I recently read an interesting novel titled "The Iron Heel." It consists of a projection into the future, a pessimistic view of the ultimate triumph of the Oligarchy and the utter destruction of the middle class and the working poor.
I have selected a few choice quotes from the book for your edification and included some bits of commentary.
Hop in a barrel and follow me over the fa-a-a-a-alls...
I’ll start with a quote from the central character, Ernest Everhard, as he addresses the US Congress:
"The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged."
In view of our recent troubles, the collapse of Wall Street and the subsequent bailout of same, I tend to agree that there has been some problem with "mismanagement" and that this was both criminal and selfish. In order to prevent a complete collapse of the house of cards built by the Ruling Class, a bailout seems to have been necessary. Whether the bailout structure was appropriate or not, I have my doubts.
Despite the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed last July, Wall Street remains powerful, out of control, and likely to present us with another collapse in the not too distant future.
While it is true that our "producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man," the vast majority of the wealth that has been created has been absorbed by the uber-rich, and not shared with the middle class or the working poor.
The whole middle class had not yet been exterminated. The sturdy skeleton of it remained; but it was without power. The small manufacturers and small business men who still survived were at the complete mercy of the Plutocracy. They had no economic nor political souls of their own.
All of the footnotes in "The Iron Heel" are written from a future perspective, some hundreds of years hence, when the "manuscript" we are reading is surprisingly discovered by the survivors of multiple economic revolutions. For hundreds of years, the Oligarchy has ruled supreme and everyone else has been enslaved or exterminated.
Later in the book, Ernest Everhard delivers another speech to Congress:
"I know nothing that I may say can influence you," he said. "You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this house. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel."
Here the shouting and the cries of "Order! order!" drowned his voice, and he stood disdainfully till the din had somewhat subsided. He waved his hand to include all of them, turned to his own comrades, and said:
"Listen to the bellowing of the well-fed beasts."
Shortly thereafter, a small bomb was thrown at Ernest’s feet, wounding only him, creating more smoke than blast.
This is quite an indictment, and one that generally applies to the current members of the House and Senate. While I know that this site is dedicated to electing "more and better Democrats," the horde of lobbyists that write their own legislation and line the pockets of politicians are no less influential no matter which party is in control.
(Disclaimer: I do not suppose for an instant that there is some sort of "equivalency" between the parties. Progress has historically only come about when the Democrats are in power. But what progress we get is so slow and so watered down, so frustratingly miniscule, that it seems inevitable that the Oligarchs will win in the long run, as is postulated in "The Iron Heel." "...well-fed beasts" indeed!
I’ll close out with one final quote that needs no comment.
Congress and the Senate were empty pretences, farces. Public questions were gravely debated and passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality all that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional procedure to the mandates of the Oligarchy.
UPDATE: "The Iron Heel" was written in 1906 by Jack London.
From the Introduction by H. Bruce Franklin
"The novel is of course a warning to London’s American socialist comrades that their strategy of relying entirely on the ballot box to defeat the capitalists is a treacherous illusion. But the Everhard style of roaring supermasculine confrontation with the capitalists proves to be equally dangerous."