Maybe I'm utopian, but I persist in believing the attitudes of the nearly wealthy can be changed so their "delicate sensibilities" are not affronted by massive redistribution of wealth. As long as the nearly wealthy can be assured their financial sacrifice isn't just fueling an idle bureacracy, I think they would amenable to the idea that greater sharing of wealth to extirpate needless misery and ugliness throughout society benefits everyone.
Carl Remick
-----Original Message----- From: Gar Lipow [mailto:lipowg at sprintmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 1999 3:31 PM To: LBO talk Subject: Middle Class
I too would like to see Carroll's post on the middle class. He is right about it's non-existence if he refers to the usual sense in which the word is used -- to describe any working person who is not dirt poor.
However there is one sense in which there is a middle class -- and by this I do not merely mean small capitalists. There is an economic class which I think is about the top 20% of the population in the U.S. which receives not only the full value of it's labor, but more, in return for doing key tasks which are essential in controlling the working class. This is a managerial/bureaucratic/administrative/technical class and has distinct objective class interests which differ both from those of the working class, and of the capitalist class. I think the left would have an easier time appealing to the working class if it spent less time trying to cater to the delicate sensibilities of this "New Class".
I'll take one modest reformist example (and thus possibly one achievable in our lifetime) Max S. has pointed out (I think correctly) that you could never finance even a modest social democracy in the U.S. from a progressive income tax that hits only the very rich. But if you included this coordinator class-- then you are looking at about 45% percent of the national income. A hefty increase in progressive taxes on income over 75,000 and a wealth tax on net worth over 500,000 could indeed fully fund National Health -- and (in combination with cuts in military spending) still leave a hefty amount for increased spending for education, child care, housing --- even if taxes for those below 75,000 were cut quite significantly .. This is just an example -- a complete political program would take a hell of a lot more than a paragraph to develop; and program is only a small part of developing a grassroots mass movement. The point is though, I think that you will find a lot of Gordian knots cut in developing program, in developing strategy and tactics if you simply concentrate most of your effort on winning the support and serving the interests of the bottom 80% of the population and pay less attention to delicate sensibilities of the 20% which exist just below the capitalist class.
-- Gar W. Lipow 815 Dundee RD NW Olympia, WA 98502 http://www.freetrain.org/