New Lines are being Drawn. Which Side are You On?
The times they are confusing. Much of the left and the right are opposed to the bailout of Wall Street. But many liberals and moderate Republicans support it. The normal labels of left and right don't work so well, when an issue cannot be seen as left or right.
Consider, the left tends to be more communal, more supportive of unions, more collectivist, more in favor of progressive taxation.
The right tends to favor free enterprise, private ownership, free trade, lower taxes, and opposes unions.
But the way that each of the opposing groups portrays the abuses of the ruling elites says a lot about their particular philosophy. The right decries Obama's alleged "Socialism", "Marxism", "Communism", even "Bolshevism". They complain about nationalizing the banks, they worry about attacks on private property. But when it comes to the bailing out Wall Street, they adopt the outrage of the taxpayer as their own. They tend to dismiss that their former hero, George W. Bush, started the Wall Street bailouts.
The left complains about welfare for the corporations; corporate domination of the government; the wealthy growing ever more wealthy. To the left, there is a revolving door between the corporate world and government, and the ruling class dominates both.
Now, why is the bailout of Wall Street not a left or right issue? I think it is because there's a segment of both mainstream political parties that pretty much automatically supports wealth and concentrated power, and there's another segment of both parties that tends to be suspicious of, or even opposed to wealth and power.
This is determined in part by how well one identifies with,
and derives benefit from, the power elites.
In other words, some on the left and some on the right are uncomfortable with authoritarianism, and naturally prefer free association. And some on the left and some on the right derive direct benefit from the concentration of power, and the trickle-down of the wealth that has been confiscated and concentrated at the top. These (including many of our most prominent politicians) want the system to continue the way it used to be, with just a few controls imposed to avoid another crash.
We can see there is criticism of the bailout from both sides. That's why i strongly recommend that for complicated political issues, we consider politics not in terms of left and right, but rather, become familiar with the concepts developed by the Political Compass website:
They add another full dimension to the political spectrum, and suddenly complicated issues make more sense.
But also consider, there's another complicating factor.
Elites tend to claim they're opposed to socialism -- that is,
the idea of spreading costs over a broad section of the public, and applying benefits as needed.
But the corporate balance sheet consists of expenses as well as revenues. Corporations are quite comfortable with socialism on the expense side, so long as they keep the profits private. Spread the costs to the taxpayers, pocket the wealth that results. The rich get richer, the poor pay for it not only through their employment, but also through their taxes.
Have you noticed that the right's slander about Marxism and Socialism has been mostly falling flat? That's true for an number of reasons. The most significant is, the Obama Administration isn't the least bit interested in most of the goals of real socialism. Even Obama's health care system retains the profit motive. Obama declares this is for "legacy" reasons. In truth, he simply doesn't want to expend political capital on initiating a single payer system, at least not directly. We already know that would be a bruising fight; Hilary Clinton took her lumps in the early 'nineties for just such a cause. If there's universal health care under Obama, corporations will profit from the increased coverage. Obama is a liberal capitalist, not a socialist.
But also, there's no great socialist movement (anymore; or, yet...) to which those on the right can point, declaring THAT is a danger to the American way. The Soviet Union is dead, and any remaining communist countries are no significant threat whatsoever. Most socialist governments don't look anything like the socialism of the past. These are mostly empty threats.
Which brings us to the "world currency" bugaboo.
Idiotic knee-jerk right wingers like Michele Bachmann can cry about "tyranny" all they want; they're whistling past the graveyard.
Here's an example of Bachmann's blather:
"If Tim Geithner is successful under President Obama, and they move us to an international currency," Bachmann warned, "Then we have no hope of standing on our own as a sovereign nation with our own economic system. It's over. We can't do that."
Now, what's actually up with that?
We have one dominant world currency right now. It is the U.S. dollar.
If we lost the dollar's dominance, it would just take away some of the advantage of being the most powerful country in the world. Bachmann's claim that it is a threat to sovereignty has no rational basis. It might be a threat to the power of the American empire, but what has the American empire done for working people lately? Sent their jobs elsewhere, that's what.
The dollar could fail. Saddam Hussein wanted everyone to adopt the Euro, just to punish the United States for reversing his invasion of Kuwait. As much as he called for this, it never happened.
Why? Because the U.S. dominates the world economy with overwhelming economic power and leverage, backed up by military might.
The Chinese have now made some noise about a new world currency. Note that we owe them trillions of dollars.
If it happens, it won't be because the Chinese subverted us, or because the Obama Administration has some weird sort of internationalist agenda. It will be because the United States, like the Soviet Union, loses its superpower status. It could happen, but losing the U.S. dollar as the dominant world currency won't be the cause, it will just be one of many symptoms of the fall of the American empire.
People like Bachmann who rail about such calamities are just fear-mongering. They imagine that they can continue to scare people the way Bush and Cheney scared people in the aftermath of 9-11.
But after Katrina and other events, the American people eventually woke up to the realization that the greatest thing we had to fear was Bush's own policies. And we're still living with that legacy.
Bachmann and her ilk will try to convince you that America has no freedom so long as Republicans are not in power.
Not only that, we'll lose the currency, capitalism will be sabotaged, and the sun will sink into the ocean and sputter out.
Why do they make these dire predictions? Simply because they want to get back into power again, and scaring voters has worked in the past.
Bachmann can blather on with the Rush LImbaugh talking points all she wants. The number of people they have buffaloed is substantial, but it is a minority, and that minority is shrinking, month by month.
Why? Because it is readily apparent to any thinking person, the seeds of the crash were planted long before Obama even came to power. If this crash turns out to be worse than the Great Depression, it will be the result of the philosophy of deregulation and dramatic speculation that was championed by Reagan, and that has been supported by majorities of both parties for several decades.
And who fueled it? The very corporations that are getting bailed out. And they did so by funding the campaigns of their current supporters, and also many of the politicians who are right now critical of the bailout. That's because when the stock market was climbing, when housing prices were soaring, it was all too easy to simply accept the bribes, and ask no questions.
And it is so easy to now be principled, when complaining about the bailout rides a wave of populist indignation.
They may finally be right about this so-called emergency welfare for the "financial system" (read:corporations),
but for many of these politicians, it is way too late to cheer.
I wouldn't worry about whether the U.S. dollar loses
its primacy as the dominant world currency. The American empire that we knew even a year ago no longer exists.
New lines are being drawn, and they are increasingly the lines that the IWW has tried to draw for a century.
When it comes to economics, working people have nothing in common with the rich bastards shoveling our tax dollars
-- and our childrens' and grandchildrens' future tax dollars -- to shore up the wealthiest corporations (and their ultra-wealthy investors!).
Nothing in common! We should all recognize, and act upon that principle.
best wishes,
richard myers
The IWW Preamble:
