Class War Comes Home to Roost

Note:  Portions of this post appeared just a year ago.  The message seems timelier than ever, so I have adapted it for the current moment.

Class War, it’s nothing new.  In fact part of the power of the phrase comes because it conjures up images of bloody revolution.  Depending on which side you are on, you envision the Paris Mob dragging their betters to the guillotine and grim Bolshevik hoards or American militia attacking a camp of sleeping striking miners with machine guns.  My old outfit, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a product of those times, put it unflinchingly in their famous Preamble, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common…”

But we haven’t heard much about Class War in America for the last several decades until fairly recently.  That’s because the Depression era reforms of the New Deal effectively called a truce.  American workers were granted certain protections—child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, the right to unionize, unemployment insurance, Social Security—in exchange for refraining from trying to carry the heads of Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and assorted other malefactors of great wealth around the streets on pikes.

The bargain seemed to work out well for just about everyone concerned.  The reforms, combined with the industrial explosion fueled by World War II production, post-war technological innovation, and the unchallenged dominance of the American economy in the world lifted millions out of what Jack London had called The Abyss into the comfortable middle class.  The bosses made out pretty well, too.  Not only did they find an enormous new markets for their consumer goods and millions of new investors—via pension plans and individual enthusiasm—in their companies, but they could sleep soundly at night without a pistol under the pillow.

In the last decade or so the phrase has been making a comeback, however.  Not on the lips of the working class, mind you, but in the fevered visions of a resurgent right wing.  You started to hear it in Congress every time a Democrat stood up to propose a new program for the poor, or more recently, whenever one would challenge the latest attempts to repeal the New Deal.  Every time any hapless mope would suggest not dropping trousers on command for a good fucking by the rich, wails of “Class War! Class War!” would erupt.  

When the faux populists of the Tea Party, obediently carrying out the orders of the ultra-rich ideologues that funded them, arrived in Congress not only did they capture the Republican Party, but they ratchet up talk of Class War.

And not only in Congress.  A wave of Tea Party governors and state legislatures unencumbered with effective Democratic opposition, enacted wave upon wave of draconian assaults on working people in the name of  budgetary responsibility and “getting government off our backs.”  When the people of Wisconsin rose up en-mass for a sustained series of demonstrations, occupation of the state capital, and recall elections, panic on the right rose to new levels.  Class War! Class War! Class!

But it has become more and more apparent that Class War is what is being waged by a class of plutocrats and oligarchs and their petty hirelings, the alternately snarling and simpering talking heads of a bought and paid for media, and the barely disguised puppets of their own private political party.

With Mitt Romney, despite the fact that he was never trusted by Tea Party mob it created,  the oligarchy finally had one of their very own poised to usurp the last tattered shreds of liberal power.  The utter destruction of Barack Obama  all he stood for seemed at hand.

But Romney and his cronies were too smug.  A secret tape from a deep pocket Florida fundraiser  surfaced with Romney’s forthright admission that he was fighting an intransigent “47% of voters”  who allegedly “paid no taxes” and were so dependent on government handouts that they would never vote for him.  Virtuous producers and wealth makers were not enough to win the election, so Romney begged his donors for money to swamp the undecided 10% into voting for him. 

The uproar upon release was predictable.  The language used insulted half of America, including many folks who traditionally vote Republican—older voters, veterans, the remnants of the blue collar white working class resentful of completion from minorities.  With his campaign in chaos and Republicans and conservative pundits turning on him, not for his meanings, but for being foolish enough to be caught stating plainly what is usually coached in code, Romney said only that he had spoken “inelegantly” but refused to back down on the sentiments.  He, in the popular political buzz phrase of the day,  “doubled down”  and reiterated his position in an op-ed piece and today in a public appearance in Florida.

Predictably, faced with this open declaration of Class War, Romney’s poll numbers, already sinking after the parade of snarlers, bigots, and zealots the Republican Nation Convention have began a free fall.

For his part, as is his want, the President took the reasonable high ground declaring simply that it was his job to be President of “100% of America” and to chat pleasantly with David Letterman.

Yet while contrasting himself to Romney, he did not reject all his opponent has come to mean.  He still spoke of reasonable compromise.  And he did not even plead for the election of a friendly Democratic Party majority in both houses of Congress in order to enact a “progressive” agenda now blocked.

Last year after cries of Class War erupted over his jobs bill and plans to modestly raise taxes on the wealthy Obama said, “It’s not Class War, it’s math.”  Clever line, but wrong.  There is a Class War.  It is being wage ruthlessly and effectively—by the wealthy and the new class of their ideological political servants.

Just how far this vision of Class War has come from political maneuvering and posturing was pointed up in a speech to acolytes at that time by right wing Blogger and hero Andrew Breitbard with the bloody scalp of Rep. Andrew Weiner dangling from his belt.  He called for real war—with guns blazing—on Liberals, the enemy in the Class War.  And he made it abundantly clear that he was not speaking metaphorically or in jest.  He meant every word of it, to wit:

I always think to myself, “Fire the first shot.” Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. [audience laughter] I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with. And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, “Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.”

Now this kind of rhetoric has not been uncommon on the fringe of the fringe, those web sites where Tea Party crazies fade seamlessly into neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, skin heads, Klansmen, and militia types.  Michelle Bachmann  made hints in this direction by referring to possible “Second Amendment options” if electoral politics are not sufficient to create a revolution.  But that was the first time a big name on the right, one who is taken with deadly seriousness by the national media, has come out in advocacy of such violence. 

It would not be the last.  Similar language is popping up from Virginia Republican newsletters to off the cuff speeches by lawmakers and officials in Texas, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere.  None of which is slapped down or denounced by the supposedly respectable elements of the GOP and conservative movement.

The background chatter for class war and revolution is ratcheting up across the cesspool that is the right wing blog-o-sphere.

This rhetoric just plays to the rich fantasy lives of many of followers who cast themselves as the heroes of the epic movies in their heads, dealing death and vengeance with righteousness.  These folks sometimes do not take a lot of prodding, or wink-and-nod approval to cross the line from fantasy to the headlines of the next “crazed lone gunman” story.

In the face off all of this rising spleen, working people, whose lives and incomes have come under tireless assault, have been strangely, until Wisconsin, silent.  But a year of the Occupy Movement has opened up new possibilities of resistance—even of boldly taking an offensive position in a new acknowledged class war.  The mass take-it-to-the-streets energy of the Chicago Teachers’ Strike astounded the pundits who routinely vilify teacher and their unions when parents and the general public flocked to the support of the teachers.

As for me, I am glad for signs that our side of the Class War—here-to-fore the losing side—is beginning to fight back.  Yes, we will fight back in the voting booth.  That is our first defense against a total takeover by the ruthless oligarchy.  But it is in the streets, in the neighborhood, on the job that we will go on the offensive.  We won’t slack our thirst for justice on what trickles down or be grateful for the crumbs brushed for our betters’ tables.  We will demand and take what is by rights our own.

 Class war? Count me as one geezer ready to re-enlist.  Who’s with me?

Social Security Under New Attack on Its Birthday

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs The Social Security Act.  Looking on are Rep. Robert Doughton (D-NC), Sen. Robert Wagner (D-NY),  Rep. John Dingell—father of the current Congressman of the same name—(D-MI),  Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Sen. Pat Harrison (D-MS) and Rep. David Lewis (D-MD).

Social Security has rightly been acclaimed “the most successful American anti-poverty program in history.”  Once considered so popular that proposals to altar or abolish it were widely considered the “third rail of American politics”—too dangerous to seriously advance.  But that was before years of a carefully managed drum beat of hysteria that the system was somehow “running out of money” which has convinced many folks, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that they would never live to collect what they have been paying in for their entire working lives.

That kind of talk was the nose of the camel under the tent that allowed retirement ages to creep upward and talk of limiting or reducing future benefits become fashionable in some quarters.  Proposals to “privatize” all or part of the system in whole or in part seemed to be gaining steam.  These would allow younger workers to take part or all of their Social Security contributions and invest them in private IRA like accounts. 

The wind was kicked out of that fantasy in the recent stock market collapse, which understandably raised doubt in the safety of investment in the volatile Stock Market.

But some bad ideas just won’t stay dead.  The alleged libertarians of the Tea Party surged to real power in the House of Representatives as a voracious, disciplined block within the majority Republican caucus driving the whole party dramatically, derangedly to the right virtually overnight.

The Tea Party House Freshmen found an incumbent ally in rising Wisconsinite Paul Ryan, a devotee of Ayn Rand in all of her sociopathic glory.  Ryan, elevated to leadership in the caucus, came up with his famous Ryan budget.  And suddenly all “discretionary” social service expenditures and Medicare were in the cross hairs for either outright elimination or a slow death by a thousand cuts.  Not content, Ryan has made clear that Social Security, too, must be “reformed” virtually out of existence.

By shoring up his tepid support among right wing zealots of his party by tapping Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney has tied himself to the hip to the public face of the destruction of Social Security. 

That’s good politics in the short run—Tea Partiers were threatening to sit out the presidential race in sufficient numbers that Romney’s number crunchers were probably convinced that he could lose a couple of critical states and their Electoral College votes without them. 

But in the long run, it is likely the doom of the GOP’s fading hopes.  Most Americans still support—and rely upon—Social Security regardless of party affiliation.  For older voters, who have been skewing more heavily Republican in recent years, it is an especially sensitive issue.

President Obama and the Democrats can hardly believe their good fortune.  They will tie the Republican ticket to killing Social Security with the kind of relentless, dramatic and maddening attack ads that the GOP itself pioneered.  And the Republicans have no good way to counter the attacks, except by trying to divert attention to the fact that the President is an honest-to-god- Negro and to fantasies that he is a foreign born Muslim out to confiscate guns, force abortion on 13 year olds, and destroy marriage. 

The trouble is that only works on the sheep already in the fold.  Everyone else just shrugs their shoulders.  But they won’t shrug their shoulders at the dismantlement of Social Security.

Of course the demographics of a lot of Baby Boomers retiring together over the next few years in a kind of slow motion avalanche and the reduction of collection of FICA taxes since the economic collapse due to heavy unemployment and actually falling wages for those still employed has put a strain on the system, which could theoretically go bankrupt in a few years unless “something is done.”

But that something does not have to be further raises in the retirement age, reduction of benefits, privatization, or changing the system from “social insurance” to a means tested welfare program—the later program sometime surprisingly advanced by some on the right knowing that it would erode support for the system among higher income voters.  Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent and others have pointed out that simply raising the cap on wage income subject to FICA taxes and/or levying FICA taxes on non-wage income above a certain level would make the system solvent through most of the rest of the century.

Given the situation it is not surprising that this year the anniversary of the establishment of the Social Security System has attracted more than the usual attention

On August 14, 1935 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.  It was the crowning achievement of the New Deal.     

Before it was enacted those who lived beyond their income producing years were the poorest sector of society, particularly those who could not rely on the support and/or charity of family.  And the necessity of supporting an elderly relative drove many young families into poverty because of the extra expenses and the foregone income of those who had to become caretakers. 

Today, those over 65 are the least likely of all age cohorts to live in poverty. 

The battle for Federal retirement insurance was a long one.  The first such scheme was advocated as early as the 1820’s by trade unionists and socialists in Europe.  German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck implemented the first old age insurance plan in 1889 in the hope of achieving social stability in the new German Empire and uniting the loyalties of citizens of the various principalities he had brought together.  The German system provided contributory retirement benefits and disability benefits as well. Participation was mandatory and contributions were taken from the employee, the employer and the government.  It would become essentially the model for F.D.R.’s initiative. 

Social security plans had spread over Europe but were resisted as unwanted government interference in business in this country.  Social security, along with unemployment insurance, a government medical plan, the eight hour day, and limits to child labor were key platforms of Eugene V. Debs’ Socialist Party platform of 1912.  It was widely supported by most of the labor movement, although some craft unions which had wrung private pension plans from employers were opposed. 

Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins spearheaded the drive for Social Security for the administration.  Republicans in Congress bitterly opposed the program, decrying it as socialist, un-American, unconstitutional, and a business destroying tax burden.  Sound familiar?   

But the program was still wildly popular with voters, who elected large majorities of Democrats committed to the program in both houses of Congress.  Some compromises, however, had to be made and the original system was far from perfect.  Nearly 50% of all workers were excluded from coverage including workers in agriculture, domestic service, government employees, and most teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers. The act also did not cover those who worked intermittently including most seasonal workers. 

These provisions fell especially heavy on women and minorities who were disproportionately engaged in these occupations.  90% of all domestic workers were women and 2/3 of all employed Black women worked in domestic service.  And Southern Black men were predominately engaged as agricultural workers.  For these reasons the NAACP actually opposed the legislation that reached Roosevelt’s desk call it, “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”

Most women qualified for old age insurance only through their husbands or children.  Mothers’ pensions based entitlements on the presumption that mothers would be unemployed. 

The Social Security Act also established the Aid to Dependent Children, a welfare program designed to support children in unemployed families who had exhausted unemployment insurance.  Management of these programs was left to the States, at the insistence of Southern Democrats who did not want to “disturb the racial status quo.”  As a result Southern states routinely adopted rules making it difficult or nearly impossible for Black families to quality. 

This became one of the major reasons, along with increased employment opportunities as the country geared up for war later in the decade, for the Great Migration of rural Southern Blacks to Northern cities. 

In 1937 the Social Security withholding tax went into effect and the system began building reserves to make the first payments to retirees, originally scheduled for 1942.  Some economists charged that the income taken out of circulation by the tax was responsible for the 1937 “Roosevelt Recession.”  Others have pointed to drastic reductions in Federal spending because of budget concerns and because key elements of the New Deal had been declared unconstitutional as being the real culprit in the downturn.  Some felt that building a huge reserve before beginning to make pay-outs was a drag on the economy. 

So in 1939 Social Security was amended to begin making payout two years earlier than planned.  This caused the plan to become de facto as “pay as you go” system with current workers supporting the immediate benefits to retirees instead of relying of a large accumulated fund.  The amendments did establish a trust fund for any surplus funds managed by the Secretary of the Treasury. The money could be invested in both non-marketable and marketable securities. 

But because this trust fund became a Treasury Department asset, Congress later began to borrow against it to fund current spending.

Amendments to the act also tied women’s benefits more closely than ever to their husband’s income. The amendment added wives, elderly widows, and dependent survivors of covered male workers to those who could receive old age pensions. These individuals had previously been granted lump sum payments upon only death or coverage through the Aid to Dependent Children program. 

While this rescued many widows from poverty, the amendments also devalued the value of benefits a woman could receive from her own labor.  If a married wage-earning woman’s own benefit was worth less than 50% of her husband’s benefit, she was treated as a wife, not a worker and the dependents women who were covered by Social Security benefits were ineligible for her benefits.  Changes were also made to the Aid to Dependent Children program, including raising the age of eligible children to 18. 

Despite being far from perfect, the first monthly payment was issued on January 31, 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont.