Is the middle class a reliable ally in serious transformative struggles? Why is it that in most historical confrontations it chooses to side with the upper class? Can middle class politics be corrected and if so, how? This article analyses precisely these and other important issues.
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What Blacks in Atlanta do is act as overseers and serve the interests of the rich whites...They serve as police, as jailers, as clerks in the county, state, city and federal offices — all to grease the wheels and make sure that no one steps out of line and messes with the money. We have a situation where a Black person in the city council is calling for the criminalization of the homeless by saying that they’re offensive in their behavior to the good tourists that come through Atlanta. ..You have a Black district attorney who started out his career as the first Black district attorney in the state of Georgia by prosecuting mainly young Black men under the new law that allows the state to try children as adults...It’s Black people themselves, elected and appointed, who have taken the machinery of government and instead of using it to serve the interests of Black and other poor and oppressed people, they have used it to serve the interests of the developers, the capitalists, the business owners and the big boys in Atlanta.174
A recent satire of Cosby's fulminations by unknown artist.
Politically powerful Blacks like Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice oppose affirmative action and other social measures to counter discrimination; they argue that Black people should elevate themselves through hard work and personal responsibility. In 1995, Black millionaire Ward Connerly led a successful crusade to ban affirmative action admissions’ policies at the University of California. This measure caused the number of Black and Latino students to drop sharply throughout the University system. On the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision (that ruled segregated schools to be illegal), wealthy Black comedian Bill Cosby slammed poor Blacks for not "keeping up their end of the bargain." Feeding every racist stereotype, Cosby delighted conservative America by condemning Black youth and their parents for keeping themselves down. In attacking poor Blacks, Cosby [a billonaire] joins a chorus of Black professionals including New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who rails against "the mass flight of black men from their family responsibilities, especially the obligation to look after their children."175 Herbert barely pauses to acknowledge systemic racism as he attacks its victims:
Society is unfair and racism is still a rampant evil. But much of the suffering in black America could be alleviated by changes in behavior....much of the most devastating damage to black families, and especially black children, is self-inflicted...we have entire legions of black youngsters turning their backs on school, choosing instead to wallow in a self-imposed ignorance that in the long run is as destructive as a bullet to the brain.176
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. chides, "We can’t talk about the choices people have without talking about the choices people make."177 Herbert calls for a new civil rights movement, not to challenge racism but to change the values and behaviors of Black people. The truth is that a racist War on Drugs has incarcerated Black men in unprecedented numbers, tearing apart millions of Black families in the process. The truth is that decades of mass layoffs have eliminated most good-paying jobs and devastated Black families. In some places, like New York City and parts of Chicago, half of all Black men are unemployed. The truth is that most parents, Black and White, are working so hard to make ends meet that they have no time for their kids.
Black students don’t do as well as White students, not because they are lazy, but because America’s school system is segregated by class and by race. The wealthiest ten percent of school districts spend almost ten times more on their students than the poorest ten percent. Less money for students means larger classes, less experienced teachers, crumbling buildings, inadequate libraries, and reduced academic achievement for poor youngsters, who are also more likely to be non-White.
Investing more money in students leads to higher academic achievement. A policy to economically integrate schools in Wake County, North Carolina, showed amazing results for Black and White students. A decade before the integration began, only 40 percent of Black students in grades three through eight scored at grade level. Ten years later, 80 percent did. Overall, 91 percent of students in grades three through eight scored at grade level, up from 79 percent 10 years earlier. The truth is that all youngsters want to learn and will do well when given the chance. Instead of condemning the racism of the system, Black middle-class liberals lecture the victims.
Malcolm X used the following parable to explain the relationship between the Black middle class and the Black working class:
The house Negroes — they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food — what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house – quicker than the master would. If the master said, "We got a good house here," the house Negro would say, "Yeah, we got a good house here." Whenever the master said "we," he said "we." That’s how you can tell a house Negro. If the master’s house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, "What’s the matter, boss, we sick?" We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, "Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate," the house Negro would look at you and say, "Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?"178
Treachery
There can be no doubt that middle-class reformers are genuinely concerned about social problems. Many dedicate their lives to making the world a better place and sacrifice much to do so. However, the belief that change comes only from the top of society causes liberals to betray their ideals and their followers by demanding that we "give the system a chance." This happened in the spring of 2006, when leaders of the immigrants’ rights movement initially opposed a bill that criminalized immigrants only to back another bill that was not much different. The same betrayal occurs in the labor movement, where union bureaucrats talk tough one day and collapse in response to employer pressure the next day. Anti-war liberals who opposed the prospect of war against Iraq did a 180-degree turn when the war began. As one liberal confessed, "I was against the invasion of Iraq, but now that we’re there, we need to finish the job." This is nonsense. The longer the U.S. occupies Iraq, the worse things get. We need to get out NOW. The billions being spent on the war
can be given to the Iraqi people as reparations to rebuild their country.
In any real fight, liberals choose the road of least resistance — the status quo. When Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death after an unfair and politically-motivated trial, the National Association of Black Journalists refused to support him, even though Abu-Jamal was president of the Philadelphia chapter of the organization at the time of his arrest! This cowardly betrayal was attributed to members being "attuned to the subtle grunts and imagined nods of their employers in the corporate media."179
In great social upheavals, sections of the middle class advocate caution and moderation, evolution, not revolution. This liberal "voice of reason" betrays the working class by holding back the struggle while the capitalist class regroups its forces. During the Russian Revolution, when the ruling class was thoroughly discredited, the middle class did all it could to prevent workers, farmers, and soldiers from forming their own government. In Germany, the middle class supported the Nazi Party’s efforts to rescue capitalism from the threat of workers’ revolution. Once the Nazis took power, professional associations of engineers, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, scientists, and other professionals rushed to pledge their support. Jeff Schmidt concludes,
Generally speaking, the greater the power, whether corporate or state or even oppositional, the more eager professionals are to subordinate themselves to it. The power’s morality or immorality has only a secondary effect on the professional’s eagerness to serve, because good subordinates don’t make moral judgements about their superiors.180
Countering middle-class politics
The middle class is not a uniform class with uniform ideas. Sections of the middle class can be convinced to fight capitalism, and most of the people in the grey zone between the middle and working classes can also be convinced. Socialists developed the tactic of the "united front" to help people with different ideas work together on matters of common concern. Too often, people let their disagreements about society hold back their efforts to change it. Human beings prefer to cooperate; conflict makes us anxious so when political disagreements arise, we tend to make
one of two mistakes:
• The first mistake is to be sectarian — to refuse to associate with people you don’t agree with. Hanging out with like-minded people is comfortable; however, organizations that avoid conflict by shutting out dissenters cannot grow beyond a small circle of friends.
• The second mistake is to minimize disagreements ("we all want the same thing"). Unfortunately, unity that is built by papering over real disagreements always breaks down under stress. Those who are loyal to capitalism and those who oppose it will forever be in conflict. When people can’t agree on the fundamentals, their organizations become paralyzed or split.
Conflict is distressing. Suppressing dissent is undemocratic. Pretending we have no differences is unrealistic. So how can we proceed? The first thing to determine is whether the disagreement is fundamental or not. That can be determined by deciding if a person has more to gain by preserving capitalism or by replacing it. Those who have more to gain by preserving capitalism will never be convinced to oppose it. In contrast, all workers and the more oppressed sections of the middle class would be better off in an egalitarian society. Therefore, despite the contradictory ideas in their heads, most people can be convinced of the need for socialism.
The united front allows people to fight together without having to agree on everything and without having to be in the same organization. For example, everyone and all organizations who want U.S. troops out of the Middle East should work together to build an anti-war demonstration. The anti-abortionist who opposes the war should be welcomed, despite her views on abortion. Working together against the war provides a space to discuss how the right of people to run their own countries is linked with the right of women to control their own bodies. Similarly, the racist worker must be welcomed on the picket line, where it is possible to convince him that his racist views hurt his class interests. The key is to be honest and open about differences and work together on specific activities, to acknowledge disagreements without letting them hold back the struggle. Over time, such discussions-within-activity help people to clarify and resolve their differences.
Movements against oppression contain people from different classes. As the struggle heats up, these movements inevitably split along class lines. The middle and upper classes will limit their demands to what can be obtained within capitalism. Such demands do not meet the needs of working-class people whose liberation requires an end to capitalism. These splits are inevitable. Socialists reject pleas for unity that would subordinate the interests of the working class to the interests of the middle and upper classes. A united front is not coercive; it is a free association where organizations holding different views can work together. Organizations participating in a united front retain their political independence, including the right to break away if that becomes necessary.
A workers’ party must represent the interests of the working class without compromise. Because middleclass views and methods undermine the fight for socialism, people who hold onto such views and methods cannot be members of a workers’ party. Membership must be restricted to those who are committed to putting the working class in power. A workers’ party cannot be a debating society or a platform for opportunists; it must be a party of action. Voting rights must be restricted to those who are actively organizing for socialism.
Those who do the work must make the decisions or they will be continually outvoted by those who assume the right to make decisions for other people to carry out. Socialists are often accused of having an agenda that undermines the struggle against oppression. On the contrary, socialists provide a unique and valuable contribution; they work to accomplish the goals of the movement by linking struggles against oppression and grounding them in the power of the working class.
Socialists raise the slogan "Gay, Straight, Black, White; One Struggle; One Fight." That one fight is the fight to liberate humanity from capitalism and end all oppression. To win that fight, we need to build the broadest possible unity within the working class across divisions of sex, race, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, and so on. Socialists insist on bringing everything back to class because class is what unites the majority and gives us the power to change the world. The next chapter in my book explains how the material base already exists to create a classless, socialist society.
Summary
The middle class is full of well-intentioned people who want a better capitalism. Being socialized to manage the working class, the middle class rejects the possibility of workers managing society. The middle class works to lower expectations and limit demands to what can be achieved within the system. To win their rights in the present and their liberation in the future, the working class must organize independently of the middle class and its politics of compromise.
—S.R.
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This material comprises Chapter 15 of Susan Rosenthal's extraordinary volume, POWER AND POWERLESSNESS, a Cyrano Library selection. Dr. Rosenthal, a Senior Editor at Cyrano's Journal Online, has been practicing medicine for more than 30 years and has written many articles on the relationship between health and human relationships. She is also the author of Striking Flint: Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-1937 General Motors Sit-Down Strike(1996) and Market Madness and Mental Illness: The Crisis in Mental Health Care (1999) and Power and Powerlessness. She is a member of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981. She can be reached through her web site www.powerandpowerlessness.com or by susanRosenthal@bestcyrano.org