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i always enjoy it when conservatives argue against equality. it kinda runs against the formal freedoms written into the constitution, doesn't it? and the whole "all men are created equal" business in the declaration? i guess for them, "all men" only refers to "all people who meet certain economic criteria"--and **that** is the mirror of arguments advanced long ago to justify slavery in fact.
the argument about the relative material well-being of the poor in america at this point--relative to the 10th century say--is also absurd---it makes no sense historically, no sense ethically.
the systems of material production in the two epochs are incommensurate. it would be like comparing the qualities of a pint of chocolate ice cream to those of an ocean liner (well the both have mass, so they are the same.....huh?).
what would you prefer, absolute abjection? how can you possibly argue that the effects of this redistribution of wealth--the lifting of american capitalism from the barbarism of unregulated capitalism---is a bad thing? and on what possible basis can you conclude that the result of the effects of a redistribution of wealth is the absolute elimination of poverty when the obvious fact of the matter is that poverty remains relational (you know, relative), that poverty remains structural? how can you possibly believe that the social system that capitalism sits on, that it draws from, that enables business to extract profit AT ALL is not better served if that system as a whole is better off economically? and what do you do with the fact that the poor in america live worse than the poor in any other industrialized country--that the rate of illiteracy in america, for example, remain well behind those of cuba, that the levels of infant mortality remains the highest in the industrialized world and on and on and on?
i know what conservatives do--they blame the poor.
but to what end?
doesn't capitalism promise a better life for all? obviously on its own, capitalism only delivers a better life for a few--so there is a redistribution of wealth. something that came about in response to SOCIAL CONFLICT CAUSED BY THE RADICALLY SKEWED DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
seriously, the focus on whining about the "plight" of the wealthy (o boo hoo! those persecuted wealthy folk--the only social class whose formal and substantive freedom conicide--boy that must be a burden--and that they have to give back to the system--MY GOD WHAT A HORROR!) and specious arguments about the effects of corporations having to plow money back into the system to maintain directly or indirectly (direct through maintenance of wage levels in general, indirectly through the relation of these wage levels to access to consumer dredit, the bubble upon whihc the whose american system operates) seem both politically naieve and ethically repugnant. for fucks sake, the arguments have slid to a level behind that of even henry ford--hardly a great humanitarian, who understood that the 10-dollar day (principle of relatively high wages pegged to patterns of regular increase) enabled the extension of credit and the expansion of the consumer base? that relative affluence for all was a recipe for exanded productivity, expanded demand, etc.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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