A few days ago, I celebrated my sixty-ninth birthday. Because of the advances in the internet and the kind thoughts of my friends, I received over 100 birthday greetings. This year I thought of writing down some extended remarks to all those who sent greetings, as well as for many who don’t know me.
This past year I managed to complete my reading of the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx. Although Marx wrote this book about 150 years ago, most of his arguments continue to be relevant today. One of those arguments is that because of the capitalist system, we continually face abstractions, as well as the objective reality.
Abstractions and the objective reality
There is a new book about the most affluent 9.9 percent of the population. This group consists of about thirty-four million people. In order to be among the 9.9 percent, one needs to have at least $1.2 million in assets.
I believe we can speculate that there are many in this group who actually believe in the abstraction that we live in a “democracy” where there is “liberty and justice for all.”
We might also look at the abstract and objective character of that thing we call “money.” Clearly, we can use money to purchase many of the things we need and want. However, money is also an abstraction because it is only a means of exchange. We wouldn’t wear clothes made of money or ride in a car made of money.
Ultimately money only has value because it can be used to purchase commodities that have real value. Here we see the objective reality. Each and every commodity that has ever been produced was the product of the labor of the working class of the world. Capitalists, who like to throw their money around, rarely, if ever, directly contribute to producing all those commodities.
My opinion is that in the year 2021, increasing numbers of people have seen the abstractions we see all the time stripped away. We are seeing larger numbers of people being thrown into poverty, while four individuals own hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Clearly there is nothing abstract about that reality.
In June of the year 2020, I was one of 100,000 people who came to the Philadelphia Art Museum to protest murders by the police officers all over the country. I would say that about 90% of those who demonstrated were under the age of thirty. Thinking about that turnout and having attended many meetings with young people, made me think of how the world is changing.
Young people in the year 2021
What does it mean to be a young person today? In the past young people routinely moved out of their parent’s homes when they were eighteen. Today about half of the population under thirty years of age lives with their parents. Many young people have a choice between a dead-end job, and an astronomical debt that would be a requirement for a college education.
The government has responded to this reality by increasing the number of people who live in the dungeons of this country from about 300,000 to about 2,000,000. The government also deported millions of people solely because they were born in another part of the world. A truly vicious aspect of those deportations was the fact that thousands of immigrant parents were deported and separated from their children who were born in this country.
Seeing this reality, many young people understand that they will not have the opportunities their parents had. Perhaps this might be why so many young people are taking to the streets and protesting against injustice. Perhaps this might explain why so many workers are going on strike demanding that we be treated has human beings, and not merely as things to be used to generate corporate profits.
So, as the abstractions continue to be stripped away, we can begin to see the essence of the problems we face. Most of us were born into a world where we need to go out and find an employer who is willing to purchase our labor. Those employers will give us money we can use to purchase a bundle of life-sustaining commodities.
In exchange for that money, employers demand that we do as we are told, or to operate within the parameters they establish. In other words, for us to have the things we need and want, employers require workers to dedicate our entire lives to creating an enormous amount of wealth for them. I believe this is the essence of Karl Marx’s argument in his book Capital.
The vicious arrogance of Donald Trump and the capitalist system
When we think about this reality, we might understand why the title of a biography of former President Donald Trump was “Rage.” The definition of the word rage is violent or uncontrollable anger. Perhaps what made many people enraged about Donald Trump was his arrogance.
My dictionary definition of the word arrogance is: “an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people.” So, the question is: Why were so many people enraged by the arrogance of Donald Trump?
Workers are routinely confronted with the arrogance of employers. While employers argue that we are all members of the same “team,” the reality is a bit different. When employers require us to do more work, their profits increase, while the value of our labor effectively goes down.
So, if we routinely see arrogance in our lives, why are so many people enraged by Donald Trump? My opinion is that people, and especially young people, were justifiably enraged by Trump’s arrogance because he was President. Trump’s pathetic and racist arguments were a clear message that people need to accept the status quo that he represents.
I don’t believe there were many people who actually expected that President Joe Biden’s policies would be significantly better than the policies of Donald Trump. However, many young people celebrated in the streets after Trump was defeated in the election. These people were tired of listening to a lunatic preaching to them about how they need to accept the status quo he helped to create.
What would a truly representative government look like?
So, thinking about the objective reality and not the abstractions, we might consider what a genuinely representative government might look like. We can begin to answer this question by asking: What might be some reasonable expectations from that kind of government?
First, we might expect that if a government were truly representative of the population, their first priority would be to eliminate poverty in the world. Right away, many would respond to this with the argument that eliminating poverty would make things worse for the so-called “middle class.”
Here again, I believe we need to strip away the abstractions from the objective reality. During literally every minute we are on the job, and for every commodity we purchase, we contribute to services we do not need or want. These include corporate profits, insurance, advertising, corporate law, and let’s not forget the thousands of atomic bombs capable of eliminating the human race.
If we didn’t need to contribute to all of those fundamentally useless services, there could be tremendous resources used to greatly improve the standard of living for the working class all over the world. If working people had real power to determine how the environment we live in is organized, I believe most people would be inspired by that atmosphere.
So, now we can ask another question. How is all of this relevant to our reality today?
As more and more people see the abstractions stripped away, we begin to see how humanity can work to begin to transform the world and rebuild it on new foundations. Why sit back and allow capitalists to throw millions into poverty, while they are swimming in hundreds of billions of dollars?
While our immediate future is uncertain, today increasing numbers of people are becoming open to the idea that workers all over the world need to be treated with the human dignity we all deserve.
Thanks again for all those who wished me a happy birthday. Wishing you and all those you care about the best in the coming year.
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