Because You Never Asked

(10/11. This is the second in a series beginning with “The Occupation of Wall Street”)

     As mentioned in the previous essay, the spontaneity of the “Occupy” movement has unleashed a protest with an ambiguous personality. Many different elements of grievance have coalesced in these demonstrations including wealth distribution, money in politics, anti-war sentiment, ecological concerns, civil rights and other micro-focal points of unrest all galvanized in a macro protest against a socio-economic system millions of people have lost faith in. Most of all, people feel as if they are getting screwed and there is no one there, in a supposedly democratic system, to represent them. Here they are, being victimized by a financial crisis they did not cause while those sitting 50 floors above in their glittering skyscrapers, people who do not produce a product, people who do not service, repair or maintain anything, people who do little more than manipulate numbers in a balance sheet shell game that somehow leaves them with tens of millions of dollars in personal wealth, all this, while the rest of us barely survive working for a living. Perhaps this whole movement can be summed up in the words of the great football coach, Vince Lombardi: “what the hell is going on here”?

     So what we have, at this point, is an instinctive uprising against a tyrannical force that is hard to define. There is no Mubarak here. The protesters themselves are not un-American, they are not dogmatic Communists or Socialists, they are not radicals. They generally believe in the America they were taught to love, but they see that America being phased out of existence. They are protesting, but that is the easy part. The hard part is to define what you want.

     I will now define what it is these protesters want. That might seem a presumptuous thing to do, but I write with the full confidence that what I’m about to say will find an almost unanimous state of acceptance amongst the “Occupiers”.

     Although demonstrations of this nature find it “politically correct” to deny political affiliation of any kind, there is always something political in play when ideas are involved. It is possible to shun existing political formations, but political ideology cannot be avoided when protest for or against anything is involved. Whatever you are against, whatever you are for, falls somewhere on the political ideological landscape.

     These demonstrators, whether they can articulately express it to themselves or anyone else, are clamoring to re-establish the traditional center-left or liberal ideal that has been so maligned and eaten away at since the appearance in America of my favorite “axis of evil”, Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch. A logical addendum to this idea is to rebuild the ideological foundation of a Democratic Party that has been ripped off its foundation and floundering, mainly due to the financial pressures of competing in the current political system. Although the target of this liberal ideology includes a varying array of goals, its bulls eye is the idea of a social safety net or Social Contract between its citizens, one that can provide a dignified minimal living standard for as many people as possible. This primal, fundamental goal of liberalism dovetails quite readily with other policy concerns such as an anti-militarism that could free up immense amounts of resources for other things, civil rights and equality issues, wealth distribution, etc. But the bulls eye, I repeat, is a strong Social Contract-safety net that is the underpinning for everything else.

     In order to make this point, I’d like to give a brief class in modern capitalism. In so doing, I will put forth 3 basic assertions that corroborate the idea that this Social Contract or safety net is the true goal of these protests.

     1) The greatest single triumph of modern capitalism is, precisely, this social safety net. The raw fact that this socio-economic system can produce such gargantuan amounts of wealth so that a reasonable percentage of it can be reclaimed and recycled through the system for the common good is a spectacular accomplishment. In fact, it is the latest socio-political evolutionary step towards a more fulfilled human condition, and history tells us it can be done without ruining the creativity and incentives for money making that characterize capitalism in general.

     There are a variety of mechanisms that can be used to fund and form the communal well being the Social Contract represents. Obviously, taxation is a formidable tool here and a fair and just levy against personal wealth and business profits is an essential source of revenue. But there are also sales taxes, tolls, fees for licenses, permits and other burocratic necessities, fees to use public facilities and such that even the humblest citizen (and non-citizen) pays into. But taxation is not the only game in town. Governmental administration of the private sector, that is, proper oversight and regulation that maintains a healthy competitive balance that, in the long run, creates a more profitable wealth creation mechanism, is another tool for the propagation of a society that can afford a social safety net. This also includes vigilant mechanisms for the rights of workers and their ability to defend their interests --- unions, safety, unemployment insurance, sick leave, etc. All this conspires, if done properly, in creating a healthy economic engine whose wealth can be administered in a way that benefits the most people.

     Such things as day care, school food programs, good public education, affordable higher education, pensions, public recreation facilities, minimal wage flooring, and a whole host of Social Contract services, including the biggest Kahuna of all and the source of America’s greatest shame, a proper health care system, are not hand outs. Social Security is not a hand out. Medicare is not charity. Almost all people participate in the wealth creating machine of the capitalist system. The guy working on a loading dock at Walmart is creating wealth. The latino woman mopping the floors in a skyscraper is creating wealth. Their paychecks cannot be considered the only remuneration they have earned. They also earn a dignified minimal standard of life with their labor. That is what the social safety net is for.

     Perhaps the most vivid way I can make this argument is to say 2 things: a) a rich man’s wealth would be meaningless without this army of people below doing so many things to provide his lifestyle, and b) when a rich man starts complaining about how this or that group is getting a hand out, or jobbing the system, or getting something for nothing; when this rich man starts acting as if this poor man is swindling him, ask him if he’d like to trade places with him.

     2) A post Industrial Revolution capitalist system without a social safety net is a failure. You can look it up. This unfettered, unregulated, purely market driven form of the beast --- what the Europeans call “savage capitalism” --- was what developed from its catalytic root, the Industrial Revolution. This is the kind of world writers like Charles Dickens and Sinclair Lewis were looking at. It created huge amounts of wealth, but it did not create a better human condition. This is the kind of world the socialist ideologs of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were looking at. People like Marx and Bakunin were correct in their analysis of an economic system that was horribly exploitive of the very many by a pathetic few; of a system that created huge amounts of poverty and degradation in a world of plenty; of a system that perpetrated these conditions with a minimal amount of social mobility.

     We might call this era of capitalist history its “immature” stage and it didn’t reach puberty until the Great Depression changed the game. We might say it had to grow up and become more reasonable if it were to meet the challenges of the 20^th century. This immature kind of capitalism is what right wing elements of wealth and power have always tried to maintain throughout the whole history of modern capitalism. With the help of the economic clout of their wealth, most embodied in the ability to control the political system in America and evangelized by huge private sector media voices, many people whose interests don’t coincide with these right wing elements are always duped into following them (hello, Tea Party). For the last 30 years or so, America , and to a lesser extent the whole world, has been drifting back towards this immature capitalism.

     Look where it has gotten us.

     3) It was the more highly evolved or grown up form of capitalism, the one that developed a social safety net, which defeated Communism. In fact, it might even be said the social safety net itself defeated Communism. Although the immature form of capitalism “muckraked” by people like Dickens and Lewis propagated huge amounts of wealth, it also created misery in unacceptable levels. Its negative aspects actually spawned the Communist reaction to it. Wealth creation alone was not the answer.

     An American could proudly say that Franklin Roosevelt, in his necessary attempts to deal with the Great Depression (we can thank the immature form of capitalism for that), was the father of the social safety net idea. I’d give some credence to that assertion, but the concept truly bloomed and reached fruition in the rebuilt Europe after WWII. The first Labor governments in England immediately after the war, led by such figures as Harold Wilson and Harold MacMillan, could be considered the triggers of the Social Contract idea, but the rest of western Europe was either not far behind or doing the same things. The various forms of universal health care are triumphant legacies of this “grown up” form of capitalism.

     Although only the United States could defend the capitalist idea militarily, the western Europeans were in the front lines in defending its ideology. Its social safety net provided a better standard of living for its working class than the Soviets did in their “worker’s paradise”. It was able to do so because, if managed properly, it did not compromise the capitalist wealth making machine. The immature form of capitalism in place before WWII might not have withstood the Communist idea, an idea that was an altruistic reaction to the failures of “savage capitalism”.

     With the fall of the Soviet Union, the conservative elements of the market system, that is, those controlling vast amounts of wealth at the tip of its economic pyramid, those who have always opposed the expense of the social safety net in a short sighted, counter productive (even for their interests) attempt to preserve even more wealth for themselves, have been flexing their muscles. They’ve been getting their way for quite some time now, and they’ve brought us to the brink of another Great Depression.

     The time has come to stop them.

     So class, let’s review the day’s work: 1) the greatest accomplishment of capitalism is the social safety net. 2) Capitalism without the social safety net is a failure. 3) It is just this social safety net that defeated Communism.

     The sooner the “occupy” movement can recognize this as the foundation of their demands, the sooner it can become a viable political force for change.

     A Post Script from Post Consumer Man – Post Consumer Man would like to remind the reader that he is neither a capitalist nor communist nor anything in between. He chooses not to define himself in such terms. He has transcended these ideological concepts by referring to himself as a “Post-Consumerist”. A Post Consumerist sees the folly of the hyper-consumptive necessities of our current economic system and considers such mega-consumption the root of all problems mankind is now confronting. A Post Consumerist believes that by providing for our material needs in a more mature, rational way, we can provide for our more important emotional needs in a more satisfying way. For Post Consumer Man, not even the optimal form of capitalism just described in this essay, is the answer. But ---

     --- if we are to move on, to transcend it, to evolve higher as a species, this optimal form of capitalism could be the bridge to the future. When the most people can be given a dignified standard of life, one where the struggle to survive does not monopolize one’s efforts, new ideas, new outlooks, the search for “better” in an environment of intellectual curiosity, find more fertile ground to grow in.

     In other words, if we look at it as a stop along the way and not as an end in itself, this optimal form of capitalism is the only thing a Post Consumerist can advocate for in a world still not ready to leave “consumerism” behind.