No Left in America?
By Don Monkerud
The widening income gap in America points to a distressing aspect of
the close of the 20th century and that's the lack of a viable,
organized and coherent left in this country. Traditionally, the left
takes up for the little people, the dispossessed and non-represented,
against economic forces that grow wealthy at their expense.
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C.
reveals that over the past 20 years, from the 1970s to the late 1990s,
the poorest fifth of the families lost 6.5 percent of income while the
richest posted a 33.3 percent gain. The richest one percent spends as
much as the poorest 100 million of our citizens.
One might think such a radical redistribution of the weatlh would cause
an uprising, but not here where there's been a radical shift of the
political spectrum to the right. During his tenure, Ronald Reagan
organized extremely conservative and wealthy forces to turn America
back to the 19th century when laissez faire capitalism
ran hegemony over the public agenda. As a result, the public today more
often champions opposition to government than opposition to the
multi-national corporations that control every aspect of our lives and
redistributes wealth to the rich.
Our political climate is held hostage to advertising that convinces us
that corporations have our best interest at heart, while they control
our economic life. Wealthy individuals in these corporations bankroll
groups who oppose taxes, propose selling all government property and
others like the National Rifle Association, the Moral Majority and
so-called Christian forces that attempt to re-institute a moral system
from the past to keep the public in its place and control our personal
lives in keeping with their notions of right and wrong. Such wasn't
always the case.
Let's recap, briefly, our history. In the last century, a number of
organizations challenged laissez faire capitalism.
Millions of people joined groups to oppose the tremendous concentration
of capital and economic power in the hands of giant trusts. The
Socialist Party had an active membership of 70,000 and polled almost
600,000 votes for its presidential candidate in 1916. The Progressive
Party garnered almost five million votes for president in 1922 on a
platform that included the right to organize unions, an excess-profit
tax, public ownership of railroads and electric utilities, graduated
income tax, women's representation and expanded public education.
There's a reason why there's no left in America today and it goes back
to the corporations, for example the meat-packing and patent-medicine
industries and Standard Oil, and the wealthy, such as Cornelius
Vanderbilt, Henry C. Frick and Simon Guggenheim, that opposed these
progressive social programs in the early days of the century. They
calculated that if they could push the U.S. into WWI, they could unite
Americans behind patriotism and destroy their opposition. In addition
to employing legions of strikebreakers and goons, they turned to the
government for assistance.
The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act outlawed freedom of
speech and association. Massive raids on Communist offices in 1920 led
to the arrest of 4000 suspected "subversives" in 33 cities. Leaders
were jailed, groups shut down and publications banned. According to
David Kennedy in "Over Here; the First World War and American Society,"
patriotic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, The National Security
League, the American Defense Society and the American Legion backed the
"Great Red Hunt."
The tactic paid off for big business and the wealthy. Not only were the
reforms stymied, but wealth was transferred from the taxpayers to
wealthy bondholders who gobbled up WWI war bonds at triple the interest
rate in the commercial market. "The Solid South" protected its Jim Crow
laws, capitalists protected their interests and industry reined in
labor unions. The backbone of the progressive, socialist movement was
broken, only to be revived briefly with the depression and stamped out
again with "witch hunts" for so-called subversives in the 1950s led by
Joe McCarthy.
Similar forces, such as those supporting the Heritage Foundation
dedicated to deregulating industry and unrestrained free markets (like
Joseph Coors and oil tycoon Edward Noble) and the libertarian Cato
Institute (American Farm Bureau Federation, American Petroleum
Institute, Monsanto, Phillip Morris and Procter and Gamble) continue
such work to control our national political agenda today. When
President Clinton pursued a mild reform of the health care industry
that threatened to remove excessive profits from the system, the
proposal was soundly defeated with cries of "socialized medicine" and
"government control." Proposals to raise the minimum wage are attacked
as "government interference" while Robert Reich, former secretary of
labor, reports that since the start of the Clinton administration, 85
percent of the increase of the value of the stock market has gone to
the top 10 percent of families and 40 percent to the top one percent.
Where are the leftists today? Where are those who call for a free
health care system, or demand that the gasoline and telephone
conglomerates be broken up so we can stop paying ten to forty cents
more per gallon than the rest of the country? (Dennis DeCota, head of
California Service Station and Automotive Repair Association told the
California state Senate in 1999 that "Californians are routinely
charged anywhere from a dime to 40 cents per gallon more than the
national average." Sacramento News and Review, May 27, 1999) Where are
those who call for appropriating land for nature preserves, demand
economic equality, a 30-hour work week, a guaranteed 6-week vacation, a
ban on firearm sales, and an end to dumping tons of toxic chemicals
into the air every year in the San Francisco Bay area? And this agenda
doesn't even call for the overthrowing the government - that would be
truly radical.
The political debate in the U.S. today is quite restricted and
conservative. Unless people begin to see their interests as different
from the interests of the corporations that control our economic and
social lives, America will be held hostage to corporate interests well
into the 21st century.
the end