excerpt from the book

Dirty Truths

by Michael Parenti

City Lights Books, 1996, paper

p46
Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling interests have ever wanted -and that is everything: all the choice lands, forests, game, herds, harvests, mineral deposits, and precious metals of the earth; all the wealth, riches, and profitable returns; all the productive facilities, gainful inventiveness, and technologies; all the control positions of the state and other major institutions; all public supports and subsidies, privileges and immunities; all the protections of the law with none of its constraints; all the services, comforts, luxuries, and advantages of civil society with none of the taxes and costs. Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.

With the rollback of communism, the politico-economic circles that preside over this country no longer feel they need to tolerate any modus vivendi with those who work for a living. Instead of worrying about lowering unemployment, as during the cold war, corporate elites now seek to sustain a relatively high level of joblessness in order to weaken unions, curb workers, and attain growth without inflation.

Growth without inflation sounds pretty good. But meanwhile we are witnessing the Third Worldization of the United States, the economic downgrading of a relatively prosperous population. Corporate circles see no reason why millions of working people should be able to enjoy a middle-class living standard, with home ownership, surplus income, and secure long-term employment. They also see no reason why the middle class itself should be as large as it is.

As the haves would have it, people must lower their expectations, work harder, and be satisfied with less. The more they get, the more they will expect and be able to demand, until we will end up with a social democracy-or worse. Better to keep them down and hungry with their noses to the grindstone. For the ruling interests, it is time to return to nineteenth-century standards, the kind that currently obtain throughout the Third World specifically, an unorganized working populace that toils for a bare subsistence; a mass of unemployed, desperate poor who help to depress wages and serve as a target for the misplaced resentment of those just above them; a small, shrinking middle class that hangs on by its bleeding fingers; and a tiny, obscenely rich owning class that has it all.

The haves are pulling out the stops. For them, it's time to cutback drastically on such luxuries as education, medical care, libraries, mass transportation, and other publicly funded human services, so that people will have the opportunity to learn how to take care of themselves. Time to do away with unions, business regulations, minimum-wage laws, occupational safety, consumer safety, environmental protections, and taxes on investment income. All these things cut into profits. Every dollar that goes into the public sector is one less for the private sector. And the haves want it all.

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