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Economic status of African Americans
A discussion
with Wilson Moses and Lloyd
D. McCarthy
Dear Rudy
I too
endorse analysis, as so wisely recommended by Lloyd D.
McCarthy, but much analysis is premature. Furthermore,
many authors confuse "analysis" with "synthesis," both
are essential but they are very different. Many
problem-solvers furthermore confuse "analysis" with
theoretical framework. Americans are congenital
problem-solvers, and always rush towards solutions,
before fully problematizing an issue. African Americans
are what Albert Murray called "Omni-Americans," and,
predictably, share with George Bush the cultural
tendency to be contemptuous of "navel gazing." Like the
protagonist of Saul Bellow's
Henderson, the Rain King, African Americans rush
impatiently to "problem solving" with their typically
American "can do" attitude. Yes, Ralph Ellison and E.
Franklin Frazier were right, black Americans always
unconsciously betray their Americanism,
especially when their touchingly beautiful
and heroic black consciousness is highest and most
assertive.
Let's
stop proposing theoretical frameworks for a season, and
concentrate on facing the brutal facts before embarking
on analysis, or synthesis, or problem solving. This
process of accepting brutal facts will require the
thoroughly un-American virtue of patience, along with
much unhappy and tedious labor. Most formulae that are
currently presented by well-meaning contemporary
Brothers and Sisters are flawed by impatience, and
haste, leading to a "magpies nest" of schemes informed
by incomplete knowledge of our past, and a failure to
engage in the painful and pessimist appraisal of black
traditions, that Harold Cruse advised in his flawed, but
brilliant masterpiece
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. His
central advisory was overlooked. What he said was:
Declare a moratorium on theory until you have studied
our own past.
McCarthy is correct. The black bourgeoisie are often
venal and feckless, but they are not the source of, nor
can they provide the solution to, the problems that
beset the black populations of the United States, or the
world political economy.
When
discussing the black worker, beware of terms such as
"productive capacity," which is nothing more than
business school jargon. It is only a euphemism for
depressed wages. The fat cat mathematical model of Wall
Street defines "productive capacity" solely in terms of
how much can be extracted from a worker's back at the
lowest wages.
Globalization has been the issue since the 1500s. It
has involved not only African slaves and Native-American
peasants, but also displaced European agricultural
workers, and exploited Asian workers. Revolutionary
solutions must be formulated globally, and regional
nationalisms and ethnocentrisms are universal components
of, although not fundamental causes of, global economic
problems.
Anyone
who looks at the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim nations
situated on the Arabian peninsula, must consider that
the nationalistic fragmentation of the region since the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire—including
the region once called Palestine—is
the source of many modern problems. Jews, Muslims, and
Christians have all spread nationalistic and religious
poison in that corner of the globe and the rest of us
must suffer because of their theocratic superstitions
and ancient nationalistic ambitions. I would encourage
black folk to avoid the suicidal tar pit of nationalism.
In my
most recent book,
Creative Conflict in African American Thought
(Cambridge University Press, 2004). I pointed out, with
reservations, the validity of E. Franklin Frazier's
Black Bourgeoisie, but also stressed the
necessity of understanding the tradition to which it
belongs. It is also essential to read the two articles
that Frazier wrote on Marcus Garvey during the 1920s.
Frazier, E. Franklin, "Garvey: A Mass Leader,"
Nation (18 August, 1926), 147-48. Frazier, E.
Franklin. "The Garvey Movement," Opportunity
(November, 1926), 346-48. Also essential is
August Meier's famous chapter on "Booker T. Washington
and the Talented Tenth." These are fundamental to an
understanding of Frazier's ideas, which derive from
those of Louis Woodson in the 19th century and Carter G.
Woodson in the 20th, as mentioned in note below.
In my
book,
Creative Conflict,
I wrote the following: "While studying briefly in
Washington, D.C., Booker T. had the opportunity to
witness the flow of cash through the black community as
"young men who were not earning more than four dollars a
week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on Sunday to
ride up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, in order that they
might try to convince the world that they were worth
thousands." [page 172, footnote, 1]
[footnote, 1] Ironically, E. Franklin Frazier, who was
among Washington's most hostile detractors, later
published
Black Bourgeoisie (1957) which was
practically an extended footnote to Booker T's
castigation of the black petit bourgeoisie. See, for
example, Booker T. Washington,
Up From Slavery, reprinted in Harlan. ed.,
Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 1., p. 261.
Frazier also repeated ideas that had earlier appeared in
Carter G. Woodson,
The Miseducation of the Negro (Washington;
Associated Publishers, 1933). Woodson, unlike Frazier,
admitted his debt to Washington. [This footnote has been
revised and expanded].
Wilson Jeremiah Moses
Author of
Creative Conflict
* *
* * *
Greetings Bro. Rudy,
As you have already
discerned, some of these studies on the status of the
Black economy is woefully short on analysis. They
provide very little by way of critical explanation
regarding why Blacks are far behind in the American
Economic system.
I find the work of
Franklin Frazier of Baltimore and former Howard
University Sociologist and Dept Chair, conducted in the
1950s still relevant. The short title of his (1957)
study is entitled,
Black Bourgeoisie.
To
broaden the perspective of his study, one could also
look at Andre Gunder Frank's "Lumpen Bourgeoisie" 1970,
on Latin America.
For more recent
analysis, examine the "Hu
Run" study on the rapid rise in the number of
"Communist"
China's billionaires.
I am also sure that
there is a host of other works that can be used to fill
in the blanks to look at the Black economy critically
in the national, regional and global context.
The findings will
no doubt show that African American workers, like the
horde of workers and peasants world wide have increased
their productive capacity and economic output under the
current economic system. Yet, their condition, social
and economic, is becoming worse—as
they are pushed to greater wretchedness and poverty
while the owners of property and capital (the propertied
class) accumulates more . . . and more.
The Black
Bourgeoisie, in their own scheme to accumulate more at
the expense of the African American community seems to
provide leadership so far as it allows them to mediate
as patrons to the black majority, on behalf of those who
exploit the community in the most barefaced and criminal
manner.
I am in Raleigh,
NC, and here I see Black Church leaders building huge
church buildings, etc., no doubt with "Faith Based
Initiative Funds." I see Black professionals providing
privatized social services, of a lower quality, designed
in a fashion to provide more wealth to the
contractors/consultants and owners of private social
service companies, but less service and helpful uplift
to the poor that they claim to serve.
Thus, the lumpen-black-bourgeoisie preys
upon the black community, as the lumpens in Latin
America and Communist China are exploiting their own.
Indeed in the Black Diaspora as well. This compounds the
problem of exploitation by international capital. The
status of Black Community underdevelopment and poverty
can be explained within this context.
Peace,
Lloyd D.
McCarthy
mccarthyconsultg@aol.com
www.in-dependence.com
* *
* * *
With slight breezes
scattering brown leaves on the lawn,
today is sunny and in the mid-70s—shirt sleeve fall
weather. The tree leaves colors are brilliant. It's a
beautiful day, though we are slightly annoyed with a
plague of black spotted orange beetles flying about.
Clothes are drying on the line near the garden. Windows
and doors have been opened to enjoy the warm sunshine.
My aunt has received four large heads of collards from
her sister's garden. Mama (96) seems calm and more in her
right mind today. Yesterday she complained from early
morning until night about a conjure woman in her room
and animals sucking her flesh. She said conjure is
conjure but poisoning is something else altogether. You
just can't put everybody's food in your mouth. Today she slept until
after midday.
All seems right
with the world, more or less. People go about their
affairs quite normally. There is no panic on
foreclosures or America becoming fascist. There are more
complaints about family members than Bush and his two
political parties.
Here's what
troubles me. Our Negro experts
(including sociologists,
psychologists, and pollsters) seldom give credit to the greater numbers
of blacks who try very very hard to improve their lives
intellectually and economically and to attend to their
familial responsibilities. However hard they work to
struggle against the odds and the social and economic
walls, all of that is ignored to indicate that Negroes
have not caught up to artificial standards and norms
because of some inadequacy (moral, intellectual, or
otherwise). It's a centuries old tale—those who commerce
in the pathologies of the Negro always get the headlines.
People allow that race and racism play a role—that they
are genuine traps and barriers to progress. But
that perspective is discounted for an emphasis on the
Negro's personal lacking of character, e.g., a failure
of personal responsibilities, as if such failures are
not generally human and often occur across the board, to
one degree or another. There is little regard given to
the work and discipline put into day-to-day life
(the human struggle for existence) despite the racial (not racist)
attitudes and contexts which make a frustrating
difference in America life not only when it comes time to
make up the statistics of comparison, but in the general
day-to-day social and economic operations within our
society. These critics are rather socially blind when it
comes to such acknowledgements.
Seldom is there genuine applause and appreciation for
the little guys below (be they white, black, brown, or
yellow)—their challenges, their victories, however
small, in the context of rising economic production and
decreasing wages. One has to make it really big like
entertainers or athletes to receive slight regard. Those
celebrated athletes and entertainers (many who come from the lower echelons of
black society) are probably deserving of criticisms in
reference to their lack of social conscience receive
however a deluge of ethical and social
complaints, concerning their dress, the company they
keep, the way they wear their hair, how they paint their
bodies. The discipline, hard work (intellectual and
physical), the focus, the denials in order to achieve
superiority in their fields of endeavor, all those
features of character are glossed over. The emphasis of
the Negro experts is that they still have not
fully assimilated culturally on the high end. Recall the Mike Vick Case.
Of course, we know, those are all false ("white")
markers of civil propriety.
But this constant complaint against those who are
nearest the great numbers of our children—parents and
neighbors—their lack of recognition and regard is an
insidious attack on black integrity in general. I hear
post-modern echoes of Alexander Crummell in this species
of cultural criticism, as in his characterization of
freed slaves as culturally depraved. Of course Crummell
did not see this depravity as innate, but rather derived
from the evil economic system in which the Negro was
entrapped, an economic system which had respect neither
for their minds nor their souls. Both then and now
these are problems of ideology from above and without rather than
sympathy and close observation of daily life from within
or from below. But these superior tones (a la Anglo-Saxonism)
bring us no closer to the truth and beauty of the lives
of working men and women than gangster hip hop lyrics.
I do not like this continuing portrait of the Negro on
the whole
characterized as a PROBLEM (or a cancer) in American
civil society
and democracy. Worse I do not like that so many black-on-black
experts (a la Judas Shinola Bottom, employed by noted
Republicans)
participate in this cultural con game. The
I-am-more-civilized-than-you ploy should have ended with
the lessons learned in the downfall of colonialism but it is constantly
still strutted out by contemporary arbiters of taste.
Life indeed may be bleak and may get bleaker. But let it
not be said that the majority of blacks did not work with
all the energy their hearts and souls could master to do their best in and on
the playing fields laid out by their betters. Let it not
be said that they did not or have not creatively work to
make the burdensome world they inherited a better one.
Let us have some grace if we are must
suffer.
However the
Negro has come up short, lay the blame elsewhere, such
as on those who were or are running the con game of
global business and profits at others expense with their
own special set of rules and ethics, backed up by
national armies, like aggressive mortgage brokers or
global financial houses. Those for which governments were
established (the rich and powerful) have always
sought scapegoats for their depravity. I would not be
surprised, at all, if someone is writing right now a "white" paper
on how the Negro should be blamed for the declining
dollar—Rudy
* *
* * *
Dear Professor M.:
I find
your response quite interesting, and so, I wish to
comment further. . . .
While, I am not a student of
E. Franklin Frazier, nor a sociologist, or even consider
myself to be a “Writer,” after examining Frazier’s
opus and drawing upon my own experience and common
sense, I find a great deal of similarities in Frazier’s
conclusion of the lumpen-bourgeoisie and my own. Of
course, as a workingman, I arrived at my assessment
based on encounters with that class, long before
Frazier’s research came to my attention. I also find
Frazier's "expanded footnote" quite useful.
Frazier has made a
contribution from the field of sociology, complementing
those from other fields, such as history and political
science. Let’s add to this lot, the artist, whose
expressions are not influenced by the milieu of the
class in question. And, yes, of course, the everyday
encounters of the black underclass with the “black
lumpen-bourgeois” have provided a wealth of knowledge
about race-class relations in the American society.
Additionally, to further
understand, in the most basic manner, how the average
black workingman or woman is treated by the black
bourgeoisie, all that is needed, is to put on, or take
off, a jacket- n- tie, and exchange it with the
blue-collar suit, then walk into their business or
government office of the, average, black bourgeoisie.
With that stated, I wish to
examine in a rudimentary, but, important, manner some of
your points, as follows:
“I too endorse analysis, as so
wisely recommended by Lloyd D. McCarthy, but much
analysis is premature.”
What analysis is premature?
Measurements and estimations are very important in
everyday life, in struggle, as well as in capitalist
society. The class of traders and financiers measure
everything and charges for imperceptible fraction of
percentages, projected into decades, to accumulate,
based on their estimates. To bring about meaningful
change in society competent study (analysis) by
progressive elements is a pre-requisite, a necessity,
which is far from being premature.
What analysis is premature?
Is the analysis of the historical development of
African America society, as it interacts with
white-racist-capitalist society over the last 500 years
pre-mature? Or is the study of the relations between
social classes in society premature? The status of the
black underclass or the underclass, period, is defined
by class relations and the analysis of such relations
need sound analysis. Thus, this is not about analyzing
text, but social classes and their relations.
“Many authors confuse
‘analysis’ with ‘synthesis.’”
I will not dispute this
statement. In fact, I agree. As I am sure you will no
doubt glean, that this is not a fundamental issue for
the black underclass or the oppressed in society, who
are struggling to relieve themselves of their oppressive
conditions. It is only a problem for the privilegentsia
who writes profusely to defend class society and the
status quo— they are avid advocates (as far as change to
benefit the poor are concerned) of “let nature” or “let
God.” The oppressed in society is concerned about
“research methods” so far as it is used to oppress them
or to extricate them from under the heels of their
oppressors—a primary outcome of privilegentsia research
(analysis/synthesis) in class and racist society is the
former use.
“African Americans rush
impatiently to ‘problem solving’ with their typically
American ‘can do’ attitude.”
The African-American
underclass is impatiently seeking relief from the
oppression that they face in the American Society, in
multiple layers. They are oppressed as a race and they
are oppressed as a class. In contrast, the black-lumpen-bourgeoisie,
as a class, is motivated and driven by the dominant
values in the society. Consequently, they are as
competitive as any white-American male, they firmly
believe in the idea of survival of the fittest and
vigorously ‘problem solve’ with the ‘American can do’
attitude to survive in the American society at the
expense of the weakest, but strengthening, underclass in
the American society and globally. Since 1946 American
capitalism has provided a wider bridge, accommodating
them, for internal/global exploitation.
“Let's stop proposing
theoretical frameworks for a season, and concentrate on
facing the brutal facts before embarking on analysis, or
synthesis, or problem solving.”
The black underclass and the
global oppressed know, quite well, the brutal facts of
life in society, which is “No society can survive if it
cannot procure the fundamental means of life—food
shelter, clothing.” The majority of the world’s natural
resources are now owned by a few. The products of the
worker’s labor are owned by the same few, with minimal
returns going back to the worker.
Progressive minds need good
theory to understand the development of society in order
to time, and bring about the changes necessary for the
survival of mankind in a society dominated by greed,
deception and massive exploitation. We are surrounded by
the ‘brutal facts’—environmental degradation, poverty,
desperation. These are all well known!
“Most formulae that are
currently presented by well-meaning contemporary
Brothers and Sisters are flawed by impatience, and
haste, leading to a "magpies nest" of schemes informed
by incomplete knowledge of our past.”
I can only respond to this
statement by repeating my above comment, “let nature” or
“let God” is not a solution to the problem confronted by
the black or the global underclass. Additionally, for
the theological minded, I say that “only God have
complete knowledge of our past.”
Further, if the “Brothers and
Sisters were not impatient and in haste,” to reclaim
their humanity and to demand a better society, then I
would have to say to them: “well, lift your worthless
hand, cast your lazy-eye upon heaven, curse God with
your foul-lip for your miserable life, then fall down
and die!”
Fortunately, many of our
ancestors left us with a historical legacy for which we
can be proud. Among these are: the underground railroad,
the Haitian revolution, the civil rights movement, the
plethora of slave uprisings in the Americas that has
never ceased since the first slaves arrived in the
Americas. These strugglers rejected the idea of waiting
for “God’s,” intervention, the kindness of the
slave-masters or for the attainment of perfect knowledge
about how to struggle.
History has also shown that
the European, American or the Asian bourgeoisie did not
wait for complete knowledge about their past, before
they acted to liberate themselves.
“Declare a moratorium on
theory until you have studied our own past”
As J. Sakai in
Settlers (1989) pointed out, It is not
“Ourstory” that we do not know it is “HiStory.” I
commend the work being done in reclaiming African
history and development’s in Africana Studies. Yet, as
Sakai correctly suggested, we should understand these
patronage-programs in academia in the context of
classical jujitsu—“study your history, not ours.”
Sincerely,
Peace,
Lloyd D.
McCarthy
mccarthyconsultg@aol.com
www.in-dependence.com
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it
just as they please; they do make it under circumstances
directly encountered, given and transmitted from the
past."
* * * *
*
Lloyd, I think that
both you and Wilson are in agreement with respect to the
black petty bourgeoisie. His criticism is rather subtle
and I think he had other things in mind than your
response. For instance there are those who wear what may
seem to some radical masks, like Pan Africanism, black
nationalism, and Afrocentrism, but who are indeed rather
black conservatives. You recall the case of the
Ghanaian and his views on Mugabe, who in many ways is
not unlike Kwame Nkrumah whom he admires.
I shared with
Wilson recently a piece by a Dr. So-And-So (with an
African name) who was throwing ice cold water on the
effort of the Jena March in Jena because their
protest used "white" facilities in order to get there.
And thus concluded "protest" was "reactionary" and that
a Buy Black program was what was needed. Then there was
the recent speech of Rev. Farrakhan who has returned to
his mentor's position of black separatism; that is, the
American government should give blacks land and finance
that new country for 25 years.
So there is a lot
of nonsense sheistering going on. Of course, I do not
know Wilson's mind but he might have had these instances
and others before him when he spoke of "analysis,"
"synthesis," "impatience," "problem-solving." Taking
just those instances above I think you will more
readily favor the way he cast his argument.
Further, I think he
would not disagree with anything you have recently
written on the problem—the position of the
working classes and the need to redress their
grievances. But there are so many charlatans and
demagogues out here masking as black spokespersons (from
the left and the right) who are strutting out time worn
solutions that will not address the urgent problems of
our time. They may mask themselves in broad masses
racial rhetoric but in fact are really interested in
their narrow and personal interests.
Wilson seems to
caution us in joining or jumping on every bandwagon that
has (red-black-and-green flags) that comes into the
community or those who make use of authoritarian names
as a mean to boost or bolster their argument or
recommendations. He recommends study and some reserve in
our theoretical response to the Negro's dilemma. That
seems rather a sound stance, though some may view it as
a conservative one. But it is not a political
conservatism as the ones I listed previously. It is
rather the skepticism of the scholar. In that I can find
no fault—Rudy
* *
* * *
Forty Acres and
a Gap in Wealth
—Last week, the Pew Research Center published the
astonishing finding that 37 percent of African-Americans
polled felt that “blacks today can no longer be thought
of as a single race” because of a widening class divide.
From Frederick Douglass to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., perhaps the most fundamental assumption in the
history of the black community has been that Americans
of African descent, the descendants of the slaves,
either because of shared culture or shared oppression,
constitute “a mighty race,” as Marcus Garvey often put
it. “By a ratio of 2
to 1,” the report says, “blacks say that the values of
poor and middle-class blacks have grown more dissimilar
over the past decade. In contrast, most blacks say that
the values of blacks and whites have grown more alike.”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
NYTimes
* *
* * *
The Good Times
Roll, for Some—In the upper
echelons of society, these are halcyon days for
African-American achievement. Never before have so many
blacks reached the highest levels of government,
business, media, entertainment and sports. At the same
time, however, the success of people such as Condoleezza
Rice, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington and
Tiger Woods has masked a troubling trend. Reports last
week from the Pew Research Center documented extensive
downward mobility among the sons and daughters of the
black middle class: 45% of black children from those
families end up "near poor," Pew reported. The
comparable number for white familiesis 16%. . . . . Too
few African-Americans benefit from that trend: The
percentage of married blacks in their 30s plunged from
68% in 1969 to 42% in 1998. (Whites have also
experienced a decline in marriage rates across
generations, but from considerably higher starting
points.) Moreover, nearly 70% of black babies are born
out of wedlock, up from about 25% in the mid-1960s. Any
discussion of the class divide that ignores family
factors ignores a root cause.Yahoo
* *
* * *
Who's Got
Wealth?—Black households were especially
unlikely to hold financial assets such as stocks and
bonds. In 2004, the average financial wealth of black
households (as shown in Table 5.6, fourth panel) was
only 15% of the average financial wealth for white
households, an increase from 12% in 2001. The median
financial wealth for blacks (as shown in the last panel
of Table 5.6) was just $300, less than 1% of the
corresponding figure for whites. The vast and lasting
disparity in the distribution of wealth between blacks
and whites is indicative of the lasting legacy of
discrimination. To summarize, the data on net worth
reveal a highly unequal distribution of wealth by class,
which has been further exacerbated by race. A
significant share of the population has little or no net
worth, while, over the last 40 years at least, the
wealthiest 20% has consistently held over 80% of all
wealth and the top 1% has controlled at least a third.
There is no reason to believe these wealth disparities
will lessen anytime soon.”
The State of Working America
* *
* * *
Manipulating Global
Markets—the Falling Dollar
The inflation of oil prices is merely the index of a
more important problem, the general weakening of the
dollar. . . . Foreign countries may accelerate the
process, already in motion, of dumping dollars, and
switching to some other currency for international
trade. As the dollar loses its status as the world's
most stable currency, it will become impossible for a
newly-elected Democratic Party to borrow money from
other countries to run the United States government.
The Democrats would have the alternatives of either
raising taxes, thus assuring the death of their party,
or shutting down the government. . . . This predicament
could lead to the destruction of the two-party system,
followed by a tremendous Constitutional crisis and
ultimately a military dictatorship in the United
States.—Wilson
* *
* * *
I have not yet
measured the full gravity of the national crisis, it
seems. Gas prices are tied to the price of barrels of
oil (now near $100 a barrel), most of us believed. Gas
prices are now only around $3 a gallon, in some places
less. But that does not make sense. Last July when gas
went above $3 a gallon, the price per barrel was around
$60. That does not make proportional sense. The price of
gas here goes up daily, which makes people think gas
stations are gouging.
It seems there need
to be a popular course in practical business and
economics. But everything is so obfuscated on the news
and talk programs, no one can make sense of what is
going at all. There's the belief it is as usual, a
temporary condition.
Moreover, I thought
that the Chinese would always be there to protect their
own investment in the US economy so that our borrowing
from them would go on rather indefinitely. Maybe their
business sense is much more practical and that they know
indeed when to cash in. There are possible other willing
investors in the US economy, which is one if not the
largest market in the world.
We have never known
a time when the dollar lost its respect and magic
worldwide. If there was a fall, there was usually a
bounce back within a year. But from what you are
suggesting that this time it might indeed be more
critical and that structural changes might be necessary
to maintain law and order and political stability.
Still I find the
whole idea of an unconcealed military dictatorship in
the USA mind boggling, inconceivable, and
unnecessary—the American public is as pliable as it has
ever been. Last night I did hear conservative—talking
heads insist that stability was better than Democracy.
But if it is true
that the future Democrats will not be able "to run the
government," make its payment to employees and citizens
(social security, Medicare, etc.), I can see a not-so
pliable, angry, and disappointed citizenry. But that
would only create mass support for a tax hike on the
rich, with a significant number of Republicans joining
in.— Rudy
* *
* * *
Dollar supremacy is
an artificial structure that decades ago lost its
usefulness to global capitalism, and now serves only the
"national" (state) interests of the U.S. and as a weapon
of the U.S.-led imperial apparatus. Post WWII, dollar
supremacy served to stabilize capitalist recovery in
Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Now the artificial edifice
actually hinders global productive forces, that
is, dollar supremacy is an ever-growing tax on and
impediment to every other nation's economic, social and
political potential. For this reason, it MUST collapse,
if only because capitalist elites around the planet can
no longer tolerate or support it. However, the process
of extricating one's economy from the web of
dollar-based relationships is excruciating and uneven,
and will be punctuated with all manner of crises,
military and economic (it's hard to separate the two).
We are in the midst
of the unraveling, at the end of which process lies the
death of U.S. Imperialism, although not
necessarily global capitalism. The "punctuations" of war
may yet prove fatal to humanity since, just as during
the Fifties and Sixties the (white) Americans declared
they would "rather be Dead than Red," they cannot
envision a world in which American Manifest Destiny goes
into the dustbin.
Here at home,
our prospects for "normal" lives will be savaged - which
is why it is most important to build defensive
structures and strategies for inexorable decline in
living standards and inevitable collapse of the huge
sectors of the U.S. domestic economy that are directly
dependent on Imperialism, a system that is now based
solely on dollar supremacy and military coercion.—Thus
sayeth Glenathustrah
* *
* * *
Well, I'd ask Glen
a couple of questions, maybe out of ignorance. Is it
possible the sinking value of the dollar is giving a
shot in the arm to U.S. exports, and if so, how does
that square with dollar imperialism? And isn't
China, holding all that U.S. currency in its central
bank, and dependent on the U.S. market, going to have to
take steps to prop up the dollar enough to slow its
decline? Actually, a third question occurs to me to
pose for Glen. As it becomes apparent that we've already
hit peak oil and the price goes up in relation to
dwindling demand, what's that going to do to the dollar?
As I understand it, oil sales are generally denominated
in dollars. So will some other currency replace the
dollar, and before something like that happens, isn't it
going to be inflationary as all hell? I don't mean to
wander too far afield here, but this question is really
bugging me.—David
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Dear David, just some brief
responses, since I'm way behind deadline.
There should be
some growth in U.S. exports due to the falling dollar,
and in fact modest increases have already been recorded
in some sectors. This is to be expected based on
simplistic notions of economy - that there is a neutral,
"invisible hand" - but it's a minor and transient aspect
of the larger picture. Please understand that the people
that RULE the U.S. are not much interested in promoting
exports, but in manipulating global markets and money.
Otherwise, they would not have spent the last three-plus
decades denuding the U.S. of export capacity.
These true rulers
are multi-national players in finance and the creation
of unfair markets through rigged trade arrangements
and/or military coercion. They will not allow the global
"race to the bottom" to be substantially interrupted by
growth in U.S. high-wage (relatively, even now)
production. Do not expect any serious or lasting
institutional support for U.S. manufacturing exports -
no matter what the "logic" of the market says. (The real
logic decreed that these criminals should have
disappeared long ago. Imperialism was erected to
insulate them from actual market forces.)
China's policies
should be seen in geopolitical as well as Chinese
domestic terms. My own belief is that the
Chinese Communist Party has been telling itself for
decades that they will turn on the U.S.-based economic
matrix "when the time is right." Well, if they are
looking for some easy exit, the time will never be
right. Extrication will cause excruciating pain to
everyone, and the Chinese are in no position to mediate,
or even in the long term mitigate, the crisis of U.S.
Imperial capitalism. They are already taking
unprecedented steps to divest themselves of a "balanced"
measure of U.S. financial instruments - as they must,
since almost everyone else is doing (or preparing to do)
the same. The Chinese are not supermen, and cannot act
like Atlas, holding up the (dollar dominated) world
order while it becomes increasingly imbalanced by
imbedded contradictions coming home to roost.
Regarding
dollar-denominated oil: every oil-producing nation has
long sought ways to escape this trap, which
constantly loses them return on their principle
resource. They have cautiously created limited "market
baskets" for some oil-related exchanges, while futilely
searching for a way around going cold-turkey. This is
especially painful for states governed by elites that
are heavily invested in the U.S. and/or militarily
dependent on Washington (Gulf states). But the
slow-motion collapse of the dollar forces their hands,
nonetheless. The "transition" from dollars - if jittery
foreign elites had their way - would be gradual, and is
in fact underway, unevenly. However, "punctuations" in
the "equilibrium" ALWAYS upset everyone's plans. Since
dollar-domination (at whatever relative
currency value) is central to U.S. rulers, they will
intervene by all means necessary to halt the process.
Who knows what will set off an acceleration of the
inexorable decline? Could it be a total withdrawal of
Venezuela from the dollar-denominated oil game
(Venezuela is about to officially announce that its
reserves are the largest in the world), or a U.S. strike
against Venezuela, or Iran? Believe me, the Imperialists
are more confused than you think you are. But they will
ACT.
"Peak oil" doesn't alter
fundamental contradictions; it simply exacerbates them.
Follow the contradictions, not the transitory
by-products. And prepare for the unknowable.—Sincerely,
Glen Ford
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Two Million
Homeowners Are Too Many to Fail: We Need Action—Single
women, young couples, Latinos and African
Americans were particular targets of aggressive
mortgage brokers. The brokers didn't care if the
loan made sense because they sold it off
immediately to the financial houses. And they
had a big incentive to hide the fees and
interest rate jumps because those made the loans
worth more when sold. Now new homeowners who
have kept up their payments are facing
foreclosure. Citibank warns that it is too big
to fail, that the Treasury must act to bail out
the banks. But 2 million homeowners are too many
to fail; they will take down our economy if they
do. So it is time to challenge the timidity and
the cribbed imaginations in Washington and to
demand action before the crisis brings down the
entire economy. We need action to postpone all
resets for those who have maintained their
payments.—
Jesse Jackson
Sun Times.
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Race or Over-Reaching or Gullibility or All Three?—Study
after study show that minorities are more likely than
whites to get subprime mortgages, which are high-cost
loans made to people with poor credit. In its heyday
earlier this decade, the subprime market was cheered as
an avenue through which historically shut-out borrowers
could get loans. That frequently meant minorities. So
long as home prices rose, the subprime market seemed a
positive example of how to increase home ownership, but
as the housing market weakened this year, many began to
question whether the loans were fairly priced. In
September, the Federal Reserve released a study that
found 52.8 percent of African-Americans got a high-cost
home loan when they refinanced in 2006, compared to 37.7
percent of Latinos and just 25.7 percent of whites in
the same year. A similar study by the Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now, known by its
acronym ACORN, in September found the same pattern even
when income was equal.—
Yahoo
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Relevant Links:
Many Blacks Earn Less than Parents Did /
Economic Mobility /
Two Million Homeowners Are Too Many to Fail (Jesse
Jackson)
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posted 14 November 2007 |
