On the
June cover of the conservative magazine
American Spectator,
a vision arises from the collective unconscious of the rich. Angry
citizens look on as a monocled fatcat is led to a blood-soaked
guillotine, calling up the memory of the Reign of Terror during the
French Revolution, when tens of thousands were executed, many by what
came to be known as the “National Razor.” The caption reads, “The New
Class Warfare: Thomas Piketty’s intellectual cover for confiscation.”
One member of the mob can be seen holding up a bloody copy of the French
economist’s recent book,
Capital in the 21st Century.
Confiscation,
of course, can only mean one thing. Off with their heads! In reality,
the most “revolutionary” thing Professor Piketty calls for in his
best-sellling tome is a wealth tax, but our rich are very sensitive.
In
his article, however, James Pierson warns that a revolution is afoot,
and that the 99 percent is going to try to punish the rich. The
ungrateful horde is angry, he says, when they really should be
celebrating their marvelous good fortune and thanking their betters:
“From
one point of view, the contemporary era has been a ‘gilded age’ of
regression and reaction due to rising inequality and increasing
concentrations of wealth. But from another it can be seen as a ‘golden
age’ of capitalism marked by fabulous innovations, globalizing markets,
the absence of major wars, rising living standards, low inflation and
interest rates, and a thirty-year bull market in stocks, bonds, and real
estate.”
Yes, things do indeed look very different
to the haves and the have-nots. But some of the haves are willing to say
what’s actually going down — and it’s a war of their own making. Warren
Buffett made this very clear in his declaration: “There’s class
warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making
war, and we’re winning.”
Warren is quite correct: It is the rich
who have made war against the 99 percent, not the other way around. They
have dumped the tax burden onto the rest of us. They have shredded our
social safety net and attacked our retirements. In their insatiable
greed, they refuse even to consider raising the minimum wage for people
who toil all day and can’t earn enough to feed their children. And they
do everything in their power to block as many people from the polls as
possible who might protest these conditions, while crushing the unions
and any other countervailing forces that could fight to improve them.
The
goal of this vicious war is to control all of the wealth and the
government not just in the U.S., but the rest of the world, too, and to
make sure the people are kept in a state of fear.
But the greedy
rich are experts in cloaking their aggression. Like steel tycoon Andrew
Carnegie, who successfully transitioned from robber baron to
philanthropist, David H. Koch and his conservative colleagues put on the
mask of philanthropy to hide their war dance. Or they project their
aggression onto ordinary people who are simply trying to feed their
families, pay the bills, and keep the roof over their heads. Many of the
wealthy liberals play a less crass version of the game: they talk about
inequality only to alleviate their conscience while secretly — or not
so secretly — protecting their turf (witness: NY Governor Andrew Cuomo
and his mission to reduce taxes on his wealthy benefactors).
It
is rich Americans, in particular, financial capitalists, who have made
the war-like values of self interest and ruthlessness their code of
ethics through their championing of an unregulated market. When we hear
the term, “It’s just business,” we know what it means. Somebody has
legally gouged us.
People in America are under attack daily. The
greedy rich know it, because they are the ones doing the attacking. They
know that they have made collateral damage out of hungry children,
hard-working parents, grandmother and grandfathers. And somewhere behind
the gates of their private communities and the roped-off areas — their
private schools, private hospitals, private modes of transport—they fear
that the aggression may one day be turned back. They wonder how far
they can erode our quality of life before something might just snap.
The
growing concentration of wealth is creating an increasingly
antagonistic society, which is why we have seen the buildup of the
police state and the rise of unregulated markets appear in tandem. This
is why the prisons are bursting at the seams with the poor.
The
oligarchs hope that Americans will be so tired, so pumped full of Xanax,
so terrified, that they will remain in their places. They hope that we
will watch the rich cavorting on reality shows and set ourselves to
climbing the economic ladder instead of seeing that the rungs have been
kicked away.
Of course, there is a very easy way for the rich to
remain rich and alleviate their nightmares of the guillotine. That is
simply to allow their unearned wealth to be taxed at a reasonable rate.
Voila!No more fear of angry mobs.
Or
they can wait for some less pleasant alternative, like a revolution.
This theme, which once timidly hid behind the scenes, has lately burst
onto cultural center stage. The cover of the current issue of
Lapham’s Quarterly, dedicated to the topic, “
Revolutions,”
features five crossed swords. Its contents outline various periods in
history when ordinary folks had had enough, such as “The People’s
Patience is Not Endless,” a pamphlet issued by the Command of Umkhonto
we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, in December
1961.
Very interesting reading for the 1 percent.
Thomas Piketty (Credit: Reuters/Charles Platiau)
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