logically and ethically justified such a revolution in a civilized society.
Following the works of the French writers and an English philosopher-writer, John Locke, who had similar views, Thomas Jefferson penned the draft of the Declaration of Independence. Even though Jefferson was a land-owner and a slave-owner, he wrote in the interest of proletarians with great logic and skill.
While Jefferson likely did not have in mind the proletarian “Citizen” or “Comrade” concept popularized by the Bolsheviks, he did write beautifully of the rights of citizens to have a government which protected their divinely granted human rights.
America has already gone too far in allowing the growing gulf of separation of a social and economic elite from the middle class, and the demotion of many in the middle class into a lower echelon. This has been done by maintaining political, as well as economic, control of the country.
This problem has not been addressed at all by the Republican Party. They refuse to see the problem. Their financial supporters benefit by what is occurring.
Democrats have addressed the problem, but not forcefully enough. They have been unable to communicate the seriousness of this economic trend at the level of understanding of the average citizen.
We are not advocating “class warfare,” although we may be so accused. Under ordinary conditions, there is a natural tension between the interests of different economic and social strata. Under conditions which favor exacerbated inequities, conflict is almost inevitable.
The concentration of media ownership, the abandonment of any kind of fairness doctrine, failure to pass laws for public financing of campaigns while restricting other money, failure to enforce any standard of truthfulness – all these have allowed the stench of corruption from money to spoil most of our politics.
Let us repeat: Money has corrupted politics.
Through money and the current media system, the wealthy are able to manipulate public opinion and voter views. This has allowed the economic establishment to maintain its level of control, write the rules of law in their interest, and give themselves tax breaks and subsidies at public expense.
Political money is the basic reason that it so hard to change the rules of the system, no matter which party is in charge. But more equity tends to occur under democrat administrations while business still flourishes.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
A proletarian is a member of the lower economic class. Typically the proletarian has only his labor to offer to economic productivity. He does not own producing assets, such as factories or equipment, nor does he own much in the way of capital shares.
Although there has been a trend toward more share ownership in America, typically this is through retirement and mutual funds over which the shareholder normally has no voting control over his own assets. More of us are proletarians because wealth and income is consistently being shifted to a smaller percentage of us.
Taxes no longer serve the function of “redistribution of wealth,” as earlier economists once envisioned the role of government in a capitalistic system, because the wealthier class has gained the political power to change that to protect not only higher income but investment gains on wealth and then inherited wealth. Further, they have convinced most of us now that this is fully their right.
This trend has typically led to a kind of economic serfdom throughout the world’s history of capitalistic societies. Witness the turmoil of the last century in Latin America, where the assets (land) became concentrated among the wealthy and ordinary citizens lived in poverty.
As we have seen, such economic trends lead to revolutions, violence, and often the political outcome is not democracy, but the rule of a dictatorship of a proletarian based strong-man. We have seen this recently in places like Venezuela.
Our “more perfect union” is not exempt from historical penalties.
We know well, as far back as the French Revolution in 1789, that proletarians will rebel against an unjust economic and political system. The French philosophers wrote compelling works dispelling the divine rights of kings and the ruling nobility. These works logically and ethically justified such a revolution in a civilized society.
Following the works of the French writers and an English philosopher-writer, John Locke, who had similar views, Thomas Jefferson penned the draft of the Declaration of Independence. Even though Jefferson was a land-owner and a slave-owner, he wrote in the interest of proletarians with great logic and skill.
While Jefferson likely did not have in mind the proletarian “Citizen” or “Comrade” concept popularized by the Bolsheviks, he did write beautifully of the rights of citizens to have a government which protected their divinely granted human rights.
America has already gone too far in allowing the growing gulf of separation of a social and economic elite from the middle class, and the demotion of many in the middle class into a lower echelon. This has been done by maintaining political, as well as economic, control of the country.
This problem has not been addressed at all by the Republican Party. They refuse to see the problem. Their financial supporters benefit by what is occurring.
Democrats have addressed the problem, but not forcefully enough. They have been unable to communicate the seriousness of this economic trend at the level of understanding of the average citizen.
We are not advocating “class warfare,” although we may be so accused. Under ordinary conditions, there is a natural tension between the interests of different economic and social strata. Under conditions which favor exacerbated inequities, conflict is almost inevitable.
The concentration of media ownership, the abandonment of any kind of fairness doctrine, failure to pass laws for public financing of campaigns while restricting other money, failure to enforce any standard of truthfulness – all these have allowed the stench of corruption from money to spoil most of our politics.
Let us repeat: Money has corrupted politics.
Through money and the current media system, the wealthy are able to manipulate public opinion and voter views. This has allowed the economic establishment to maintain its level of control, write the rules of law in their interest, and give themselves tax breaks and subsidies at public expense.
Political money is the basic reason that it so hard to change the rules of the system, no matter which party is in charge. But more equity tends to occur under democrat administrations while business still flourishes.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
