Conservatives stoke resentment between worse off & better off workers to prevent solidarity

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.openleft.com/diary/19926/conservatives-stoke-resentment-between-worse-off-better-off-workers-to-prevent-solidarity

Yesterday, in my diary, "What the elites are trying to steal from us, and why", I quoted from economist Dean Baker's recent article, "When Wall Street Rules, We Get Wall Street Rules", including the following two crucial paragraphs:

No progressive movement will make any progress until we understand the battle we are fighting. Our income is a cost to the rich. They will look to cut it wherever they can, whether this is wages for private sector workers, pensions for public employees, or Social Security for retirees. That is their target.

We have to fight back using the same logic. Their income is our cost -- the multimillion dollar bonuses for the Wall Street wizards is a direct drain on the economy. So are the bloated paychecks of top executives and their lackey boards. Progressives must be prepared to use all the same tactics to bring down the income of the rich and powerful that they have used to reduce the income of everyone else.

Regarding the bolded passage, I then wrote:

Keep that passage in front of you at all times, and you'll save yourself enormous amounts of grief.

Not least of all, it will help you recognize when someone's trying to distract you by pitting you against some other poor soul who's in exactly the same sort lose/lose negative sum situation that you are. Pitting one generation against another? Workers and/or taxpayers from one state against another? Employed against unemployed? Insured against uninsured? Oil rig workers against fishermen? (Especially when both are one and the same workers!) All these and more just different forms of the same class war game, the oldest one in the book: Let's you and him fight.

Oaktown Girl later wrote a comment picking up on this, along with a comment by VLaszlo quoting from a similarly themed piece by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford.

MORE at the link ---

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. It works, even here...

....where you wouldn't expect it.