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March 21, 2007

It's Time to Hate the Rich

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz today makes the case for why we should hate the rich - not merely conceptually, but personally. And the more I learn about who the rich really are, the more I agree with her.

We are held back and diminished by the claim that hating is bad for us, bad for everyone. You can hate the act but not hate the person. You can hate wealth or capitalism but not the rich. It's a ridiculous logic that keeps us hating and blaming ourselves for not being rich and powerful. Anyway, it's not consistent; it's all right to hate slavery and slaveowners, fascism and Hitler, etc. Why not hate the rich, the individual rich, not an abstract concept?

That may seem a bit outrageous at first glance. People who earn a high income aren't all that bad, are they? I mean, don't we all want to be rich like them? But as Dunbar-Ortiz points out, the people we think of as rich aren't the rich people she's talking about.

The rich own not just a mortgaged house and a car, maybe a boat or a cabin in the woods or a beach house to boot; rather they own you. Even the cash and luxury soaked entertainment and sports stars are not the rich; they certainly deserve contempt and disgust, but not hatred. Don't go for scapegoats--Jews, Oprah, Martha Stewart. Hatred should be reserved for those who own us, that is, those who own the banks, the oil companies, the war industry, the land (for corporate agriculture), the private universities and prep schools, and who own the foundations that dole out worthy projects for the poor, for public institutions-their opera, their ballet, their symphony, that you are allowed to attend after opening night.

I'm pretty much with her up to this point. Unfortunately, from here she heads off in a direction that makes me extremely uncomfortable.

In all the arguments about the crimes of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, rarely is their greatest crime ever discussed--the leveling of class, rich and poor are the same in god's sight. What a handy ideology for the rich! The same with US democracy with its "equal opportunity" and "level playing fields," absurd claims under capitalism, but ones held dear by liberals. Hating the rich means also hating the state, the United States of America that is the ruling corporate body of the rich.

Hate religion? Hate the United States of America? Dunbar-Ortiz might call me hopelessly brainwashed, but I think she's gone a bit too far. She does, however, make a good point:

Why are we so silent about this, grumping over the increase in the income gap, trying to figure out how to narrow it? What do we expect, that the rich will empower the people to overthrow them as they almost did in response to the labor movement in the 1930s or the Civil Rights Movement with the War on Poverty? Not again will they make that mistake. I'm not saying we shouldn't point to it as evidence of the crimes of the rich, but we should not delude ourselves that the rich will give up their ownership of us. So, we need to stop longing for the return of the New Deal or savior Roosevelt. Passionate, organized hatred is the element missing in all that we do to try to change the world. Now is the time to spread hate, hatred for the rich.

Interestingly, another piece on the rich is also posted today on Counterpunch. James Petras writes about the growth in the number of billionaires around the world, calling them the global ruling class, and contrasts their vast wealth with the vast poverty in the rest of the world.

[O]ne hundred millionth of the world's population (1/100,000,000) owns more than over 3 billion people. Over half of the current billionaires (523) came from just 3 countries: the US (415), Germany (55) and Russia (53). The 35 per cent increase in wealth mostly came from speculation on equity markets, real estate and commodity trading, rather than from technical innovations, investments in job-creating industries or social services.

As you read his description of how these wealthy individuals acquired and concentrated their wealth, you will probably feel a bit of that hatred that Dunbar-Ortiz talked about. Petras discusses the making of several billionaires, showing us the crimes, betrayals, and suppression of the rest of us that has made them what they are and revealing the political movements that assisted them. The impact of their greed on our lives has been much more broad than one might suspect. And the role of the U.S. government in their creation has me re-thinking my original response to Dunbar-Ortiz's hatred of the United States of America. I can't join her in hating our country, but certainly the "global ruling class" has been pulling our strings, and I definitely hate that.

The responsibility of the US for the growth of Latin American billionaires and mass poverty is several-fold and involves a wide gamut of political institutions, business elites, and academic and media moguls. First and foremost the US backed the military dictators and neo-liberal politicians who set up the billionaire-oriented economic models. It was ex-President Clinton, the CIA and his economic advisers, in alliance with the Russian oligarchs, who provided the political intelligence and material support to put Yeltsin in power and back his destruction of the Russian Parliament (Duma) in 1993 and the rigged elections of 1996. And it was Washington, which allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to be laundered in US banks throughout the 1990's as the US Congressional Sub-Committee on Banking (1998) revealed.

It was Nixon, Kissinger and later Carter and Brzezinski, Reagan and Bush, Clinton and Albright who backed the privatizations pushed by Latin American military dictators and civilian reactionaries in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's . Their instructions to the US representatives in the IMF and the World Bank were writ large: Privatize, de-regulate and de-nationalize (PDD) before any loans should be negotiated.

It was US academics and ideologues working hand in glove with the so-called multi-lateral agencies, as contracted economic consultants, who trained, designed and pushed the PDD agenda among their former Ivy League students-turned-economic and finance ministers and Central Bankers in Latin America and Russia.

It was US and EU multi-national corporations and banks which bought out or went into joint ventures with the emerging Latin American billionaires and who reaped the trillion dollar payouts on the debts incurred by the corrupt military and civilian regimes. The billionaires are as much a product and/or by-product of US anti-nationalist, anti-communist policies as they are a product of their own grandiose theft of public enterprises. …

Countries of 'surging billionaires' produce burgeoning poverty, submerging living standards. The making of billionaires means the unmaking of civil society the weakening of social solidarity, protective social legislation, pensions, vacations, public health programs and education.

I finally understand the problem with the Republican argument about policies that help the rich. The problem is in how they are framing the debate. They mean one thing, but the public understands something entirely different. They're talking the ruling global elite. The public is thinking of that guy who owns a vacation home at the coast, wears a Rolex and drives a Humvee – when he isn't racing around town in his Corvette, that is. Maybe they're even thinking about that rock star or basketball star or movie star with a couple mansions and fancy clothes and a staff of bodyguards, stylists, housekeepers, and landscapers. They'd like to live that life and hope that someday they'll have a lucky break and they will be rich, too. But those people are millionaires. The concept of billionaires is beyond comprehension for most of us. They somehow slip under our radar. And they are the real problem.

Posted by Becky at March 21, 2007 11:30 AM