Only a tiny minority of the super-rich dare to speak out against the ideology of the free market, as in this NYT article: The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age. But even those super-rich espouse an anti-democratic, elistist view of politics in their views of how their money should be redistributed - through philanthropies that they control - rather than through taxes (or direct seizure of their property).

The new tycoons oppose raising taxes on their fortunes. Unlike Mr. Crandall, neither Mr. Weill nor Mr. Griffin nor most of the dozen others who were interviewed favor tax rates higher than they are today, although a few would go along with a return to the levels of the Clinton administration. The marginal tax on income then was 39.6 percent, and on capital gains, 20 percent. That was still far below the 70 percent and 39 percent in the late 1970s. Those top rates, in the Bush years, are now 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

The NYT does a good job of tacitly highlighting the contradictions between the ideologies of the rich and the realities of American inequality. Yet, they don’t go nearly far enough in making any kind of explicit critique of the specific connections between the obscene profits reaped by the rich and the vicious cycles of poverty. What they should say is the following: philanthropy and market ideologies serve to mask the fact that the rich earned their money through accumulating capital from the surplus value of the millions of workers’ they exploit around the world. Workers should recognize their exploitation and organize as a class which would give them leverage to demand greater political power over the distribution of wealth and income.

Maybe to make this argument, the NYT would need to use the marxist language of “exploitation,” “surplus value,” “capital,” and “class”. They already have used the language of class, in their special issue, “Class Matters - Social Class in the U.S.A.” But they should use that language more systematically and in connection with political projects, such as those of the Democratic Party. (Or maybe they are relying on bloggers like us to draw those more radical connections for them?)

When I read soft-balling critiques of the rich, I think of the song, “Kill the Rich” by Anti-Flag. (Although I don’t endorse its violent message, I can appreciate its sentiment of REFUSAL.)

They’re gonna give you nothing
They want to take away the little they call something
You know you’re being used still you play along
If you’re not complacent,
You’re doing something wrong
One day they’ll push too far
That marks the beginning of their end

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 10:31 and is filed under Politics, anti-capital, revolution, violence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.