On SAVING THE MIDDLE CLASS in a CLASS SOCIETY

Not for nothing Abraham Lincoln thought that the study of Euclid would sharpen his intellect for political debate. First year geometry students learn at the very beginning of the course how necessary is precise definition: DEFINE YOUR TERMS.

Listening to the Rhode candidates for governor, an alert voter will notice how they NEVER do this. Again and again they talk about OUTSIDERS, INSIDERS, THE TAX PAYERS, and SAVING THE MIDDLE CLASS.

They invariably hint that their opponent represents SPECIAL INTERESTS. While they are self-evidently champions of THE PEOPLE.

What makes this shameless political circus possible is the lack of clear CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS in America. This country is far from an egalitarian society with LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. And most certainly THE LAW is not above the CLASS STRUGGLE.

In his book "Passionate Declarations", the famous leftist professor, Howard Zinn has a whole chapter titled "Economic Justice: The American Class System" writes Zinn: "We have a class system, unmistakably, in a country that promises LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL."

Even liberal Democrats refuse to see the obvious because their careers are based on CLASS loyalty-but to the ruling class.

By the way, just what can these dishonest politicians DO for the so called middle class anyway? Can they prevent them from falling into the lower classes? Is the capitalist economic system all about protecting the middle class? Why is it OK to ignore the traditional WORKING CLASS? Why is it OK to ignore what socialist writer Michael Harrington called "The Other America" – the vast numbers of hopelessly poor Americans? Hardly any liberal Democrats talk about saving them anymore.

It is clearly politically safer to babble about their great love affair with the American middle class. And almost everybody not homeless or jobless begin to see themselves as middle class. Hope for millions is not real class mobility but WINNING THE MEGABUCKS LOTTERY. All that is left of the American Dream.

Image from: http://www.procon.org

You can't begin to improve the lives even of the so called middle class until you challenge the very legitimacy of wealth. What makes all this obscene private wealth possible is PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. Every blacked-robed American JUST JUDGE is a sworn defender of just this very unjust system. If you disagree with YOUR HONOR over sacrosanct PROPERTY RIGHT, he might even let you think it over in jail.

The bourgeois legal nose is expert at sniffing out any UN-AMERICAN socialist or communist types.

What is the ultimate authority behind THE LAW? A God that they no longer believe in? It can't be THE PEOPLE because capitalism must exploit and oppress them. The MAJORITY simply must not rule, must be excluded from the halls of real power. 

So it seems that American Democracy is democracy only for the rich, the ONE PERCENT. They are always the shadow government of the United States. They are what C. Wright Mills called them: "The Power Elite." And even the CULT OF CELEBRITY serves them.

WE THE PEOPLE are the true outsiders. For how much longer?