"Class Warfare"

Dave Weissbard

UU Rockford

09/03/00

Reading from

"The Power of the Merchant Class"

Theodore Parker (1846)

In a 1846 sermon "Of Merchants: their Position, Temptations, Opportunities, Influence and Duty," Theodore Parker said:

Here in America, the position of [the merchant] class is the most powerful and commanding in society. They own most of the property of the nation. The wealthy . . . are of this class; in practical skill, administrative talent, in power to make use of the labor of other(s) . . . they surpass all others. . . .

To this class belongs the power of skill and of wealth, and all of the advantages which they bring . . . Now the merchants in America occupy the place which was once held by the fighters, and next by the nobles . . . The merchants are the prominent class; the most respectable, the most powerful . . . This class controls the State. I know there are some noble [people] in politics, who have gone there with the loftiest motives, [those] who ask only after what is right. I honor such – honor them all the more because they seem exceptions to a general rule . . .

Our politics are chiefly mercantile, politics in which money is preferred, and [people] postponed. When the two come into conflict, the [people] go to the wall and the street is left clear for the dollars. . . .

If we begin with taking care of the rights of [people], it seems easy to take care of the rights of labor and of capital. To begin the other way is quite another thing. A nation making laws for the nation is a noble sight. The government of all, by all, and for all is a Democracy. . . . But the predominating class is making laws not for the nation’s good but for its own is a sad spectacle; no reasoning can make it other than a sorry sight.

This class. . buys up legislators, consciously or not, and pays them for value received. . . .

Once, in the nation’s loftiest hour, she rose inspired and said "All men are born equal, each with unalienable rights; that is self-evident." Now she repents her of the vision and the saying. . . . Instead of that, through this controlling class, the nation says, "All dollars are equal, however got; each has unalienable rights. Let no man question that!". . .

Would that my words could reach all of this class. Think not I love to speak hard words, and so often; say not that I am setting the poor against the rich. It is no such thing. I am trying to set the strong in favor of the weak, I speak for humanity . . .

It is for you who own the machinery of society to see that no class appropriates to itself what God meant for all. Remember, it is as easy to tyrannize by machinery as by armies, and as wicked; that it is greater now to bless mankind thereby, than it was of old to conquer new realms. Let [humanity] not curse you, as the old nobility, and shake you off, smeared with blood and dust. Turn your power to goodness, its natural transfiguration, and [humanity] shall bless your name, and God bless your soul.

If you control the nation’s politics, then it is your duty to legislate for the nation - for humanity. . . If the church is in your hands, then make it preach the . . . Truth. . . The church of America, the church of freedom, of absolute religion, the church of mankind, where Truth, Goodness, Piety form one trinity of beauty, strength and grace – when shall it come? Soon as we will. It is yours to help it come.

The Sermon

[the power to define]

Power is virtually never equally distributed - not in a family, not in an organization, not in a community, not in a city, state, or nation. There are always those with more of it and those with less. One of the most amazing aspects of power is the ability it gives those who possess it to define the terms of their relationship with those who have less.

Some of you may have heard the story I tell about a visit I made to Montreal in 1963 with my wife Karen’s father, John Wells, when we were both in theological school. We were attending a meeting of the St. Lawrence District of UU churches, and were housed in the home of a Unitarian woman in the strictly Anglophone, gated, Mount Royal section, which had a private police force.

At breakfast, John and I were subjected to a harangue from our hostess who told us she just couldn’t understand why we in the States treated people of color so badly. After this went on for a while, John, who had a distinguished career as a Civil Rights lawyer before deciding to become a minister, suggested to our hostess that we did understand that the English in Quebec were facing similar tensions in their relationships with the French-speaking population. "Oh no," she said, "it’s not at all the same. Our French are happy. It’s just a bunch of outside agitators stirring things up."

There were people in South Africa who truly believed that Nelson Mandela was a Marxist who was just trying to destroy their happy, good nation. There were people in the American South who truly believed that the struggle for Civil Rights was just a matter of outside agitators stirring up their "contented Niggers." There are people in Rockford today who still believe that the only problem with our schools is the Federal Magistrate, and not the decades of discrimination.

The oppression of one group by another is always, at some point, merely the way things are done – the status quo. It only becomes a "problem" when someone tries to change the status quo.

One class of people can dominate, exploit, oppress another group for the power group’s economic gain for generations. It is only at the point when the exploited group objects that the relationship is termed "class warfare," and it is the supporters of the exploited who are charged with engaging in it. Holding slaves is not considered violent -- freeing slaves is.

When the President of the United States vetoes a piece of legislation that would give a free ride to the wealthiest 1% of Americans by eliminating the tax that now applies only to estates over $675,000, and points out that this piece of legislation would do no good for the remaining 99% of us, he is accused of engaging in class warfare. (The claim is made that families are being kicked off their farms – the present exemption for farms is 2.6 million dollars and the Democrats are planning to move that up to $4 million!)

When Al Gore talks about providing help to the middle income families who have lost out in the boom which has mostly affected the rich and the super-rich, he is accused of engaging in class warfare. The numbers are as clear as they can be. The top 1% of Americans, who controlled 22% of the wealth in 1979, now controlled about 42% according to the most recent numbers I’ve found; the top 10% owns 86%. In the last two decades of economic prosperity, the bottom 20% of our population has seen its average income fall 30% while the top 5% has increased by 25%. Middle class families now need two people working longer hours to try to stay even with their buying power in the 80's.

This is not really a partisan issue. The Democrats talk about being fair to the average American, but the truth is that while their rhetoric is more justice oriented, their actions can hardly be differentiated from those of the Republicans. The trends during the Clinton administration have not shifted significantly. Bill Clinton learned his lesson when he was defeated for reelection after his first term in Arkansas: to stay in power, one must please the powerful.

[not a new problem]

As Theodore Parker pointed out in his sermon of 154 years ago, from which Phil read earlier:

I know there are some noble [people] in politics, who have gone there with the loftiest motives, [those] who ask only after what is right. I honor such – honor them all the more because they seem exceptions to a general rule . . .

Our politics are chiefly mercantile, politics in which money is preferred, and [people] postponed. When the two come into conflict, the [people] go to the wall and the street is left clear for the dollars. . . . This class. . buys up legislators, consciously or not, and pays them for value received. . . .

We were all taught in school about the egalitarian commitment of the founders of our nation, but there is abundant evidence that this was strictly propaganda that has blurred our perceptions of reality. Our revolution wasfought not so much for political freedom as for the freedom of the wealthy to engage in less restrictive trade than the mother country permitted. That’s why only about a third of the colonists supported the revolution – the others knew there was nothing in it for them – and they were largely correct. The Continental Congress was immediately engaged in protecting the property of the wealthy, lest any should think there was a true revolution going on here.

Listen to what Alexander Hamilton said:

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent chair in the government . . . Can a democratic assembly who annually resolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?

From the beginning, the laws that have been passed by our Congress have been skewed heavily in favor of keeping those with wealth, wealthy. They paid good money for those legislators and they deserve to be taken care of by them.

We have been taught that we have a classless society, unlike the European nations, and the occasional successes by common people who have won the lottery or happened to create a great invention, have been held up as proof of the pudding. The constancy of our American wealthy class takes no back seat to the noble families of any old world nation. The present gap between rich and poor in America far exceeds that anywhere else in the world, and it is increasing daily.

[was Marx wrong?]

Capitalists have prematurely celebrated the defeat of Marxism. The Soviet Union had not more relationship to the teachings of Karl Marx than the First Assembly of God has to the teachings of Jesus.

Marx was a romantic. His timetable was off, but his predictions are coming true in present day America. Marx did not appreciate how flexible capitalists could be for a time to stave off the threat of Socialism. He knew how American capitalists had been able to use physical intimidation and even murder to keep labor from organizing. He did not appreciate how the 40 hour week and health care and retirement systems could and would be used to undercut Socialism. He was right, however, in his belief that the unrelenting greed of capitalism would lead to an ever increasing concentration of wealth. He never could have dreamed of Michael Eisner being paid $177 million to run Disney in 1998, or Millard Drexler of The GAP $660 million, or the multimillion dollar bonuses being paid to CEO’s whose companies are going down the tube. The Walton family of Wal-Mart is now worth $67.5 Billion!

[the rise and fall of organized labor]

Who would have guessed in the early part of the twentieth century that so called "labor leaders" would come to live in the same neighborhoods as CEO’s and be members of the same country clubs? Who would have guessed forty years ago that companies would decide to reduce wages, cut back on health care, renege on pension guarantees, and that workers would put up with it?

The last century saw the rise and the fall of organized labor. Working people, who had been viewed by capitalists as simply an expendable commodity, did organize sufficiently to become a resource, for a time, and to use the power of that position to gain benefits. The strike used to be a powerful tool.

The demise of organized labor is symbolized by Reagan’s firing of the Air Traffic Controllers and the destruction of their union, but that was more a symbol than a cause. The real problem was that labor leaders had become part of the managerial class –they knew and cared more about paté than about the lives of their members.

The coup de grace for organized labor came about when corporations began to say, "Go ahead and strike. We’ll just close this plant and build one in a third world country." Cities gave incredible concessions to industries that subsequently thumbed their noses and walked away. Flint, Michigan is one of the most cited examples, but it is only one. And our government has not only permitted but supported, even underwritten the costs for American industries to open foreign plants, which not only take jobs from American workers, but facilitate the avoidance of taxes.

It is the development of the "global economy" that facilitated the expansion of the wealth of the wealthy, and the diminished economic capacity of the working class in America. The European nations, or, more accurately, their wealthy classes grew wealthier during the colonial era by exploiting the resources and labor of the colonies, but what they did "ain’t nothin’" in comparison to what is happening in the 21^st Century.

[the global economy]

One of the outstanding lectures at Chautauqua this summer was delivered by Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director of the National Labor Committee. It was probably the most radical lecture I have heard in 45 years of attending lectures there. When he began, I was afraid that Kernaghan was going to be such a rabble rouser that hewas going to lose his audience. Oh, no. He was so well informed, his presentation so fact filled, that people hung on his every word.

Kernaghan is the one who is responsible for making Kathy Lee cry when he confronted her with the reality of what lay behind the labels of the clothing that was being marketed in her name.

His organization, which receives much of its support from the Veatch Fund of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, researches and documents the abuses of labor in nations around the world – in many cases, jobs that have been exported from the United States.

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer of clothes in the US today. One of the reasons why their smiley-face can reduce prices is that one of their major suppliers of shirts and pants pays 20 cents an hour to young women in Bangladesh who are forced to work 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. 7 days a week if they want to keep their jobs. It is not uncommon, when the pressure is on, for them to be forced to work a 24 hour shift. The law in Bangladesh requires overtime pay after 48 hours, and that overtime be limited to 12 hours. Wal-Mart’s contractor simply ignores those laws. (By the way, these are the wages for the sewing machine operators – their helpers earn nine cents an hour.) Wal-Mart’s sales in 1998 amounted to $137.6 billion, which is 36 times greater than the total revenues of the Bangladeshi government. No wonder the government can’t stand up to the sweatshops.

Who benefits? The Walton family, of course, and you and I when we take advantage of the "low, low prices."

Haitian women who sew 101 Dalmatian children’s clothing for Disney are paid an average of 33 cents an hour - which is $2.64 a day, $57.20 a month, $686.40 a year. We are assured that it just doesn’t cost as much to live in Haiti, which is certainly true, but we are not told how much it does cost to live there. The National Labor Committee points out that transportation to and from work costs 27 cents, breakfast 67 cents, lunch of rice and vegetable stew $1, and a glass of juice 27 cents, for a total of $2.21, when the day’s pay is $2.64! The net for eight hours work is 43 cents. The price of water is eight cents a bucket and a family requires an average of six a day, which is 48 cents, a nickle more than the net pay. The NLC estimates that the average Haitian worker would need to work fourteen and a half years to make what Michael Eisner makes in 1 hour.

Women in El Salvador are paid 20 cents for every $75 Nike shirt they sew. In Northern China, Nike pays 23 cents an hour for people to assemble sneakers – the people are forced to work 10-15 hour shifts. A recent law signed by President Clinton has lifted all quotas and tariffs on clothing made in Central America with US fabric. What that means is a windfall of $200 million a year for the US companies whose contractors make those goods.

Chentex is a factory in a free-trade zone in Nicaragua which produces 20-25,000 pairs of jeans a day for Kohl’s, JC Penny, K-Mart and Wal-Mart. The workers earn 18 cents for each $24 pair of jeans. There has been an attempt to unionize the workers at the Chentex plant, but the company has responded by firing union leaders, hiring gangs to terrorize workers, installing surveillance cameras, and promising they would close the plant and move from the country before giving increases.

The thing I found most impressive about the National Labor Committee is that it is not urging us to boycott goods produced in third world countries. It acknowledges how terribly those plants are needed for the local economies. The NLC is not suggesting that American level wages should be paid. All they are urging is that American stores that are selling the products demand that the people who are producing them be paid a living wage. How awful would it be to pay $10.25 instead of $10 for a T shirt? Or $93.25 instead of $92.99 for pair of sneakers? And the workers’ wages could be doubled!

The NLC has a campaign going to have people demand that Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Kohl’s tell us in which factories their goods are produced and what kind of wage was paid to those who labored. If we are going to buy, we have a right to know what we are buying. And the real point is, we ought to care.

[the concentrationof capital]

Marx was right about the conflicting interests of capital and labor. The Soviet experiment demonstrates how easy it is for the dictatorship of the proletariat to become a front for a dictatorship by an oligarchy. I was in the USSR in time to observe the remnants of the gap between the lives of the party aparatchiks and the people. The USSR was doomed to failure.

As one looks at the growing gap in the United States between the wealthy and the rest of us, at the growing disdain for the rights of workers it seems as if we are moving back in history. At this point one of the major points of contention between labor and management is the right of companies to demand overtime work and to fire those who are not willing to work 60 and 70 hour weeks. The laws do not prohibit forced overtime – they only insist that it must be compensated. People are being denied any time with their families. Productivity is up and wages are down; benefits are being lost.

The propagandists tell us that we all have a stake in Wall Street - the big lie is repeated again and again. While it is true that more than 51 million people own some stock, according to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, 90 % of the value in the stock market is owned by 10 % of the people.

In my research for this sermon I came upon a fascinating number that I have never seen before. We are often told that it would do us no good to tax the rich more heavily because all of their wealth distributed would make no difference. Well, I have not been able to verify it from another source, but one statistician has suggested that if all of the wealth in America were equally distributed, every family would receive a quarter of a million dollars. Of course, I would speculate that it would not be long before it would again be redistributed disparately – but it does give us something to think about.

The place where I part from Marx is that history gives me little faith in Revolutions. I suspect that is what the Book of Deuteronomy means when it says, "The poor will be with us always." There will always be some who have more and some who have less. The problem is how many have how much less?

What does it mean when people who work hard for forty hours a week do not have the means to provide adequately for their families -- to live with respect? What does it mean when investors not only want a profit, but want more profit all the time from the same investment? Is it the business of government to protect privilege, or is it to be sure that all have sufficient?

[setting the strtong in favor of the weak]

Theodore Parker, in 1846, had been called to preach in Boston in a pulpit created for him by a group of prosperous business people. He was not trying to bite the hands that fed him. "Think not I love to speak hard words, and so often," he said. "Say not that I am setting the poor against the rich. It is no such thing. I am trying to set the strong in favor of the weak. I speak for [humanity]."

Most of us in this congregation are people of privilege. Few of us have concern about the source of our next meals or our shelter, or even our comfort. Few of us can be numbered among the top 5% in wealth, but none of us are in the bottom 5%. We are, indeed, relatively speaking, strong. We need that strength to challenge the propaganda which we were fed in what we call the educational process, which led us to misunderstand our history. We need that strength to challenge the propaganda with which we are inundated daily by media owned by the privileged and in the business of protecting privilege, which assure us that this is, for us, the best of all possible worlds – or that it could be bettered only by giving the privileged more privileges. We need that strength to stand together in favor of those who have been denied access to fair rewards for the work in which they have engaged, who have been denied access to a share of power.

Labor Day should not be a day of celebration so much as a day of challenge: a day when we ask ourselves what we have done, what we have failed to do, and most importantly what more we can do to make this world a place of justice for all people.

No one wins when there is warfare among people, but we need to understand that war is going on whenever one group of people is exploited by another. There can be no peace without justice. Let us be a people committed to justice for all those who labor on our behalf.

[closing words}

Dorothy Day said:

People say, "What is the sesne of our small effort?  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.  A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions.  Each one of ourthoughts, words and deeds is like that.  No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless.  We have too much work to do.