Today 82 per cent of the American people believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and they are looking for change. They want solutions. They want answers. And no wonder. The crisis at the very roots of American society is reflected in the growing polarization of wealth and poverty. Last year 482 billionaires for the first time could not all make it onto the Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans. With a combined wealth of over $1.54 trillion, they stand in stark contrast to the one in six American households who had zero or negative growth in 2004, or the one in three Americans who had less than $10,000 net worth. And that was before the mortgage crisis hit.

Real inequality has not seen these levels since the 1920s. Between 1983 and 2004, the wealth of the top one per cent has grown by 78 per cent, while the bottom 40 per cent has fallen by 59 per cent. Since 1984 we have added 184 new billionaires. In 2007 half of the 45 new billionaires amassed their wealth in hedge funds and private equity. At the same time, five million more Americans fell below the poverty line, 47 million are without health insurance, and record numbers are losing their homes to foreclosures. The social consequences are astounding, as society literally seems to fall down around us. Society is forced to exist on a mountain of debt and when that bubble reaches its limit, trillions vanish in a single day on Wall Street.

Everything is being thrown into the air. The necessary unity of opposites – the capitalist and worker – is being torn asunder by a new kind of production, laborless production based upon the new electronic technology that no longer requires workers. Manufacturing shrinks, jobs are permanently lost, and corporations without borders roam the globe in search of the cheapest labor, just as workers who have been impoverished by globalization migrate in a desperate search for survival. Great wealth is amassed by the capitalist class, and millions of workers fall into destitution, because they cannot compete with the robot, which lowers the value of all human labor.

It is within this context that the elections of 2008 are taking place. In this time of social destruction, when the two poles of capital and labor are becoming objectively antagonistic, the most critical question facing the twin parties of capital is – can the center hold? Can the unity of opposites that composes American society be maintained?

The crisis in society is a reflection of the revolution in its economic base, but the solution has to be fought out in the realm of ideas. People with a vision and a program make change. The elections themselves are a forum where the battle for the mind of America is being fought out. The question is: Will the ruling ideas prevail and allow the ruling class to preserve all-class unity – unity across the classes – and maintain their rule?

Or is it possible to introduce new ideas, ideas that reflect the objective interests of the new class of poor and workers who are arising from the destruction brought on by the revolution in the economic base? Will the workers remain ideologically tied to the ruling class, or can a new consciousness, the ideology of the new proletariat, begin to emerge?

Ideas of the Ruling Class

Asking why the workers vote against their own interests is really the same thing as asking why the workers are not class-conscious.

In 1968 Martin Luther King strove to transform the movement for equality in the South to a national class-conscious movement of the "legion of the deprived" to restructure the very architecture of American society. The fundamental issue at the heart of the Civil Rights revolution had all along been poverty: the inequality of class that would not be wiped out by the elimination of color discrimination. While over half of all black families were locked into poverty, they comprised only 22% of the poor as a whole. Millions of white poor, "derivative victims of the slave system," but constrained by the ideology of white supremacy joined with their own oppressors. King now called upon them to join a united movement of the poor across color lines that would contend for a radical redistribution of political and economic power.

That did not happen. The pull of all-class white unity prevailed, as white workers, still benefitting from an expanding economy, were persuaded to view the movement of blacks for equality as a threat. The passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act meant that white supremacy no longer defined the Southern political order, but every subsequent election has seen its version of a "Southern strategy" as the key to electoral victory.

The ideological ties that bind the workers, all workers, to the ruling class are the ideologies of the ruling class – individualism, patriotism, religion, and the work ethic among others. The ideological tie of white supremacy comprises but one thread of this ideological matrix, which the ruling class employs to bind the workers in one form or another of all-class unity. The ruling class is capable of, on the one hand, basing its strength in white supremacy, while at the same time, offering the minorities enough to strengthen all-class unity despite white supremacy.

The elections are a forum wherein the people are solicited to unite behind one variant or another of the program of the ruling class. The workers enter the electoral arena on the basis of their daily struggles for survival, but no one speaks for them. The only options open to them are one version or another of all-class unity.

The Elections and the Battle for the Mind of America

The ideologies of all-class unity are not simply displayed every four years during the Presidential elections. They have been ingrained in the public psyche for generations. Perhaps chief among them is the philosophical assertion that lies at the heart of the case made for American exceptionalism, i.e. that we are essentially a classless society because American society is founded upon the primacy of the individual. Hence the role of government is simply to provide the "opportunity" for each individual to become all they can be. So the workers find themselves pitted against one another in the market place competing for fewer and fewer low-wage jobs. It is every man and woman for themselves, and if they don't succeed, then it must be because they made bad choices.

The ideology of individual and personal responsibility means that you don't begrudge the success of the rich and you are opposed to anything resembling a handout from the government. Entitlements mean something for nothing, and in a time when jobs are disappearing, the ethic of hard work is upheld. So the individual is to be unfettered by downsized government and reduced taxes on the rich.

In these uncertain times the people see the decline of their culture and find their families in peril. They experience the erosion of "traditional" values; they look out of their windows and it looks like the end of the world; they look to their faith for moral absolutes, for guidance and personal salvation.

Appeals to patriotism and national unity are another expression of all-class unity. But in time of war and global instability, pride of country gets translated as a justification for empire, and even immigrants are scapegoated as a threat to the American way of life. Reinforced with the steady drumbeat of fear, all are called upon to unite in defense of the "homeland."

As the deteriorating economic conditions undercut their foundation, there are signs that the entire complex of ruling class ideologies is beginning to lose its grip. Within the evangelical communities of faith, for example, there is an emerging concern about the plight of the poor, the environment and human rights. Individual workers, no matter how hard they toil, see their lives and their families destroyed due to no fault of their own as they are swept up in the race to the bottom. Government does not answer their needs. Persuaded to put their faith in corporate solutions, they find these too fail to deliver.

None of the solutions offered within the electoral arena offer any real answers to the millions of Americans who are engaged in a search for solutions to their plight. The people want change, but the only options they are offered are one or another version of all-class unity. Indeed, when the content of our time is polarization, antagonism, and social destruction, the ideological complex of all-class unity can ultimately only be a call for a fascist solution to the crisis.

Revolutionaries’ Tasks

This brings to the fore the urgent tasks of the revolutionaries in these times. The objective polarity today is between absolute wealth and absolute poverty. The ideological polarity is between the ideologies of capital and the ideology of the new proletariat. In the battle for the mind of America, we strike a blow at the middle. The ties of all-class unity will finally be broken only when the new proletariat becomes conscious of itself as a class, and politically independent, begins to move in its own interests. This new proletariat is engaged in the daily battle for its very survival, and for the survival of all of humanity. We cannot concede the field in the battle for new ideas.

 

August.2008.Vol18.Ed4
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