[Zzlist-deux] Getting Serious about Inequality

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A new posting -
Getting Serious about Inequality
  - from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/


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"*The tenacity of the Yankees... is a result of their theoretical
backwardness and their Anglo-Saxon contempt for all theory. They are
punished for this by a superstitious belief in every philosophical and
economic absurdity, by religious sectarianism, and by idiotic economic
experiments, out of which, however, certain bourgeois cliques profit."
*Frederich
Engels, *letter to Sorge*, London, January 6, 1892. Translation by Leonard
E. Mins (1938)

One hundred and twenty-two years later, the Yankees remain bereft of theory
while clinging to every outlandish scheme promising to curtail the appetite
of an insatiable capitalist system. Churning on without interruption,
capitalism generates greater and greater wealth for its masters while
devouring everyone else in its wake. From regulatory reform to alternative
life styles, from tax policies to cooperative endeavors, self-proclaimed
opponents of this rapacious economic behemoth have announced newly
contrived exits from its destructive path. While "...people [in the US]
must become conscious of their own social interests by making blunder upon
blunder..." as Engels put it in another letter to his US friend Frederich
Sorge, the contented capitalists merrily continue profiting.

Engels' brutal indictment of the North American allergy to theory and the
affinity for unfocussed activism was tempered by an optimism based more
upon hope than reality: "The movement itself will go through many and
disagreeable phases, disagreeable particularly for those who live in the
country and have to suffer them. But I am firmly convinced that things are
now going ahead over there... notwithstanding the fact that the Americans
will learn almost exclusively in practice for the time being, and not so
much from theory."

That conviction may well seem misplaced today as many of those who claim
opposition to capitalism continue to decry theory and invest instead in
utopian schemes and isolate burning issues from a general critique of
capitalism and its social policies.

Nothing illustrates the Engels' diagnosis more than the current public
discussion of inequality and poverty. It is tempting to call the new-found
interest a fad or fashion, since it seems to spring from nothing more than
a sitting President's alarm. But the present-day rage to address economic
inequality is far more cynical. With interim national elections on the
horizon and a competitive Presidential race on its heels, Democratic Party
leaders served notice on the lame-duck President that it is time again to
rouse the Party base, the labor unions, the progressive single-issue
organizations, internet lefties, and the deep-pockets social liberals.
Hence, despite the fact that inequality and poverty are neither newly
discovered nor newly arrived, the alarm goes up: inequality is with us!
Poverty is on the rise!

It is true, of course. Only a few outliers would deny that income and
wealth growth for most people in the US have been stagnant or declining
since some time in the 1970s (Even right-wing ideologue, Representative
Paul Ryan, concedes that there are 47 million US citizens living in
poverty). Health care has been in crisis, with millions left without any
significant health options and untold numbers dying prematurely. The
education system, like the physical infrastructure, is underfunded and
crumbling....
*To read the rest of the article, please visit:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/ <http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/>*
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