The Protestant Ethic, the Spirit of Capitalism and the Inherent Flaw in the American Dream and Why It Has Become a National Nightmare. (Part Three)

“That’s the problem with the American dream; it makes everyone concerned about the day they’re going to be rich.” – President Bartlett from The West Wing.

Being in sales, I often attend sales training seminars: boot camp as I often call it. The purpose of these seminars, officially, is to reacquaint the sales staff with the benefits and features of a particular product or group of products so as to be better able to explain said benefits and features to potential customers thereby increasing sales and profit. The unofficial reason for attending these seminars, and the one you will never see publicly admitted to, is to drum in to the sales staff’s collective heads that you can make as much money as you wish; that ours is the only profession where there are no limits on our income, and that if we weren’t making enough money, then there was something we were doing wrong that needed correction; hence the need for a seminar.

Now, while there is an element of truth in that “unofficial” statement, what is left out is the very real and profound fact that despite every possible advantage that these seminars provide underachievers, the hard truth is that of all the people currently in sales, a handful – say 10 percent – do VERY well; another 25% are doing OK; and the remaining 65% run the gamut from barely making it to just flat out falling flat on their faces. Like the bulk of the American people, the ultimate goal is rarely reached, and the majority toil on, desperately believing that one day they will be in that top bracket. Like Joe the Plumber, they talk optimistically about a day when they can drink from the fountain of success, unfettered by the disadvantages they left behind in another lifetime in a galaxy far, far away. For them, the American dream is real, not because they have a realistic chance at living it out, but because they are terrified that the life they have is as good as it will ever get. They are the ultimate Republican wet dream, because each election cycle they eagerly line up and buy into another faulty notion that the wealthy have their backs, and that with a little more effort on their part, they will soon reach the summit of the mountain they have been climbing all their lives. The Democrats are Socialist kill-joys, they say, looking to rob them of the fortune they still do not have but earnestly believe they will one day achieve. Never mind that they are losing their homes, or are about to lose their jobs, or can’t afford to send their kids to college, or that their 401K just turned into a 201K, or that they don’t have quite enough money to both heat their homes and put food on the table. All that is just negative speak, not to be tolerated. It runs counter to an ethic that goes back centuries and is as deeply embedded into our collective psyches as the faith we profess to believe in. It is as old, it seems, as the printed word itself.

This Protestant ethic that Weber spoke of, whether you completely buy into all his conclusions – and I admit he does not explain all the inherent problems that exist – or not, has been primarily responsible for fostering a system that holds at its core a belief that success was evidence of God’s blessing, and there was something evil or contemptuous about those who could not fend for themselves or who needed assistance. Such people were to be scorned and those who “enabled” them shunned. Words like Socialist are code for non-conformists to an ideology that needs to reinforce a nation’s belief in its hegemony as evidence of God’s pre-determined favor, just as its peoples’ success within its borders were predicated squarely on how well they strived for it. It is an ethic that is self-fulfilling in its totality.

The truth is that for all the rhetoric that gets tossed about in this country, most of the “real” Americans that the Right seems to want to champion, would do well to wake up and smell the caffeine. Far from helping them realize their dreams, the Right has made their lives a living nightmare, a nightmare from which they are reluctant to wake up from. This Joe the Plumber guy is a case in point. Like so many other gullible individuals this “unlicensed” plumber, who can’t even pay his taxes, and is nowhere near being able to afford to buy his boss’s company, if he stopped and gave it some thought, would actually come to the realization that he would come out ahead under an Obama Administration. But John McCain whispers in his ear what he has always wanted to hear: that one day he will be rich enough to buy that business, and that when that happens he will be penalized for being prosperous. McCain has told him what he wanted to hear; Obama told him the truth. In politics the truth is mocked; in real life, however, the truth hurts.

The nation is hurting, more now than at any time since The Great Depression. Maybe now some of this painful truth will seep into the fabric of our society and we will finally be able to emerge if not totally from the nightmarish existence which is our history, then at least partially from it. Self-reliance, along with the arrogance that runs parallel to it, will never be completely exorcized from our collective conscious – they are too deeply embedded for that. But, maybe, we can all come to a fuller understanding that while there is nothing wrong with a little hard work and breaking a sweat for one’s wages, not everyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. As Children of God, we are called to help those less fortunate than ourselves, not from a posture of pride and self-righteousness, but from the humility of knowing that while we were still lost in sin, Jesus gave up His own life to save us. He fed the hungry, healed the sick and tended to those less fortunate. As His Disciples, we are no less obligated to return the favor in His name.

Crimes & Misdemeanors: McCarthyism revisited in Michelle Bachmann.

I pulled this from YouTube. It is the interview Michelle Bachmann made on Chris Matthews’ Hardball show on MSNBC last Friday. I’ll let her words do the talking.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_pN2IPAw6E


It is still shocking to me that no matter how much we seem to progress as a society and how distant we seem to get from those painful and embarrassing years in our nation’s history, we can still fall right back into the garbage disposal of accusations and shameful name baiting that epitomized the McCarthy era. If this woman were the only example of such despicable acts, I would just chalk her up to a lunatic who had escaped from the asylum. Unfortunately, Michelle Bachmann is only one of a great many conservative Republicans who collectively, it seems, have lost all moral bearings as they desperately try anything that will resonate with the electorate. Fortunately for the country, the vast majority of those “real” Americans that Bachmann keeps referring to have chosen to ignore her vicious attacks, along with the Bill Ayers and Acorn cheap shots.

As the nation continues to reel from a deepening recession and looks for answers from the candidates as to how they will pull us out of it, the McCain campaign talks about socialism, terrorists and Joe the Plumber. The number one topic of discussion on Fox News is “Voter Fraud and the Obama/Acorn Connection.” Predictable as dirt, you might say. Hopefully, this time it won’t work. Obama seems to be comfortably out in front; the country seems poised to make history. In the next twelve days we will have to endure assault after assault by the Right on our common sense. Good thing McCain brought that plumber guy with him on his campaign trail. We’re all going to need a few drain pipes cleared before this is all over!

P.S. I donated $25 to Michelle Bachmann's opponent. Just an FYI

The Protestant Ethic, the Spirit of Capitalism and the Inherent Flaw in the American Dream and Why It Has Become a National Nightmare. (Part Two)

Now that we’ve studied the early histories of the United States and France, I thought I would bring us up to the late 20th century. Remember both these countries were Republics in the strictest sense of the word, born out of revolutions, yet different in philosophical bents. Whether you buy into the Weberian and Marxist theories that explain their divergent paths or not, it is clear that both countries were radically different when it came to their internal and external affairs. In Part Two I wanted to concentrate on the U.S. from the 1970s up to the ‘90s. Part Three will conclude this series.



The 1970s had not been kind to the United States. In America, the country was still reeling from the embarrassment of Watergate and the shame of Vietnam. The Carter Administration was viewed by many as impotent, especially during the Iran-hostage crisis which gripped the nation for more than a year before the 1980 election. Add to that the rising rate of inflation and a general feeling of malaise within the populace and it is not so surprising that Ronald Reagan won handily over a beaten and badly demoralized Jimmy Carter.

More than any other economist of his era, John Maynard Keynes understood that workers were more than just a drain on corporate profits; they were also the consumers who would purchase those products, which were being manufactured by them. If these consumers could not afford to consume the goods they were producing, then the businesses that hired them, faced with a loss of revenue, would have to reduce their overhead, which usually meant layoffs for the workers. Those unemployed workers would represent still more consumers unable to consume, which would necessitate the letting go of still more workers. This vicious cycle would go on until the country would inevitably be plunged into recession or depression. The only antidote for this calamity, according to Keynes, was high wages, which would lead to increases in production as consumers purchased more goods. While inflation was always a risk, it was a risk Keynes considered acceptable. At the conclusion of the 1960s the United States was enjoying the fruits of Keynesian economics.

Then things fell apart. Most commentators agree on the list of factors that pulled the system down: export rivalry from newly industrialized nations where labor unions were weak or outlawed; inflation exported around the world by the United States as it tried to pay for the Vietnam War; slackened commitment to full employment because of that inflation; weakening of the U.S. dollar and, consequently, of U.S. hegemony. Instead of carrying out a Keynesian mission to facilitate growth, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund became the international debt police. They squeezed second and third world economies, constricting global demand. In 1973, the Nixon administration threw out the fixed exchange rates - established at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 - and over the next few years, the United States pressured other countries to decontrol their financial systems. U.S. elites believed that given complete freedom in international finance, they could reestablish their hegemony. Instead they made instability a key characteristic of the period.[1]

Supply-side Economics and the American War on the Poor

The Reagan revolution - as it was called then - swept the United States in 1980. It was, for all intents and purposes, a direct response to the general malaise, which had been gripping the nation for over a year and a half. Many have singled out the ineptness of the Carter Administration as the impetus behind the movement. The reality, however, was that the origins of Reaganomics (a.k.a. supply-side economics) went back much farther, all the way back to the 1960s. The welfare state of Keynes had, according to conservatives, gone too far. Instead of helping the poor and underprivileged of American society, welfare had robbed them of their self-respect and dignity. As early as the late 1960s and early 1970s, conservative politicians were calling for an end to the "Great Society" as it was known to Americans. By the late 1970s, with the country in the middle of an economic downturn that saw interest rates hovering at just over 22 percent and inflation almost as high, the conservative wave had turned into a tidal surge of unprecedented momentum.

Supply-side economics rests on two underlying principles. The first of these is that government is not the answer to our problems, government is our problem. All we have to do is reduce - or eliminate altogether - the government and allow the capitalist system to do what it does best - provide jobs for everyone. The second principle was that since the rich within this system were the ones who created jobs through their investments, the government should do all that it can to ensure their continued good fortune, including, but not limited to, reducing the maximum tax rate on them. On both counts did the Reagan administration make good its promise. Welfare spending was cut and the richest one percent of the country received a tax break which increased their real income by 73.9 percent, while the bottom fifth of the country suffered a 4.4 percent decline.[2]

Additionally, that top one percent owned and controlled 41.8 percent of the wealth; 35.1 percent in the first half percent alone. That figure was up from 1963, where the top half percent of the population controlled 25.4 percent of the wealth. As if that were not bad enough, data shows that the middle class shrank as a result of the movement of capital from the working poor to the super rich. From 1963 to 1983 the percentage of wealth in the remaining 99 percentile went from 67.2 percent to 58.1. Not since 1929, when it was estimated that the richest one percent owned almost 43 percent of all wealth, has there been such a gap between the rich and the poor.[3] While not all of this can be attributable to Reagan administration policy - the Kennedy administration actually began the process in 1962 when it cut the top tax rate from 88 percent to 70 percent[4]- most of the damage was done during its watch.

Those most victimized by the Reagan Administration cuts in welfare and social spending were African Americans. Traditionally blacks had been a highly class homogenous group, first as slaves, then as sharecroppers and domestics in the South, and then, in the first generation of migration to the North, as workers in the menial services, domestic labor, and lowest level industrial jobs. Out of this traditionally class homogenous group three distinct and qualitatively different black social classes appeared to be crystallizing: a privileged black petty bourgeoisie, a black industrial proletariat, and a black urban underclass.[5] The latter two of these classes would be at the focal point of race relations in the 1960s.


In 1947, the median income of non-white families was 51 percent that of white families; in 1957, it was 54 percent.[6] The economic deprivation, social isolation, and psychological alienation produced by decades of segregation bore bitter fruit in a series of violent urban riots during the 1960s.[7] Between 1963 and 1968, riots broke out in sixty U.S. cities, among them Birmingham and Los Angeles. In the case of the latter, which occurred in the summer of 1965, the city suffered 35 million dollars in damages, and there were 4,000 injured and 34 dead. Riots in Chicago, in 1968, followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April of that year.

Unlike the communal race riots of the early 1900s, these disturbances arose from within the black community itself and were "commodity riots," directed at property rather than people. Attacks were confined largely to the ghetto and were directed at white property, institutions, or authority symbols. The participants did not express a racial hatred of whites per se, but an anger with the conditions of racial oppression and economic deprivation that had been allowed to fester in the ghetto for sixty years.[8] The country was in the grips of a racial meltdown, the likes of which threatened to tear asunder the economic order of those who had both the most power and the most to lose. Clearly, a response was dictated to restore order and stability within the black underclass.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination in employment, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in housing, were touted as emblematic of the commitment of the United States to justice and equality for all its citizens. In truth, however, both were little more than paper tigers designed to appease the discontented. America had passed anti-discriminatory legislation in the past - the 1866 Civil Rights Act stands as a monument to deceit and chicanery - but in spite of the legislative initiative, blacks were still victims of its perverse grip.

The inherent problems in both acts lied not in their intent, but in their almost complete impotence in matters of enforcement. To put it bluntly, they had been stripped of every ounce of their testicular fortitude. For example, under Title VIII of the Fair Housing Act, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), established in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration, was authorized only to investigate complaints of housing discrimination made to the Secretary by "aggrieved persons;" it then had thirty days to decide whether to pursue or dismiss the allegations. If it decided to pursue, it was empowered only to engage in "conference, conciliation, and persuasion" to resolve the problem. Moreover, if the alleged violation occurred in a state where a "substantial equivalent" fair housing statute existed, HUD was not required to pursue the case at all - it was instructed to refer the complaint to state authorities.[9] Without any way to force compliance with the law or to assess damages, HUD was reduced to the role of ostensibly slapping the wrist of offenders.

The same was true with the Civil Rights Act. Though Title VII specifically prohibited employment discrimination in the private and public sectors on the basis of race, color, religion or sex, it could not provide high-paying jobs to poorly educated minorities when there were no jobs to give out. Thus, complaints by blacks of discriminatory hiring practices by employers were met by the obligatory "applicant not qualified for this job" retorts. As a result, the class structure of the black community bifurcated into an affluent class whose fortunes were improving and a poverty class whose position was deteriorating.[10]

No decade was more cruel to African Americans than the 1980s. The Reagan administration sought, with the help of a Republican controlled Congress, to turn back what little progress had been made by the Civil Rights and Fair Housing Acts. It also worked closely with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to undermine HUD's already limited enforcement authority.[11] But the cruelty did not end there. Even when the mood of the country towards the end of the decade began to swing closer to the center, opposition to ending discrimination remained fervent. Each time that a legislative or judicial action was undertaken to ameliorate segregation, it was fought tenaciously by a powerful array of people who benefited from the status quo (realtors, bankers, politicians); and these actors, in turn, relied on the broader indifference and hostility of most white Americans.[12]

Growing up in these impoverished ghettos severely hindered employment opportunities for African Americans. Those who did manage to find work, continued to be hampered by vast inequities in the rate of pay. In 1967, the median black family income stood at $16,595 in 1987 dollars, compared to $28,029 for whites, which meant that black families had about 59 percent of the median income of white families. In 1977, it was 57 percent and in 1987, it was 56 percent.[13] Not only had the condition of black families not improved since the 1960s, it had actually worsened.

In earlier times, the elder statesmen of urban ghettos acted as a kind of "guidance counselor," admonishing the young to stay out of trouble. The latter readily deferred to the former's age and "worldly experience." In contrast, today, as economic and social circumstances of the urban ghetto have changed, the traditional old head has been losing prestige and credibility as a role model. When gainful employment and its rewards are not forthcoming, boys (and girls for that matter) easily conclude that the moral lessons of the old head concerning the work ethic, punctuality, and honesty do not fit their own circumstances.[14]

Over time, as intense racial isolation and acutely concentrated poverty have continued, ghetto attitudes, values, and ideals have become progressively less connected to those prevailing elsewhere in the United States. As conditions worsen, and the social environment grows more hostile, the original connection of ghetto culture to the broader values of American society - even if only in opposition - has faded. The new culture of the ghetto rejects the values of American society as a farce and a sham, and traits that were once clearly oppositional and therefore somehow linked to the rest of American society have become ends in themselves, esteemed in their own right and disconnected from their relationship to the surrounding "white" society.[15]

The story of Rodney King was a case in point. What happened in Los Angeles in April of 1992 was neither a race riot nor a class rebellion. Rather, this monumental upheaval was a multiracial, trans-class, and largely male display of justified social rage. For all its ugly, xenophobic resentment . . . and its downright barbaric behavior, it signified the sense of powerlessness in American society.[16] It transcended the mere verdict of the case completely. What we witnessed in Los Angeles was the consequence of a lethal linkage of economic decline, cultural decay, and political lethargy in American life. Race was the visible catalyst, not the underlying cause.[17]

At the heart of the matter was a prevailing attitude among African Americans that regardless of which political wing was in power, they would always be on the outside looking in. To liberals, blacks had to be "helped," "encouraged," and "integrated" into white society; to conservatives, they must be "well behaved" and "worthy of acceptance" into it. Of crucial importance, however, was the fact that it was a "white" society after all, and that blacks represented the problem in it. Worse, yet, black politicians fell victim to this creed. Though they continued to call for more government relief, believing as they did in the benefit of such programs, they avoided both any attempt at serious dialogue on the causal factors of racism and, to a greater degree, any public criticism of one another over it.

To talk about the depressing statistics of unemployment, infant mortality, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, and violent crime was one thing. But to face up to the monumental eclipse of hope, the unprecedented collapse of meaning, the incredible disregard for human (especially black) life and property in much of black America was something else.[18]

Because all people, especially those who are oppressed, hunger for a sense of self-worth, as well as for food, no discussion of inequity can transpire without both spheres, mind and body, being present. Liberals excuse black acts of transgression as emblematic of a people deficient in values and work ethic. By throwing money at the problem, they enable the symptoms without finding a cure for the disease. Conservatives are worse still; they blame the victim for the disease, refuse even to acknowledge the symptoms and, like the proverbial ostrich, hide their heads in the sands of ignorance, believing as they do that the problem of poverty is a matter of self-will, or lack thereof.

Black people have always been in America's wilderness in search of a promised land. Yet many blacks now reside in a jungle ruled by cut-throat market morality devoid of any faith in deliverance or hope for freedom. Contrary to the superficial claims of conservative behaviorists, these jungles are not primarily the result of pathological behavior. Rather, this behavior is the tragic response of a people bereft of resources in confronting the workings of U.S. capitalist society.[19]

Like all Americans, blacks are influenced greatly by the images of comfort, convenience, machismo, femininity, violence, and sexual stimulation that bombard consumers. These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out non-market values - love, care, service to others - handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of a nihilistic threat in black America.[20]

In place of traditional mores that assign value to steady work, family life, the church, and respect for others, a drug culture and its economy have arisen, with profound effects on community well being. The proliferation of the drug culture within the ghetto has exacerbated the problems caused by segregation and its concentration of poverty, adding a powerful impetus to the cycle of decline.[21]

Disillusioned young blacks, who see little hope for improvement through the conventional methods of hard work, education, or staying out of trouble, employ the same "aggressive" marketing strategies as their "legitimate" white counterparts to get over on society. With the potential for a young black man to earn in a day what most people, white and black, earn in a month, it is a small wonder that the crime rate in urban America has skyrocketed over the last twenty-five years. Here, the lyrics to Ice-T's song, New Jack Hustler are alarmingly prophetic:

"I had nothin' and I wanted it;
You had everything and you flaunted it. Turned the needy into the greedy;
With cocaine, my success came speedy!".


This song, and others like it, epitomize the ghetto world of the 1980s and '90s. Rap culture depicts the demise of conventional family values in black America. Its rage is the rage of its listeners. It embodies the hopelessness and frustration of being black in a "white" America. From a sociological point of view, the specific content of these works is less important than what they illustrate about the state of race relations in America. By confining large numbers of black people to an environment within which failure is endemic, negative role models abound, and adherence to conventional values is nearly impossible, segregation has helped to create a violent counterculture sharply at odds with the basic values and goals of a democratic society.[22]

If the Great Society, at least on paper, waged war on poverty, the 1980s and '90s have witnessed a war on the impoverished. To be poor in the United States is to be without hope. The law of supply-side economics targeted for elimination the great welfare state Keynes envisioned more than forty years earlier. Unfortunately, neither conservative nor liberal politicians put in place any viable alternative to take its place. The poor today, both black and white, have become the scourge of contemporary society. We have become frightened not only of who and what they are, but of what they represent. Like our worst nightmare come true, the impoverished remind us of how much farther we must go to achieve a civilized society.

In the early twentieth century, racist sentiment in the United States was heightened by the Eugenics Movement, which had at the center of its argument the belief that the white race, specifically the native, mostly Protestant, white race, was being overrun by inferior blacks from the South and immigrants from Southern Europe (Italians, Spanish, etc.). This unsubstantiated fear was fueled mostly by the rising flood of migration from the South and immigration from Europe of lower-class workers desperate for the employment opportunities afforded them in the industrialized North. It also served as the impetus behind the race riots of that era.

In the 1920s, anthropologist Franz Boas spoke out forcefully against the racialist theories being propagated at the time, and by the 1930s and '40s, other important scientists joined him in attacking the idea that blacks were inferior to whites.[23] By the 1930s, the Eugenics Movement had all but run out of steam. Though discrimination continued thereafter, the majority of scientists and political pundits had little use for it as a theory.

Today, however, Eugenics has returned with a vengeance. Though its proponents skillfully avoid mentioning it by name, the dialogue of such demagogues carefully reveals their covert, racist agenda. Fueled by centuries of mistrust, and the white ruling-class controlled media, conservative politicians today capitalize on the fear of millions of white Americans with race-baiting statements concerning crime and welfare.

During the 1988 Presidential campaign, Republican organizations supporting George Bush put out advertisements about a black murderer who, while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison, raped and brutalized a white wife and husband. The "Willie Horton" ads became infamous for exploiting white fear of black criminals for political gain.[24] The fact that most violent crime is committed, not by blacks, but by whites, or that white-collar crime is by far more prevalent in America, was deliberately omitted from campaign coverage.

The depiction of "welfare mothers" in the media is still another example of Eugenics revisited. Welfare is an easy target for both racial and non-racial smears because it has come to symbolize a sort of anti-American Dream, a complete lack of work ethic and responsibility.[25] This symbol of work ethic was precisely what Max Weber was referring to in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It is here that Weber first distinguished the deep-seated belief that to work hard and be successful was a sign from God that one was chosen to be saved. One served God through one's works. This ethic eventually became secularized in contemporary beliefs and mores. Today, it is no longer God that capitalists serve, but the image of success.

Thus, disadvantaged blacks suffer the pains of two stigmas. First, they have none of the signs of success - status, esteem - needed to attain respectability in the eyes of most Americans; then, as if to add insult to injury, they must seek help from those who do, providing proof of their lack of pride and responsibility. The image is thus cemented in the white populace's consciousness that black people are lazy and irresponsible. When this image is allowed to cultivate still further, it expresses itself in the usual forms of myths and propaganda that are the stuff of contemporary journalism in the United States today.


The misrepresentations do not end simply with assaults on welfare recipients. They go right at the heart of race in general. More than a hundred years after they were granted their freedom, and more than thirty years after the first legislation was passed to end discrimination against them, African Americans are, once more, having to prove they are worthy of the same rights accorded whites. The latest trend of discrimination concerns the "gains" blacks have made at the "expense" of whites.

Affirmative Action is now being targeted by conservative whites (and, sadly, conservative blacks) as being discriminatory to white Americans. The argument goes like this: Discrimination may have been a problem once in this country, but now it has been rooted out. The only victims of it are whites, predominantly white males, who are locked out of positions of employment to accommodate a quota of minorities and women who are not nearly as qualified as the white male applicants.

This twisted logic has become a paradigm for populist thought in America and poses the greatest threat to any hope of an equitable sharing of the land by whites and blacks. It makes two thunderous, yet calculated, lies. First, by suggesting that discrimination "may have been a problem in the past," it dares to imply that racism was more a figment of reactionary bleeding hearts than an economic and social fact. This yarn is spun by countless white-supremacist groups throughout the country, particularly the American Nazi Party, which has vehemently maintained that the holocaust never happened. Secondly, the contention that discrimination has been "rooted out," is offensive to both the researchers who continue to document its presence and, more importantly, those of African American decent who are still caught in its grip.

In The Case for Affirmative Action, Roger Wilkens illustrates perfectly what is really at work here:
"In a society so conceived and so dedicated, it is understandable that white males would take their preferences as a matter of natural right and consider any alteration of that a primal offense. But a nation that operates in that way abandons its soul and its economic strength, and will remain mired in ugliness and moral squalor because so many people are excluded from the possibility of decent lives and from forming any sense of community with the rest of society."[26]


The perception that welfare increases dependency of minorities on the state under-scores the cyclical nature of politics in this country. A look at the last sixty years will be revealing. During the 1930s, large-scale federal relief programs were established to ward off the deleterious effects of the Great Depression. The 1940s and '50s saw cutbacks to these programs, once it was deemed that the crisis had subsided. However, as a response to the civil unrest of the 1960s, federal legislation and programs, once more, were stepped up. By the 1970s, this trend began to be reversed yet again; it was accelerated mercilessly during the Reagan and Bush years. We are now witnessing the implementation of punitive workfare programs at the same time that relief and other programs for the poor are being cut back.[27]

We are living in dangerous times these days. Polarizing elements abound everywhere. In a time when we should be looking to forge relationships of common interest and mutual respect, we are, instead, heading backwards in time. We have witnessed but only a harbinger of things to come. The riots of Los Angeles should serve as a reminder of the fuel of discontent awaiting the spark of opportunity to ignite it.

As Cornel West so eloquently put it, "Whoever our leaders will be as we approach the twenty-first century, their challenge will be to help Americans determine whether a genuine multiracial democracy can be created and sustained in an era of global economy and a moment of xenophobic frenzy. Let us hope and pray that the vast intelligence, imagination, humor, and courage of Americans will not fail us. Either we learn a new language of empathy and compassion, or the fire this time will consume us all!"[28]


[1]Barkan, p. 72.
[2]Kelly, p. 38.
[3]Hurst, p. 28.
[4]op. cit., p. 38.
[5]Szymanski, p. 451.
[6]Hurst, p. 93.
[7]Massey and Denton, p. 58.
[8]ibid., p. 59.
[9]ibid., p. 196.
[10]ibid., p. 219.
[11]Massey and Denton, p. 208.
[12]ibid., p. 212.
[13]Hurst, p. 93.
[14]op. cit., p. 173.
[15]ibid., p. 172.
[16]West, pp 3-4.
[17]ibid., p. 4.
[18]ibid., p. 19.
[19]ibid., p. 25.
[20]ibid., pp. 26-27.
[21]Massey and Denton, p. 174.
[22]ibid., p. 177.
[23]Hurst, p. 91.
[24]Chideya, p. 6.
[25]ibid., p. 36.
[26]Wilkens, p. 416.
[27]Schram and Mandell, p. 478.
[28]West, p. 13.

The Protestant Ethic, the Spirit of Capitalism and the Inherent Flaw in the American Dream and Why It Has Become a National Nightmare. (Part One)

I came across my college thesis a while back and it stirred up some old feelings I had harbored, not about my faith, but about the basic presuppositions about the true origins of the United States’ value system, particularly as it pertained to the accumulation of wealth and the endemic belief in self determination and self justification in matters of foreign policy. The paper was called “A Tale of Two Countries: A Comparative History of the United States and France.” I was interested in comparing the theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx with respect to the development of both countries, and where those theories intersected, so to speak. It is clear that both men had a lot to say about religion, particularly Weber who concluded it was the Protestant countries that made the most advances during the industrial revolution, primarily fueled by a belief system based on an inherent belief that God had pre-determined that they were blessed by God and therefore could do no wrong. Where I insert the paper, it will be in italics. All footnotes are taken verbatim from the paper. Part Two will follow shortly. Stay Tuned!

Martin Luther did not intend to start a revolution in the sixteenth century. His dissatisfactions with the workings of the Roman Catholic Church; to wit the obvious corruption of Papal indulgences and tithing, the retreat of monks into monasteries and the inability of the Church to reach out to the "common man," were not meant to be seen as divisive or disrespectful of Rome, even if they were interpreted as such. The Protestant Reformation which ensued Luther's excommunication by the Pope was to have a profound impact not only on the religious affairs of the European continent, but on its political and social affairs as well.

However, the Protestant revolution, which "swept" through Europe in the sixteenth century, was to have, in many respects, its most profound and lasting impression not on Europe, but in the American colonies. It was here that Pilgrim settlers, escaping from the religious and social persecutions they suffered in England, and longing for the freedom to worship God in their own way, first exhibited signs of what Max Weber would later refer to as the Protestant ethic. Those early Puritans forged an identity for themselves, which might be loosely described as opportunistic. Faced with illness and death, they met the odds with uncommon bravery and faith. It does not much matter for our purposes whether their faith was influenced by their circumstances or vice versa; such horse and cart sagas are better left for other theorists and other arguments. From an historical perspective, it is sufficient to say that how they lived and behaved was intrinsic to their way of life and the shaping of their belief systems, and, in turn, their belief systems shaped our history.

Central to Protestantism, especially Calvinism, of which the Puritans were an offshoot, was the doctrine of predestination. In the Westminster Confession of 1647, three pertinent points are worth noting about the doctrine: first, that man, by his fall into a state of sin, was unable to attain grace on his own merits; secondly, that since the beginning of time, God had predetermined who among men would be granted salvation and who would be condemned to hell; and lastly, that those whom God had chosen for eternal grace "before the foundation of the world was laid," would forever be in His favor and could never fall from it.[1]

Of principle concern to Calvinists was the matter of who was chosen for salvation and who wasn't. Since there was not only no magical means of attaining the grace of God for those to whom God had decided to deny it, but no means whatsoever,[2] it later became necessary to extract some sign of proof of grace. It was impossible, at least so far as the question of a man's own state of grace arose, to be satisfied with Calvin's trust in the testimony of the expectant faith resulting from grace;[3] his followers, therefore, looked for more tangible evidence.

The doctrine of proof that later Calvinists developed provided at least potential sources for such evidence. The first of these sources was based on conduct. To live as a saint through arduous times or to be frugal in matters of money was interpreted as a sign of God's grace. On the other hand, to succumb to the temptations of the flesh or to be wasteful in matters of money was seen as a sign of damnation. The second, and perhaps, most determinant source of evidence rested on one's personal wealth. To be successful and possess tremendous personal wealth was a necessary by-product of hard work and was evidence of God's favor. To be unsuccessful and poor, or to be unwilling to work hard was a sure sign of God's disfavor. It was this doctrine of proof among the Calvinists and Puritans that was to play a crucial role in the development of the philosophical approaches of the founding fathers, especially men like Benjamin Franklin.

In his autobiography, Franklin intimates a direct correlation to Calvinism when he discusses his thirteen virtues. Chief among these virtues was temperance and frugality. With respect to the latter, he wrote, "Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."[4] In other writings, Franklin admonished his readers to work hard and to be seen as working hard, to pay back all debts punctually, and to not waste time idly as time was money.

Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address to the nation, likewise was influenced by this ethic when he referred to the United States as a "chosen country, enlightened by a benign religion," whose Providence "delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter." He further added, "With all these blessings, what more is necessary? Still one thing more, fellow citizens: a wise and frugal government . . . which shall leave [men] otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."[5]

Both of these men, to put it mildly, were instrumental in the building of the United States as a nation. Like the men of their time, they were well bred and well spoken. They were also Protestant and were beholden to an ethic, which had as its cornerstone an overriding belief in the superior man of wealth and stature being in the good graces of God. And since that grace was irrevocable, such a man could do no wrong.

It was this arrogance - this overriding belief that it could do no wrong and that Providence was on its side - which became the primary impetus behind the United States' imperialistic splurges in the nineteenth century. Manifest destiny was more than just a foreign policy of wanton thievery - though certainly such a charge would have been sufficient for most nations - it was born out of an innate need to justify not only the right of the United States to expand, but to provide the justification that such an expansion fulfilled the will of God.

Nor can this ethic be confined merely to the expansion of the United States westward. The expropriation of territories, which belonged to sovereign countries in Latin America, likewise, reiterated the inherent gall of such a mind set. The taking of Cuba from Spain and the supporting of a revolution against Colombia which gave the United States the right of way to build the Panama Canal are perhaps the most prevalent examples. Theodore Roosevelt, when asked years later about the Canal, boastfully declared, "I just took it!"[6]

The series of foreign policy successes, which the United States enjoyed only facilitated the justification of America's righteousness and, moreover, the belief that it could do no wrong. The spectacle of Teddy Roosevelt marching up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders - so indelibly etched in the hearts of many Americans as representative of their nation's yearning for justice and equality - presented a far different image to the citizens of Puerto Rico. To them, America's actions were those of an imperialist nation bent, not on justice, but on colonization.

The life of the western settler in many ways paralleled the nation's beliefs, or perhaps it is better to say the government paralleled the beliefs of the settler. By the mid-1800s, the eastern United States was severely overcrowded. Not even the Gold Rush could ease the region's burden, though it undoubtedly provided the impetus for many an adventurer to risk the trip westward. The federal government needed to provide an incentive for its citizens to migrate westward, not only to reduce the overpopulated eastern half of the country, but to stimulate the growth of the western economy, which all agreed would hold the key to the nation's future.

With the secession of the South during the Civil War, northern Republicans in Congress were able to pass the Homestead Act. It provided 160 acres of free land to any settler who paid a small filing fee and resided on and improved the land for five years. If after six months of residency the settler wished to buy the land for $1.25 an acre, he could do so. Advocates of the Homestead Act believed that it would diminish the number of paupers or squatters and increase the proportion of working, independent, self-sufficient farmers in the region. In reality, however, the Act did little to spur migration for two reasons. First of all, speculators bought most of the good property at the below-market rates and held onto it until they could sell it at a profit, usually 100 to 150 percent of cost. More importantly, the government severely overestimated the value 160 acres had to a farmer in the West. Such an amount of land was simply not adequate for agricultural needs in the arid regions.[7]

In the late nineteenth century Congress attempted to face up to the problems that the West presented to farmers. But regardless of what measures were passed to aid in the producing of crops successfully on the Great Plains, on western deserts, and on heavily timbered lands, each proved to be instructive failures, revealing western environmental realities.[8]

Cattle Ranching proved a viable option to farming and, for a while, such ranchers enjoyed a boom. But the harsh winters of the late 1880s, combined with overgrazing, brought about both ecological and economic disasters, as countless thousands of cattle either starved or froze to death. With the country entering a depression and prices dropping, creditors, frightened by the losses, began calling in their loans. The ranchers, both to pay back their creditors and to reduce pressure on their denuded ranges, had to sell on a falling market. They succeeded only in driving prices down even lower and driving themselves into bankruptcy.[9]

Those farmers and cattle ranchers who did manage to survive the harsh western environment, were hardened by their experiences like no other American could possibly have imagined. Such people persevered in spite of the elements and with virtually little, if any, help from the federal government. When such help did arrive, it was either too little as in the Desert Land Act, which called for the irrigation of desert lands for the expressed purpose of aiding the farmer, or too late as in the bailouts of the cattle ranchers, who collectively lost over 50 percent of their herds.

Like the early Puritans of Plymouth, the settlers of the West endured hardships unique to the rest of the country. They lived in one room log cabins which offered little protection from the elements, relied on no one but themselves, and learned to adjust to the norms of their environment with uncommon alacrity. Above all, they were driven by a set of principles, which compelled them to persevere in the face of such hardships. While they may or may not have been cognizant of the role in history they were playing, they were, nonetheless, resolute in their belief that the land they were living on, indeed the lives they were living, were the gifts of divine Providence. Surely the hardships they were enduring were but a prelude to the greater joys, which would be found with God in eternal salvation.

The French experience was vastly different from the American. While the revolutionists of colonial America were well-educated Protestants, the revolutionary tradition of France was rooted in the egalitarian and primitivist communitarian ideals of the French peasantry and petty bourgeois artisans, most of whom were Catholic. The combination of its hatred for modernity and liberalism,[10] urban-industrial development and political centralization, was highly conducive to the conspiratorial, elitist and terrorist strategies characteristic of the revolutionary politics of the Jacobins. Despite the French Revolution and the beginnings of urbanization and industrialization in the nineteenth century, the peasant and artisan culture of eighteenth-century France survived.[11]

The distinguishing feature of liberalism as a world-view is the value placed upon individual freedom, whether defined as freedom from coercion, moral self-determination, or the right to individual happiness. Liberals have sought to defend individual freedom through a variety of idioms - for example, the doctrines of natural rights (Locke), Social Darwinism (Spencer) or moral idealism (Kant). Pluralists have maintained that individual freedom implies an institutional condition of competition and conflict. The gravest threat to freedom is monopoly and absolutism, which suppresses self-determination with external coercion; which suppresses competition and diversity in a regimented and uniform order; and which substitutes authoritarian means for conflict and consensus as the primary problem-solving mechanisms.[12]

Liberals in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries uniformly agreed that, given what they perceived as the voluntary, pluralistic and dynamic nature of capitalism, private property was a necessary condition of liberty. They failed to grasp what was to become the core of the socialist critique, namely that the other side to the voluntarism, competition and dynamism of capitalism was heteronomy for the laborers and the poor, and a developmental process towards monopoly and static hierarchy.[13] Because of the intellectual and political immaturity of the people of France, and the resistance to change by its propertied classes, conspiracy, terror and dictatorial means were considered legitimate vehicles of revolution.[14]

This differed from the American situation wherein revolution was seen as the agency of individual liberty. Such a revolutionist was thought of in terms of his individual accomplishments. Indeed, the great moments of the War for Independence seem to highlight the notable men who participated in it: Washington's crossing of the Delaware; Benedict Arnold's treason, etc. The French Revolution, on the other hand, is fraught with instances of the masses rioting against the established regime, at times in utter chaos.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the French locked horns with the dilemma of progressivism. Liberalism joined ranks with conservatism to thwart the socialism of Marx and Saint Simon. The constant seesawing back and forth between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie had less to do with fulfilling the will of the people than with the confusion of an illiterate populace.

But what of Catholicism? Was the chaos in France the by-product of Catholicism or is there another explanation? Certainly Protestantism was not unknown in that country. Since the days of Louis XIV, the Huguenots proselytized about the virtues of hard work and duty to God. Minorities in France, they behaved very much like their brethren in Germany, England and the American colonies. While the Catholics seemed content with the otherworldliness of their faith, the Protestants endeavored to acquire the materialistic joys of life. A famous proverb of the day seems to sum up the differences between the two quite nicely: "The Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honor and riches. While the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic prefers to sleep undisturbed."[15]

Despite its love/hate relationship with the Church, France remained throughout her turbulent years very much Catholic. At no time, even during the Jacobin era, was there a repudiation of the Pope; merely a renouncing of Papal authority. The French were, on the whole, loyal to Rome. The violence the nation witnessed throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth century was not, at any rate, directed at the Pontiff, but rather at those who corrupted his authority: namely the clergy.

Nor is it conceivable that the lag France endured during the formative years of the Industrial Revolution could be attributed solely to the political upheavals of that time. Other nations have endured similar upheavals. What sets France apart is the fact that her population, in addition to being divided and polarized by economic tensions, was under the auspices of an ethic which, at a time when it ought to have been inspiring its people to reach new heights, was still extolling the virtues of caution and forbearance. Though France dabbled in feats of colonialism, particularly during the Napoleonic eras, the French as a people never thought of themselves as the rightful heirs to the world, at least not in the modern era. Providence, to the French Catholic, did not make the world a stage for him, it merely molded him into a good actor on it.

And France was not alone in this affliction. Spain, Portugal and Italy, where Catholicism was and still is prevalent, likewise showed a disparaging trend in both economic and political influence during the early period of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout these countries, indeed throughout Europe and America, the fact that the business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labor, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, were overwhelmingly Protestant was undeniable.[16] Even more striking was the fact that while Catholics tended to remain in their crafts and became master craftsmen, Protestants were much more likely to fill the upper ranks of skilled labor and administrative positions.[17] This latest fact might explain why France was so late in automating much of its textile industry, and why Germany, Belgium and England, all predominantly Protestant, enjoyed such an immense advantage in productive capabilities.

Race and Exploitation: A Marxist Perspective on Capital

Many explanations concerning the matter of racism have surfaced over the last few decades. Nearly all have ignored the connection with capitalism. For good reason is this done. To take a revealing look at the roots of racism, particularly in the United States, and to attempt a causal link with the development of capitalism, would be to unmask an unspeakable truth about western society; one which Marx wrote frequently about. That truth was simply that capitalism, to thrive, must inevitably pit one worker against another. In the United States, at least, that meant the white worker against the black.

Marx believed that capitalism must inevitably bring about three conditions in society: 1. Recurrent economic crises; 2. Alienation of the worker from the product of his labor; and 3. Exploitation of the worker at the hands of his employer. It is this last point which demands our attention here.

Up to the eleventh century, Christian Europe was hemmed in from the North, East and South by heathens and infidels; the Mediterranean was almost completely encircled by the Arabian Mohammedans, a people whose culture was superior to that of the northern Europeans.[18] Owing to a need for trade with the East, especially by the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese merchants, and its obstruction by the Mohammedans, the Crusades, with the blessing of Rome, commenced. Though not completely successful, the experience did nonetheless expose the Europeans to other cultures.

By the late 1400s, Portuguese traders had begun to feel their way down the African coast in the hopes of finding a yet faster route to the East Indies. At this point in time the white man still had no conception of himself as being superior to other men. Though they viewed the natives of Africa as heathens and inferior warriors, this had not led to any conclusions about racial superiority.[19] Of more significance still is the fact that there was as yet no belief in any cultural incapacity of these colored people.[20] It was believed, in fact, that their conversion to Christianity would make them the equals of all other Christians.

The Portuguese had no clear sense of racial antagonism, because its economic and rationalistic basis had not yet been developed among them.[21] The reason for this was that the Portuguese, like the Spaniards and Italians of southern Europe, were still endowed with the crusader spirit of the Church. They saw no exploitable value in the black man, and were far more concerned with the condition of his soul than with the services of his sweat. Once conquered and converted, blacks were quickly integrated into society. This ethic was to change abruptly, though, in 1492.

The discovery of America would usher in a new creed. Though Columbus initially found the natives of the West Indies[22] to be a "loving" and "docile" people capable of harming no one and offering nothing but unconditional love and friendship, the governments of Portugal and Spain were, nonetheless, unmoved. Pope Alexander VI's bull of demarcation issued under Spanish pressure on May 3, 1493, and its revision by the Treaty of Tordesillas on June 7, 1494, arrived at through diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Portugal, put all heathen peoples and their resources - that is to say, especially the colored peoples of the world - at the disposal of Spain and Portugal.[23]

The path was now cleared for the expropriation and subsequent exploitation of these lands by both countries. Gone were the mystical inhibitions of the Church to free exploitation of economic resources; developing was a sense of nationalism and a commitment to the consolidation of European nations by the rising mercantile class. The ensuing slave trade which was to develop was simply a way of recruiting labor for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of the new world. This trade did not develop because Indians and Negroes were red and black, or because their cranial capacity averaged a certain number of cubic centimeters; but simply because they were the best workers to be found for the heavy labor in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic.[24] Had there been a sufficient supply of white workers to dig the mines and plant the fields, they most assuredly would have been used as well.

This then was the catalyst of race prejudice in the West. It did not spring up by chance, nor was it a by-product of a built-in antipathy between various ethnic groups or cultures. Only the need for exploitable labor facilitated the rise of it, and its origins have no parallel anywhere else on the globe. It follows, logically, that all racial antagonism is essentially political-class conflict. The capitalist exploiter, being opportunistic and practical, will utilize any convenience to keep his labor and other resources freely exploitable; he will devise and employ race prejudice when that becomes convenient.[25] Hence, exploitation of peoples should not be construed as a moral deficiency, but rather as a necessary by-product of the need to increase production and compete for markets.

In Marxist terminology, classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production (i.e., the tools, machines and property used in production). In a capitalist society, the owners of the means of production are called the bourgeoisie. The proletariat, the workers, having no means of production, are thus "reduced to selling their labor power in order to live." For the transformation of money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must find the free worker available on the commodity-market; and this worker must be free in the double sense that as a free individual he can dispose of his labor power as his own commodity, and that, on the other hand, he has no other commodity for sale.[26]

The worker's place in the system has been primarily related to production, and he has been regarded as an item of cost - that is to say, as both a necessary and important factor of production and as an impediment to the entrepreneur in his basic urge to undersell his competitors.[27] In other words, the worker was worth only so much in wages as was necessary to keep him alive and allow him to reproduce so as to insure future working-class generations. This wage was referred to as a subsistence wage. The capitalist, further vilifying the relationship of exploitation, uses the labor of the worker above and beyond what is needed to compensate him for his production. If, for instance, it takes six hours to produce say 50 widgets at 50 cents per day, and the capitalist uses the labor of that worker for a duration of twelve hours without compensating him for the additional six hours, it can be said the worker has created surplus-value "which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of something created out of nothing."[28]

Slavery, then, was the ultimate windfall for the capitalist. At once, he had all of the advantages of exploitable labor without virtually any of the costs. Whereas, the working-class white man at least had his labor power to sell to the capitalist, the African slave did not possess even this measly commodity. He had only his life, and even that was owned by his master. Without disguise the master defined the slaves, the colored people, as chattel, and exploited them in production virtually on the same economic principle as that employed in the exploitation of beasts of burden.[29]

To justify their behavior the exploiters argued that the slave, by his inferior breeding and sub-human condition, merited such treatment. Hence, throughout the colonial South, and even after the War for Independence, plantation landowners and their brethren preachers extolled the incontrovertible superiority of the white man over the black. They relied for verification of their views not on the basis of superstition or mere gossip, but on the basis of "scientific" books, which stated unequivocally the incapacity of the black man to be assimilated into the white man's culture. Blackness was associated with filth, foulness and evil. Owing to these beliefs, the colonies passed laws banning sexual mixing and marriage. Children of mixed marriage were considered black. At the time of the War for Independence, a black man was considered only three fifths of a white man. No less a "patriot" than Thomas Jefferson had held these racist views; at the time of his death he had over 180 slaves on his plantation.

The treatment the American Indian received was hardly any better. Though never officially enslaved the way his African brethren were, America's native son, nevertheless, was subjected to much of the same discrimination. In the period between 1880 and 1930, over 65 percent of the 138 million acres of land previously held by Native Americans moved to white ownership. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, most of the indigenous populations were on reservations where they were forbidden to practice their religions and their children were forced to go to boarding schools run by whites where they had to learn to speak English. While this policy was publicly touted as essential in helping the Indians to assimilate into the "mainstream" culture, the facts were very different. Native Americans were excluded from citizenship and not allowed to vote until 1924; even as late as the 1930s, there was a feeling among some influential individuals that they were biologically inferior to white Anglo-Saxons.[30]

While the French had their share of racists tendencies, like the Spaniards and Portuguese before them, its economic and rationalistic basis had not yet been developed among them. Most of France's empire building after 1870 attested to the presence, but hardly the overwhelming dominance, of its economic factor.[31] The Third Republic had inherited a motley assortment of colonies from previous regimes. Unlike the British, who in principle aimed at ultimate self-government for many of their colonies, the French wavered between the policies of assimilation and association. Assimilation would hopefully result in the natives' total absorption of French culture and civilization ultimately resulting in their becoming full-fledged French citizens in a unitary French Empire. Association, on the other hand, was the policy of encouraging the subject peoples to evolve in their own culture under the direction of French appointees and a local elite that had acquired French attributes.[32]

Because of the political struggles of France's left- and right-wing factions over the issue of colonialism, the country lost valuable time in the achievement of a world presence. Only 10 percent of French "foreign" investment was placed in French colonial possessions. The trade of the colonies, too, was principally with other countries and not with France. Nor did the French merchant marine benefit from this commerce; most of the trade was carried in foreign ships.[33]

The Clergy, too, complicated matters and played a prominent role in French foreign policy. While the United States, Great Britain and other Protestant nations were exporting their brand of philosophy, France was extending its Catholicism throughout North Africa and Southeast Asia. Unfettered by any need to "save" these peoples' souls, the former were free to exploit them by any means necessary to both the advantage of the oppressor and the detriment of the conquered. While in the Caribbean and Latin America, capitalism was free to take the resources it needed to expand the American empire, France's wavering and missionary spirit would cost it dearly.

The differences between the United States and France are apparent both with respect to their religious beliefs and, more importantly, how those beliefs influenced their policies. The United States operated from a posture of self-righteousness. Its policy of manifest destiny was derived not from any ill-will towards those people who were directly and unfortunately exploited, but rather from divine Providence, whose good graces all real Americans were presumed to be under. It then parlayed that belief system into a racist, exploitative formula, wherein blacks were targeted as "inferior" to their white counter-parts.

France, still endowed with the crusader spirit of its Catholicism, did not fully reap the benefits of capitalistic exploitation. Its internal political division led to its economic malaise, which led still further to its decline as a world power at the hands of its Protestant neighbors.

Sociologists who have studied Marx and Weber have focused, understandably, on the differences between the two theorists. Most have chosen to ignore the fact that Weber, despite his apparent aversion of his counterpart's methodology, was nonetheless in constant dialogue with him. I suspect that most of the controversy surrounding this dialogue centered around the fact that both men were talking about opposite sides of the same coin. For Marx, history was driven by economics. In his deterministic view, humans defined their belief systems through their economic conditions. Weber turned this equation around. He believed that humanity defined its economic situation through its belief system. While it would be convenient to dismiss the argument both theorists had as merely a cart/horse dialogue, much of the histories of the United States and France support both men's views.

Whether one is an economic determinist or not, there is ample evidence to suggest that the economic prowess and developmental belief systems the United States procured throughout its formative years cannot be adequately explained by any available method other than Weber's Protestant ethic theory. While it is true that other nations besides the U.S. were predominantly Protestant, in no other nation was the Puritan spirit of Calvin so indelibly and undeniably etched.

Also true is Marx's theory of capitalistic exploitation within such countries. For, if it is true that capitalism developed most strongly in those nations with a strong Protestant work ethic, so was it equally true that a high incidence of racism developed, as well. The United States is both the most economically advanced and the most racially polarized nation on the globe. This cannot be a coincidence.


[1]Weber, pp. 99-100.
[2]ibid., p. 105.
[3]ibid., p. 111.
[4]Bellah, p. 39.
[5]ibid., p. 29.
[6]Mowry, p. 154.
[7]White, p. 143.
[8]ibid., p. 150.
[9]ibid., pp. 224-225.
[10]The use of the term liberalism in this context should not be construed in the same context as that which currently passes for liberalism in contemporary America. For our purposes, it is analagous to progressiv-ism, at least as it pertains to the tradition of Marx, Weber and Durkheim.
[11]Seidman, p. 71.
[12]ibid., p. 15.
[13]ibid., p. 15.
[14]ibid., pp. 69-70.
[15]Weber, pp. 39-41.
[16]ibid., p. 35.
[17]ibid., pp. 38-39.
[18]Cox, p. 326.
[19]While earlier societies often discriminated against different peoples (the Romas against the Christians, the Egyptians against the Jews), such discrimination was cultural, not racial.
[20]ibid., p. 327.
[21]ibid., p. 329.
[22]The term Indian was actually coined by Columbus himself who thought he had mistakenly stumbled upon the East Indies, thus the inappropriate usage.
[23]ibid., p. 332.
[24]ibid., p. 332.
[25]ibid., p. 333.
[26]Marx, 272.
[27]op.cit., pp. 338-339.
[28]op.cit., p. 325.
[29]op.cit., p. 357.
[30]Hurst, p. 89.
[31]Harvey, p. 155.
[32]ibid., pp. 156, 160.
[33]ibid., p. 155.

To Ayers is Human, To Incite Disgraceful.

Undecided Voters and the Bradley Affect, and How the McCain Campaign is Trying to Stir Up Hatred to Steal an Election.


In 1982, Tom Bradley, the long-time mayor of Los Angeles, California, ran as the Democratic Party's candidate for Governor of California against Republican candidate George Deukmejian, who was white. The polls in the final days before the election consistently showed Bradley with a lead. Based on exit polls, a number of media outlets projected Bradley as the winner; early editions of the next day's San Francisco Chronicle featured a headline proclaiming "Bradley Win Projected." However, Bradley narrowly lost the race. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted, and that previously "undecided" voters had voted for Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.

A month prior to the election, Bill Roberts, Deukmejian's campaign manager, predicted that white voters would break for his candidate. He told reporters that he expected Deukmejian to receive approximately 5 percent more votes than polling numbers indicated because white voters were giving inaccurate polling responses to conceal the appearance of racial prejudice. Deukmejian disavowed Roberts's comments, and Roberts resigned his post as campaign manager.

Try as I can, 1982 looms large as life in my mind. The rather large number of, still, undecided voters in this election gives me pause. What is it that they are still undecided about? History has repeatedly revealed that undecided voters tend to break away from the incumbent party’s nominee when things are not going well. In deed almost 80% of likely voters believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction, with the current president at unprecedented low opinion polls. With those two things going for him, why do so many perspective voters confess that they are still not sold on Obama? In lieu of any reasonable and rational argument to the contrary, I can only conclude that most of this undecided vote is quite simply hesitant to vote for a black candidate.

And the McCain campaign is trying to capitalize on that hesitancy with repeated attacks, not on Obama’s economic plan or his seeming lack of experience, which would be fair game in any election, but on what New York Times columnist Frank Rich called the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

They can deny it all they want, but they are clearly playing to the race card, and what worries me most is that they might actually get away with it. They know they can’t win by talking about the economy – every poll shows that – so the only thing left to do is paint Obama as “risky” or “dangerous” or “not like us.” You don’t need a road map to see where they’re going. And while the imploding economy has dominated the landscape to such an extent that once Republican states like Virginia and North Carolina are now within reach of Obama, the margin or error in both mean that at the eleventh hour they could also swing away from him and back into the Republican column. In deed, with the exception of Pennsylvania, which now seems firmly in the grasp of Obama, most of these swing states that he has a lead in, including Ohio, fall within 2 to 4 points. Bradley affect proponents say that if these uncommitted voters break like they did in 1982, Obama could easily lose between 2 to 4 points on election day. In other words what could possibly be a landslide victory might actually be a very close loss. NBC predicted that McCain would, in all probability, need to sweep all swing states to get to 274 electoral votes. Loathe though I am to admit it, given what we know about racial bigotry in this country that is not out of the realm of possibility.

So, in the midst of the most important election this nation has held in 70 years, and with the economy teetering on a depression, John McCain, the former maverick, has now turned to inciter and enabler of racist rhetoric. Shouts of “terrorist” and “traitor” and “kill him” go unchallenged by his running mate, with only veiled protestations by the man himself when a woman referred to Obama as an Arab. Shameful, vile and disgusting, and totally beneath contempt. Regardless of whether McCain actually pulls this off and manages to win the election, he has forever tarnished what was once a distinguished career in Washington and, once more, pulled the nation backwards into a past it can’t seem to keep from reliving.

PALIN SHOVEL:

The pursuit of intellectual mediocrity in an ever-demanding and dangerous world.


I wonder what William F. Buckley would say about Sarah Palin’s performance last night in the vice presidential debate. Probably the same thing that George Will said about John McCain a couple of weeks ago.

“Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.”

That both McCain and Palin would try to steer the debate away from the last eight years of incompetence under Republican stewardship is of course to be expected. What else can they do? That they have done so not by reaching for the stars of hope, but by diving down to the lowest common denominator and “dummying up” as it were the whole process is beyond contempt. By appealing to the “average” person’s level of understanding they have, in actuality diminished the very offices for which they seek election to. Last night offered a stark contrast not just in styles, but in substance and temperament. On the one hand, you had Joe Biden, who brought with him 30 plus years of effective leadership in the Senate and answered each question posed to him by facts; on the other hand you had Sarah Palin, who for the first time in almost a month managed not to look like a deer caught in someone’s headlights, but who never directly answered the questions posed to her; in deed showing contempt even for moderator Gwen Ifill. When in doubt, blame the mainstream and elitist press. Joe Sixpack was her intended audience, anyway, not all us elitists.

Conservatives like Buckley and Will belong to a fast fading contingent of intellectual thinkers on the Right, who, while I disagreed with their view points, offered challenging and thought-provoking insight into topics that were of national importance. Buckley, in particular, never failed to provoke a visceral response in his opponents. You may have despised what he stood for, but you could never challenge the intelligence of the man. Today you would be hard-pressed to find any one of the caliber of a Buckley or even a Will within the Republican party. The Mitt Romney’s, the Rudy Giuliani’s (a noun, a verb and 9/11 is what Biden once called him), and now the Sarah Palin’s of the world have taken over the dialogue. Anyone caught using a vocabulary above a 6th grader has to stay after school and write 1,000 times on the blackboard, “Though shall keep it simple for the simpletons!”

When did the pursuit of intellectual mediocrity become a virtue? Why was the bar set so appallingly low for a vice-presidential candidate that the fact that she managed to get through an hour and a half debate without fainting is considered a victory? I don’t know about you, but I want the next president and vice president to be smarter than me. It’s nice that they can identify with people in my tax bracket, but it’s far more important that they be able to help people like me in my tax bracket. Big words have become a thing of the past. Our expectations, along with our aspirations, have become the stuff of stereotypes. College graduate? You must be an elitist! Work on an assembly line? You’re Joey sixpack! Don’t engage me in a stimulating conversation; that might be too confusing. Instead, send out a few sound bites. Maverick will do. What, you say you want some examples? I’ll get back to ya on that. Maybe you’ll forget the question and just focus on the sound bite. It’s all too confusing anyway. All that technical stuff is for egg heads. How 'bout I just give ya a wink and a smile?

What worries me most is that this disgusting strategy might just work. In my own line of work – sales – I have often found that the most successful sales people keep technical jargon out of their discussions about the product. Don’t confuse the customer, lest he leave with his wallet. The Republican party has a lot of good old-fashioned salesmen in its ranks. They have a lot of crap to sell the American public, most of it defective. They are good at marketing and selling this crap; they ought to be. The current president has managed to steal one election and hoodwink a nation into re-electing him in another. And all the while convincing them that he was “one of them.” The ultimate con job. The nation needs a doctor, so send in a bar tender and pour another round of drinks. What’s another four years on the tab anyway?

It was Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, who once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Much as I think that is a grand statement, the one that comes to mind most and the one that I fear is most pertinent to what is going on in this nation, comes from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Scene II, The Forum, after Brutus explains why Caesar had to be killed. Mark Antony is addressing the mob.

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones;So let it be with Caesar. The noble BrutusHath told you Caesar was ambitious:If it were so, it was a grievous fault,And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--For Brutus is an honourable man;So are they all, all honourable men--Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.He was my friend, faithful and just to me:But Brutus says he was ambitious;And Brutus is an honourable man.He hath brought many captives home to RomeWhose ransoms did the general coffers fill:Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;And Brutus is an honourable man.You all did see that on the LupercalI thrice presented him a kingly crown,Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;And, sure, he is an honourable man.I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,But here I am to speak what I do know.You all did love him once, not without cause:What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,And I must pause till it come back to me.”

We all know what happened next; the mob turned on Brutus, and what was once considered an act of bravery became an act of treason. I think Shakespeare nailed it; don’t you?