rough draft Article IV (take two) of "On Wage Slavery and Notions of Socialism"

“In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 29-2

Article IV

Marx predicted that "the contradiction between ever richer capitalists and ever poorer workers would eventually lead to the collapse of the capitalist system and its replacement with socialism, by which he meant essentially the end of class warfare and exploitation and their replacement by a system in which the benefits of production were shared equitably” (Isbister, 51). But, of course this collapse is taking far too long, and destroying millions of lives the world over in the process, stagnating the lives of the poor abroad and here in America, consistently stripping the middle and lower classes of more and more options and of more and more of their power over their own lives. Leo Tolstoy argued in "What Is to Be Done?" that "it is really so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor" (54). As Engels suggests in "The Housing Question," the housing shortage, taken as one example of what our system forces upon the poor, is "a necessary product of the bourgeois social order... it cannot fail to be present in a society in which the great masses of the workers are exclusively dependent on wages" (44). In other words, our modern capitalist system not creates inequality not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a necessary piece. And, in response to the resulting, ever-widening gap between the upper and lower classes, it comes to those in charge to do something about it. Richard Cloward suggested the obvious, that "a federal program of income redistribution has become necessary to elevate the poor en mass from poverty." Of course, such a thing is only necessary as long as we remain within the confines of a capitalist system; Engels does, after all, argue that the housing shortage (or, I would suggest, any of the conditions that come with being the working poor) "can be abolished... only if the whole social order from which it springs is fundamentally refashioned" (44). But, in America, to even suggest anything other than capitalism is verboten. And, that same attitude is increasingly the case around the world. So, assuming operation within our modern Consumer Capitalist system, what is to be done?

Before answering what should be a simple question we must come to an understanding, beyond even the previous argumentation in the previous articles above, of what poverty is and how people come to it. As John Isbister describes it in Promises Not Kept, "lack of income is only the beginning of an understanding of poverty... Other attributes include low life expectancy, adult illiteracy, underweight [--or in America, for example, with our subsidized, corn syrup enriched diet, overweight--] children, inadequate housing, child labor, food insecurity, and lack of access to safe water, to health services, and to sanitation." We take many of these things for granted in the core nations, here in America or in her "democratic" allies. We have our own lower classes, our own citizens who live at or below the poverty level, but for the most part, we like to believe our people are doing okay. Economist and social theorist Simon Patten suggested we have come upon a "‘new basis of civilization.’ Industrial society, he contended, had moved from a ‘pain economy,’ where the scarcity of resources demanded a struggle for subsistence, to a ‘pleasure economy,’ in which abundance was potentially available to all” (Kasson 98).

That potential is the key to understanding the American Dream and American refusal to undertake real reform to diminish the economic gap between rich and poor. Fundamentally, it must be understood that "what poverty means is the inability to make choices" (Isbister, 18). Just as the capitalist system constricts all of our options, it restricts even further the options of the poor. But, we like to think that the poor are only poor because they made the wrong choices, not because they have been exploited, not because the system requires some of us to be on the bottom, but because they screwed up. We can blame them, we can ignore them, we can pretend they do not exist, but then, to channel Niemoller, what do we do when poverty comes for us?

It is important to draw a link, and a contradiction, between the American Dream and its notion that we can all have success, that we can all be well to do if we just work hard enough and make the right choices and ideas I proposed in my essay, "For Everyone Everything." The American Dream depends on us all believing that we can have everything. It does not necessarily tell us that in order for we as individuals to achieve the Dream, someone else must be left behind, left beneath. In fact, the Protestant Ethic discussed in Article III would suggest that, hand in hand with the American Dream, we are not only allowed but encouraged to assume that the poor we leave behind deserve to be where we leave them because, as I already said above, they made the wrong choices. And, by obvious inference, if we have success, if we get rich, then we made the right choices. Capitalism under the Protestant Ethic becomes not some objective system dealing in hard currency but a measure of each and every one of us in terms of moral and spiritual currency. In "For Everyone Everything," I suggested something that should befit the American Dream, if America is not a collection of disparate individuals but rather a collective formed by those individuals. Patten's notion that we have potential abundance for all is not far off from what is possible if we are more willing to share, more willing to lift each other up... At this point in our history, it seems, we would rather lift ourselves up by our bootstraps so that we can then stomp down on everyone else, the poor here or the exploited abroad with those same boots.

John Isbister suggests that "living in a world of obscene inequality, the privileged have a moral responsibility to do what they can to improve the lot of the less privileged." This seems like a very moral attitude, a Christian attitude, and yet we claim to be a Christian nation and reject this very idea. This is why, in "For Everyone Everything," I suggested "a new approach--call it socialist if you like...

This new approach: the government exists to promote justice, i.e. to renounce, discredit and disallow racism and sexism and other forms of discrimination, to ensure that those who commit crimes (and not just those who can't afford good attorneys) pay the price as our society sees fit. Also, that housing access is equal...

Remember the Universal Declaration of Human Rights quoted in the preamble above; it says:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (Article 25-1)

Human Rights Education Associates suggest:

Population growth, migration to urban areas, conflicting needs for existing land, and insufficient financial and natural resources have resulted in widespread homelessness and habitation in inadequate housing. In every country children, men and women sleep on sidewalks, under bridges, in cars, subway stations, and public parks, live in ghettos and slums, or "squat" in buildings other people have abandoned. The United Nations estimates that there are over 100 million homeless people and over 1 billion people worldwide inadequately housed.

I further argued in "For Everyone Everything" that the new approach ensure "that access to education and jobs and transportation is equal, that access to healthcare is equal.". In addition to this, the Declaration of Human Rights suggests everyone has the right to equal access to public services (Article 21-2), to social security (Article 22), to "life, liberty and security of person" (Article 3), and even to an education (Article 26-1). After all, Thomas Jefferson called the people "the only safe depositories" of government. He argued that to render them safe from that government, "their minds must be improved to a certain degree." In other words, if we want democracy or any other form of society that includes the populace in the decision making, we need to have a guarantee of education.

My own argument continued with the notion that having access to these things--to public services, to social security, to an education--is what makes "domestic tranquility," the promotion of which I listed, per the preamble to the Constitution of the United States, as another reason for the government to exist. And, my argumentation continued:

This new approach: the government exists to promote the general welfare of all of its citizens, i.e. that, as Alexander Hamilton argued in his "Report on Manufactures," 5 December 1791, "the object to which an appropriation of money is to be made" or for which a law is to be passed (I would add), "be General and not local," that the government not promote, directly or indirectly, one portion of its peoples over another, be it certain corporations, be it certain races or creeds or religions.



This new approach, put simply in perhaps some very socialist terms: for everyone everything.




John Isbister calls the poor the "people on the bottom, the people denied benefits of the society in which they live.” If government is to exist, if government is to have a purpose, then guaranteeing the benefits of society to these people... to all the people should be its purpose. The American Dream--the Capitalist Dream--is something approximating my argument; instead of "for everyone everything," it's "for everyone the potential for everything." But, that simply isn't good enough. Potential means nothing without guaranteed access.