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Tag(s): Capitalism; Capitalism Over Humanity; Class; Liberalism; Middle Class; Power; Social Justice; Work
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November 19, 2007 at 17:51:20

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BEWARE THE MIDDLE GROUND

by Susan Rosenthal (Posted by Jason Miller) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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(Rosenthal provides a social definition of class in POWER and Powerlessness, Chapter 13. “Decide Which Side You’re On.”)

Compromise Always Favors Those Who Have More Power

In The Cancer Stage of Capitalism, John McMurtry compares capitalism to a cancer that threatens the human species. Like a cancer, capitalism seeks to expand regardless of what it destroys. McMurtry concludes that, like a person suffering from cancer, humanity must unite to repel the disease. Here the metaphor breaks down. A person with cancer has one goal — to defeat the illness. In contrast, humanity is split into classes with conflicting goals. As the cancer of capitalism grows, the capitalist class grows richer and more powerful. From the perspective of the working class, the capitalist class is the cancer because it imposes its sick rules on society. The middle refuses to admit that the conflict between the other two classes is irreconcilable. Middle-class appeals for unity disarm the working class — the only force that can cure the cancer of capitalism.

The capitalist class has no problem supporting appeals for peace and unity that do not challenge its power. In 1999, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed a Declaration “to promote and strengthen a culture of peace in the new millennium.” In 2000, the UN launched the International Year for the Culture of Peace, and the following ten years were declared the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World. While the UN talks peace, it wages war. For the past 70 years, the UN has provided a humanitarian cover for the military aggression of the world’s most powerful nations. During the 1990’s, the UN imposed an economic embargo on Iraq that resulted in the deaths of more than half-a-million children. In 2004, UN forces helped to crush the democratically-elected government of Haiti and establish a murderous military dictatorship. The UN message of peace works like a drug to dull the pain of imperialism. Soothing phrases about peace seduce people into supporting a system addicted to war. There can be no peace without justice. As long as the capitalist class wages war on the working class, asking people to cultivate peace in their hearts is asking them to accept exploitation and oppression....

Click the link below to continue reading this rich, comprehensive and graphic-laden analysis of the unwitting complicity of the middle class, liberals and deeply divided working class in the crimes of capitalism (and a primer on how those of us qualifying as members of one or more of these groups can end our abetment):

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=446

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3 comments

Jay Esbe is a writer with a background in cultural anthropology and comparative religion and lives in Seattle Washington.
EsbeJay Esbe is a writer with a background in cultural anthropology and comparative religion and lives in Seattle Washington.

congratulations....

You have managed to post the ONLY example of where the middle ground actually does make sense, and claim it doesn't. What is your alternative paradigm? Communism?

The "middle ground" is an end to corporate capitolism, and the establishment of an economic meritocracy based upon a leveled playing field and equality under the law. I highly doubt that's your value. Please correct me if I'm wrong.....and allow me to correct your assertion into it's proper context: Beware of the "middle ground" in the assessment of nuclear threats and "pre-emptive strikes"; beware of the "middle ground" in the Israel Palestinian issue: Israel was wrong, is wrong, and will remain wrong until it's abandoned it's theocratic fascist "Jewish Mjaority" Apartheid, and returns the land to it's rightful owners.

by Esbe (50 articles, 0 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 85 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 7:52:15 PM

A concerned citizen and former mathematician/engineer now retired and living in rural Maine.
PrMaineA concerned citizen and former mathematician/engineer now retired and living in rural Maine.

Either-or

In my mind this binary logic kind of thinking, that if you do not favor unbridled capitalism then you must be a communist, is at the root of what has crippled political and economic discussion in the public arena. It just is not true in economics, in politics, or in almost any complicated topic that there are only two choices and one must select from either extreme.

Europe has prospered under an economic regime that falls between an extreme unbridled capitolism and extreme communist economy, and the U.S. would do well to learn from their example. Just because essential services like roads, communications, water and healthcare are provided by government does not mean that you have to leap all the way to a planned economy in which the government takes over all production. From another point of view, just because a private sector is allowed and encouraged to produce automobiles, children's toys and food does not mean that the government should wash its hands of providing services to people and businesses that are necessary to provide for the general welfare.

I would encourage everyone to avoid thinking that you have to choose from among fascism, capitolism, communism and any other !#@%&*ism, except possibly as a perverse extreme that is to be avoided. Instead, lets look at what kind of society we want to have and think about how to get there.

And let's not be afraid of an idea just because it wasn't invented here. A good idea is a good idea even if it came from Cuba, from the Soviet Union or even from Nazi Germany. A bad idea is a bad idea even if it came from Washington, from California or from Kansas.

by PrMaine (11 articles, 9 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 395 comments) on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 9:53:05 AM

Ideologies are lethal.

I agree. I think "pure" ideologies are in fact lethal. I say take what is true wherever you find it, and reject whatever is false, wherever you find it. The best government MUST combine the best ideas man can come up with. No single ideology can sustain a society; a purely libertarian society is nothing more than "law of the jungle", whilst a purely socialist society OR a fascist society are ultimately two sides of the same coin and result in a tyrannical oppression of the higher man, to the lowest common denominator of cultural idiocies. A blend of socialist economic policies, meritocracy based on individual attainment on a leveled playing feild, and libertarian personal freedoms with regard to free speech and private property, are the only sensible solutions when implemented in combination by non-corrupt representitives. The founding father had sound principles which should never be abandoned, but a "strict constructionist" view of the constitution is utterly crippling to any progress of society. That balance of common sense and mixture of the practical with the absolute in a just and progressive way, -however- is NOT the current paradigm, but the complete inverse.

by Esbe (50 articles, 0 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 85 comments) on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 12:30:44 AM