by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – January
21, 2009
The classic Marxist
concept of class struggle elucidates the millennia-long battle between the
owners and controllers of the means of production, whether that be agricultural, trading, manufacturing, or finance, and
everyone else.
Under the capitalism
of Marx’ time, the bulk of “everyone else” consisted of the manufacturing
working class and related occupations, such as the miners and the railroad
workers. In our era things have
gotten rather more complex.
First of all, in the
developed capitalist countries fewer and fewer people are engaged directly in
manufacturing, more and more in “white collar” positions directly and
indirectly supporting the manufacturing sector, and in small business. Second of all, while there is a
definable owning/controlling class, it is much less publicly apparent than it
used to be and many non-owner/controllers have the appearance of
“ownership’ and an interest in it through the securities markets. Third of all, in the United States to
the greatest extent, but in most of the other developed countries to some
extent as well, the owners/controllers have created a very effective propaganda
machine designed to suppress traditional working class consciousness. For example, when President-elect Obama
refers to the “middle class” what he is really talking about is
what used to be called the “working class,” but the capitalist media
have made sure that that term is passé.
Fourth of all, in the
United States since the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and its
successor state totally mis-named “right-to-work” laws and in the United
Kingdom more recently since Margaret Thatcher (but less in most of the other
capitalist countries) the trade union movement under which so many workers
developed class consciousness has been very actively and very successfully
repressed. Finally, in the United
States the owner/controllers and their media have run a very successful
propaganda campaign to get the term “class warfare” to be used to refer to the
(relatively weak) efforts by the Democratic Party to mitigate some of the worst
effects of the owning/controlling class’ ownership and control, like the
ever-rising and very rapidly-rising separation in both income and wealth
between the top of the o/c heap and everyone else. The result of all this is that in the United States, and to
a lesser extent in the other developed countries, there is very little of the
old-fashioned class consciousness on the part of the workers, whether blue or
white collar. This does not mean
that there is not class struggle going on. It does mean that most of the non-owners/controllers of the
means of production are not aware that they are in one.
The human species is
the only one that cannot survive without converting elements that it finds in
its environment into other things. It began with simple food conversion, and producing clothing and
shelter. It has obviously gotten a
lot more complex over time. Thus
it is that control over the means of production, from growing food in amounts
to feed more than oneself and one’s family to converting iron ore and coke into
steel and the products that can be made from it, is central to controlling
human life. Central also is the
ownership and control of the natural resources that literally fuel our modern
economies. Karl Marx provided us
with the understanding of the basic class divisions, in relation to the means
of production.
It was V.I. Lenin who
provided the understanding of the true relationship between the
owning/controlling class and the government in any modern nation. Under capitalism the owners/controllers
attempt, usually with great success, to create the illusion that the State is
somehow an independent body, up for grabs. In fact, and one can observe this happening over and over
again, the State serves the interests of the owning/controlling class, which in
fact own it too. (In the U.S.,
with for the most part private financing of elections, they literally buy
it.) Thus the greatest achievement
of the last great reformer US President, Franklin Roosevelt, was to save US
capitalism operating with a Constitutional government (Marxists call the form
“bourgeois democracy”) from becoming either a fascist state or becoming, horror
of horrors, possibly subject to at least an attempt at socialist revolution.
Barack Obama is in
exactly the same position as FDR was, although given the depredations on our
nation of the particular sector of the US owning/controlling class represented
by what I call the “Georgites” over the past eight years, his task is rather
harder than that of FDR. But he no
more represents the interests of the true non-owning/controlling class
(whatever label one might give them) than did FDR. But he is representative of one actor in the current class
struggle in the United States. It’s just that that active, conscious-as-between-its-antagonists, class
struggle is not of the traditional kind. It is occurring within the owning/controlling class, not between it and
everyone else.
There are certainly
overlaps in both interests and memberships, but what one can now discern with a
fair degree of confidence is that the US owning/controlling class has split
into two fairly well-defined groups. They happen to have seriously competing interests in both the economy
and government policy, in both the domestic realm and the foreign one.
In one corner are the
extractive industry (petroleum, natural gas, coal, and minerals), the
military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, and certain
elements of the “health care” industry (particularly in the pharmaceutical and
insurance ends of it). In the
other corner is what is left of the US manufacturing sector, the service and
communication industries, the public utilities, the growing “green energy” sector,
the entertainment industry, the news media complex, and major elements of the
financial sector (although some of them are on the other side). It is clear that Pres.-elect Obama
represents this latter class-sector. For decades they had done very well under “bourgeois democracy.” The Georgites have launched a major
assault on it in many sectors over the past eight years, serving the interests
of their controllers, with, however, the results that readers of these pages
know all too well. The other grouping,
shall we for the sake of moving the argument along call them the
“Constitutionalist owner/controllers,” wanted it back. And to spearhead that drive, they have
put Sen. Obama in the Presidency.
Obama and his people
are very smart and appear to be very well organized. They have a quite monumental task in front of them, however,
for capitalism has never faced a world-wide crisis of the sort it is now
facing. But the Georgites, for all
their apparent failures, are not going away. In fact, while most observers rank George Bush as the worst
President the US has ever had, in terms of his record of achievement of his
true goals, mostly never openly stated, he is in my view the most successful
President the US has ever had. I
have written on that topic on these pages and plan to return to it in a couple
of months. He has definitely
advanced the interests of the class sector he represents. In fact, it is no coincidence that Bush
made so many extractive-industry friendly rulings since the election. He is their boy.
Obama and the class
sector he represents represent a major threat to them. With green energy increasing oil and
coal consumption will gradually decline, and along with a decline in both their
influence and their profits. With
a decline in the shoot-first, maybe negotiate afterwards foreign policy, the
production of military hardware, especially the high-tech, high profit type,
declines, along with their profits. And kind of national health insurance system that can control costs to
even some extent ins going to reduce the profits of both the pharmaceutical and
the “health” insurance industries. And so on and so forth.
The Georgites may be
somewhat conflicted because of the immediate impact of the Recession/Depression
on their profits. But in the long
run, they want to get back into power. Even though the Team Obama has a monster challenge and may well not
succeed, they just might. And the
Georgites cannot take that chance. The Georgites own and control the Republican Party. While there will be some sharp battles
within it over tactics, their class interest remains the same. So, trying oh-so-cleverly to hide their
true intent behind various kinds of rhetoric, they will do everything they can
to make sure that Team Obama does not succeed.
Of course, the
failure of Obama to rescue traditional American capitalism would mean a rapid
rush to squalor for many Americans. And that might mean the outbreak of anything from union organizing, to
civil disobedience, to outright violence of the type that caused the Bush
Regime to recently ready Army units for domestic duty and Treasury Sec. Paulson
to openly refer to the possibility that it might be necessary to use them. Fascism, anyone? Well, Cheney, who directly represented
the extractive industries in government, has done his best to lay the
governmental groundwork for it. Oh
yes, there is a class struggle going on. While capitalism is not at stake in the U.S., just what the form of
government that the owners/controllers will use to maintain their power very
much is. That’s the class struggle
that is going on in front of our very eyes. 