We Are the Poor! Three Pieces on Political Economy
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We Are the Poor! 43 Endnotes 1. See, for example, The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andre McAfee (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2014; and The Fourth Industrial Revolution, by Klaus Schwab (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016). 2. “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?” Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, 2013: http:// www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/ The_Future_of_Employment.pdf. 3. “Automation sweeps China’s factory floors,” Shanghai Daily, Kelvin Chan, September 26, 2015. 4. See, for example, http://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate- united-states. 5. Cited in Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises, by Anwar Shaikh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 491. 6. Best Care Anywhere, by Phillip Longman (Sausalito, CA: PoliPointPress, 2007, pp. xxii-xxiii. 7. For information on debt and a very interesting website, see The US Debt Clock at http://www.usdebtclock.org. 8. Just 8 men own the same wealth as half the world, Oxfam International. 2017. https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8- men-own-same-wealth-half-world. 9. See Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations#Extraterritorial_and_major _domestic_deployments. ISBN: 42 We Are The Poor! private, national and international security. That is what the propaganda war against the poor, women, people of color, gay and transgendered, and the political left mean. All of this points to the fact that the ruling class knows they're preparing for a much bigger fight We Are the Poor! than they have on their hands now. And they're moving quickly to cut off the possibility for a fair fight before it even starts. Three pieces on Political Economy There is a lot of talk about neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the ideology of the capitalist class on the attack. There is no serious opposition to neoliberalism within the capitalist class. There is no “gentler, softer” capitalism. Opposition to the capitalist class and the system of capitalism must come from the working class: the only force large enough and organized enough to resist capital. The possibilities today are more than ever Capitalism is destroying the planet and its people, but it does What Are Classes? not have to be this way. With the electronic technology that is Revised, February 2018 destabilizing capitalism, we can build a world of abundance and plenty. We can care for everyone. The glut we have under capitalism becomes the creation of plenty in a cooperative society led by the working class. Without profit, we can produce as much as possible and distribute it to those in need. We do not need the crushing burden of inequality: social, Why Are We Poor? political or economic. We do not need the crushing burdens of poverty, July 1989 of war, of a poisoned environment. We do not need the crushing burden of debt. We can build a society that nurtures its people, defends what is right, and looks to a peaceful, sustainable future. We can build a society where art and culture emerge from the people, not from crass commercialism. We can build a society where people are safe in We Are the Poor! knowing they will be economically secure. We are the poor. And the poor have nothing to lose but their A Sequel to “Why Are We Poor?” poverty! Society stands at the tipping point. The ability to feed us, to December 2017 clothe us, to house us, to care for each and every one of us, to educate us and to provide us with work, with recreation, with safety and stability is all around us. It is there. It is only this system that keeps us in poverty. Today we understand that we have an obligation to our class – to our political army – to stand shoulder to shoulder and say, “The time has come! Our time is now!” by Bruce Edwards, Ph.D. University of the Poor Journal We Are the Poor! 41 place to lay their head. Behind them stand those who are struggling to feed their children off of public assistance and to keep their families together. Behind them are the unemployed looking for jobs. Behind them are the underemployed who are working and still cannot feed their families. This grouping, 60 million strong, is leading the entire working class. We talked about the fact that the working class does not know it is a class. It is completely divided. And it does not know it’s in a war. And many of the leaders of the working class – the generals of the army, What Are Classes? if you will, are on the other side. The situation today has advanced. The real difference between 1989 when I gave the ‘Why Are We Poor?’ speech, and today lies in the developing political restlessness of the working class around the world. Bruce Edwards, Ph.D. People are standing up. They are demanding real change. They are not Revised, February 2018 sure exactly how that change can come about, but they know that “business as usual” is killing them and that we need “business that’s not usual.” We need government and business run by and for the people What are classes? We hear about them all the time. “We live in a themselves. class society.” “The working class.” “The capitalist class.” “The rich and The 2016 election cycle brought forth candidate Bernie Sanders. powerful.” “The middle class.” “The upper middle class.” “The 1 No matter what you may think of Sanders, the upsurge that he led percent.” “The 99 percent.” “The poor.” But what we don’t hear are the taught us three things that are crucial to the working class army. First, definitions of what we’re talking about. Many of us have been taught he put a positive spin the word “socialism” and made it acceptable to that it’s more important to act, or to “do something,” than spend time discuss it. Socialism is for the people. It ends the system of profit and on definitions. Yet how we define the problems we face has everything runs society on the basis of need. Second, he pointed the finger right at to do with how we’ll act in trying to solve them. the class enemy: the one percent, the corporate elite, the rich and There are several ways of looking at class. One is to just use the powerful and the system they represent. He showed that in the class word without defining it, as in “We are against racism, sexism and war that is under way, they are the cause of the problems besetting classism.” But there are two definitions that stand out. One is more society. Third, he “outed” both the Democratic and Republican Parties popular and widely used. The other has been ignored, yet is ultimately as tools of that corporate elite, of the ruling class. He showed that the more practical when it comes to understanding social problems are and ruling class is controlling us by keeping us confined to the two parties how to solve them. The two definitions are quite different, but they that are both bought and paid for by the ruling class. And the business describe the same reality, so they overlap quite a bit. class has shown time and again that they will not easily give up what The first, less useful but more widely used definition of class is they bought and paid for. to define class by income level. The rich are the top 20 percent of all The upsurge remains. People are dissatisfied and continue to income earners. The 1 percent is the top one-hundredth of all income search for answers. The army is looking for true generals; the class is earners and are the super-rich. The poor are the bottom 20 percent of looking for true leaders. The key is to unite the bottom, the poor and the population. The middle class is the part of the population that’s working people who are the disadvantaged, the dispossessed, the “doing OK,” where “doing OK” is often defined not only by income level, disenfranchised. We need these generals, these leaders to step forward but also by the level of education or type of job. from among the poor and working people, for an army fighting to There are a number of problems with this approach. First, since defend the interests of the working class must be led by the working there will always be those with more resources and those with less, class. The responsibility and the opportunity are ours. there is no way to overcome class inequality using this definition. But the capitalist class is on the attack. That is what the Second, the definitions are unclear; they change to meet the complete ramping up of the police, the courts and the military needs of the writer. Third, this definition hides many economic and apparatus means. That is why they are building walls and investing in political realities. It doesn’t make any distinction between how people 40 We Are The Poor! 5 What Are Classes? make their living or get the money they have. Fourth, the members of capitalism imposes poverty. But the capitalists have also been these classes have no names and can change from year to year, so we continually at war since 1989. One could say it began with the first Gulf don’t know whom we’re really talking about. War, but it actually started long before that. Nevertheless, the US has Take the “middle class” for example. This is what politicians are been continually at war since then.