The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest

[Gar Lipow]

On Mon, 13 Jan 2003 08:28:06  Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> said
> Subject: Re: The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest
> 
> The fact that "the top 1%" are "making incomes over $300,000 per 
> year" while you are making only, say, $30,000 isn't in itself a 
> reason enough for you to get mad as hell at the top 1%....unless you 
> also know that the top 1% are making over $300,000 _because_ they 
> exploit you and your fellow workers, _because_ the value that you 
> produce have and will be making them richer, more powerful, more 
> capable of exploiting and oppressing you further.  Facts about income 
> inequality are not that hard to come by even in the corporate mass 
> media, not to mention the smaller liberal media.  You can't find 
> anything about exploitation (in the Marxist sense) of ordinary 
> American workers in the corporate mass media, though (the smaller 
> liberal media only faintly hint at it, once in a blue moon).  If 
> "exploitation" is mentioned _at all_, the word is invariably used in 
> such a way that it only refers to super-exploitation of sweatshop 
> workers in poor nations and other extreme cases.  If anything, you, 
> with your $30,000 income and bargain-hunting practice, will find 
> yourself damned as among the chief exploiters of poor Third-World 
> workers.  Ideology turns the world upside down, with the exploited 
> (American workers) portrayed as the exploiters, the exploiters 
> (capitalists) portrayed as the "fortunate," the "hard-working," the 
> "charitable," etc.
> - -- 
> Yoshie

Don't know how everyone feels about reclaimation of language as a 
tactic. But would it be a small step in the right direction if we, on 
this list, stopped using "producers" as a term for owners, and used it 
as a term for workers?