Two Americas
01-02-2007, 11:05 PM
Economic Democracy and the Struggle for Equity: A Populist Demand
America in 2006 is more polarized economically than maybe ever before. Though the contradictions may remind some of the 1880s and 1890s, when the first Populist movement emerged as a powerful force of protest, especially across the American Midwest. The gap today is pretty mind-boggling. And anything but democratic: the top 1 percent owns more than 40 percent of total wealth in this country, and over 80 percent of assets like stocks and bonds. In 2002, the top tenth of 1 percent, the wealthiest 130,000 households, had some $505 billion in income, averaging a cool $4 million a piece. Meanwhile, some 25 percent of all wage workers earned less than the official minimum hourly wage.
Along with some nine million workers officially unemployed in the U.S., there are maybe another five million not counted, considered “discouraged” and hard-core unemployed, not looking for work anymore. Another 25 million are working part-time, most for low pay and few benefits. Median household income over the past few years has been falling, especially in the Midwest, due to job losses in manufacturing and the relentless dynamo of outsourcing. Real wages have generally stagnated or even declined since the mid-1970s, and American workers have been compelled to work longer and longer hours just to pay their bills.
<snip>
Everywhere it means massive new job insecurity under the impact of neo-liberal capitalist agendas. And people often holding down more than one ‘contingent’ job just to make ends meet. Working people, blue-collar and white-collar, know this. Many college graduates have joined that club.
Their anger is palpable, often expressed in a refusal to even bother to get involved in anything political, let alone vote — a vast sense of political impotence. And disempowerment in the workplace, no unions or totally co-opted ones, though the struggle for worker-controlled unions continues.
<snip>
The Populist Party has to speak to that gut awareness, that disaffection, and build on it, become a vehicle for its articulation, as its predecessor sought to become over a century ago. The July 1892 platform of the Populist Party stated it well:
The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. … The people are demoralized … The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. … The fruits of the toil of millions are badly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.
We would do well to remember the vision of the Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease, the ‘People’s Joan of Arc,’ speaking to women in Kansas in 1890, urging them to join the ‘Alliance.’ In the interim, less has changed than some think:
Let no one for a moment believe that this uprising and federation of the people is but a passing episode in politics. … We seek to enact justice and equity between man and man. We seek to bring the nation back to the constitutional liberties guaranteed us by our forefathers. … Crowns will fall, thrones will tremble, kingdoms will disappear, the divine right of kings and the divine right of capital will fade away like the mists of the morning when the Angel of Liberty shall kindle the fires of justice in the hearts of men. “Exact justice to all, special privileges to none.” No more millionaires, and no more paupers; no more gold kings, silver kings and oil kings, and no more little waifs of humanity starving for a crust of bread. No more gaunt faced, hollow-eyed girls in the factories, and no more little boys reared in poverty and crime for the penitentiaries and the gallows. … when we shall have not a government of the people by capitalists, but a government of the people, by the people.
Bill Templer
Midwest Populist Party
http://www.midwest-populistamerica.com/ ... st-demand/ (http://www.midwest-populistamerica.com/articles/economic-democracy-and-the-struggle-for-equity-a-populist-demand/)
America in 2006 is more polarized economically than maybe ever before. Though the contradictions may remind some of the 1880s and 1890s, when the first Populist movement emerged as a powerful force of protest, especially across the American Midwest. The gap today is pretty mind-boggling. And anything but democratic: the top 1 percent owns more than 40 percent of total wealth in this country, and over 80 percent of assets like stocks and bonds. In 2002, the top tenth of 1 percent, the wealthiest 130,000 households, had some $505 billion in income, averaging a cool $4 million a piece. Meanwhile, some 25 percent of all wage workers earned less than the official minimum hourly wage.
Along with some nine million workers officially unemployed in the U.S., there are maybe another five million not counted, considered “discouraged” and hard-core unemployed, not looking for work anymore. Another 25 million are working part-time, most for low pay and few benefits. Median household income over the past few years has been falling, especially in the Midwest, due to job losses in manufacturing and the relentless dynamo of outsourcing. Real wages have generally stagnated or even declined since the mid-1970s, and American workers have been compelled to work longer and longer hours just to pay their bills.
<snip>
Everywhere it means massive new job insecurity under the impact of neo-liberal capitalist agendas. And people often holding down more than one ‘contingent’ job just to make ends meet. Working people, blue-collar and white-collar, know this. Many college graduates have joined that club.
Their anger is palpable, often expressed in a refusal to even bother to get involved in anything political, let alone vote — a vast sense of political impotence. And disempowerment in the workplace, no unions or totally co-opted ones, though the struggle for worker-controlled unions continues.
<snip>
The Populist Party has to speak to that gut awareness, that disaffection, and build on it, become a vehicle for its articulation, as its predecessor sought to become over a century ago. The July 1892 platform of the Populist Party stated it well:
The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. … The people are demoralized … The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. … The fruits of the toil of millions are badly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.
We would do well to remember the vision of the Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease, the ‘People’s Joan of Arc,’ speaking to women in Kansas in 1890, urging them to join the ‘Alliance.’ In the interim, less has changed than some think:
Let no one for a moment believe that this uprising and federation of the people is but a passing episode in politics. … We seek to enact justice and equity between man and man. We seek to bring the nation back to the constitutional liberties guaranteed us by our forefathers. … Crowns will fall, thrones will tremble, kingdoms will disappear, the divine right of kings and the divine right of capital will fade away like the mists of the morning when the Angel of Liberty shall kindle the fires of justice in the hearts of men. “Exact justice to all, special privileges to none.” No more millionaires, and no more paupers; no more gold kings, silver kings and oil kings, and no more little waifs of humanity starving for a crust of bread. No more gaunt faced, hollow-eyed girls in the factories, and no more little boys reared in poverty and crime for the penitentiaries and the gallows. … when we shall have not a government of the people by capitalists, but a government of the people, by the people.
Bill Templer
Midwest Populist Party
http://www.midwest-populistamerica.com/ ... st-demand/ (http://www.midwest-populistamerica.com/articles/economic-democracy-and-the-struggle-for-equity-a-populist-demand/)