on one employee:
Sadie had been a very strong, healthy girl, good appetite and color; she
began to be unable to eat… . Her hands and feet swel ed, she lost the use of
one hand, her teeth and gums were blue. When she final y had to stop work,
after being treated for months for stomach trouble, her physician advised her
to go to a hospital. There the examination revealed the fact that she had lead
poisoning.
The conditions of that time produced bitter criticism of the profit system, of capitalism. The
idea of socialism had not yet been corrupted by Soviet Russia. Socialism was the dream of
many—Eugene Debs, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Helen Kel er, and more than 100,000
who joined the Socialist party. There were over 1,000 socialist officeholders in over 300
towns and cities. Perhaps a mil ion people read the socialist newspapers.
137
Jack London turned from his popular adventure stories to write a political novel, The Iron Heel. Through his characters, he comments on the economic system: "Let us not destroy those wonderful machines that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us
profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let us run them for ourselves. That, gentlemen, is
socialism."
The great worldwide interest in socialism—which continues, despite the way the original
dream has been distorted in a number of countries around the world—is due, I believe, to
what people have seen happen in capitalism—that the profit motive has had some terrible
human consequences. People turned to socialism because of the belief that human beings—
once their essential needs are taken care of—can be motivated to work and create by
considerations other than monetary profit: self-respect, the respect of others, compassion
for others, and community spirit.
Moving Toward Justice
The American economic system is enormously productive, but shameful y wasteful and
unjust. The contrasts between rich and poor, the flaunted luxury of the very wealthy
alongside decaying cities, the pressure on everyone to make lots of money—there must be
a connection between al that and the great number of violent crimes in this country, the
frighteningly widespread use of drugs, the alcoholism, the mental il ness, and the broken
families.
The odds are stacked heavily against the poor—black and white. There was a study in the
1970s by the Carnegie Foundation, on the futures of American children. Looking at two
children, both with average IQs but with different backgrounds, the researchers found that
one of them, the son of a lawyer in the top tenth of the income structure, was four times as
likely to enter col ege as the other, son of a custodian in the bottom tenth. He was twelve
times as likely to complete col ege, and twenty-seven times as likely to end up in the top
tenth of income at middle age.50
We need fresh thinking, new approaches. The old formulas for socialism have been
discredited by the experience of "socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But the standard praise of capitalism is not warranted by the human results of the American
system. On the other hand, the mixed socialist and capitalist economies of Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, and New Zealand have succeeded in achieving a certain degree of
economic justice, a high standard of living available, without too much inequality, to the
entire population.51
We need to start figuring out the arrangements, the principles, the practices, and the forms
of production and distribution that wil give our economic system both efficiency and justice,
thinking boldly and bypassing the old ideologies. Economics is very complicated, even for
economists. You can tel that by how often they are surprised by a sudden turn of events—
the stock market col apses, the dol ar plunges or rises, foreign trade diminishes or
increases. And how, when they are interviewed on television to give the public their
wisdom, they speak glibly but seem as mystified as everyone else.
It is up to the public to say to the technicians—the economists, the planners, and the
managers—what the public wants done and what principles to fol ow. Let the experts figure
out how to do it and have the public check up constantly on their suggestions. The people of the nation wil need to reach some consensus (we wil not get unanimity, because there are
powerful interests opposed to change) on certain goals.
What might these goals be?
138
A real "war on poverty" is required (that was the phrase used by the government in the sixties, but it was a minor skirmish). The objective should be to make sure that every man,
woman, and child in the United States has adequate food, decent housing, free medical
care, a free col ege education if they want it and can't afford it. We need a real war on
pol ution: to clean up the air, the rivers, the lakes, and the beaches in a few years, in time
for the next generation to enjoy the fresh beauty of nature.
There should be useful work guaranteed for everyone who wants to work. And every kind of
work, however unskil ed or however unwanted by "the market" (I am thinking of
dishwashers, janitors, poets, painters, musicians, actors, and housewives among others)
should be paid close to the average wage of working people in the country.
Al these things can be done, because this country is brimming over with natural and human
resources that have been either unemployed or badly employed. There are enormous parts
of the national wealth—mil ions of people, hundreds of bil ions of dol ars—used for absurd
purposes, to produce stupid luxuries or vicious weapons.
Corporate profit, not social need, has determined what shal be produced. Huge amounts of
steel, concrete, and human labor have gone into the building of skyscrapers in every city,
which are used for banks, insurance companies, offices, or luxury apartments. Those
ingredients could have gone into the building of homes in every city, for families in
desperate need of a good place to live, except for the profit motive of builders.
That's where society comes in—through the federal government or local government or
independent housing authorities—who wil pay the builders and then, if necessary, subsidize
the rents, so that we have no more homeless people or slum tenements in this country.
This wil require an almost total turnaround in priorities and a measure of national and local
planning. The money is there ($300 bil ion a year for useless or wrongly used weapons), but
it needs to be used to subsidize the establishment of a decent standard of living for every
person and the turning of our cities and countrysides into beautiful places.
Such subsidies are not something new in this country. We already do this with our military
establishment. We subsidize everything in the military—the buildings, the weapons, the
transport systems, and the personnel—and pay for it with public funds. We plan for what is
needed and it al comes out of the national budget, paid for by taxes. We have a kind of
socialism for military needs and capitalism for civilian needs.
Our nation experimented with a sort of "socialism" in the thirties when, desperately trying to escape economic disaster, the government planned and subsidized activities that the
market, that is the profit seekers of the business world, would not pay f
or. The government
paid young people to plant trees and build roads. It paid men to clean up parks and streets.
It paid artists to paint murals on public buildings al over the country. It subsidized theater
people, who put on exciting plays, and writers, who wrote beautiful guidebooks for the
states.52
That kind of planning, the use of public funds for good purposes, did not diminish our
liberties. Democracy was enhanced by bringing large numbers of people into useful service,
by making the work of artists available to people who never could afford them.
There is no need to do away with private business or with profit or with competition. They
can al play their part in an organized national economy that has a certain critical measure
of planning and large areas of free enterprise.
139
At some point the planning would need to become global, because it is impossible to confine economic justice within national boundaries. The enormous disparity between the richest
and the poorest countries cannot continue if we care about justice. It was estimated in the
mid-1980s that in every year 15 mil ion children around the world died of malnutrition or
sickness.53
It wil take a massive redistribution of resources to do away with this situation. The
international organizations have so far been dominated by the national interests of the
superpowers. The World Bank, for instance, has granted loans to Third World countries on
condition that they use it to grow cash crops, to sel abroad and thus make money to pay
off their foreign debts. The result has been less food grown for the consumption of their own
people and mass starvation.54
In 1974 U.S. food aid was cut off to Bangladesh and other countries. By that summer
Bangladesh could not pay for any more food because the price of wheat had tripled. It had
contracted to buy 230,000 tons of wheat from the United States. The wheat was ready and
the ships were ready to load it, but Bangladesh had run out of money and the wheat was
not sent. A few months later there was famine and mass starvation in Bangladesh. The
economist Emma Rothschild comments: "United States officials observed these commercial
proceedings, but the Government chose not to intervene in the workings of free
enterprise."55
It seems clear that, if justice is to be done, the rigid ideological insistence on "free
enterprise," the fears of planning, of socialism, of interfering with the market, wil have to be replaced by a wil ingness to plan, to experiment, and to take care of people's needs
outside the money system.
President Reagan, early in his administration, was part of a "North-South Summit" of
twenty-three nations meeting in Mexico to discuss the problems of poor nations. Mexican
writer Carlos Fuentes related an exchange between Reagan and the leader of Tanzania,
Julius Nyerere:
Mr. Reagan … stil insists that private enterprise do the job from scratch,
which is not possible. When Reagan said that the problems of agriculture and
food production could be solved only by private enterprise, Nyerere
immediately shot back: "But Mr. President, you have the most heavily
subsidized agriculture in the world … . It is an agriculture propped up by state
interventionism, so what are you talking about?"56
The fear of the United States of socialist planning, the insistence that Third World nations
depend on private enterprise, was reemphasized by President George Bush almost as soon
as he took office in early 1989. Clearly, there is much resistance, among powerful interests
devoted to making money, to the kinds of bold steps needed to bring about justice inside
nations and in the world. Citizens of the various countries, rich and poor, wil have to
organize themselves as a force to turn the national and world priorities toward equality and
economic democracy.
Reason, Representation, or Struggle?
In 1971 Harvard University philosopher John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice, which led to
years of discussion among political philosophers.57 Rawls believes there is too much
inequality, and he has worked out an elaborate philosophical argument for a just
distribution of wealth.
He omits, however, one crucial problem: the real world of harsh conflict that surrounds
every issue of economic justice. That real world is one of class difference and class conflict.
A reasoned argument is not enough to persuade a bil ion-dol ar corporation.
140
The establishment tries very hard to shut that out of public consciousness. During the 1988
presidential campaign candidate George Bush said, "I must say that I've been disturbed, as
I've witnessed my opponent's campaign over the several past weeks, at the increasing
appeals to class conflict. In my view, there is no place in American public life for
philosophies that divide Americans one from another on class lines and that excite conflict
among them."58
Confronting that real world of class conflict requires two things. First, we need to get a
consensus of agreement among most people on the goal of basic equality. A minority of
affluent, powerful opponents wil oppose this. This is a class society and there wil be class
conflict. But if we can get a consensus among most people, they might organize themselves
in such a way as to win that conflict.59
impractical and worrisome to many people to paint a picture of a perfect leveling of the
situation. I mean equal access for every human being on earth to the fundamental
necessities of existence: food, housing, medical care, education, civil liberties, useful work,
and respect, with these things distributed according to need. And beyond that, a reasonable
equality in income, using smal differences as incentives when needed.60
Getting that consensus is not easy in a society where the dominant ideology is shaped by
the people who have the wealth and the power to overwhelm the mass media and the
educational system with their ideas. It wil be necessary (this essay is such an attempt) to
show the falseness of that ideology, with al its arguments against a radical reorganizing of
society: the glorification of the present system ("the market … the profit motive … the
money incentive … entitlement to wealth"), the putting down of the poor and less financial y
successful people ("they're lazy … they're not intel igent … they deserve what they get"), and the use of scare words ("socialism … communism").
In fact, we are not impossibly far from having such a consensus. During the 1988
presidential campaign, a New York Times /CBS News pol reported:
Three-fourths of the public favors Spending more for education and anti-drug
programs. More than two-thirds favor more spending for the homeless, and
half favor spending increases for daycare. But fewer than one-fifth of those
surveyed want to spend more on military programs.61
One of the things said most often about the United States is that there is very little class
consciousness. But there is strong evidence that this view is mistaken. Back in 1964 the
Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan asked people, "Is the government run
by a few big interests looking out for themselves?" About 26 percent of those
pol ed
answered yes. But by 1972, 53 percent answered yes. And long after the war was over, in
1984, the year that Ronald Reagan was reelected president, a pol by the Harris
organization showed that 74 percent of the public believed "a smal group of insiders run
the country."62
Truth is, class consciousness is a slippery term, making it hard to decide whether American workers are class conscious. Most blue-col ar and white-col ar workers certainly know that
there are employers and workers, rich and poor, powerful and powerless and that "a smal
group of insiders run the country." They have not translated this consciousness into the
formation of a working-class party such as in England, France, Italy, Spain, etc. They have
suffered many defeats at the hands of the employer class. But the fact that there is
consciousness of their situation creates a basis for future action.
141
For his book Working, Studs Terkel spent three years interviewing hundreds of people: farmers, miners, receptionists, telephone operators, actors, truck drivers, garbage men,
mechanics, janitors, policemen, welders, cabdrivers, hotel clerks, bank tel ers, secretaries,
supermarket workers, athletes, musicians, teachers, nurses, carpenters, and firemen. He
found pride in work, but also "a scarcely concealed discontent" and, compared to his
interviews of workers in the thirties, more people who said, "the system stinks."63
It seems that very many people understand the existence of injustice and the need for
change. But they consider themselves helpless, and this is probably the greatest obstacle to
social change.
History comes in handy in this situation. People can learn from the history of social struggle
(a history that is largely omitted in the traditional learning that takes place in our schools
and in the society) how seemingly powerless people were able to bring about changes in
their own situation and changes in public policy. The history of the civil rights movement,
the antiwar movement, the women's movement, and the labor movement can inspire
people to create new movements for change.
History does show us how hard it is to chal enge those in authority, those with great wealth
and great power. It shows how many battles have been lost in class conflict in this country.