I Can No Longer Stomach Middle Class Americans of the Commissar Caste

[T.Ruth2power]

Cheaper to rent slaves than own them- by Joe Bageant



These people do not consider themselves affluent or their families particularly elite. Yet their kids, after finishing expensive educations, will eventually take the reins of the administrative class, university deans, government bureaucrats, financial managers, publishing and electronic media people, etc. Then they will continue to stick the ole prickly pear to the other four-fifths of Americans, not to mention the world, without flinching. And they will continue to consider themselves quite ordinary Americans, and expect their children to do even better. Though it is nowhere near the middle demographically, this is the true middle class in America, the only group that meets the criteria we are trained to associate with the term "middle class." In truth they only represent about 20% of the population. The dangerous 20% in my opinion. Not that they ever ask me.

I'm like everyone else in my generation. I was raised on Ozzie and Harriet and the Dick Van Dyke Show. So the image of the middle class American life fried into my cranial wiring by the great hologram burner looks like that. People stashing money in the college fund for the Beav, and never getting tired or dirty at work ... sporting Argyle sweaters and smiling affectionately, asking, "Are you boys ready for a milk shake?" (Ozzie always had time to make a fucking milk shake. Did that guy ever actually go to work?). However, if the middle class is defined as the middle of the middle of Americans, then the real middle class guy or gal is probably driving a car parts delivery truck or clerking at the mall.

Anyway, I'm just et up wif class rage bubba! I can no longer stomach middle class Americans of the commissar caste. I'll blame them for any fucking thing I can think up. Because it is they who enable the great faceless economic machine to grind the piss out of the other four-fifths of the population. They've got theirs and they'll blow whoever they must to keep what they’ve got. The core of this nation’s gutlessness rest with this national bucket of soft little maggots. Because on the whole they are the only class with even modest political power politicians would actually listen to them if the screeched about justice instead of losing 10% on their 401Ks. But they won't. So I lay much of this nation's planetary and societal criminality on this three-quarter million dollar fuck-box crowd.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/cheaper-to-rent.html

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. So it's not just the rich anymore, it's anybody with an education

and the drive for their family to succeed. That guy is a gob who yeans fot a marxist state.

[T.Ruth2power]

2. Define success

n/t

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. Not having to drive a delivery truck, unless you want to.

You couldn't possibly be defending that hack? Nobody, no country in the world subscribes to that shit, including China & Cuba.

[T.Ruth2power]

7. So who's going to do the delivering?

Are you opposed to the concept of manual labor?

I'm doing more than defending him. Joe Bageant is one of the most astute honest writers in America right now.

He writes about powerful ideas-- there's no flinching in them, no looking away.. and that unbroken gaze is quite admirable. It's difficult to truly articulate in a way that doesn't meddle or skew or hide. This is what makes me feel sometimes that liberal 'rhetoric' (in the american sense) is somehow an evil thing. It gives people too much freedom to say little and to do so beguilingly. Bageant sees with eyes wide open and that is inspiring-- definitely a voice worth listening for and to.

In short no elitist claptrap coming from him.

Not to mention the American middle class delusion is an ecological wrecking ball. It's okay I do understand how it has come to pass that most people here identify with the ruling class ideas and have there own aspirations of acquisition and see in themselves the status quo.

[Pavulon]

8. Who is the ruling class

define the class system and how it is enforced in the US?

[T.Ruth2power]

14. This will do

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruling_class

for the first question though we could part on various details.

The second question is the more imortant one in my opinion.

It is enforced primarily through economic controls with numerous other mechanisms of control that buttress the former. A few examples:

1) Educational curriculum;

2) Media;

3) Public Relations;

4) Bureaucracies;

5) Political systems;

and numerous other minute forms.

You could add to the list.

[Pavulon]

15. No, I've read marx I want your opinion on how this is applied

in the US in 2008.

[T.Ruth2power]

19. Reactionary

Your post is typical knee-jerk silliness. It's little different than people yelling at the anti-war protesters to "Get a job" or "cut your hair." My fault for expecting better.

Algorithm #1

Stalinism Marxism

Good luck with the elites.

[Pavulon]

20. As an elitist (college educated)(graphic)

and person who has traveled outside the us extensively I have the context to make my own decision.

Again I simply asked how you apply Marx's ideas to the US or EU right now?

Been a while since he published, his social revolution has not come yet, unless these guys count. Here are his ideals in practice. That guy may have had glasses, elite, so he was killed.

[readmoreoften]

28. How about pictures of US soldiers holding up the heads of Iraqis. I got em if you want em.

I don't think you do. Like the porn site that exchanged photos of dead iraqis and their body parts for porn.
http://www.americablog.com/2005/09/us-soldiers-allegedly-trading-pictures.html
Unfortunately, I saw these before they were scoured off the net.

Your comments are facile propaganda. Do you see mass deaths in Cuba? Do you see mass deaths in Venezuela? If it's all about body counts then you'll have to count all the counter-revolutionary murder we've done:

East Timor: over a million
Chile: 24,000 minimum.
Cambodia: unknown (ostensibly putting Pol Pot in power)
Vietman: 2 million
Iraq: unknown +million
Guatemala (right wing paramilitary death squads directly funded by the good ol' U.S. of A.): unknown
Nicaragua: thousands
El Salvador: thousands

Or do the lives of dead socialists not count when they're killed by "liberal democracies"?

[Pavulon]

31. USSR and China

take your list multiply by 10. Nice even order of magnitude.

That picture is marx in action. Cambodia is the place to see those ideals at work.

Timor, cold war. see ussr.
Cambodia, carried out without us resources
Vietnam, proxy war with USSR
Iraq, your numbers are off IBC is realistic. Survey with n of under a thousand claiming 1% population kill is a joke. However the war is useless.

rest, ussr and us playing games with others lives.

cuba is changing right quick. once castro anything agreed upon in the 60's is off the table. People are not leaving miami in boats ot get there, must be a great place.

Venezuela, been there. Was poor in 02, poor in 06 and was poor in march. Most everyone there would swap places with you in a second. There were educated working people. Not the true poor.

When chavez led a coup he went to jail, when he is targeted, it is our fault, when he is out on his ass or shot dead by his own people, it will be the natural progression of his kind.

Been to the gulf arab states too, that is how oil wealth is distributed, chavez needs to go for a visit. Then he can spread the wealth past his family and supporters.

[readmoreoften]

47. Timor, see Russia? No. See Henry Kissinger.

Yeah, so I've been all over the world as well. Who cares. Been to Mexico. Been to Nicaragua. Been all over South America. Been lots of places. Great for anecdotes. Doesn't mean jack shit. Yeah, I'm sure they'd swap places--no shit--that's what they're trying to do. They're poor because they live in a socialist country under global capitalism.

The fact that we name these operations "proxy wars" means zero. Try again. It wasn't a proxy war to them. It was a war against an imperialist aggressor. We killed a bunch of people to promote our products and our way of life. Finit. Finuto. That's it. Period. You can't say "oh, they were under Soviet influence." Actually, we really didn't. (By the way, didn't that work out great in Afghanistan!)

Your kill counts are absurd because there is no reliable source for deaths under Stalinist state, which is a total perversion of Marx and had nothing to do with the October Revolution. The only people who even try are neoconservatives who write books whose numbers are argued to be 10x higher than even rational assessments. Let's face it, the neocons are just pissed at communists because their daddies' workers went on strike and they didn't get their ponies for Christmas that year.

But the fact that you even bring up bodies is evidence that you're from the camp of people who like to think of themselves as "political realists" but are actually detached elitists who rationalize whatever they can't solve. Precisely, what is it that your team is fighting for? What is your team killing for? Let's pretend that we've killed 10x less people--only in the millions instead of the tens of millions. What was it for? What does it continue to be for?

So how about you can call me a commie, and I'll call you an apologist for murder-for-profit and slavery and we can call it a day. I think we're done here.

[Pavulon]

55. Lay out a better system (or just define the BS class system)

some other poster brought in body counts. My point the USSR is historically on record killing many more. Their books and records, not disputed.

Millions died through starvation (intentional) and purges. This is not disputed.

What the fuck defines my class. really how do I figure this out? Is there a survey or rule book?

I am a fucking IAM member, does that influence my class. I have a college degree, so I add an elitist point.

Everyone who I work with is also a part owner in the company. That is not my identity, and certainly has nothing to do with marx, chavez, or any imperialist bullshit.

I have called you nothing, not attacked you, not insulted you. Do disagree with the OP, and your position. There is not team, there is reality and then there is idealistic fantasy.

Provide some substantive idea that can replace what we have now.

I would like a outline of how I determine my class?

[Hannah Bell]

82. The foundational division: do you have to sell your time to other people

to live, or do you live by hiring other people's time.

[Pavulon]

90. Binary response. The world exists between 1 and 0

if you have 10,000 you have saved from your hard work. You can invest it and make return. You could make nothing, lose it all, or make 2 million dollars betting oil will go to 200 or 50, or corn will shift up or down. If you make 2 million you are still sitting in front of the same pc you are posting with.

you are controlling your time. you do not hire or fire, write reviews, or worry about cola. you are an island.

2 million can become 200 million. At that point you may want to hire some help, but you dont have to.

You concept is turn of the century. The rules around wealth are fundamentally different.

[Ghost Dog]

103. What you describe is not "investing", it is gambling

(whether well-informed or not). "Investment" implies (or should imply) investment in something truly productive (and much of the gambling you describe has been shown to be, simply, very destructive). These days, to be 'truly productive' also has to imply being conservative, if not reparative, of the very, very damaged ecological environment everything else depends on.

(Just an aside, here). Thanks for the interesting discussion.

[Hannah Bell]

109. non-seq response. saying "binary" doesn't refute the proposition.

can't, since it's true.

there are permutations, but "have to sell your time" & "don't have to sell your time" is the underlying division.

Sure, you can work your way up to "house n--r," but what makes that a good place to be?

just cause you get to piss on those "below" you, while still being pissed on from "above"?

not my dream.

[NashVegas]

188. No, That's About What It Comes Down To

To invest that $10k, someone somewhere has to do some sort of labor in order for the money to grow.

[martymar64]

170. Please cite where Marx advocated murdering people with educations?

Please cite where Marx advocated murdering ANYBODY?

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. Well, hopefully not people with master's degrees.

That guy is essentially advocating reeducation camps & collective farms, if that's forward thinking yoiu are as crazy as he is.

[T.Ruth2power]

16. Well

the first thing I would recommend is that you read more of Bageant's essays. You would then clearly see the absurdity of your comment.

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/

Do you believe people with Master's degrees are of a higher order than the janitor?

What's wrong with a collective farm?

[Terry_M]

17. What's wrong is that it's been tried...

And it has failed numerous times before... Basically this guy's thoughts are that the 4th, 5th, or 10th time is the charm?

[readmoreoften]

29. Ask the Mexican indians picking your coffee how this is "working" for them.

Oh I forgot, only white people count.

[Pavulon]

32. Solutions time..

define a better system in operation or that has operated in the modern era. you cant.

nice race bait, out of ideas or what?

Please do not say USSR.
purge..

[readmoreoften]

39. Define "better". Define "system".

Yeah, I think Venezuela has a better "system". But the "system" we have is global, so it can't really compare. I think that Zapatismo is fantastic. The reason why "socialism doesn't work" is because the United States slaughtered and infiltrated every damn uprising in every damn country in the world. It's like saying my family "didn't work" because a sociopath broke into our house and butchered everyone because they owned everything. We're not just in Iraq because of oil. We're also in Iraq because the Ba'athist party is socialist. Is Iraq really in a "better system" now that it's capitalist? Seriously

Obviously Stalinism was the death of communism. Kruschev isn't even considered communist by communists. He was largely thought of as a counter-revolutionary. So there wasn't communism in Russia for at least 3 decades before it collapsed. Deng Xiao Peng is most definitely a counter-revolutionary. China was a communist nation for about 25 years. It's been a totalitarian capitalist slave state now for going on 30 years.

What I'd like to see won't happen because well-armed thugs won't let it happen. What "works" and what "doesn't" is a complete red herring. Capitalism will always "work" because even if there's an economic collapse, the rich will just come in and steal everything from you again because they live their lives above the law without impunity. You can call that a "system" if you like. You can even say it's "better" because you happen to be doing just fine and dandy.
But the majority of the world's population lives in horrific poverty directly caused by our "great system."

If "great" means longevity, then yeah, capitalism's great. I hear theocracy is also great. They last a long time too.

[Pavulon]

43. Visit there..

then visit any gulf arab state. chavez is not spreading money equally, the more equal seem to be better off (his supporters, base, family).

Most people you meet would swap out for your life.

That was my take, was not there to discuss the government.

So is the system in Norway, Finland, or Germany as evil as us or pseudo evil?

You cant blame everything on the US. The world had no poverty before our system? Really, read french and english history in their early colony days.

[readmoreoften]

65. Yes there was poverty before the US. There was feudalism.

Was the Burgher revolution a step from the horrors of feudalism? Yes. But since you've read Marx, you already know that his point was that capitalism was a step towards communism. And I've read quite a bit of French history and British as well. There would be no communism without the French Revolution. And there would've been no French Revolution if it weren't for the American Revolution. And the French Revolution inspired the Paris Commune, which inspired Lenin.

Of course there was poverty before capitalism. Where do you think the capitalists got their money? They were the manored vassals who did well during the Renaissance, because the royalty were too lazy and neurotic to figure out how to trade. Trade wasn't possible until the Moors pulled back. When they did the new technologies made available over the centuries allowed them to travel far and wide. Why would a king want to leave his castle? What on earth for? So the vassals did and they became rich. With the assistance of the wealthiest kings, they set up banks and so forth. But the serfs were the serfs. Until the French Revolution, that's all they'd be.

But that's EUROPE, not Asia or Africa or Latin America. Latin America was indigenous. And no, there really was no "poor" in Latin America. There were rather advanced kingdoms with their own literature and laws and nothing but public space. Life wasn't perfect, I'm sure. But pre-colonialism unleashed a torrent of blood and death rather quickly.

Now we use them as our outsourced slave labor. No more Mayan literature or sculpture. Now it's 10 cents a week in a coffee finca, sexual assault from the white owners, and burying your kids in coffee boxes and suitcases. And China was of course colonized then brutalized by Japan. Despite all the hubhub, I'd guess that there were LESS deaths under communism than at any other time and most certainly less then under Chang Kei Shek, who used to shoot communists in the back of the head in the street. Currently it's the worst of both worlds: a totalitarian factory state.

I don't blame America. I blame global capitalism and the ever expanding state. I think we were a really interesting country until corporate personhood. I think we really jumped the shark during the cold war, though. We'll never get back to who we were because the concept of nation states is crumbling.

[Pavulon]

71. Now this is getting interesting, I agree

100% with what you said and do not have the background in pre-colonial Americas to give an opinion. Corporations are interesting because they allow the continuance of ideas and wealth and protect people. DU is an LLC.

However they are subject to abuse. I believe spain was effective at disrupting Latin America, however my discovery channel (not up to my normal standards) memory seems to have something about warring and crumbling empires before colonization took place.

But now the serfs have access to the ballot, I had shit as a kid, and can access systems that generate wealth from the ether.

We do good things here as well as terrible things.
However the freedom to cross traditional class barriers is an important thing.

China is scary in its ability to destroy ecosystems and cause human misery.

I do not believe that marx or smith or other period concepts can be perfectly matched to the present system.

The basic rules of market forces and wealth can be. But human aspects change.

Enjoyed your post.

[readmoreoften]

132. There's good documentary on China. I think it's just called "China". It's 6 hours long.

I think that China is frightening to us regardless because of its enormity. It's difficult to conceive of living in a culture that's nearly homogenous with three times as many people as in the US. Since unification the nation has always seemed to brutalize its people: the emperor, Chang Kei Shek, Mao, and Xiao Peng. When you take Maoism in the context of China, it's not worse in magnitude of death--it just got weird. I think the early Chinese communists are probably the most likable of all the groups--before they came to power, but when they ran their own city. Shek's was a brutal nationalist regime and they were literally trying to kill all 100,000 of them. They tortured them and so forth. And this is while the Japanese invaded. I mean China's always been a horror. But the early Chinese communists are very likable. They transformed a very repressive and impoverished farming society, with women who were literally non-human, to a community of equals. They seemed seriously happy actually. It was more like a commune. But once they won power, things got strange. I think as much because the party leaders were more just statist control freaks than communists. I don't want to say totalitarian because everything in China seems totalitarian at all stages. I think Mao Tse Tung was trying to create a free state, but I think that his momentary campaigns of openness and expression were brutally countered by opposition within the party. Eventually I think he went insane. But the goal of the Cultural Revolution was to overthrow the communist party itself. Mao was less interested in economy than in destroying the state. In the end, one of his counter-revolutionary enemies took over and "freed" everyone by taking away their security and their freedom. The worst of all possible worlds. But China is an odd bird.

Mexico is an excellent example of the problems of capitalism in a nutshell. You've got A few empires: Aztec, Mayan, Zapotec, but also Mixtec peoples, Olmecs, Where the Zapatistas live, you've got Tojalobil, Tzetzals, Tzotsils, Cho'l indians. These are massive, advanced empires. The Aztecs were pretty aggressive and the Mayans were peaceful poets and artisans, but they never destroyed once another--a lot like Athens and Sparta. They were very technologically advanced. They had wheels, and even painted toys on wheels for their kids. The Aztecs had elaborate markets and a population of about 20,000,000. The Mayan civilization had collapsed by the time the Spanish came. Oddly, this helped the Mayans survive. The Aztec were killed all at once. The Mayans hit the Spanish tribe by tribe. For that reason they survived. The result was: the total destruction of Aztec architecture, the burning of their books (codices), all their assets were taken by Spain and they were forced upon pain of death to Christianize and stop speaking their languages. They intermarried with the Spanish and made Mestizo peoples--who we now call Mexican. Basically, in Mexico the whiter you are, the more booty you got from the Queen of Spain after the conquest. The Mayan sites took longer to occupy and more remained of their culture and people. As a result there are 28,000,000 fully ethnically and culturally indigenous peoples living in their historic homeland as they have for millennia. They do not even speak Spanish. They speaks hundreds of distinct indigenous languages.

The Spanish took most of their good land, and they have been desperately poor subsistence farmers since colonialism. Ever since, they have been literally slaving for mostly Mexican companies but some US companies too. From what I've seen, sometimes they didn't have so much as a chicken for months on end, living on corn and leaves. The only reason these people have been able to survive is because when Mexico was founded, they wrote an article in their constitution that they had permanent right to the little plots of land they were allowed to keep for their linguistic communities. One condition of NAFTA was that the indigenous would no longer necessarily have a claim to their remaining pieces of land.

Basically, this was a death sentence for the Mayans in the highlands and jungles of Chiapas. The indigenous who lived somewhat near cities could migrate. But they couldn't. If they weren't literally killed by soldiers for the land, they would die of starvation by the thousands very quickly. So with the help of a Mestizo ex-Maoist, they trained using CIA and US army manuals. They obtained a few guns and they made replicas out of wood. And on Jan. 1st 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect, they stormed 5 cities and occupied them. They were exceedingly careful not to harm any civilians. About 150 of them were killed by the Mexican army. Citibank sent the President of Mexico a memo: Get Rid of Them For 14 years they have survived a stand off with the Mexican Army and worse paramilitary fascists (who have murdered women and children in nearby towns for supporting them.) Unfortunately some of these murderers have been under orders of Mexican officers trained in Fort Benning, Georgia.

If these people didn't arm themselves against large capital interests, they'd be dead. But they have largely survived and thrived. They have a school (their children never went to school) and the kids don't have to work all day now. Women are treated equally (30% of the militia have always been women--even during the takeover) and they have no restrictions against gays--not even in their military. They have a system of governance that rotates power every--I believe--three weeks. But these people are so invisible that things like voting mean nothing. This is what I mean by poor. Not just poverty in the US, but deep, deep starvation-level poverty among civilizations raided during colonialism. They are so isolated and culturally removed that they are nothing but a remainder from a world that colonialism didn't fail to kill. They have an amazing philosophy and culture. But most people don't realize that they exist.

Outside the Zapatista strongholds, many of the other indigenous were forced into the cities by the millions, displacing the serf class mestizos, who then come to the United States. This is one of the major reasons why we've seen such a tremendous influx in "illegal immigration" since NAFTA--the 28 million indians it displaced. Then you have angry people in the US say "let them fix their own problems in that damn country!" But our government and "our" corporations had an enormous hand in creating the whole problem. Not because we're "evil" but because we're wholly unconcerned with the human factors. What there's Indians? They're getting in the way of business! Handle it, will ya?"

I totally agree that there needs to be interaction among classes. But also internationally among the non-world's-richest-1%. In other words, if 100,000 regular non-anthropology Ph.D. folks say "Hey, I wonder how this NAFTA thing is going to effect my friend Donett in Chiapas or my friend Carmela from Mexico City" we're 10 steps closer to standing up for one another when abuses take place. Not "voting with our dollars" as abstract customers who care about some abstract humanitarian concept, but "hey wait! I'm worried about Sam!" That's solidarity as opposed to charity and I think it's an excellent start.

Cheers!

[Ghost Dog]

141. Right on. ¡Salud! n/t

[conflictgirl]

184. Amazing post!

Thanks! :thumbsup:
That was really informative, do you have recommendations for further reading on the subject?

[readmoreoften]

202. Not on China but definitely on Mexico

If you go to Amazon and look up Zapatista and/or the writings of Subcomandante Marcos you'll get all you could ever need and more. The great thing to me is that they're feminists as well as queer and trans friendly!!! In fact I've seen Mexican drag queens sporting Zapatista gear which is pretty fantastic. You can also check out YouTube for videos of Subcomandante Marcos. The 60 minutes interview with Ed Bradley in 1994 is up. He is a poet and media professor (so the government says, he denies it of course) who went to live with the indigenous folks out in the jungles of Chiapas about 2 decades ago. Now he's their spokesperson (they don't speak Spanish for the most part) but not their "leader." There is no leader. Everyone's the leader. They're probably one of the only anarcho-socialist areas existing. The army has surrounded them for 14 years.

[bean fidhleir]

51. Actually, socialism works fine - where its members aren't "disappeared" or similar

The MCC is very successful --billions of euros every year-- and the turnover is almost nil among its nearly-100K owner-workers. Likewise all the credit unions, mutual insurance companies, and co-ops of various kinds--when they don't succeed, it's often because they can't figure out how to get past the predatory capitalism around them.

I have only once ever been a member of a credit union or co-op where the people working there weren't truly cheery and interested in being of service. (It was a credit union, and the board was later replaced en-masse after the executive was convicted and imprisoned for embezzlement).

[readmoreoften]

67. Precisely.

It's like a predator breaking into your house raping your mother and your wife and your father and slitting your children's throats and stealing everything you own and splitting it up amongst his family members--one of whom is a judge. And then at the trial, the predator's mother-in-law, who is holding your son's teddy bear and sipping out of your dead daughter's sippy cup, says to the judge, "Her family didn't work!" And then the judge says, "fine by me," as he adjusts your father's glasses on the tip of his nose, "make him pay the lawyers fees."

[bean fidhleir]

129. Actually, "collective farming" was the standard method for millennia

And it still is in many places, where the land is divided out every year (in different ways each time), and everyone does the best possible with their allocation. And the members of the community too disabled to work their allocation have it worked for them by other members of the community in a rota. And in some of those traditional "collective farms", the total of the produce is shared out among all so that nobody goes hungry in winter. It's a "community" thing, you see - people caring about one another's wellbeing.

[Two Americas]

135. of course

It still is to a large extent here in the U.S. That would be the "fundies and rednecks" who are feeding us all and who are living in sustainable cooperative agricultural communities and under terrific pressure from the various ideas and activities of the more enlightened suburbanites. "Who needs 'em!" I have seen expressed here often recently.

[bean fidhleir]

152. I think there's going to have to be a big revision of how things are done

The monocrop corpo farms and feedlots are going to have to be obliterated, and true family farms using intensive multicropping (co-cropping? I don't completely know the terms) next to or even in population centers will have to become the norm. There's just no other way to restore the vital "lungs of the planet" forest cover AND have food enough for all.

[NashVegas]

189. Then Came Enclosure

And now we have a different sort of enclosure, with intellectual copyrights.

[Ghost Dog]

190. Absofuckinglutely.

Get the fuckers out of our Commons. Now. :mad:

[Two Americas]

201. correct

Thanks for that. Too few people know the history of that.

[Pavulon]

18. What about a Janitor with a PHD

Collectives actually enforce skill binding. Blacksmith cant just quit, who would do his job? However here the gal with a degree in particle physics can push a broom if she tires of sub atomic particles.

Marxism is a failed notion. start here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge

[T.Ruth2power]

21. Please

Your equating the Khmer Rouge with the idea of collectives is insane. Even Wiki knows better:

From your link:

The relation between the massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians. In 1984 Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia argued that it is "untenable" to assert that the Khmer Rouge would not have won but for U.S. intervention and that while the bombing did help Khmer Rouge recruitment, they "would have won anyway." <3> However, more recently historians have cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965-1973) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. Historian Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen have used a combination of sophisticated satellite mapping, recently unclassified data about the extent of bombing activities, and peasant testimony, to argue that there was a strong correlation between villages targeted by U.S. bombing and recruitment of peasants by the Khmer Rouge. Kiernan and Owen argue that "Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began." <4> In his 1996 study of Pol Pot's rise to power, Kiernan argued that "Pol Pot's revolution would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilisation of Cambodia" and that the U.S. carpet bombing "was probably the most significant factor in Pol Pot's rise."

So you might consider how Capitalism manifest those skulls and how the US imperial forces set into mtion, quite purposefully, the very things you are wrongly attributing to collective ideals. The propaganda industry has worked wonders. Your selective interpretation and complete misreading of history is a prime example.

Of course that paragraph above barely scratches the surface.

[Pavulon]

24. You are not talking collective activity, you are talking

marxist socialist government crap. Khmer embodies all the aspects of class based reorganization and reeducation.

there is no functioning example of a system that can replace the system used in western europe and the us in the world. Never seen it.

That all died when the politburo dissolved.

When you get around to it please apply marx's concepts to the US. Will take more than google.

Because I am an elitist I could do it for you but I want to see your ideas. Not some one else's.

[Hannah Bell]

33. no, the essay said nothing about reeducation camps, socialism,

marx, or anything like it.

The writer said the "commissar class," the upper middle class of functionaries, talks a good game but essentially their role is to keep the lower classes in line & cut off protest & change that would benefit those lower down the scale.

& it's true. They're a buffer class between the super-rich (the owners) & the rest.

Some people drag out stalin's rotted corpse on any excuse.

[Pavulon]

34. commissar is a soviet term

what the hell do you expect.

So this is the hate your manager essay? The entire concept of what it says is wrong.

There are super rich here who dont own shit, except market positions that made them rich.

If you bought oil contracts in 02 with 10 grand on margin you would never need to work again.

The old concepts of wealth and class no longer apply here.

!Still waiting for the op or any poster to adapt marx to the us or any EU nation.!

[Hannah Bell]

46. The writer criticized existing power arrangements. You transformed the criticism

into support for reeducation camps. Common tactic.

[Pavulon]

48. Soviet language and all hack no substance

not one suggestion of a system to replace the existing one. Typical anti-cap bs.

The op (or any poster since) has yet to define the class system in the us.

Can we start there?

[Hannah Bell]

52. The writer said nothing about reeducation camps, marx, or

the terms you throw about. Can we start there?

[Pavulon]

57. Lets start with class.

can one poster define this in modern terms in the US. Not proles such shit. We will ignore commissar a soviet term.

What class is:

union member
college educated
machinist
business co owner
investor
contributor to democratic party
contributor to Habitat for Humanity

and WHY.

What defines class now that fortunes can be made without employees or material ownership. You could make 10 million tomorrow in speculation and employ no one.

[readmoreoften]

70. Really. I can make $10 million tomorrow with nothing but speculation.

Owning nothing and no employees? Wow. Sounds like something on a cable ad.

Class is not a Stalinist term. It's a term from feudalism.

[Pavulon]

77. Cash (yours or borrowed)

etrade account with requirements met to trade futures on margin. Soros and his peers have made vast fortunes on this form of speculation.

[Hannah Bell]

107. Perhaps you should look deeper into Soros' background, rather than relying on the

fairy-tale narratives of the media.

[Pavulon]

119. Two words

hedge fund. Asian currency.

[Hannah Bell]

146. & before that? just a poor little bumpkin?

besides which, soros's victory was not victimless.

[Hannah Bell]

84. do those people have to sell their time to live, or do they live by buying other

people's time?



"You could make 10 million tomorrow in speculation and employ no one."

Yes, I could do it at vegas, too. It's a passingly rare occurrence, otherwise the house would go out of business; regardless of occassional big payouts, the house wins overall.

But if you trace back the money i win by gambling, it leads to some people forced to sell their time to others, & some being in a position to buy.

[Pavulon]

89. You can speculate on anything.

it can be done ethically. You can speculate on interest rates. Point is that it does not require you to employ or own. Just to pay taxes.

commission on trades could be likened to a cut but gambling is just that, playing chance. Investment can be done with some knowledge.

Like when oil was $20 a bbl..Not a hard call.

[Hannah Bell]

100. I disagree that it can be done ethically. The present speculation

on grain futures, for example, directly causes death, riots, & political chaos.

[Pavulon]

118. Speculate on interest rates value invest

you can let your money work for you. If you have a 401k or pension it is already invested in something.

[Hannah Bell]

150. "value invest" = speculate on necessary commodities =

drive up the price = starve poor people, make others lose their homes, cars, schooling.

[Pavulon]

159. Value invest =

traditional investing in companies. long term balance sheet driven. technical investing statistics driven, lots of ways to loose or make money.

[Hannah Bell]

168. you're the poster who was advocating for commodities on another

branch of this thread, i believe.

[Ghost Dog]

106. What's working class? Bageant puts it thus:

And just what is working class?

Well, working class is not being able to choose what kind of work you do -- when you work -- how much you get paid, when you take a vacation -- whether you have benefits -- or when you take a walk because the man doesn't need you anymore. The majority of Americans work under exactly those conditions. Or worse.

The truth us that about 65% of the American work force is working class, not middle class. It has nothing to do with how much they earn. It's about power over their own daily lives.

/... http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/breaking-the-be.html

[martymar64]

171. Then try the fascist term, KAPO or the plantation term OVERSEER

Whatever term, it still; describes those that work for the aristocracy to keep their boot on the neck of the worker.

[Two Americas]

217. nonsense

What ever are you talking about?

How would why of those criteria have anything to do with the OP, the discussion the others are having, let alone the discussion you seem to be intent on forcing on the rest of us?

You seem stuck on that word "commissar" and are still ignoring how the author used it.

Those who have to work for a living are the working class. Those who don't are not. How is that? Obviously, no categorization of people could ever be perfect and there will always be exceptions.

[bean fidhleir]

53. No, it's a RUSSIAN term taken from French

Jeez!

[Pavulon]

59. USSR and communism

common use under soviet era.


\ˈkä-mə-ˌsär\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Russian komissar, from German Kommissar, from Medieval Latin commissarius
Date:
1918

1 a: a Communist party official assigned to a military unit to teach party principles and policies and to ensure party loyalty b: one that attempts to control public opinion or its expression2: the head of a government department in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1946

[Hannah Bell]

68. If so, it would appear that bagneant is comparing the US functionaries

with their soviet equivalents in a derogatory rather than laudatory way, contra your thesis that the essay is supportive of the russian experiment.

But "commissar" has long passed into general useage.

[Two Americas]

216. that makes no sense

The author is complaining about the class of people he is calling the "commissar" class. You respond as though he were advocating communism, because the word commissar is a "soviet term." WTF?

[Indenturedebtor]

215. Bullshit bullshit bullshit

It's been the middle class throughout history that has started the revolutions.

I have climbed and groveled and clawed and fought like hell to get to be lower middle class. And I'm not part of the damn problem. I have people at work that I depend on in order for me to do my job. If I didn't do my job and sell for the company they wouldn't have a job. It's called a codependent relationship.

I'm not middle management, I'm just higher on the food chain after years of struggle.

I've cleaned toilets, I've sold vacuum cleaners door to door, I've even sold blood to get those last few dollars for the rent. If I work my ass off and get a ton of good sales this year I could potentially (extremely unlikely) make it to upper middle class and finally pay off some of my outrageous debt. I will still be a progressive socialist.

This asshat blogger either forgets, or knows nothing about, history or modern politics.

[The_Casual_Observer]

37. What's wrong with a collective farm? Oksy then, you first.

[eridani]

169. Kerala (one of the Communist success stories) went with land distribution instead

--much to the overall improvement of life in its population. The example of Kerala pretty conclusively proves that Communists who don't run one-party states get a lot done for common people.

[Silent3]

205. Do you recommend that we all drive delivery trucks?

Perhaps we all have to drive a delivery truck one day per week? Or should it be three days? Can we trade a day of truck driving for a day of ditch digging to mix it up a bit, and to have some freedom of choice?

If I'm off the mark at what you're getting at, don't blame me. There's not a lot of clarity being offered, only incoherent anger at people with more money and education, with a nice dollop of conspiratorial paranoia about "the system" thrown in.

[Greyhound]

94. Even that reply exposes your ingrained bias. n/t

[Pavulon]

5. Owning your time

having the resources or training that allow you to choose when and where to work, or if work is what you want.

Want to go back to school to be a vet, chef, pilot, or engineer, then that should be a reasonable thing.

Money does not peg to this. Choosing what to spend it on does. cars, expensive house, bullshit, choice.

apartment, cheap car, save, choice.

at some point we all have choices. That does not degrade those who have not had the same choices though or have had misfortune.

That is my definition of wealth and what I work towards.

[T.Ruth2power]

9. How do you

get your food?

[Pavulon]

12. barter for time, exchange time on paper

money is essentially a means of placing value on time and commodity value. So an ear of corn from the farmers market and the effort to produce it is traded for the time given with the knowledge it takes to set up and design equipment that is used to manufacturer products like tractors or turbine blades. Some one else takes the system I produce to make an item of value, etc..

Really simple once you peel back the layers.

[T.Ruth2power]

22. The layers are very real even if unseen

The average world citizen has 500 energy slaves and the average American, 5500 energy slaves (we should reduce these
numbers by the efficiency of the engines we are using, to be fully consistent). No wonder we are intoxicated
by it.

How many energy slaves doe the upper-middle class US citizen possess you think? At what cost to the world?

[Pavulon]

25. By attempting to operate in that construct I would

play into the idea it is valid.

Define classes in the US.

[bobbolink]

60. I wish I had the choice to have an apartment.

That would be very nice, indeed, for millions of us.

[Hannah Bell]

76. No one owns their time who has to sell it to survive. The only "choice"

involved is for how much, & that choice is constrained by lots of factors, starting with accidents of birth.

[Pavulon]

78. But choices can be made that change the value

of the time you sell. Unless you inherit wealth this is the basic constraints applied to all of us.

Depending on where you live you can opt out and take the minimum from the government or you can use resources like pell grants to follow a track that allows you more freedom over your time.

Risk plays a part as does geography. But in the context of the US we do hove more influence over this than some others.

[Hannah Bell]

85. Certainly choices can change the value of your time. So can

dumb luck, winning the lottery, & who you have sex with.

The fact remains: most people live & die having to sell their time to others, & for a price that won't even cover their retirement.

2/3 of americans rely on social security for 50% or more of their retirement income. 1/3 relies on it for 100%.

It could be they're all stupid sob's who made bad choices, but since the percentage holds pretty steady through time (before SS it was family, the poorhouse & the workhouse), i think not.

[Pavulon]

93. Not stupidity..

SS should be there, it is your money. If you work long enough to fund it, it is yours. 401k helps many.

I cant say why people do what they do, only that the opportunity exists to do more or less.

You can cash out and move to Bali. Good or bad, you can make that call.

[Hannah Bell]

99. Bali is expensive.

There is opportunity to do more or less in any socio-political system. Kruschev was a peasant from the provinces who rose to be supreme leader. Imperial china sponsored exams open to everyone; if you passed, you got a place in the chinese bureaucracy & the chance to gain the ear of the emperor. Madame du Barry, who had the ear of Louis 15 on policy, was born a peasant. The military has historically been a channel for power & wealth in many systems; e.g. Chavez in Venezuela is a poor boy who made good. Plenty of examples of talent in the arts & sciences coming from the hinterlands too.

There's always room at the top in hierarchical systems.

So what?

You seem to think the "chance" to be rich & powerful is the best humanity can do.

I don't.

[Pavulon]

102. Chance is not the major factor

using one offs fails. Finding examples of high per capita incomes works. While not a direct peg income strongly correlates to health and longevity.

Obviously we can improve our system.

Luxembourg 68810 76040
Norway 60890 66530
Switzerland 55320 57230
Denmark 48330 51700
Iceland 48570 50580
Ireland 41140 45580
United States 43560 44970
Sweden 40910 43580
Netherlands 39340 42670
Finland 37530 40650
United Kingdom 37750 40180
Austria 37190 39590
Belgium 36140 38600
Japan 38950 38410
High income: OECD 36506 38120
Germany 34870 36620
France 34600 36550
High income 34962 36487
Canada 32590 36170
Australia 33120 35990

[Hannah Bell]

104. What is that list supposed to prove?

It's meaningless, unless you're suggesting we should all move to luxembourg & become bankers & functionaries for bankers.

[Pavulon]

122. Access to resources

allows freedom of time. Access to disposable income to invest is critical to financial success. It is not meant to prove anything.

[Hannah Bell]

148. i don't see the point of posting it, then. what resources? what time?

whose time? no one works for shit wages in luxembourg? no one in luxembourg eats chocolate picked by 3rd-world peasants?

what's your point?

[earth mom]

110. Sounds like you're the dude Joe was talking about. Truth hurts doesn't it? In DENIAL much?

:eyes:

[The_Casual_Observer]

173. I went to college got a job & sent my kid to college, Guilty as charged.

No denial here. Your response was almost as stupid as the OP.

[Dr Fate]

126. I dont know much about Marxism, and I dont know what the author wants from me.

I think you and I might agree that people who write things like this fail to take into acccount that most people are just trying to get along in life based on the game that was handed to them.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. Essentially, you appear to be advocating Maoism, or something similar to it.

I invite you to consider where that lead.

Western society may or may not be able to function without a top 1% of capitalists. It certainly can't function without doctors, lawyers, academics and so on.

[readmoreoften]

23. Oh big deal. What we do is no better than the Cultural Revolution.

"I invite you" to look at what China has become: a capitalist totalitarian state as opposed to a communist one.

Maoism: oops, a 100 million teenagers beat up and/or killed a few tens of thousands of people in the streets. The French Resistance did as much in the streets to the Vichy after WWII.

Multinational Capitalism: gosh I didn't even notice that 1 million Iraqis are dead. Wow, a million East Timorese are dead. Wow, Kissinger bombed Cambodia. How many dead there? I don't know because I'm too busy eating my gold-encrusted truffle hamburger. Add it to the 2 million dead communist Vietnamese. Oh Guatemalan death squads trained to torture to get rid of the Arbenz government for the benefit of the United Fruit Company? Sure, why not. Hey I don't like this "Allende" commie asshole, let's back the fascists and along with ITT and Ford we'll put Pinochet in power. And he'll round up tens of thousands of people in a football stadium like cattle and start shooting. Then he'll throw others out of airplanes alive just to "show his power." Sounds great. How many millions are we up to?

And why would he, in particular, be "advocating Maoism"? Maybe he's advocating Bolivarianismo? Maybe he's advocating Leninism (which is more accurate, so it seems.) Or maybe he's advocating Zapatismo, which was begun by Maoists and Liberation Theologists.

The whole thing about socialism is that it takes for granted the notion that you and I and the African kid who had his throat slashed to get your neighbor's wife's diamond ring are all completely equal. Unlike capitalism, which treats those who didn't have the good fortune to be born wealthy as pure instruments. And for that it will always be an ethically inferior system. It kills just as many people as any weirdo, paranoiac communist purge of the mid 20h century, just with total dispassion, like an enormous factory...

[Pavulon]

26. All the isms are human constructs

and require participation. You are not required to work, you are not required to attend university, you are not compelled to work in your skill set.

our isim is less destructive than the others you listed. certainly more sustainable.

completely equal is fantasy. equality based on what?

social structures have existed since time began, they exist in nature, and the isms are just variations on control.

[readmoreoften]

35. If you were on the "unequal" side, it wouldn't be a theoretical question to you.

But you're not, so you can afford to wax philosophical and pretend to be ponderous about the matter. Let me spell out equality and what it means:

It means that the kid next store to me who can't finish high school because he has to work to help his parents pay rent could've found the cure for cancer or the fourth dimension. But he and 5000 others like him won't so some kid whose dad is a lawyer whose dad was an oil man whose dad was a banker can go to school to be a useless stock broker.

It terms rich-folk might not understand: it means y'alls ain't any better that no one else.

All this pseudo-philosophy and these appeals to "nature." You're saying things that mean nothing. All the isms are human constructs? Yes? So? Your point? Yes, social structures have existed since the beginning of time And many of them weren't hierarchical and none of them were global capitalism. Industrial capitalism itself is only 150 years old for god sakes.

Totally equal exists in plenty of cultures as a known truth that a culture needs to work hard at in order to employ it in the operation of running a population. It's not even a goal here. People don't even have the slightest concept of what it might mean. They think it means "identical." (No, identical is what people look like when they walk into corporate headquarters.) It doesn't mean that every person is identical. Just the opposite. It means that every person is comprised of pure unquantifiable alterity--therefore, let's just start at equal. But we don't. We start at class structure. We start with predicatives.

This system doesn't work either. It just works for you and me. It works because we have slaves that we're allowed to forget about. Maybe that's a good definition: being equal means that you don't have the right to have slaves--even anonymous ones.

[Pavulon]

38. I've been on that side

and moved over. So I paid my way through school, had to take time off to be deployed, but I dont look down on someone who cant do the same.

There is no system that guarantees equality for all people everywhere.

The only system I am aware of where totally equal existed was Sparta. A warrior class was totally equal, but supported by slaves. Real ones, not made up ones like we are pining over here. Not a great model.

I am not aware of any large population that controlled resources without some type of central power (king, councils, etc).

Anarchy is not possible and Marxism's looked great in the book, tanked in reality.

I have worked with my "slaves". Traveled in LA to set up machines that are used to make everything from jet parts, weapons, to traffic signals.

These people would be poor if I had not been there. However by providing a means to manufacture stuff and skills, I create wealth. A machinist is paid more than a guy picking fruit.

I worked with a guy in Brazil who had nothing but some english and will power 5 years ago. He is doing well at empresa (Embraer). Next time you fly a regional jet remember who made it.

[readmoreoften]

54. Great for you. You're a token and an inspiration.

You're probably also a white guy. I worked my way through 3 grad degrees. Big whoop. I know how lucky I am. I knew a guy from Argentina who worked his way to grad school from cleaning toilets. And he's still a hardcore socialist.

[Pavulon]

63. socialisim is not marxisim

it is not communisim. don't tie them together. Paid my way through a "cow college" with NG time and shit jobs. I earned my POV. I do not disrespect yours.

GI bill could be called socialism. So could a pell grant. Those are good things.

I create wealth. By providing tools to people they improve their lives. Not complex, want to cut something over and over exactly the same, give me a call. People pay my employer, I take a cut. All parties willing, no slaves. Cheap dollar good business. Pretty simple.

[readmoreoften]

79. Socialism was invented by Marx and synonymous with communism until it was later separated.

There would be no student loans or GI bills without Marx. Those ideas were incomprehensible. Later the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks fought and so forth and through that fight democratic socialism became defined as moving towards the goal of communism/equality by including the merchant class.

But like the term "liberal", socialism has hundreds of meanings. One of the those meanings is synonymous with communism (and commonly used by Mao, Marx, and Lenin.)

I personally like the socialism put forth by Upton Sinclair as a general rule, the resources would be shared, but things that you make--art, literature, books, clothing, entertainment--would be sold. The problem is that late capitalism has put us in a strange place where answers aren't clear, although wrongs still are. (Wrongs as in: hey, one company ought not buy up all the water rights in a Bolivian town and force people to die of thirst for the same water sources they've always used.)

I owned a business as well--for 6 years. I don't understand the concept of creating wealth. You get handed dollars from people, so their wealth goes to you. But it sounds like you're creating tools, which is a noble profession--you're creating something real. So what you are is an actual worker who is being compensated well, brought in on the deal, and you're happy.

But that's not what's going on at Exxon Mobil, Walmart, Monsanto, and so forth. And the problem with capitalism is when they take your specs and send them to Indonesia to be made by people who live--literally--on the train tracks because they are exploitable.

Sorry for being offensive before.

[Pavulon]

87. George Lakoff

is a good resource to why this is so complicated. Intentional misuse and historical linkages of terms make words like socialism mean something different to an American than to a swede. National Socialism = Socialism is a prime example.

My biggest issue with traditional class views is that they tend to trap the people who they define. I have met guys who are ten times smarter and better at the job I started out with say "I can't go to state and get an degree" (the company will pay for it) or "Fuck it, I am just a .." somewhere someone put a limit in this persons head and they cant clear it.

The one good thing is knowledge, they cant take what is in my head, they cant reproduce that in china.

Manufacturing is cool because you can actually see a product. We deal with a large aircraft manufacturer in Brazil. They have made improvements over the last 10 years, (i have been at the company 9 or so), so their product has improved. Very safe aircraft common in our fleet. With the current fuel mess we will probably see more of them.

Less material waste, less time to make it. I can honestly say they paid for the systems with recovered time and material.

I consider that a creation of wealth. But that is a complex subject.

Look forward to more discussions, not one I get to have that often.

[Hannah Bell]

112. "class views is that they tend to trap the people who they define."

"I have met guys who...say "I can't go to state and get an degree" (the company will pay for it) or "Fuck it, I am just a .." somewhere someone put a limit in this persons head and they cant clear it."

Yes, "someone" did - but it wasn't any marxist. The system works by inculcating ideas like "some people are just smarter, prettier, more hard-working...they deserve more. If you have little, it shows you're dumber, lazier, worth less....".

To be aware of how the system works is a way of freeing yourself from those constraints & nasty ghosts in your head. People should be exposed when they're young; it's an inoculation.

"The one good thing is knowledge, they cant take what is in my head, they cant reproduce that in china."

They have no knowledge in China? Lots of people went & got degrees in computer science during the tech boom. Lots of cutting edge knowledge, didn't prevent salaries & jobs from going south when the boom collapsed & outsourcing began. Seems that "knowledge" that used to be worth 100K is worth only 25K in India.

Perhaps "they" can't take your knowledge, but they can render it much less valuable in the market where you sell your time.

[Pavulon]

121. Knowledge is not degrees or smarts

it is applied experience and handed down from person to person. I learned from mentors and by screwing things up. My experience can not be sold by china. The products are well beyond what they currently make. Even if they can clone hardware, they can not clone knowledge.

If they could they would. They can kill off my ability to mentor a person if they outsource the "entry level" work to a faceless person who has no vested interest in the success of my business.

That is a threat, those jobs are where innovators are trained.

H1B is certainly misused. My field overlays with tech industry and outsourced doofuses have diminished the quality of service.

[readmoreoften]

140. You're probably safe, but here's where the problem comes in...

The problem comes in when a company says--you know what? Forget quality. We'd make more branding our product well and selling junk. This is the biggest issue I think. It sounds like you're in one of those rare industries where it's important not to make junk. But trust me, for most people their craftsmanship is replaced with the making of junk.

It's even an issue at universities. It doesn't matter whether your teaching is good or your work is innovative. Will you win awards for the university from organizations that perpetuate the status quo? Will you teach the maximum number of students for the minimum amount of money? You're under pressure to create courses that are students will like: not too difficult, contemporary, snappy new ideas. The problem is in order to get to point B sometimes you need to get to the very humdrum point A. And talking about "A"s that's what the students want, if they don't think they can get an A, they'll drop the course. So it's difficult to really teach something of quality, something outside the normal difficulties, or even something really important because everyone is concerned with making the most money and getting what they pay for.

You're really lucky. Sounds like a great job.

[Hannah Bell]

149. no one said it was limited to degrees. the chinese have mentors

too. they also have foreign capital. that's the source of the chinese boom.

i don't see your point, you seem to be talking in circles.

there's nothing special about the us, its "mentors," its political system, or its economy.

[Pavulon]

162. Bottom line

in what I do there are three large players. Germany, US, and Japan. We make equipment used by aerospace companies and other specialized manufacturers. China has not developed the technology to do this on an industrial scale yet. They are where japan was in 50's. The Germans, traditionally, are the benchmark. They have been for 80 years. Because of economic trends their very high end equipment is now much more expensive than the high end product we make. They still make innovative systems.

Germany has a large technical base in material handling and tooling and you just don't clone that.

[Hannah Bell]

164. japan's economy challenged the US by the 80s - 30 years.

anything can be "cloned," given the capital backing.

and anything can be taken down when the capital is withdrawn.

smart people, no capital = 0.

dumb people, plenty of capital = more than 0.

[Hannah Bell]

116. So...

"All parties willing, no slaves."

If you win the lottery for a cool billion, you'll continue doing exactly what you do now, for the sheer love of the work.

Right.

[Pavulon]

124. No I buy the company I work for

and continue innovating in the field I work in. Just spend more time in development and less in implementation.

After dropping off the grid for two years.

[Hannah Bell]

151. thus proving my point. you wouldn't continue as a wage slave, you'd

prefer to be master = non-free choice.

[Pavulon]

161. I am free to choose my job.

I can pick up and move to Brazil tomorrow and make my salary tax free, and have a company make sure all the visa and taxes work in my favor. I enjoy what I do. I own part of the small specialized company I work for. As do my co workers.

I would never put the word slave next to any part of my life. My wife, works in a specialized medical field. Both of us had jack shit 15 years ago.

I am comfortable saying neither of us fuck people over for a living.

I set the terms of how my time is spent. I would buy my employer because I enjoy what I do.

[Hannah Bell]

165. if you're so free to choose, why aren't you ceo of the company, instead of a hired hand?

[Pavulon]

174. Ever written a review?

CEO is bullshit paperwork job. I work for a living.

[Hannah Bell]

180. but - if you got a billion, you'd buy the company & run it.

why not just "choose" to do it now, before you get too old?

[T.Ruth2power]

199. So this is a matter of choice?

Is it true then that all of the "downtrodden" are making bad choices?

Is this some character flaw in the poor and needy?

Is it then by extension possible that entire groups of people and/or nations, who happen to be oppressed and destitute, can be said to collectively make bad choices?

I'm interested in hearing more about this.

[Hannah Bell]

88. Then why is the supply of those necessary people purposefully limited?

If they're so important, there should be more of them, & we should open the phoney barriers to entry, right?

Free college tuition to anyone who can pass a test, for starters.

[Pavulon]

95. Agree

everyone should have access to state schools if they score in. College is not an education alone, access to mentors was invaluable to me. What I thought was a part time summer job turned into a good job.

[Hannah Bell]

120. But if there were more doctors, lawyers, etc.

They would not command high wages. Thus the supply is deliberately limited, by many barriers to entry that masquerade as other things.

"Doctor," contrary to popular belief, has not always been a high-wage profession. That's a post-war development.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

160. Sorry, I forgot I was talking to mostly Americans.

Here in the UK, university education isn't free, but it's much cheaper. And that's certainly a much better way of doing it, and cheaper still would be better still.

OTOH, I can also see merit to the argument that taxing people who will never go to university to pay for other people to do so is unjust; I can see arguments in favour of a "graduate tax", which is something that's sometimes been mooted in the UK. That said, while I don't *know* of any strong arguments against it, I suspect there *are* some.

[bobbolink]

127. I will accept your invitation. CUBA has LOTS of doctors, and a good health care system.

The Cuban doctors AREN'T in the top 1% of their society.

I invite you to question the assumptions you're making, based on the propaganda we've been getting in this country for the last few generations.

Capitalism isn't flawless.

Really.

It isn't.

[Pavulon]

6. Cambodia killed them all, did not work out that well

so a resounding been there done that can be expressed.

[sam sarrha]

11. i met one of them.... she explained how they have 2-3 yr waiting lists for the right preschool that

will get them into the chain of schools all the way to harvard, etc so they dad to plan the conception if their child.

sh said she was making a 1/4 million dollars at her job and couldn't stomach it any more and quit, her mother had her committed to a mental hospital.

she told me some really strange stories..

that remote area seemed to be a hideout for people escaping the Elitists, in the 1980's i met a young guy, very educated, very...well, its hard to describe.. he told us about the politicians and pedophilia, child prostitution, prostitution, perversions and high politicians. he had tried to commit suicide 3 times as a child

later i discovered what it was he was talking about
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/boys_town_abuse.htm dont flame me for the link they all say the same thing

the boys town prostitution ring

[readmoreoften]

13. I've got news for him. The people who are university deans and publishers aren't middle class.

As a working class kid with 3 graduate degrees and a whole lot of debt who taught college for dirt wages, let me tell you here and now that the people who get ahead--particularly in the large cities--aren't just "people with degrees" but people who are so wealthy they don't have to work and group up with massive amounts of privilege.

My working class students never got placed out of college. It was my wealthy students who could afford all the right clothes, the expensive salons, and who could spend all their time doing high-level internships because they didn't have to work. That doesn't happen from Mom and Dad making $80K a year a piece.

Unless you have a Ph.D. in the sciences or math--which is unusual if you're poor because your high school math teachers are likely to be very overworked and undertrained and you're not likely to have good equipment at your school--you'll be more likely to make low wages.

My partner is 3 years out of a 4 year degree she funded. Now she's 60 grand in debt and works at Starbucks (and is happy to have a stable job). Last job she had was cleaning carpets. She worked her ass off in school, but she couldn't take the internships and she couldn't afford the equipment she needed to be successful.

The problem is that along side of the doctor's kids, you've got the filthy rich taking up ALL the jobs. I know too many rich kids who work "for dignity" in jobs they consider humble (assistant director of an arts center) that a working class kid would kill to have. They are also lowering the wages because they "don't need the money" and take honorariums and stipends. It's god awful.

Wait... did he say 3/4 of a million dollars????? Who makes that?

[malaise]

27. Nice article

We describe them as the house slaves in these former plantation islands.

[MedleyMisty]

176. That's interesting

I describe myself as a house slave at my current job because I have some autonomy, regular hours, and pretty decent benefits and I'm not suicidal like I was when I was a field hand - which is how I refer to my time at Arby's.

[Buzz Clik]

30. Geez. The only people who count are people who get dirty at work and don't earn much money?

Christ, the focus on whom to hate gets broader every day.

[Xenotime]

114. Sounds like immigrants to me.

[Hannah Bell]

153. immigrants are the only people who get their hands dirty?

[blindpig]

203. Not the only people who count

But rather the people who count most, as they are most of the people. That is democracy, yes?

Calling it hatred is a mark of your defensiveness, the author scores!

It is frustration with a group of people who deny the reality of class relationship for scraps from the rich man's table and a reassuring pat on the head from Masa.

[Hydra]

36. The top 1-5% can't control the entire population themselves

They need another 10-15% to help do it, along with about 40% dupes among the "proles" who think they belong to the the "outer party" class.

In short, they couldn't enslave us if most of us didn't help them to do it. The illusion of economic/class mobility allows them to have that majority- most people think that if they are good little slaves, that they will be allowed a bigger portion of the pie.

The reason the elite laugh at us is because we think the way they tell us to. Instead of asking for a bigger share of the pie, we should be asking where all the other pies are! The "Elite" eat over half our pie, but then they smirk and go eat all of the other ones too, while we feel grateful that they shared any with us.

Minds out of the box, people. They're selling us a load of shit and calling it "reality."

[Pavulon]

42. Make your own pie!

nymex will allow you to trade oil futures on margin. Simple, will it go up or down. If so how much money did you make or loose.

It is a money engine.

You dont have to be white, dont have to be rich, even a prole can make massive fortunes. And if you live in florida and fuck up, you can go bankrupt and keep your house.

[conspirator]

72. The stock exchange can be manipulated (by guess who?). Trusting your money to brookers will not

make you rich. Remember enron.

[Pavulon]

80. Dont invest in companies

invest in simple commodities, do not use a broker. (not telling you what to do obviously) Investing with research allows a person to make enough money to control more of their time.

Take risk according to your situation. Just saying many individuals have made vast fortunes this way.

[Hannah Bell]

101. Funny how we're not all rich, then.

But oh, i forget. "Wealth" requires a contrast with "poverty".

[Hydra]

209. The Uber-rich are more than just greedy

I puzzled long and hard as to why they stand in the way of many innovations- clean, cheap renewable energy comes to mind. After all, the more enriched a society is, the more everyone benefits, right?

Not in their minds. They feel that their importance would be diminished were people allowed into their private domains, having access to their lifestyle. In short, they have a massive inferiority complex. They have to feed that black hole 24/7 with the belief that they are better than us.

Rather pathetic, if you ask me. I guess they are afraid that if we were given the choice of allowing us to live, they think we would do to them what they are doing to us- exterminate them.

[JackRiddler]

40. The spectacular misrepresentations here!

You can't talk about the class war in America - the real one, the one waged from the top down and celebrated daily as the image of wealth and virtue - without inspiring 101 irrational replies about how you're

a Commie
a Maoist
a totalitarian
an anti-intellectual
jealous of the rich
jealous of the happy
someone who wants everyone to starve
someone who hates the educated
someone who wants to reduce America to third world poverty
a lazy bastard looking for a hand-out
out to rip off your betters who earned their station through hard work

etc. etc. etc.

Now go on.

[Pavulon]

44. Can we define the classes in the US

I am having a real hard time figuring that out..

I really want to see, is there a survey online.

1) Income
2) Education
3) Vehicle Driven
4) Brand of Coffee
5) accent used
6) net worth
7) what is on my ipod?
8) osX or intel
9) hourly or salary
10) dirty hands after work. (seen guys who make 250k with dirty hands before..)

Really the application of the essay to a western nation will be fascinating.

[JackRiddler]

56. Hmmm...

"I am having a real hard time figuring that out.."

That says more about you than about the existence of class, which under capitalism is defined by one's functional relation to the economic machine (owner, manager, servant, wage worker, slave, spare part, pariah).

1, 2 and 6 on your list might be relevant; the rest are "culture war" distractions.

[bean fidhleir]

58. Why not inform yourself rather than expose your ignorance.

I'll suggest 3 authors: the late C. Wright Mills, Bill Domhoff, and Robert A. Dahl. All world-class political scientists at major schools (Columbia, UCSC, and Yale respectively). THEY can tell you all about classes in the USA.

[Pavulon]

62. Read dahl, will read others

dahl does not outline class system but power distribution in advanced economies. Certainly not along the contents of the OP's article.

wealth is not, in my view, a direct peg to traditional class.

access to political influence may be.

All subjective, but not a simple system.

[bean fidhleir]

64. What do you think classes ARE if not groupings of power distribution?

If you've read Dahl on democracy, then you know he talks about the unequal distribution of resources as an effective barrier to democracy or even polyarchy, and discusses classism and classes in that context.

[Pavulon]

73. New Haven

class and power distribution does not equate to Marxist ideals. That study would be radically different in the South or SoCal.

[bean fidhleir]

111. I'm not a marxist and don't see the world through the filter of that dogma

Domhoff disputes Dahl's analysis of New Haven, but to me the dispute is a forest/trees issue; one of granularity, not fundamental disagreement.

Classes are about where the power resides, and can be sliced along many different dimensions and with a choice of granularity: coarse as Mills did and Domhoff does, or fine as Dahl generally prefers.

The two "universal" classes are: who must live on their own labor -vs- who has the power to live on the labor of others.

They're not truly universal: the late anthro Marvin Harris noted that it's not until society reaches the tribal level that the non-working class begins to appear.

Up through Big Man societies, everyone works and everyone shares. Classes in those societies are mere groups based on role/skill rather than "importance": gatherer, hunter, toolmaker, shaman. In a Big Man society, the "ruler", the Big Man, holds his position by working *harder* than anyone else and by persuading other people to work when needed even though they might not want to. (We can see a survival of the Big Man in a tribal-level society: the Romany, where the leader is even *called* the "big man" - "Baro Rom".)

Something happens at the level of tribal complexity. There begins to be enough separation between members of the tribe that psychopaths can often gain power rather than be recognized and killed. This was a problem that was recognized by Publius Valerius Poplicola and resulted in the republican law that anyone attempting to make himself king could be lawfully killed by the first citizen to get close enough.

And the problem only gets worse as the society grows in size. There's no reason why it has to be that way; it's just that the psychopaths who gain power make sure that the law doesn't allow the getting rid of any but the most violent of their fellow deviants.

[readmoreoften]

49. It's funny. Sometimes I forget that it has nothing to do with logic.

It's people protecting their right to have their daddy's money. Daddy gave it to me! I earned it!

[Rosemary2205]

41. K and R

There are people in this world that no matter what, they just feel they have it harder in life than anyone else on the planet. I made a joke the other day about how if Starbucks goes belly up then we know America is screwn beyond all hope. Because people will lose the house before they give up the latte.

I saw on ABC world news the other day of a woman putting groceries in her car talking about how bad the prices are now. She was putting a big 12 pack of Bounty brand paper towels in the back of an Expedition as she talked about how awful she was having it. They cut to those now famous pics of the "average" family in several countries around the world and what they eat in one week. They pointed out all the junk and convenience food in the stack of richer countries, and then showed what a family in Chad is eating - grain products right out of the burlap sack and that's about all - cooked on an open fire outside thier ratty looking refugee tent. God bless ABC for putting it into perspective - but I doubt very many people bought a clue.

[Cleita]

45. I grew up with "Father Knows Best" and the rest as well, but for some

reason or the other my middle class home was not as fancy as theirs. My clothes were much cheaper. My bicycle was second hand. Most of the kids I went to school with were economically where my family was, not where the sitcom families were. Yet, Jim Anderson was able to achieve all this with a job in an insurance company. Ozzie Nelson didn't have a job. All the mothers did their housework in high heels, pearls and fully made up. My mother wore ratty clothes around the house you could work in and only dressed up to go shopping. The Nelsons, Andersons and et al were able to achieve an affluence with ordinary jobs that wasn't possible in the real world. I think most of us realized it was pure fantasy. Also, did you ever notice how the parents always agreed with each other and never had fights? Yet, the majority had enough just not a lot of extra so we were truly middle class back then.

[Truth2Tell]

50. the commissar caste

Indeed, this class of people exists much as the author describes. And many are as abhorrent as he feels they are.

But the solution to this situation isn't Marxism, or collectivization, or any sort of forced social engineering.

It's education.

If "this national bucket of soft little maggots" wasn't so damned brainwashed into uber-nationalism and a feeling of entitlement then maybe the outcome of their existence wouldn't be so objectionable.

If we (I include myself in this maggot class) - the privileged classes in America - were taught from birth to respect all of our fellow humans; if we were taught from birth to seek justice for the downtrodden; if we were taught from birth that we are simply fortunate, not better; then maybe America would be a nation of humility and humanity, and not hostility.

But alas, the social classes with the most political power in America are also the most arrogant and unenlightened. We need to teach civic responsibility, critical thinking and universal compassion to our children. If we do, then the fact they grow up to administer a University or serve as VP of a company won't threaten anyone anymore.

[bean fidhleir]

61. "But the solution to this situation isn't any sort of forced social engineering"

Too late. What do you think all the capitalist propaganda is?

[Truth2Tell]

69. Propaganda isn't

"forced." It is willingly swallowed - by those who have not been taught to think for themselves. If we were a population possessed of critical thinking and real compassion for others, the garbage on our TV sets wouldn't have the collective effect it now does. An enlightened and properly educated populace would reject that crap and it would swiftly become irrelevant.

[bean fidhleir]

83. It looks forced to me. I wasn't aware that we have the option not to have it shoved into our faces

except by turning hermit out in the desert or something similar. You really think it's voluntary in any meaningful sense?

[Truth2Tell]

86. My family hasn't had a TV in our house for many years.

And the other crap I see outside the home flows right past me. Clearly all the propaganda hasn't turned you into a capitalist auto-bot - or many others. Why is that? Likely because you have the mental-emotional tools to think beyond it. Once enough people have those same tools the propaganda will cease to be useful to the propagandists and they will lose power. So sure, because 95% of Americans still lack those tools, the propaganda is effectively involuntary for them. But maybe we do better teaching the next generation? I think it's our only hope.

[Hannah Bell]

96. Yes, when you're 7 years old, you have the choice of not watching TV,

not going to public school, not going to the store, not reading certain books, no video games, no games like monopoly or battleships...no fashion clothing choices...

it's a seamless web channeling consciousness, from the time you're too young to know different.

Your parents can go off into the woods with some others to keep you from being exposed, that's about it.

It isn't just "ideas" or thinking, it's the total package; it creates certain fundamental assumptions which are the base of our so-called "thought."

[Truth2Tell]

105. Sure, all true

it's very ingrained in our culture. That's why those of us who understand it need to work together to change the way our society functions. We need to work to ensure that schools teach children to think for themselves. We need to work to help enlighten other people one at a time or in small groups. The fundamental assumptions can change.

My wife and I had to (and continue to) sacrifice quite a lot so that my daughter can attend a school without the crappy indoctrination. My rule was no pledge-of-allegiance and no prayer. I'll tell ya, that doesn't leave very many schools.

I also think that by age seven a child has already been taught to either think critically or to blindly accept authority. If they have been taught by example how to think for themselves, then they will use those skills to assess that game of monopoly at a friend's house and put it in proper perspective. Or they will be able to look beyond the fashion mags at the checkout stand, etc. You do, don't you? How did you gain the ability to think beyond the propaganda even with it all around us? Anyone is capable of it, especially the young, if they are taught how.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

66. Wow, are there ever a lot of people (deliberately?) misunderstanding this article

:eyes:

A lot of them are the people I would expect to react like that.

[dweller]

74. I love reading Joe B.

but i have no idea what these eggheads are bonking noggins about.

dp

[conscious evolution]

75. Same impression I got.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

81. They're trying to scare the proles out of being self-aware

by invoking the Khmer Rouge and Stalinist bogeymen, whether the comparison is apt or not.

That's their job. :-)

Whenever I meet someone who brags about their material possessions and being "a college graduate," I know I'm talking to someone who is a "dumb up."

I forget who came up with this classification but it works like this:

Smart ups: People who are in the upper class, know exactly what the score is, and consciously use their power for either good or evil.

Dumb ups: People who in the upper class and think they're there because they deserve it instead of because they had good support and enjoyed sheer dumb luck. Your average country club Republican or DLCer is there.

Dumb downs: People who are in the lower classes and think they're there because they deserve it and that they should venerate the Ups. That's probably the majority of the American population, thanks to relentless corporate propaganda.

Smart downs: People who are in the lower classes and understand how the system really works.

[conscious evolution]

91. OH NOES!!1!!The Boogeymen!!

Amazing how deeply ingrained the pavlovian anti-communist knee jerk reactionism is in most people.

Oh,speaking of boogeymen,Some idiot puke I know tried to get me to listen to a tape the other day that supposedly came from afriend of a friend who knows someone who works for the NSA(that sound familiar?)of Obama and intercepted phone calls between him and Black Panthers and Muslim terrorist groups.

He did not have much of an answer when I asked him why,if these supposed tapes are real,they have not been plastered all over the internet and MSM.

[Raksha]

108. I see what they're doing, but WHY are they doing it on DU?

That's RW troll stuff.

Re They're trying to scare the proles out of being self-aware by invoking the Khmer Rouge and Stalinist bogeymen, whether the comparison is apt or not.

That's their job.

I see this kind of crude caricature ALL the time on other forums, where the second someone criticizes predatory capitalism or points out the mere existence of social classes in the U.S., they immediately get accused of being Marxists or even Stalinists by the RW kool-aid drinkers.

I mean...WTF??? Just because Bageant used the word "commissar"? I didn't pick up on anything even close to advocating communism from his essay.

I've been following this entire discussion, and it's hard to believe I'm reading DU. Some of these people apparently have *NO* idea they are coming across exactly like knee-jerk free market globalists. The level of defensiveness and hostility is also difficult to fathom.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

158. Some of the people who are doing this consistently advocate right-wing opinions

As I said, it's their job.

[bean fidhleir]

154. What a *NICE* taxonomy, Lydia!

Truly excellent. I hope others besides me are writing it down.

[Solly Mack]

179. Thank you for adding the classification

[Greyhound]

98. It is difficult for a person to understand something when their paycheck

depends on their not understanding.

Just as it is hard for those who proclaim themselves "self made" to understand that there is no such thing.

[conscious evolution]

212. You cannot awaken a man

who is pretending to be asleep.
Don't know who said that but they sure got it right

[blindpig]

213. Pretending, you say?

There is much pretending throughout the progressive and liberal community.

Success and the good life, credentials and status, position and privilege must be protected, at least for people like "us." At the same time, this position and privilege is dependent upon playing a certain role. As Liberals we must pretend that we are not defending privilege and position and must pretend that we are for the downtrodden. We must pretend that privilege and position is all earned, and that anyone could have anything that we have. We must defend the system of dog-eat-dog competition without allowing that to be too obvious. So we pretend that introducing "fairness" rules and regimens into our personal life nullifies all of the things we do to attain and preserve the spot we have clawed our way to in society.

Sometimes this balancing act is fairly easy, since there are so many people willing to help us keep up the facade and since reality doesn't intrude into our "reality based" fantasy world, but once in a while something arises and calls our bluff.

When our bluff is called, there is no amount of time and energy we will spare in internecine warfare arguing fine points of what a liberal is, or what our position should be on each and every minute issue and sub-issue and variations on every issue. These arguments can never be resolved, because there is no basis of consensus.

Actually there is a consensus, but an important component of the consensus is that we never talk about it and we must pretend that it isn't there.

The consensus from which liberals and Democrats operate:

We are the better people. We are smarter, we are humane, we are more compassionate, we are better informed. We are better citizens, we are more cooperative and realistic. we are winners- not losers, and we deserve everything we get. We are spiritually superior. We are centered and balanced, calm and insightful. We are on the right side of history. We are building a better world.

The general public does not realize that we are the better people, and the ones who should be making the decisions. Of course the only logical reason for this public oversight is because- “Republicans are able to take advantage of the people's stupidity and ignorance and turn them against us.”

As Liberals we understand that most of the problems in the world are the result of stupid people running things. If “We the smart people” were in charge, all of the problems could be solved with science and technology and rational social planning.

Class analysis, and the struggles of working class people against tyranny have no place in modern society. They are obsolete and passé, and only something that we read about or see in movies. Romantic as those stories are, they are no substitute for hardheaded practical reality, whether we like it or not. This is a matter of being a mentally healthy, modern, well-adjusted adult in society. None of the lessons from history apply, because things are different now. Only strange maladjusted people are attracted to obsolete political ideas. They are all obviously losers, and are a great danger, almost as much of a danger as the Republicans are.

Since politics and economics in the traditional sense are dead, we embrace a new paradigm of self improvement and self-actualization. Anything that interferes with our focus on ourselves and our pursuit of creating ourselves as an actualized being is to be rejected. The way to achieve the perfect society is first to create a perfect self. Meanwhile, so long as the authorities do not interfere with our self-actualization, we must comply in all ways with that authority. This allows us perfect self-expression within perfect social conformity. Anyone who attacks our personal choices is the enemy, and anyone who attacks the social system based on personal choice is also the enemy.

As fully-realized liberal-progressives we understand that our enlightened self-interest is the ultimate engine of social progress.

Others, however, who do not share our values are not to be given personal choice, when and as we can prove that their personal choices are wrong, often with our righteous claims that their choice impacts us somehow. We support the police state and massive incarceration of people, so long as they are being harassed and imprisoned for the right reasons. Any variance from our idea as to how people should be is quite naturally the right reason, by definition.

We believe that we must “be the change we wish to see,” and the change we wish to see is more people like us: polite, talented, beautiful, intelligent, calm, successful, clever, enlightened.

So we merely need to be ourselves, focus on ourselves, and serve ourselves. Those who cannot or will not become like us need to back down and get out of the way.

We fully support aristocracy, capitalism, corporate domination, and consumerism, provided that they support our self-actualization and afford us the personal lifestyle choices we prefer.

(THIS IS A REPOST OF SOMETHING I POSTED A COUPLE YEARS AGO. IT IS THE WORK OF A FRIEND AND SEEMS APPROPRIATE IN THIS THREAD.)

[Ghost Dog]

92. Ah, Joe Bageant, what a discovery for me, thanks.

Considering eg. this:

...Consider this statement: "Everybody is a patsy for the new corporate order of information -- the well-coiffed talking head, the brain dead audience, even the world's heroes and outlaws themselves. All play out their parts as good guys or bad guys or attractive puppets in a light show of images that pass for vital news. American culture is deformed, and by extension, its media are equally deformed.

I wrote that in 1976. I was 30. Now I'm 61 years old and it's still true today, as far as I am concerned. And it will remain true until we reinvent our media system completely. Our system is like an old beater car that should have been junked a long time ago, but everybody keeps insisting a new paint job and set of tires, or some new regulation, will do the trick. The problem is that it's the only ride in town and it's owned by the same forces that own congress, the banks and everything else that has any value whatsoever, whether it be bonds, real estate or broadcasting. The airwaves are a common. Cyberspace is a common. And as such they should be owned exclusively and entirely by the people -- not corporations. All it would take to do that is a complete reversal of American capitalism. Anything else is a holding action or token change. Unfortunately, most of us working in the business have internalized the corporate/state process so thoroughly they do not even know we are conditioned creatures of a larger machine.

Now we are all here in the name of Media reform. But media, particularly the most important form and the one that really counts, television, is non-reformable under its corporate driven structure. With damned few exceptions, nothing of significance in the mainstream news is what it appears to be. This is not as much the result of conspiracy, mind you, but rather that the people working in the business have internalized the corporate/state process so thoroughly they do not even know they are conditioned creatures of a larger machine.

Working class liberation leaders are beginning to evolve from the sons and daughters of Baptist truck drivers or 55-year old Wal-Mart greeters with varicose veins and no health insurance. I get emails from hundreds of them.

Working class liberation's future leadership is out there right now, stocking the shelves of the supermarkets tonight, buffing the floors of the nation's universities and banks, checking on the calf-cow pairs in the late season snows of Montana, and likely as not they are gun owning, non-drinking Christians doing solitary jobs with lots of time to think. And they experience things like loneliness, modern alienation, and an inner emptiness within that now quaint concept called the soul. Which drives so many of them to the last place that even addresses the souls of people such as themselves -- fundamentalist churches.

/... http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/breaking-the-be.html

(Now to read through all of this thread).

[Pavulon]

97. This is why I post here, brilliant place

agree or disagree there are people posting intelligent ideas in a civilized way. While we may never agree 100%, I enjoy the discourse. I have 2 new books to read and learned something new.

It is 102 outside and I can't think of a better way to spend the afternoon than posting here.

I have lots of respect for you guys and gals.

Cheers.

[Dr Fate]

113. When I read things like this, I always fail to see what the author expects of me.

I'm not rich, but I'm not dirt poor either. used to be.

Am I supposed to be poor on purpose, or am I supposed to not try to get jobs that pay better?

Should I not have kids, property or responsibilities, so that I can live the life of a wandering gypsy or "pure" activist who doesnt happen to burden anyone else (or would I?)

I vote, I'm as politically active as time allows (& much more so than most folks I know-should I quit my job, sell all my possessions & be a full time street activist?)- so I'm never really sure what these folks want from me.

I grew up poor as shit until I was 12, then I was in the suburbs with cartoons on saturday & birthday parties- should I feel guilty or something? How should I make ammends?

I get it- but then again, I really dont get it. If I were some poor dude working at a gas station & listening to old folk records at night-Would I be immune from or be beyond this type of critisism?

[bean fidhleir]

123. I think he expects us all to get in touch with how undeserved our situation is

whether it's bad (as yours was in childhood) or good (as later). In neither case did you deserve the position you were put in.

That's the distilation of his thesis, I believe. That, and the corollary: if we have advantages, we should do our best to help those less lucky.

Deming proved in Japan that individual success or failure in a system is about 80% a function of the system itself; that in a myriad of ways, the system decides who will succeed and who will not. And of course, once we're aware of that fact, it's child's play to come up with a thousand obvious examples before breakfast.

[Dr Fate]

128. If so, I like the way you put it much better.

I agree that if we have gained advantages (earned or un-earned) then we should do our best to help others...

[dweller]

181. "we should do our best to help others..."

DING!


end of round 1.
dp

[Ghost Dog]

185. Yup. "Manual and intellectual workers" of the world, unite!

:-)

[Dreamer Tatum]

125. It's pretty simple

No one is supposed to do anything to make themselves better off without feeling the bone-crushing, soul-sapping guilt that
they have one microbe more than anyone else.

How funny - Republicans want us to wake up every day in abject fear that Muslims are trying to kill us, and we don't like that.
Instead, we're supposed to replace that fear with plain old garden variety guilt that by specializing and adding economic value,
we defer for one more day the concept of dividing everything right smack down the middle.

I say FUCK fear, FUCK guilt, and FUCK the idea that I am betraying the wishes of the latest blogger-cum-social planner.

[Dr Fate]

130. I see your point as well.

I came away from the article with the impression that the author was emitting a shot-gun blast that hit a lot of the wrong people.

I'm still unsure as to what I'm supposed to be feeling so damn guilty about- I'm just tying to get by like everyone else.

I prefer the idea of more education and less guilt-tripping about being educated.

[bean fidhleir]

134. Your interpretation is about 270 spherical degrees out from mine

Not merely diametrically opposite, but in 3D, too. :)

He's not advocating guilt at all. That's coming from yourself, not him.

What's the sign of having true wealth? It's when you feel you can give to others. The one with all the money in the world would be *psychologically* bone poor if he was unable to give without calculation.

Bageant is saying: if you're fortunate, do what you can to make others fortunate too. If you're not, don't take it as a sign of personal failure - it wasn't you wot dunnit to yourself.

[Dreamer Tatum]

136. Bageant is being a condescending jerk, actually

And when someone tries to shame me for what I've been able to amass, I presume that I am supposed to feel
shame. Sorry, not buying.

"If you have more, then share" is not the message of the article. Instead it's browbeating a percentage of the
population that he pulled right out of his ass.

[Hannah Bell]

142. not trying to shame anyone for "what they amassed."

rather for their toadying support of the status quo.

[Dr Fate]

138. I'd say he is advocating a degree of guilt. Milk shakes?

So I'm some kind of capitalist stooge if I like a milkshake every now & then? Or worse- my father had the means & time to make one for me now & then? How about comic books or cheeseburgers, or non-political(Shudder!)rock & roll music?

I realize that is an over-simplification, but I disagree that he wasnt trying to inspire a degree of guilt in some shape or form...Otherwise- your clarifications have made sense to me....

[Hannah Bell]

143. yes, it's about the milkshakes.

way to miss the point, take 50.

amazing how many ways there are. can't make this stuff up.

and these poor readers are apparently the "successful" functionaries bagneant is writing about.

[bean fidhleir]

147. Honestly, I don't see it. What I see him going off on are the "apparatchiki"

to slightly skew a soviet-era term. The people who aren't merely middling well-off or better, but who are smugly self-satisfied with it. The ones for whom we proles in some sense don't exist. The ones who would never chat to the clerk at the grocery because they almost don't see her, and certainly don't see her as a person like themselves. The ones who think *they* are the "average Americans".

Example: back in the '70s when NOW was just starting up, a lot of the energy was supplied by lesbians, who tend to have much more highly developed consciousness than most about issues such as class.

But it proved to be *impossible* to get through to the hierarchy that NOW was almost 100% composed of White professionals and academics focused on issues such as career advancement and was therefore not representative in its makeup or direction of the women it claimed to represent.

Many lezzies and class-aware straight women bailed after their heads got sore enough from wall-banging, and a little while after that, there was a purge that got rid of the rest of the lavender mob. If you look at the NOW membership, you'll still find a few token "lesbians" and even more "gay women" - but low-class "dykes" who might drive a truck or like to bowl a few lines? Don't hold your breath while looking. But the hierarchy will still tell you that they represent all women.

Bageant is talking about the kind of oblivious, self-satisfied person represented by the NOW hierarchy. He's not, as far as I can tell, suggesting that we feel guilty for our good luck. Feel guilty if we don't see those who WEREN'T lucky, yeah, but not for being lucky ourselves.

[readmoreoften]

157. Yes, what's worse, from what I gather (I was too young to be there personally)

is that the upper-class college lesbians were also very into neutral appearance... butch and femme are just a recreation of heterosexist oppression! Butches are worse then men and femmes are just stupid airheads. Apparently the presence of college lesbians born from white middle class feminism segregated working class butch/femme couples out of their own communities or pushed them further into working-class bar life.

[Xenotime]

115. This is a great rant. These people have ruined america.

[earth mom]

117. Joe is DEAD ON. Look no further than DU for intellectual superiority aka B.S.

Yup, You see it ALL the time here on DU.

Few here on DU care about the working class.

Without a doubt there are a bunch of intellectual snobs here on DU who defend illegal immigrants who have by their presence have lowered wages and taken jobs from working class america.

Yep, these snobs could give a flying fuck about the working class of this country. They could give a shit about the people who are close to being poor themselves right here in the U.S.!!!

Because doncha know it's more important for intellectual asswipes to think they are holier than thou because they believe illegal immigrants trump the people who have legal rights here?! :wtf:


p.s. And just wait-One of them will post an outraged reply to my post because I dare challenge them about their bullshit illegal immigration position. :eyes:

[Hannah Bell]

131. huh? illegal immigrants? that's a leap. it's not illegal immigrants

to blame for the destruction of the middle class economy.

[earth mom]

137. No-I blame the corporations and business for giving those people jobs & allowing this to happen.

I blame the intellectual snobs for defending the entire mess because they think illegal immigrants need the jobs more than people who are legally here.

[readmoreoften]

144. How about fixing NAFTA so that US companies don't displace millions of Mexicans

so that they have no choice but to come to the United States? For example, NAFTA allowed US companies to take the land of 28 million indigenous farmers. A nice chunk of those folks migrated to cities to do manual labor. The manual laborers had nowhere to go. Guess where they landed? And that's just one instance.

This is one of the great problems of global capitalism. Capital can move, but we're stuck. The answer is not to hate other working class people or "send them back to Mexico" so they can be homeless because our country's elected officials chose to screw them and us over for big business. If they work for 2 cents an hour there to make our shirts, you better believe there will still be a flood across that border.

We need to stand in solidarity with them and fight with them so they have a home to go back to. Many of them would rather be in Mexico, but they can't survive there because some maquiladora fucked everything up or some coffee finca took their land. But if you drink fair trade Mexican coffee, you're making sure more Mexican working class people can stay in Mexico. It's not just about fines in this country. It's about fines in THEIR country too.

Furthermore, if you're worried about Mexican immigrants in your industry "working for too little" then why not unionize with them. Most Mexicans I've met know a hell of a lot more about labor organizing than most white folks. If they were paid the same as you they wouldn't be "taking your job."

It's a complicated situation. But obstinate nationalism is not going to solve a problem created by a global multinational.

[earth mom]

177. Nafta Sucks. And FYI-I am totally Pro Union.

All I'm saying is that we MUST protect legal residents and citizens jobs FIRST.

If we don't stand up for them, then who in the hell will?!

Look, you probably won't believe me, but I feel sorry for the poor of Mexico and I hate what's being done to them in recent months in this country. It is criminal.

And it is a disgusting and criminal that corporations and business who are fueling this problem are getting off scot free while the illegal immigrants are being made to pay.



However, my loyalties lie first with the working class who have been screwed over but ignored by holier than thou intellectual dems who think they don't matter as much as poor immigrants.

And yes, it is a complicated situation, with no easy answers.

[readmoreoften]

178. My point is purely pragmatic actually.

We can't take care of the American working class first really because it's all interconnected. There really needs to be a serious effort at international unionization. It's about as likely as Cheney on the Green ticket, but it's the only solution. If we're in solidarity with all the outsourced and insourced workers and we demand comparable pay, then jobs will go everywhere not just to the slaves of the world wherever they might be.

Construction and restaurant will always be a different story, but big ag, manufacturing, customer service, etc. will be global. Mexicans are being forced across the border by U.S. corporations on the other side. We won't get our jobs back until they get theirs back. They are one big owning class who see us as one big labor pool and they rely on our national pride to pit us against one another. It's a tall order, but that's our hope, IMHO.

[Hannah Bell]

155. Maybe you should blame the international financiers & politicians who took down

the Mexican economy in the peso crisis.

The better to pit workers against each other & drive down everyone's wages.

When we scapegoat immigrants, we play right into their hands. This scenario has occurred at regular intervals in US history.

Solidarity works better.

[earth mom]

175. First off, I never said anything about Mexico.

Though it's true that it's where the majority of illegal immigrants have come from.

Let me ask you this-what if there were of FLOOD of illegal immigrants coming from everywhere on the planet to the U.S. and one of them took YOUR job right out of your hands?

Bet you would be pissed off and screaming it wasn't fair.

And I bet you could NOT go into any other country in the world and get a job just because you wanted one.


So-Solidarity between all peoples of all countries is a great ideal, it's just not realistic.

This country needs to take care of it's own legal residents & citizens first, like all other counties do.

[Hannah Bell]

182. The laws of "this country" are made for the owning class.

You're not going to get a law to send the immigrants back to mexico without pushing back on the people who own the country. & the world.

Historically, there's always anti-immigrant movements when the economy goes south, & the sentiment is ramped up by the owners to take the heat off themselves.

I have sympathy for people who lose their jobs to immigrants; I have sympathy for the immigrants. I have sympathy for the whole working class; everyone's wages are lower than they were 40 years ago. In 1968, minimum wage was the equivalent of 10.76/hr today. Today, nearly 1/4 of the population makes under 10/hr.

It's not immigrants who did it, it's the ruling class, both parties, & overseas as well. Until people realize this, things aren't going to change, it'll just keep getting worse.

[earth mom]

197. Yes, we are in a class war.

Thank you for acknowledging that the working class has taken a huge hit. My original post and rant was at the intellectual elite whom I've seen here on DU-a few people in particular-who only side with the immigrants and never have a word for the working class of this country. I know this because I've asked them point blank if they give a damn about the people here in this country legally who are working class who are getting screwed over. And I've never gotten an answer back which pisses me off, which is obvious in my first post.

Okay, that said, let me also say that Edwards was the only candidate to address the issue of "status quo" and the power elite shut him up very quickly didn't they? Once Edwards was out of the way, we got a primary that was all about racism and sexism INSTEAD of what the primary should have been about: The Class War & Status Quo. That DUers fell hook line and sinker for the b.s. that was dished out during the primaries was very frustrating for me. I really thought people around here were smarter than that and could see when they were being played. I'm sure the powers that be aka the power elite got a good laugh out of the primaries this year.

IMO, Nothing is going to change. Obama & McCain are cut from the same ruling class, the same corporate cloth, so nothing is going to change in '09 and beyond.

Not unless the people are pushed to the brink. And we are not there....yet anyway.

[Two Americas]

133. question

What is up with the red-baiting and McCarthyism on this thread? Does that not tend to validate and support Bageant's thesis rather than refute it?

[Dr Fate]

139. I thought that the author was advocating some form of communism or another.

Should folks who disagree with this thesis (I agree with some of it, other parts I question)ignore this context in their responses?

If he is advocating communism or a form of it (nothing wrong with that, per se)-then is it really "red baiting" or McCartyism to strongly disagree with it? Just saying.

[Hannah Bell]

145. is it true what he says? has he lied somewhere?

if joe stalin says "the earth is flat" do i respond with "you want to put us in concentration camps!"

bagneant is a self-admitted moderate socialist. on the mold of fdr or sweden. so tf what?

it's quite a leap from that to "reeducation camps". That's what red-baiting is. Dragging out stalin's corpse on any possible occasion.

Disagree with his thesis, don't leap to refute a thesis he hasn't made with your boogeyman.

[Two Americas]

214. Bageant

Bageant is less radical than Thomas Paine, than Samuel Adams or Thomas Jefferson. Maybe less radical than John Adams, and certainly less radical than Lincoln. Yet from the responses on this thread, one would think he was the greatest threat to America ever.

Argue against communism all you like. However, calling any discussion about economic injustice a promotion
of communism, and therefore to be without merit and dismissed upon that basis, is red-baiting.

[readmoreoften]

156. My favorite "Anti-Red" quote from the House un-American Activities Committee:

I love this guy. He's like the Dashiell Hammett of Anti-Communist testimony.
On the Chinese "brainwashing" of American troops in Korea. Warning graphic!!! (just kidding) :


<>snip
The Reds selected Americans who had fine intelligence quotients, but with poor education. Their heads were like a good, solid but empty bucket, only waiting to be filled. The Reds did so with their own slanted material. They deprived all these men of reading matter except what was pro-Red, and gave them plenty of that, and lots of time in which to read it. They especially fed the boys the writings of pro-Communist Americans. One of the most corrosive publications was a magazine called The China Monthly Review, published by American pro-Communists at Shanghai. The men couldn’t get over the shock of an American-edited magazine being put out in Red China. They read it out of indignation or curiosity, and because they had nothing else to do. The smoothly written poisons caught them by utter surprise, leaving a deep impression on their minds. In a number of cases, it was the decisive factor in their softening up.

The enemy didn’t neglect the indoctrination process, but used it simultaneously. The one thing the prisoners least expected was to come into a classroom atmosphere. Yet this was what the Communists endeavored to create.
<snip>

*****

Oh the horrors! They gave them reading material!!! But no Highlights Magazine or Readers Digest! It was all commie propaganda! And then they gave them...plenty of time (shivers) Why those Red bastards snuck up on us and turned the POW camp into a goddamn classroom! We thought we were going to be tortured, oh but it was much worse than that. It was reading political ideas!!!!

This was the guy's explanation why 10% of our POWs came back communists and 21 actually refused to return. Actually....I think it had more to do with showing the soldiers pictures of the biowarfare damage they were causing.

Oh shit! Is that what we're doing in Abu Ghraib? Making them read Wired Magazine and Esquire? "Zee hier, Iraqi man. If you convert to chreestianity and vow to love America, you will have many gadget, jeys? And you will be able to read girly magazine. Go America. Say it! Go American!" (inside mind of Iraqi prisoner: This is madness. I thought I was going to be attacked by dogs and tortured with knives. But it appears to be some sort of school... Wow George Clooney lost a lot of weight...is he still with that stripper?...NO! MUST...RE...SIST...)

[FreeStateDemocrat]

163. Joe speaks for this old-time, blue collar, redneck, Truman Democrat.

I have voted Democratic in every presidential election since JFK but it ain't gonna happen this year. Fuck the corporate whore ruling class.

[bemildred]

166. Divide and rule is not exacty new.

And it wasn't invented by teachers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

186. Yeah, I thought it was unfair of Bageant to include teachers in his list of commissars

The average teacher isn't in the top 20% of income, I'd think, and are hardly 'renting slaves'. It makes the whole thing smack a bit of "anyone with an education should be suspected".

[Ghost Dog]

191. I agree. Not all teachers (even these days) just help sell "The System" to kids

(without ever attempting to teach them to think for themselves) and then just go home to their (these days, relatively poor) homes to struggle with their consciences (or not as the case may be).

Agree with you, Vole: that stood out to me too.

[bean fidhleir]

194. I read it as referring to a role rather than individuals. How many teachers, do you suppose,

teach critical thinking and distrust of authority? What would you guess the number is in the US - 5? 10? 2?

[muriel_volestrangler]

204. 'Many', perhaps?

Certainly not all; but Bageant didn't seem to make any attempt to distinguish between good, bad or middling teachers. Teaching distrust of authority isn't always appropriate to a subject, anyway; if you're teaching elementary Spanish, or physics, there isn't really time for that, but that doesn't make you a pawn of the ubercapitalists.

[bean fidhleir]

206. I suspect not.

As to subjects not being appropriate, ex-middle-school-teacher Grace Llewellyn made what I think is a very good point:

All the time you are in school, you learn through experience how to live in a dictatorship. In school you shut your notebook when the bell rings. You do not speak unless granted permission. You are guilty until proven innocent, and who will prove you innocent? You
are told what to do, think, and say for six hours each day. If your teacher says sit up and pay attention, you had better stiffen your spine and try to get Bobby or Sally or the idea of Spring or the play you\'re writing off of your mind. The most constant and thorough thing students in school experience---and learn---is the antithesis of democracy.

Every teacher and class teaches obedience to authority, regardless of the subject. So why shouldn't teachers *consciously* teach the opposite?

[bemildred]

167. Unfortunate duplicate. nt

[blindpig]

172. This is the truth.

It is the failure of these folks, the traditional leadership pool of the working class, that has retarded any possibility of advancing economic justice in this country, or the world for that matter. They have traded the welfare of the commomwealth for the crumbs from the rich man's table. Though those crumbs might seem considerable they do not outweigh the infamy and disgust which they inspire.

Which side are you on?

[tjwash]

192. You either with us or against us eh?

:eyes:

Irony can be so ironic sometimes.

[blindpig]

198. At the end of the day

there are the capitalists and and the workers. At some point you gotta choose: which side are you on?

[bean fidhleir]

207. Which side are *you* on?

It's an oldie, but a goodie. Written by Florence Reese of Hazard Co. Kentucky in 1931 at the height of a coalminers strike in which her husband, a leader of the strikers, had to hide out because the company's thugs planned to kill him. She was only a folk poet, but she put her heart into the song.

Which side are you on?

[dweller]

183. who needs a beer?

Breaking the Beer Barrier

This is the advance text of a presentation by Joe Bageant at the National Conference On Media Reform June 6-8 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Joe is scheduled to give the presentation Saturday, June 7, 4:30-6:00 p.m. in Room 212-B. His participation in this conference is sponsored by WorldNewsTrust.com.

By Joe Bageant

Hello fellow members of the liberal media conspiracy. I'm happy to be here at the annual gathering of our secret cells.

Here's my question: Why can't progressive media ever learn to communicate in redneck and born again bubba? I would guess that a lot of you are thinking, "Why would anybody want to?" One answer is the election of George Bush -- but there are many others. For example, a third of all Americans live in the geographic South and over 50% live in the "cultural south" -- which is to say places with white Southern Scots-Irish values -- places such as western Pennsylvania, central Missouri and southern Illinois, eastern Connecticut, northern New Hampshire -- and others we never think of as Southern. When you look at people in what has come to be called the red state heartland, most of their values are more or less traditional white Scots-Irish values.

Yet, as much talk as there is about these fellow Americans, particularly during election season, most liberal and alternative media never speak to them or for them. And that's a shame, because when we do that -- we abandon the project of equality for all Americans -- some of which happen to hunt, fish, drink Bud Light and enjoy NASCAR, Bon Jovi and Toby Keith.

Anyway, just telling our own truth to people who already agree with us isn't going to do anything, regardless of our illusions about the power of the "blogosphere," etc. As Bill Moyers said last year at this conference, despite all the new information platforms, cable, the Internet, blogs, podcasts, YouTube and MySpace -- our resources for collective understanding as Americans are contracting, not expanding. To make matters worse, we progressives use these resources to talk to one another in a closed conversation, instead of reaching all the people.

I had an editor once, Mr. Miller, we called him respectfully. Mr. Miller was one of the old school shot-and-a-beer newsmen who'd come up through the ranks of reporters in the days when almost no newsman had a journalism degree. He told me: Joe, it's a damned privilege to communicate to an audience of a dozen citizens, much less thousands or millions. Honor that privilege. Write for everyman. Don't become a stenographer for the powerful, regardless of their politics or party."

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/06/breaking-the-be.html#more

burp.
dp

[bread_and_roses]

187. zing! you touched a nerve there, T.Ruth

I have enjoyed the predictability of some of the responses here. The paens to the self-made, the I did it so anyone else has the chance to do it, the why should I feel guilty simply because I want to continue using my 20% of the world's resources. As someone above quoted, it is hard to understand something when your livilihood depends on your not understanding it.

That an off-hand comment - a reply to a reply, no less - should set off such reaction simply because it tosses off in passing a less than timid criticism of our system is very telling.

[ginchinchili]

193. This is just a racist diatribe.

I wonder if this is the attitude Obama is going to take in order to bring America together. If it is I'm sure he will be as successful as Bush has been.

[bean fidhleir]

195. "Racist diatribe"?? You must be joking.

[madmusic]

196. Let's get real and connect the dots

http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/121/march08/barkow.shtml">THE ASCENT OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE AND THE DEMISE OF MERCY

The administrative state and the faith in experts is mostly a middle class and elitist contraption. These same "experts" ARE the middle class.

[T.Ruth2power]

200. What do you mean?

The Bourgeois Blues

"The Bourgeois Blues" is a blues song by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. It was written after Lead Belly went to Washington, D.C. at the request of Alan Lomax, to record a number of songs for the Library of Congress. After they had finished, they decided to go out with their wives to celebrate, but were thrown out of numerous establishments for being an interracial party. The song rails against racism, classism, and discrimination in general, with such verses as "The home of the Brave / The land of the Free / I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie".
Lead Belly recorded the Bourgeois Blues numerous times, first on December 26, 1938, accompanied by himself on his 12-string guitar. It should be noted that in all but the earliest recording of the song, the original line "Some white folk in Washington / they know just how, call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow" was altered to "give a colored man a nickel just to see him bow", presumably to avoid causing offense. The song has been recorded by many other artists, most notably Pete Seeger and Ry Cooder It was reworked by Billy Bragg as "Bush War Blues", and by Mark E. Smith as Bourgeois Town on the The Fall's Are You Are Missing Winner lp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bourgeois_Blues

Me and my wife went all over town
And everywhere we went people turned us down
Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say'n I don't want no niggers up there
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Home of the brave, land of the free
I don't wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisie
Lord, in a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a nigger just to see him bow
Lord, it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

I tell all the colored folks to listen to me
Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC
'Cause it's a bourgeois town
Uhm, the bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

- Leadbelly

[blindpig]

208. All of this talk of re-education camps

which have nothing to do with the OP, being pulled directly out of anal orifices, makes me think that they might be a good idea.

Such is the result of a century of red baiting, insurmountable ignorance.

[Bake]

210. This is the kind of crap that makes DU an embarassment.

And I thought GD/P was bad ...

Most middle class people - including the ones you'd like to see dead - are just a paycheck or two away from disaster these days, or hadn't you heard?

Bake

[blindpig]

211. Reading comperhension problem?

Where in the OP is anyone wished dead?

Middle class a paycheck or 2 from disaster? You are well indoctrinated, what the OP is talking about is the real middle class, lawyers, doctors, media types, management types. Without them the rich would be unable to suck the rest of us dry. America as a middle class society is nonsense and a propaganda coup, we are mostly working class.

What's an embarrassment is the display of historical ignorance and elitist entitlement so profuse here.