A Polemical Analysis of Sabrina Tavernise's 'Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension'
By Lil Joe, February 3, 2012
The more accurate survey question to be put to American workers is whether their perceptions of class in "American society" correspond to actual empirical content of relations of production in the capitalist mode of production and appropriation. That is whether they understand the opposition as between the capitalist class as appropriator and exploiter of wage labor, thus the owners and management of the labor process, and thus, corresponding to this mode of appropriation the relation of workers as economically dominated class - an exploited working class.
The fact is that American capitalists think and act as capitalists, not 'Americans'. It has been for centuries in the United State self-evident that capitalists have always understood their economic and political interests as class interests - capitalist class interests. Their economic interests are represented by political parties and by print and electronic media.
Democrat and Republican politicians and propagandists refer to capitalists as products of 'American exceptionalism' being 'successful businessmen', 'entrepreneurs' and euphemistically call them, implicitly altruistic, 'job creators'. Yes, capitalists are job creators, insomuch as it requires living labor power to exploit in order to make profits. This consequence of jobs is ignored by Democrats and Republicans and omitted by opinion poll questions.
When Democrats and Republicans, don the mask of 'populism', denounce 'the rich', these politicians and propagandists, while maintaining their euphemisms, use this populist language that are straw man ad hominems. Yet, they know what capitalists really are. The purpose of euphemisms, from the one side of the mouth, and ad hominems, against categorical straw men, from the other, is demagogic mental obfuscation to snuff any authentic working class consciousness and divert workers from political independence.
The most powerful, economically dominating classes are the classes in possession of the means of production and subsistence. These are the politically most powerful classes, the ruling classes. In the U.S., presently, the capitalist classes are in possession not just of monopoly of ownership of the means of production and distribution, but are the classes that are in possession of the nation's dominating political parties. Thus, class monopoly on political power. The economic factions are represented by political factional class formations, Democrats and Republicans.
The working class as yet is without any political power and consequently is dominated both economically and politically. Thus, the accurate survey question to be put to American workers is are you aware of yourself as a member of an economically dominated, subordinated and exploited class that is also politically powerless? - Voting rights notwithstanding?
The correct political survey question is: Do workers recognise the Democratic Party, as well as the Republican Party to be primarily financially based in Capital. Democrats and Republicans are political factions of the ruling class. Do workers recognise the capitalist class partisanship as a faction of the ruling class, Democrats, fight and rail against Super PACS of 'the rich' and that workers have no dog in this fight as it is a battle between factional capital based political parties that are separate and apart from, and alien and antagonistic to workers interests?
Workers class interest is not to get Democrats elected but the fight for the building of their own class party - an American Labor Party by fighting for its own class power to displace both Republicans and Democrats. It is not in workers class interests to oppose the "Citizens United" decision, because the banning of unlimited class contributions to political parties will be used to ban unlimited contributions of unions to Labor Party candidates.
Our class interests as a working class is the premise predicated upon which our philosophical arguments and proletarian politics are the basis. Workers must not permit Democrats to shape our agenda. Workers interest is not to oppose the capitalist's Supreme Court's recognition of capitalists as political persons, but the formation of the working class political person, develop our own political personification and make it dominate and dismantle the Supreme Court.
This worker's party must be socially based in the working class as a whole and financially based on trade unions. Such is a matter of principle in its Party platform. It must reject any and every iota of finance or aid from any and every capitalist PAC and reject all bourgeois lobby monies.
Of course the article on surveys does not present the questions to any authentic class constituents as such - what and how do capitalists and proletarians separately percieve 'Perception of Class Tension' in the United States, but lump the capitalists together with workers as 'Americans'. There is no clear concept of class premised on relations of production and corresponding modes of income - landlord's rent, capitalist's profits, worker's wages - and therefore no discussion of actual class conflict, SO come up with this crap:
"About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are 'strong conflicts' between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found".
Pew didn't ask and report on if workers as distinct from capitalists and capitalists from workers 'now believe' that there are 'strong conflicts' of interests between workers wages and capitalist's profits derived from exploitation and between tenant's payment and landlord's appropriation of rent. There is no mention of any such class interests in conflict.
Rather, the article deliberately is misleading of American worker`s reading it in the formulation of the objective mode of appropriation`s relations of production of capitalists to workers, the exploitation of wage labor by capital, resulting profits of capital investments, as the reason that exploiting capitalists are `rich` and exploited workers are poor.
Actual class conflict is the conflict of appropriating capitalists and appropriated workers, whose labor power is sold to capitalists and consequently alienated labor is exploited by capitalists. The presentation of class conflict as between rich and poor is a straw man and a red herring by way of euphemism.
Doctors, lawyers, entertainers, professional athletes can be rich, but they do not get rich by appropriating labor power and exploiting workers. Doctors are paid and the owners of hospitals that employ them exploit them, lawyers by law firms, entertainers by entertainment industries and athletes by club owners.
Capital is an economic category, capitalists are personifications of capital. http://www.springerlink.com/content/q31h82t631344434/
Also:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_SPbfTT-0RAC&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=marx+on+personification&source=bl&ots=pjegsCWfNz&sig=sZgXqje3tu-WsngdwufaFjkLIOY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wAsvT7H0Ku3XiQLnjs3NCg&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=marx%20on%20personification&f=false
Democratic Party politicians and their `progressive` media propagandists presentation of class warfare as a "conflict between rich and poor" is a deliberate obfuscation that they are using as a red herring to divert workers from an analysis of economic categories - of capitalist appropriation and exploitation of wage labor that is the real class basis of individual interests as the source of profits, to pseudo-militant ad hominem attacks on individual 'millionaires' and 'billionaires'. In other words, by positioning the conflict as of between individuals and not positing them as representations of economic categories and personifications of them, this straw man and posited in the forms of ad hominem attacks on 'millionaires' and 'billionaires' divert workers and renters from analysis of class exploitation and cheating of the producing classes by the appropriating classes.
The the ad hominem attacks upon the `rich`, therefore, is a straw man predicated upon falsification of presentation of class relations by the very formulation of questions as 'rich' v 'poor' or of 'the top 1%' vis-a-vis 'the middle class' and consequently that the solution to 'America's economic problems' is 'shared sacrifice', which is code for 'rich pay their fair share' in taxes, is positioned in such language that directs workers to support Democrats.
The same is true of Democrats' ad hominem attacks on and opposition to 'millionaires and billionaires, superpacs financing Republicans. These red herrings and ad hominem attacks on individuals supplant actual class categories and personifications of them by demonising individuals rather than analysing class interests.
Actual class conflict is the conflict of appropriating capitalists and appropriated workers, whose labor power is sold to capitalists and consequently alienated labor is exploited by capitalists. The presentation of class conflict as between rich and poor is a straw man and a red herring by way of euphemism.
Doctors, lawyers, entertainers, professional athletes can be rich, but they do not get rich by appropriating labor power and exploiting workers. Doctors are paid and the owners of hospitals that employ them exploit them, lawyers by law firms, entertainers by entertainment industries and athletes by club owners. The fundamental conflict of classes is therefore the buyers and sellers of labor power and consequently capitalist exploiters and exploited workers.
Money is the mediator of commodity production and measure of wealth. With money capitalists purchase the labor power of workers, proletarians. With money capitalists purchase labor power and means of production, the the power to use these in combination and managements of labor processes. Valorisation and exploitation in this labor process of objectification and as these objects containing value are commodities. Though value is embodied in the products as objectified labor through the labor process, it is the selling of them that this value is quantified in money: the capitalists end up with more money than the initially invested quantity: Money -Commodity ... Production ... changed/valorized objectified Commodity - Money +.
Conversely, the proletarian enters the 'labor market' with nothing in his or her possession but himself or herself, starts with his labor power as a commodity. This labor power is regarded as a commodity by both the proletarian who sells it and the capitalist who buys it. It is not as a 'poor' man selling of himself to a 'rich man', because to sell himself as such the person of the proletarian would be selling of himself bodily into chattel slavery.
This is an economic contradiction: the selling of his labor capacity to the capitalist is to place himself or herself at the disposal of the capitalist for a contracted period of time. The labor process is class antagonistic.
The labor power is alienated from the worker during the period of the labor process. Thus alienating of this labor capacity from himself, insomuch as capitalist own both it and its products by purchase of it. Outside the productive sphere the capitalists social life is a rich man or woman, and the workers have the illusion of being a 'middle classes', but in the employer -employee relationship there are no illusions, the capitalists are the bosses and the workers are bossed.
With the money the worker received as wages from capitalist, constituting the price of the labor power, which must be in specified quantity by means of which to purchase means of subsistence, workers leave the wealth they produced in the labor process the wealth of the capitalist. Afterward, now as consumers, workers must purchase from the capitalist classes the very products of the labor process as means of subsistence they themselves produced.
As at the onset, so at the conclusion of the working day, the capitalist has in his possession quantities of products embodying value - but, the means of production has had their values preserved as transferred to the product as these subjects of the labor process are changed by the work and this work is objectified values and surplus value embodied in the products that when sold as commodities pay for the prices of production -including of labor power - and supply a profit.
Thus, the actual objective of the working class isn't to 'achieve the American dream', by selling his labor power to 'job creating capitalists', for wages to purchase a 'middle class' lifestyle means of subsistence, but to appropriate the productive forces and eliminate capitalist commodity production and wage labor's exploitation. When all this is done away with by worker's self management of production not as commodities but as use values.
The class issue of conflict is therefore concerning the future for capitalist commodity production by wage workers, the ending of exploitation of wage labor by capital through the labor process, and not whether as an 'income bracket' capitalists are 'rich' or workers are 'poor'.
It therefore doesn't matter whether a capitalist is a 'rich man' -'millionaire or billionaire' paying higher taxes, or the workers 'earn income tax credits'. This is therefore a red herring and straw man against which Democrats present themselves to divert workers from the real issues of 'class conflict' and consciousness of it.
Commodity production performed by purchased labor power places the sellers of their ability for a specified time, the workers, into a servile, subordinate position, relative to the capitalist, who bought it, placing the workers into a dominance/subordinated relation, for that period of time. The workers sell the rights to themselves -alienation of labor power of the worker from the worker is self-alienation.
Workers are human beings, and as such need means of subsistence that they purchase for themselves and their family, which constitute the cost of living to which the wages paid for labor power by the hour must be paid by the capitalist. Workers, human beings embodying value, objectify their labor and its value by work. The labor process is a valorisation process.
Democratic Party politicians and their `progressive` media propagandists as "conflict between rich and poor" is a deliberate obfuscation that they are using as a red herring. The attacks upon the `rich`, therefore, predicated upon this obfuscation is an ad hominem against a straw man. Critique is here thus diverted from the real antinomy of interests of wage workers and capitalists. The issues of material and quantifiable exploitation is thereby diverted, and Democrats can hereupon masquerade as representatives of the `99%` against the `1%`.
> Conflict between rich and poor now eclipses racial strain and friction between immigrants and the native-born as the greatest source of tension in American society, according to a survey released Wednesday.<
Conflict between classes are between personifications of economic categories. The friction between ethnic groups, in the United States at any rate, has been about artificial differences among workers competing for jobs. It is not, therefore, just a matter of opinion statistic that workers are less divided by ethnicity increases and spreads in proportion to which they recognise 'class' differences as primary, but the significance is that the present economic crisis is the praxis - that is the practical engendered critical faculties of reason based in material reality and the actuality of real class interests, empirically apprehended and rationally comprehended, that, among workers, combat the internalized bourgeois cultural ideological mythology of 'race' nationalism. It is being challenged and refuted among workers by workers comprehending economic realities as basis for social ideologies of racial hatred.
"... racial strain and friction..." is ideological based cultural delusions of racial grandeur promoted on the behalf of capitalist that has been internalised self-consciousness among this countries working classes and poor 'whites'. The human species is comprised of a rainbow of colors, including 'white'. There is no such thing as 'white skin priviledge'.
Capital and labor interests are conflicted - capitalists and proletarian class interests are in constant conflict. The capitalist classe are comprised according to the economic division of production: industrial capital, agricultural capital, those which own the means of production and subsistence, means of distribution - circulating capital and commerce, financial institutions and housing. While these economic factions compete and their respective political representatives campaign to have political hegemony in the appropriation and use of the power of the State, yet, at the same time, the capitalist classes are united against workers as employees and as a class.
Workers -the proletariat - is defined in its relation to capital. As capitalist classes own means of social production and employ wage labor in commodity production, the proletariat is comprised of people who having no means of production of their own sell their labor powers in order to live - to ascertain the money paid in wages to ascertain means of subsistence.
This is the capitalist mode of production and appropriation.
At the conclusion of the working day the capitalist has in his possession quantities of products embodying value that when sold are enough to pay for the prices of production -including of labor power - and supply a profit. Commodity production performed by purchased labor power places the sellers of their ability for a specified time, the workers, into a servile, subordinate position, relative to the capitalist, who bought it, into a dominance/subordinated relation, for that period of time. The workers sell the rights to themselves -alienation of labor power of the worker from the worker is self-alienation.
Workers are human beings, and as such need means of subsistence that they purchase for themselves and their family, which constitute the cost of living to which the wages paid for labor power by the hour must be paid by the capitalist. Workers, human beings embodying value, objectify their labor and its value by work. The labor process is a valorisation process.
The wage labor- capital relationship -relations of production - workers are subordinate to capitalists and in this dominate subordinate relationship the capitalists organisation and management of production of commodities force the workers to produce commodities, useful objects bearing value, in quantities over and above the wages value paid by capitalists to workers, the prices of production, surplus products of unpaid for labor time. This is the exploitation of wage labor by capital - the source of capitalist's profits.
Wages paid to workers and derived profits from exploitation are inversely proportional and the class interests of workers and the capitalist class interests are inversely related and mutually exclusive.
> About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are "strong conflicts" between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness. <
This statement is an example of capitalist's ideological toadies use of positivist fallacies. The fallacy is in the premise of the question itself/ and the subjectivity of respondents, by this very questioning constitute the poll itself an ideological straw man that at the same time is a red herring diversion from the real issue - capitalist appropriation of labor power and exploitation of work occurring by the capitalist dominated and management of the labor processes of commodity production: objectification as valorisation, surplus products embodying value, thus surplus value the selling of these objects as commodities realises profits of capitalist derived from exploitation.
It is in consequence of the capital/labor dominate/subordinated relationship which enable capitalist management of the labor processes correspond to the economic compulsion of workers to submit to unpaid labor-time that surplus objects produced as commodities that capitalists derive profits and consequently are 'rich', and workers 'poor'.
Class conflict in terms of rich and poor in this connection is an issue of 'economic inequality' as a contrast between those who have money and those who don't. This presentation of the problem as the contrast of rich and poor - as 'the haves and the have nots' - is a red herring that deliberately diverts workers from issues of appropriation and exploitation of labor power by capitalists it changes the discussion from how capitalists get rich by the exploitation of workers through the labor process of commodity production and why workers are poor.
The politics of the presentation of the question in terms of rich and poor separate and apart from an analysis of the capitalist mode of production and exploitation of workers by capitalists enables the Democrats to masquerade as the Party concerned with 'the plight of the poor'. This red herring deliberately obfuscate the fact that the Democratic Party to be the political representative of the exploiting, capitalist classes.
The fundamental conflict of classes is the capitalists which classes use money to make more money than invested, at the points of contact is the competition between buyers and sellers of labor power, in the labor process organised and managed by the capitalist owners of the purchased labor power, exploitation/ valorisation of variable capital using constant capital, surplus value of unpaid work, the universal opposition of wage laborers to capitalist appropriator and exploiter of universal proletarian work. Yes, the capitalists are rich, vampire-like they suck wealth from the sweat from pours of proletarian labor.
Democratic Party politicians and their `progressive` media propagandists want to present themselves as friends of the poor but do so by diverting from the parasitic character of capitalist exploitation of wage workers in commodity production to a sociological "conflict between rich and poor". This is a deliberate obfuscation that they are using as a red herring.
The attacks upon the `rich`, therefore, predicated upon this obfuscation is an ad hominem against a straw man. Critique is here thus diverted from the real antinomy of interests of wage workers and capitalists. The issues of probable because material and quantifiable exploitation is thereby diverted, and Democrats can hereupon masquerade as representatives of the `99%` against the `1%`.
The Democratic Party represent political interests of factions of the capitalist ruling classes, the same as do Republicans of other factions of the capitalist ruling classes. By means of euphemism in the presentation of the class warfare of capitalist`s exploitation of wage workers and worker`s resistance as between rich and poor, and making it instead an issue of taxes and `fairness` - that members of the top 1% pay a lesser rate or percentage of taxes to fund the State than do their secretaries, is `unfair` - by this straw man of a red herring the Democrats present the solution to this pseudo version of `class conflict` is the capitalists paying their `fair share` of `shared sacrifice`.
The empirical facts, however, presents the solution to the actual class conflict of capitalist exploiters and exploited workers in the overthrow of the system of capitalist commodity production and wage labor; the elimination of the capitalist mode of production and appropriation, by the working class, as a class, by its revolutionary expropriation of the productive forces: the means of production and distribution, housing and finance.
Worker`s self management of production and distribution puts an end to the commodity form and wage labor. Thus ending exploitation there is no necessity for dominance/subordination in relations of production and unemployment will be ended and consequently the hours of labor time expended in production will be reduced by this increasing of the labor force in production of objects needed for social reproduction of means of production and subsistence. Social productive forces in the possession of social labor, the producers themselves, workers self-management of the labor processes where labor power is not sold and its products no longer alienated, puts an end to the division of material and intellectual labor and thus ends dominance/subordinate relations of production.
This is to be accomplished in the United States by the American workers as a class formation of itself in a national political association, a Labor Party that is based financially in trade unions and socially in the class as a whole -including immigrant workers - winning the battle of democracy, displacing the Democratic Party and Republican Party in the House of Representatives, abolishing the Senate and the Judiciary, to legislate the productive forces from the private possessions of the capitalist classes to the public property of the working classes.
Occupy Wall Street as a 'movement of the 99 %', vs. the '1 %', though comprised of working class youth, and protected by labor unions, is not an explicit, class conscious labor movement the objective of which would be the appropriation of the productive forces and abolition of the wages system. Neither Democrats nor Republicans would ever agree to this working class objective, only an independent labor party would legislate such a transfer.
The Democratic Party, including labor union officials who are part and parcel of that capitalist political association, by presenting the class conflict of workers vs. capitalists as an opposition of rich and poor are therefore thereby able to infiltrate and appropriate the Occupy Wall Street Movement as its `representatives`.
This partisan capitalist Party, and its ideologists and media propagandists, want to derail the potential train of class struggle against the capitalist class as a class by diverting it into the safe opposition to `corporate greed` and `the rich` as issues of taxation and `economic inequality` - increasing wages and expanding unemployment compensation, and increasing taxes on `the rich`, closing `corporate welfare` subsidies, and so on as a red herring attacks on straw men `fat cats` - all the time leaving the productive forces in possession of the capitalist classes, thus the continuation of commodity production on the basis of wage labor, exploitation and corresponding dominance/subordination relations of production.
If Democrats can pull this hood winking of the Occupy Wall Street Movement it is because there has been no organic working class political class struggle tradition of a Labor Party, and thus unchallenged bourgeois ideological cultural domination of the working class manifest in ignorance and fear regarding socialist and communist working class theory and politics. This is the heart of the matter and theoretical statement of the problem. The only means the Occupy Movement can, consistently, resist and stave off encroachments by the Democratic Party is the presentation of and fighting for an alternative political party based in the labor movement.
Otherwise, the stupidity engendered by infamous American pragmatism will keep the working class locked in the ideological dungeon of the Democratic Party, fighting not its own absolute class enemy, the capitalists, as a class, but the enemy of the relative enemy of the Democratic Party, the Republicans, as is the case in Wisconsin where the recall Scott Walker drive by unions is to displace him and Republican legislators by Democrats. By constantly growling at heals of the Republicans on state and federal offices as `anti-labor` and `attacking the living standard of the middle class`, labor union officials in the Democratic Party are assigned the performance of capitalist lackeys. This is all the more evident as AFL-CIO officialdom and propaganda arms never attack the anti-labor legislation of Democrats, and turning a blind eye to the fact that it is Democrat mayors, and police chiefs and captains, which are ordering and engaging pre-dawn raids and assaults on Occupy Wall Street encampments.
The Democratic Party - it's politicians, masquerading as 'progressive' and 'justice' movements - can appropriate the language of Occupy Wall Street and rail against 'the rich' and the '1%', and legislate government regulation of banks and industries, promote extensions of unemployment compensation and increase the minimum wage, increase `diversification`, denounce racism and legalize undocumented workers, and defend legal abortion, oppose global warming and other `issues`, without, however, thereby, denouncing and advocating a socialist alternative to capitalist exploitation/ which is the basis from which is obtained profits. Demagogic Democrats denounce 'corporate greed', protest 'economic inequality', because this is but the language of moralising emotional, populist, demagogic rhetoric.
So long as spokespersons, self-appointed or elected representative present the `mood` of Occupy protesters as `the 99% v the 1%`, denouncing `the rich` and `corporate greed`, `Wall Street banksters`, `income inequality`, and `unfair` tax policies, instead of explaining, to American working classes these are but manifest corollaries endemic of and embedded in the capitalist mode of production and appropriation; so long as they don`t explain and denounce exploitation engendered by capitalistic commodity production by wage labor and call for the abolition of the wages system by the working class as a class form their own class party by means of which to expropriate the productive forces, Democrats can always appropriate this language and define it in the interest of capitalism.
> The survey, which polled 2,048 adults from Dec. 6 to 19, found that perception of class conflict surged the most among white people, middle-income earners and independent voters. But it also increased substantially among Republicans, to 55 percent of those polled, up from 38 percent in 2009, even as the party leadership has railed against the concept of class divisions. <
Another red herring! Race! American exceptionalism!
Species are defined as organisms capable of reproduction of fertile offspring. Genetic inheritance is determined by mitochondria DNA. 'Race' doesn't have an empirical existence, but if it did it would be defined by matrileneal inheritance and because Barak Obama's mother's mitochondrial geneology is 'white' he would be considered a 'white man'. Yet, notwithstanding the lack of an authentic, i.e. verifiable data, in American bourgeois racialist culture and ideological sociology, Obama is a 'Black man'!
Biology and anthropological research and analysis has determined that race is an ideology and not an empirical biological category pf anthropology. Rather, this racialist demagoguery is the red herring predicated upon the same prejudice as when sprouted by the Ku Klux Klan.
The same is true of racial identity politics wherein "Black and Brown" Democrats and 'progressives' rail against 'the disproportionate percentage of Blacks and Browns in prison', which is a red herring that divert workers from class analysis of the State, itself, which is an instrument of class domination. Ditto the issue of capital punishment. The State is by definition an organisation of professional killers and strike breakers, tanks in the street and the band plays on.
"Race" is an ideological social phenomena that has no objective, biological scientific validity whatsoever, including this formulation in pseudo scientific classification and subjective quantification of percentage of `white people`.
The question regarding class consciousness is of awareness of the economical basis of sources of income, not `income brackets` - the basic sources of income are wages of labor, profits of agricultural and industrial capital, interests derived by finance capital and landlord rent. Scientific polling would be the quantification of percentages of American workers who have come to recognise modes of appropriation and corresponding relations of production as class appropriation and exploitation resulting in capitalist wealth and proletarian wages and lack of wealth, rather than these racialist and pseudo-scientific economic categories would have been the posing of the questions to the working class, sampling workers without pseudo-color categories, but at random.
Republican denouncing of Democrats by accusing the Democratic Party of instigating `class warfare is absurd! Taxing `the rich` to help `the middle class` bare the burden of providing funds transfer to finance capital, to pay for loans and interests to finance the bourgeois State, and government, to finance capital and the military-industrial complex, is in the interest of the capitalist class as the appropriating class.
The quality and quantity of taxes appropriated by the State has nothing to do with `big government` vs. `small government`, or `the rich` paying their `fare share` to `restore the American dream for everyone`. This has nothing to do with Republican rhetoric of `big government` spending on social programs needing to be `rained in` and `brought under control`. It is not about Democrats preserving Medicare and extensions of unemployment compensation. The primary function of the Leviathan is to pay finance capital for spending on the military-industrial complex and finance U.S. imperialist wars of aggression and/or occupation or pay off its quisling regimes and to train and arm the regimes mercenary armies.
> The change in perception is the result of a confluence of factors, Mr. Morin said, probably including the Occupy Wall Street movement, which put the issue of undeserved wealth and fairness in American society at the top of the news throughout most of the fall.>
The class basis and character of the State is revealed by Taft-Hardly legislation and implementation by Court injunctions and the dictatorial, brutal crack-down suppression and dispersal of Occupy Wall Street. Whether capitalists pay more or less in taxes is with money from profits derived from exploiting workers irrelevant because this State is an instrument of repressive capitalist`s class interests.
Clap trap about `fairness` is another red herring by straw man. The issue of class relations is not one of `undeserved` wealth, which indicates its opposite: `deserved wealth`. What is meant when Democratic Party `progressives` speak and write of undeserved wealth, and denouncing of capitalists not paying their `fair share` of taxes to the State, is actually an apology for profits on the wealth created by wage labor and owned by capitalists. Denouncing `the rich` and `the banksters`, `corporate greed` and so on operate on these premises.
These are red herrings and straw man `polemics` or `debates` because this demagogic clap trap diverts workers attention from fighting the capitalist mode of production and appropriation, the exploitation of wage labor by capital, in the production of commodities embodying at the same time paid socially necessary labor time and unpaid surplus labor time transferred to objects by the labor process: objects containing at the same time value derivative of socially necessary labor time and surplus value from unpaid labor time that is embodied in objectified form in the objects themselves, as commodities.
This is an objective empirical process that has nothing to do with morality. The issue, therefore, isn`t whether or not profits of capital are moral - deserved - or immoral -`undeserved` or whether or how much taxes they pay being `fair` or unfair, but that every empirical penny of profits is the realisation of surplus value converted into money.
The presentation of the issue of wealth appropriation as a moral problem therefore is a red herring, and of taxes as an issue of fairness is a diversion of the problem of the State. What the State is: what objective, empirical, class interests it serve, are material premises that must be presented analyzed and defined - prior to and predicated upon which the discussion of whether the capitalist`s taxes ought to be higher or lower.
The ruthless Leviathan that is the State is the political personification of the interests of the appropriating classes, the instrument of class rule by violence for coercion purposes. The most powerful, economically dominate classes are, in other words, the most powerful, politically dominate class, the ruling classes. It, and therefore the laws it decree, legislate and enforce, has nothing to do with morality or categorical imperatives.
A government is not the State, rather the State is special bodies of armed personnel that has prisons at their disposal. Classes that are in possession of the means of production, distribution, commerce and finance are the economically dominate classes - the ruling classes! Classes rule.
It makes no difference which politician of either party win elections. Not the Democratic Party, nor will the Republican party ever represent the interests of the working class. Parties govern in the interests of various and sundry interests of the various and sundry factions in and of the ruling classes. In every case its division of labor, including capitalist class and sub-classes of divisions of labor - e.g. agricultural, industrial, commercial, financial - pour money into Democrat or Republican political campaigns in respective class or sub-class interests the objective of which is to gain hegemony one against the other by influencing government policy.
Democrats and Republicans defend by State power the right of capitalists to make profits from investments, and therefore capitalist`s appropriation of labor power by purchase and the exploitation of workers in commodity production. The working class produces the wealth and the capitalist class owns it and sells it to other capitalists as components of means of production and distribution or to back to the working class that produced it as means of subsistence, thus profits are an economic rather than a moral category.
< `Americans have always acknowledged that there are Rockefellers and the lunch-bucket guy,` said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, based at the University of Chicago. But they believe it is not a permanent caste, but a transitory condition. The real game-changer would be if they give up on that.` Going by the survey`s results, they have not. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said the rich became wealthy mainly because of their own hard work, ambition or education, a number unchanged since 2008. >
American working class consciousness has been diverted and falsified by the cultural fictions of race and ethnocentric interests in conflict in individualistic 'achievement' of the `American dream`/ `American exceptionalism`.
Competitive engendered hostility against immigrants ostensibly 'taking American jobs' is a false consciousness that corresponds to the false consciousness qua 'American values' of the work ethic, denouncing welfare and believing the myth that workers with jobs by being obedient to the capitalists on the job and the laws of the State, work hard playing by the rules can 'make it' - i.e. get rich and thereby 'achieve the American dream'.
The fiction of the American dream notwithstanding, no one has ever gotten rich by working hard for capitalists. Wages are determined by and corresponds to the costs of means of subsistence.
It makes no difference whether a capitalist inherits wealth or appropriate it by his or her own ruthlessness of exploitation. The understanding of capitalism as is understood by workers everywhere else, is necessary as proletarian praxis dismisses the American dream.
Determination of classes are modes of production and corresponding mode of appropriation`s relations of production. Caste does not determine class, but the inheritance of division of labor of occupation within and techno-economic relations of production and factions of the ruling classes determine caste. Besides, in caste systems, one can be born into a caste and though inheriting title and castle be poor compared to rich commoners.
President Obama's recent Prayer Breakfast Speech wherein he quotes from the passage of the Gospel where Jesus said 'to whom much is given, much is required', is taken out of contexts and twisted as a means for manipulating American Christians to support the Presidential re-election campaign by ostentatious populist rhetoric of tax the rich to pay their 'fair share'!
Jesus never gave speeches to princes, kings or to Roman emperors, Senators and provincial governors urging them adopt legislation making the slave owning aristocracies and wealthy merchants to pay more taxes funding of the Roman Empire and its Herod governed Judean suzerainty puppet regime. Whatever percentage of taxes paid by capitalists is out of profits derived from the exploitation of wage workers to finance their own State's repressive and militarist powers and policies.
Obama is the President of the United States, not president of the Missionary Baptist Convention. He is commander and chief of the armed forces of the State, not a commander in the Salvation Army. He orders troops to kill and assassinate people. How dare he quote from the Gospel of the Prince of Peace, using the selective sections from Biblical texts to manipulate public opinion.
The participants of the Prayer Breakfast are selective indeed. Obama - nor, for that matter: Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and the other's wearing their religion on their sleeves, ever present the actual passages from Jesus and the Apostles specifically of the rich and poor:
Luke 6
20 And [Jesus] lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.
21Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.
22Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.
23Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
24But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.
25Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6&version=KJV
James 5
1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.
5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
6Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5&version=KJV
These passages need no interpretation!
Lil Joe
Laborpartypraxis@Yahoogroups.com
Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: January 11, 2012
Conflict between rich and poor now eclipses racial strain and friction between immigrants and the native-born as the greatest source of tension in American society, according to a survey released Wednesday.
About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are "strong conflicts" between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness.
The share was the largest since 1992, and represented about a 50 percent increase from the 2009 survey, when immigration was seen as the greatest source of tension. In that survey, 47 percent of those polled said there were strong conflicts between classes.
"Income inequality is no longer just for economists," said Richard Morin, a senior editor at Pew Social & Demographic Trends, which conducted the latest survey. "It has moved off the business pages into the front page."
The survey, which polled 2,048 adults from Dec. 6 to 19, found that perception of class conflict surged the most among white people, middle-income earners and independent voters. But it also increased substantially among Republicans, to 55 percent of those polled, up from 38 percent in 2009, even as the party leadership has railed against the concept of class divisions.
The change in perception is the result of a confluence of factors, Mr. Morin said, probably including the Occupy Wall Street movement, which put the issue of undeserved wealth and fairness in American society at the top of the news throughout most of the fall.
Traditionally, class has been less a part of the American political debate than it has been in Europe. Still, the concept has long existed for ordinary Americans.
"Americans have always acknowledged that there are Rockefellers and the lunch-bucket guy," said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center, based at the University of Chicago. "But they believe it is not a permanent caste, but a transitory condition. The real game-changer would be if they give up on that. "Going by the survey" results, they have not. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said the rich became wealthy "mainly because of their own hard work, ambition or education," a number unchanged since 2008.
The survey's main question " In America, how much conflict is there between poor people and rich people?" was based on language used by Mr. Smith" center at the University of Chicago, Mr. Morin said.
Mr. Smith said the question was often understood to mean, "Do the rich and the poor get along?" and "Do they have the same objectives?"
The issue has also become a prominent part of the political debate. President Obama has pressed the case that income inequality is rising as election season has gotten under way.
It has even crept into the Republican presidential primary race. At a debate in New Hampshire last Saturday, Rick Santorum criticized Mitt Romney for using the phrase "middle class," dismissing the words as Democratic weapons to divide society. And conservatives have been wringing their hands over Newt Gingrich" recent attacks on Mr. Romney" past in private equity, saying they are a misguided assault on free-market capitalism.
Independents, whose votes will be fought over by both parties, showed the single largest increase in perceptions of conflicts between rich and poor, up 23 percentage points, to 68 percent, compared with an 18-point rise among Democrats and a 17-point rise for Republicans. Sixty-eight percent of independents believe there are strong class conflicts, just below the 73 percent of Democrats who do. (The survey's margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for results based on the total sample.)
"The story for me was the consistency of the change," Mr. Morin said. "Everyone sees more conflict."
The demographics were surprising, experts said. While blacks were still more likely than whites to see serious conflicts between rich and poor, the share of whites who held that view increased by 22 percentage points, more than triple the increase among blacks. The share of blacks and Hispanics who held the view grew by single digits.
What is more, people at the upper middle of the income ladder were most likely to see conflict. Seventy-one percent of those who earned from $40,000 to $75,000 said there were strong conflicts between rich and poor, up from 47 percent in 2009. The lowest income bracket, less than $20,000, changed the least.
The grinding economic downturn may be contributing to the heightened perception of conflict between rich and poor, said Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
"Rich and poor aren't terribly distinct from secure and unemployed," he said.
The survey attributed the change, in part, to "underlying shifts in the distribution of wealth in American society," citing a finding by the Census Bureau that the share of wealth held by the top 10 percent of the population increased to 56 percent in 2009, from 49 percent in 2005.
"There are facts behind it," Mr. Smith said of the findings. It's not just rhetoric."
Robert Rector, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, took issue with that, arguing that government data routinely undercounted aid to the poor and taxes taken from everyone else.
To him, the findings did not mean much, "other than that the topic has been in the press for the last two years.
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