Thoughts on Republican Accusations of “Class Warfare” Against Democrats

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Wed Jul-26-06 06:40 PM
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Thoughts on Republican Accusations of “Class Warfare” Against Democrats

The term “class warfare” as it is used in the United States today is very misleading – and purposely so. It is primarily used by Republican operatives to conjure up fears of the “lower class” masses rising up to steal from the rich what is rightfully theirs, in the process plunging our country into Communism or anarchism. For example, the number one Republican operative in our country, George W. Bush, said not too long ago in preparation for another round of tax cuts for the wealthy: "I understand the politics of economic stimulus -- that some people would like to turn this into class warfare."

Not only is this line of propaganda condescending and offensive, as it implies the existence of a so-called “lower class” that is somehow inferior to the upper classes who are the defenders of our civilization. But it is also terribly misleading.

There is indeed a kind of internal warfare going on in our country today, as is testified to by the massive grassroots support for the impeachment of the worst President in our history. But this warfare does not involve lower class vs. upper class, or even the poor vs. the rich. Rather, it is more accurately characterized as a struggle between those who seek responsible government versus those who currently hold power in our country and who wish to expand their wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. In fact, it is the former group, not the latter, who are the defenders of our civilization, and it is the latter group who are plunging our country into anarchism.

The idea that these two groups break out along so-called “class” lines, whatever that means, is ridiculous, unless by that we mean the moral class vs. the robber baron class. For example, consider the 90 some thousand persons who have registered with the DU. These people certainly represent the whole spectrum of economic status, and yet they are almost uniformly on the side of this struggle that seeks responsible government. True, they are doubtlessly much more intelligent and better educated on average than the other side. But that doesn’t qualify this as “class warfare”.

Furthermore, those who spew out this venomous spin aren’t even consistent about it. Whereas they use the term “class warfare” to their higher income audiences, to arouse fear of insurrection from below, to their lower income audiences they are much more likely to use the phrase “liberal elites”, in order to arouse a different kind of hatred.

But in order to put this into better perspective I need to back up in time a bit to consider some historical events and situations.

A brief example of anarchy – 14th century France

The Republicans know what they’re doing when they try to conjure up fears of anarchy, which is indeed a dreadful state of affairs. Barbara Tuchman, in “A Distant Mirror – The Calamitous 14th Century”, describes what the anarchy occasioned by warfare in 14th Century France was like:

The breakdown of authority was reaching catastrophe. Its catalyst was the brigandage of military companies… and were to become the torment of the age…They had acquired in the Prince’s campaigns a taste for the ease and riches of plunder… they swelled, merged, organized, spread, and operated with ever more license. Seizing a castle, they would use it as a stronghold from which to exact tribute from every traveler and raid the countryside… They imposed ransoms on prosperous villages and burned the poor ones, robbed abbeys and monasteries… pillaged peasants’ barns, killed and tortured those who hid their goods or resisted ransom… violated virgins, nuns, and mothers, abducted women…

That’s anarchy. In a nutshell, anarchy is where, in the absence of adequate government authority a power vacuum is created whereby opportunistic men without morals act as predators on the rest of society. Who benefits from anarchy? Certainly not society as a whole. The only people who “benefit” from this, if “benefit” is the appropriate word, are the powerful, greedy, aggressive men who have the means of power to get what they want and the lack of conscience to restrain themselves from trampling over everyone else to get it.

One of the main reasons that people create governments is to protect themselves against that sort of thing.

But sometimes government itself is the problem: The American Revolution

Of course, not any old government will do. Often government itself is headed by men who use their authority to enrich themselves and enhance their power, rather than to serve their people.

Such was the situation that incited the Revolution that gave birth to the United States of America. Thus, the Declaration of Independence, which formally signaled the birth of our country, contains a list of numerous grievances against King George III that mostly involve his accumulation of power at the expense of the Americans.

Today, nobody thinks of the Founding Fathers of the United States as “anarchists” or as men who fought a “class war”. Rather, they were a group of men who believed that their government was tyrannical, that they therefore had the moral right to overthrow it, and who did so. Thus, they were a group of men who fought for responsible government, not unlike the group of people whom I mention in the first section of this article.

The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age encompasses the period of United States History from roughly 1865 to 1901. It was characterized by rapid industrialization and a great widening of the income gap between the rich and the poor. The term “robber baron” was used to characterize the leading industrialists of this period, who were described by Thorstein Veblen in “The Theory of the Leisure Class” as being “not different from a barbarian because he uses brute force, cunning and competitive skills to make money from others, and then lives off the spoils of conquests rather than producing things himself.”

Note the similarity between this characterization of robber barons and the brigands of 14th Century France described above. The major difference is that the robber barons didn’t use force and violence with their own hands to enhance their wealth and power, but rather used the power of government for that purpose. Some would also argue that these people did not act immorally in their acquisition of wealth and power because their actions were supported by the legal power and authority of government.

This is obviously a very complex issue. But to add some human perspective to it, consider the events of May 1886, highlighted by the Haymarket bombing incident and its aftermath, and considered to represent a major turning point in the history of America’s labor movement. These events are described in detail in James Green’s “Death in the Haymarket – A story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America”.

A very brief history of the Haymarket Square bombing incident and its precedents and aftermath

Precedents

Working people had it very rough in those days. They often worked very hard, under very bad physical conditions, for very little money, and for so many hours that they had very little time for leisure or to spend with their families.

Labor unions began to form as a response to these conditions. One of the main goals of the labor movement was the establishment of the 8 hour working day. Industry vigorously resisted this, and they were greatly assisted in this resistance by the leading newspapers of the time, as well as the powers of government.

Yet, the labor movement persisted, and through organization, political activity, strikes, and demonstrations meant to appeal to the American masses, by the end of April 1886, it appeared to be on the verge of winning substantial concessions.

On May 1st a general strike began, with its most intense activity in Chicago. By the afternoon of May 3rd, several employers had granted major concessions to the labor unions, and the situation was looking bright for them. Then about 200 police officers attacked strikers at the McCormick plant in Chicago with clubs and guns, resulting in six dead strikers.

Rather than quelling the strikes, the deaths at the McCormick plant infuriated the workers, who responded by gathering together for numerous meetings, where angry and violent rhetoric was spoken. The strikes continued on May 4th.

The Haymarket Square bombing incident

On the evening of May 5th a protest rally was held in Haymarket Square, Chicago, with about 3,000 people attending. By 10:20 p.m., bad weather had caused many people to leave, and only about 500 remained. As the meeting was winding down, police entered the square and commanded the crowd to disperse. The speaker, Samuel Fielden, briefly argued with the police, claiming that the rally was peaceable, but relented after further insistence by the police. Fielden then began to climb down from his platform.

At that moment a grenade was thrown, landed on the ground, and exploded. There is controversy about what followed, but most of the witnesses who were not bribed or threatened or tortured into giving specific testimony said that the gunfire which followed the explosion of the grenade came entirely or almost entirely from the police. By the end of the mayhem that followed the exploded grenade, three civilians and seven police officers were dead or lay dying.

Aftermath

The “terrorist attack” set off hysteria throughout the country, but especially in Chicago. The hysteria was occasioned by the fact that the use of bombs for such a purpose was not previously known, and there was a belief that this could auger in an era where police were defenseless against terrorists who chose to fight by methods such as this.

In the following days many of the leaders of the labor movement in Chicago were rounded up and held for interrogation. Eight of them were indicted on conspiracy to commit murder. These eight men were mostly anarchists, Communists, or socialists, and all of them were immigrants to the United States.

The trial of the eight men became one of the most controversial trials in American history because of its many irregularities. In the first place, people were admitted to the jury only if they expressed prejudice against the defendants. The person who threw the bomb was neither identified nor charged, and indeed many people suspected that it was thrown by someone whose motivation was to cast a cloud over and destroy the labor movement. Furthermore, it was made clear to the jury that the defendants were being tried on the basis of their political beliefs rather than on the basis of their relationship to the specific events of May 5th. The prosecutor put it like this in his charge to the jury:

America… might be in danger, for … anarchy is possible… There is but one step from republicanism to anarchy… Freeing the anarchists would mean taking that step… If the jurymen unjustly acquit the anarchists, their followers would flock out again like a lot of rats and vermin.

And the judge agreed, instructing the jury that they could find the men guilty of murder even if the crime was committed by someone who was not charged.

7 of the 8 men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hung, while the 8th was sentenced to 15 years in prison. A sympathetic governor later commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment for 2 of the 7 men who were sentenced to hang, refusing to do so for the remaining 5 because they refused to ask for mercy, on the grounds that they maintained their innocence. One man committed suicide, and four were hung to death. A new mayor eventually pardoned the remaining three, based on the paucity of evidence against the defendants, the numerous irregularities of the trial and the finding that most of the witnesses for the prosecution had been either bribed, threatened, or tortured into testifying against the defendants.

Nevertheless, the hysteria and fear occasioned by the “terrorism” unleashed at Haymarket Square led to aggressive suppression of the labor movement in the following years, very possibly setting back the labor movement in the United States by decades. And to give you a general idea of the violence involved in conflicts between labor and employers, the historian Richard Hofstadter, writing in 1970, concluded that the United States had experienced at least 160 instances in which state or federal troops had intervened in strikes, and at least 700 labor disputes in which deaths were recorded, with clearly most of the violence being perpetrated by state or federal authorities.

Amelioration of the excesses of the Gilded Age

Eventually, reaction set in against the robber barons, and measures were taken to reduce income and power disparities in America. Landmark measures included the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, President Teddy Roosevelt’s vigorous enforcement of those laws during his Presidency, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, which allowed the graduated income tax, and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Finally, Congress mandated the eight hour working day with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Relevance to the present day situation

Republicans cry “class warfare” whenever Democrats suggest measures that are meant to improve the lives of American citizens in general, but which may cut into the profits of the wealthy and powerful benefactors of the Republican Party. They like to pretend that they represent the forces of law and order, and that they will protect us against those of us who wish to institute “class warfare” and plunge our country into anarchy and terrorism. But in reality they are similar in many ways to the brigands of 14th century France or the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age.

Thousands of examples could be provided of how current day Republicans are moving our country in a direction that makes the wealthy and powerful less accountable for their actions or unfairly increases their wealth and power at the expense of everyone else, thus reversing so much of the progress that has been made since the late 19th century in leveling the playing field to make opportunity for a good life available to all Americans. Here are just a few of those examples:

 Passing of a Medicare bill that prohibits government negotiation of prices with the drug companies, thus enriching drug companies at the expense of our senior citizens
 Massive tax cuts for the rich
 Nominating a Secretary of Labor who is rabidly anti-union
 Nominating a Secretary of the Interior who is rabidly anti-environment
 No bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq, and then failure to follow up on gross violations of those contracts
 Failure to raise the minimum wage for almost 10 years
 Passage of a bankruptcy bill that encourages predatory lending practices
 Passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed the consolidation and monopolization of the news media
 Failure to take seriously or respond to the worst hurricane to hit our country in several years or decades
 Deregulation of the energy industry, which allowed Enron to create an artificial power crises in order to raise energy prices
 Voting machines provided by allies of the Republican Party, that count our votes using secret software and produce results that cannot be verified

As a result of all this, the poverty rate has increased substantially during the Bush administration for the first time since the end of the first Bush Presidency, the wealth gap has widened to the highest levels since the Gilded Age, so that CEOs now make on average 431 times the annual income of their average employee, and even infant mortality rate has begun to rise for the first time in 40 years.

The Haymarket bombing incident is very reminiscent of the September 11 attacks on our country:

 Both incidents set off widespread hysteria and fear in our country because of the advent of a new form of terror.
 Both incidents resulted in massive repression by government, which consequently greatly enhanced its powers.
 And, the investigations of both incidents were grossly inadequate, with widespread government interference, so that numerous questions remained as to who was responsible.

Even worse, our leaders have used the events of the September 11 terrorist attacks as a pretense for preemptive war, for spying on its own citizens without the use of warrants as demanded by U.S. law and our Constitution, and for violating the terms of international treaties whose purpose is to establish the rule of law among nations. And all for no apparent reason – other than to enhance the wealth and power of our leaders and their friends.

In Summary

Democrats and other people who are disgusted with our current leaders are not interested in “class warfare”, as Republicans repeatedly whine about. They are primarily interested in restoring responsible government to our country. Part of that includes removing some of the privileges that have been heaped upon the ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful during the past several years of Republican rule.

One of the major indications of Fascism is a tight relationship between corporate power and government, so that in many ways corporate power rather than the people is in control of the government. Can anyone claim that we’re not there yet?

I don’t think that opposing Fascism is the same thing as class warfare. But if it is then I guess that many of us Democrats will just have to plead guilty to that charge.