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Behind Intolerance

By Farooque Chowdhury

13 September, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Announcement of burning of a section of believers’ holy book specify a society’s state of tension and decadence. The incidents in New York and in few other places are significant as it is happening in an advanced society considered center of the center of the world capitalist system.

The action at micro level has macro implications, both within the US society including its class politics and in the broader world. The perspective of the incidents will help identify the disease.

In short the perspective is:

(1) The society is ridden with crises encompassing areas from grim economy to environment. Ghost towns, homeless camps, tent cities, closed down schools, a large homeless child population, increased child hunger, increased rates of suicides and rapes, and individualized adventurist protests symbolize corrosion in life in a debt and deficit burdened state. For the first time in US history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the number may go up to 43 million in 2011. In 2010, approximately 21 percent of all children in the US are living below the poverty line. Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, an increase of 32 percent over 2008. Referring to the data Michael Snyder, editor, theeconomiccollapseblog.com wrote: The large and prosperous US middle class is radically shrinking and is increasingly finding things to be very tough. The persons at the top are doing quite well while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. “The … middle class in America is dying …” (The Business Insider, posted on Jul 15, 2010)

(2) An Associated Press news report (Sept. 11, 2010) said:

“The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on … a record increase …[The] 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent. … [S]ome 45 million people in [the US], or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. … Among the 18-64 working-age population … a rise beyond 12.4 percent, up from 11.7 percent [is assumed]. That would make it the highest since at least 1965…. ‘The Great Recession will surely push the poverty rate for working-age people to a nearly 50-year peak,’ said Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.”

(3) Reference of the present high unemployment rate may now appear a trite. Rising costs of medical and child care and transportation are increasingly pushing working-age people into poverty in a society with shattered social and physical infrastructures. One percent of the population own 83 percent of all US stocks while the top 1 percent of US households own nearly twice as much of US corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago. As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of US households held about 7 percent of the liquid financial assets. Now, the bottom 50 percent of income earners in the US collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. Sixty-six percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1percent of all Americans. In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to 1. Sixty-one percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

(4) Monopoly-finance capital’s speculation working as king pin in economy, robbing of Main Street by Wall Street, increased class war waged by capital (eroded real income is the class war’s part) tell only a smaller part of the political economy that the citizens are encountering.

(5) The political system’s failure to pull the society out of crises is eroding trust on political leadership while the political process is dominated by elites.

(6) Imperial wars are costing the people and depriving the society from funds urgently required to address immediate problems the society is mired in.

This perspective (1) creates sense of uncertainty in the leadership, (2) pushes the leadership to desperation, adventures and brinkmanship, (3) breed forces of intolerance and extremism. Desperation and brinkmanship most of the times lead to immature steps that ultimately harm the broader society as it turns difficult for the leadership to find appropriate steps other than creating tension among sections of the society, and it tears down fabrics of fraternity among non-antagonistic sections of society and helps status quo. Jingoism, chauvinism, hate-ism, and retrogressive ideas are fanned by ruling capital as these divert people’s dissatisfaction and anguish, fragment people’s broader camp by pitting one section against the other, and confuse people in identifying sources of problem. The working people’s endeavor to get rid of an illogical economy and their effort to unite for achieving the common goal of justice, liberty from the yoke of capital, and welfare is subverted with hatred charged cheap slogans.

The tactics become urgent for the dominating interests as the socio-political canvas has already been dotted with the Chicago workers’ factory occupation, Debtors’ Revolt embodied by Ann Minch in California standing against one of the biggest banks, Philadelphia transportation workers’ strike, homeless New Yorkers’ protests with placards “Hands off the homeless”, a poverty-plagued Los Angeles suburb residents’ protest against high salary of city officials and demand to recall them, white-collar employees’ protest at Goldman Sachs’ headquarters demanding to redirect multi-billion dollar bonus pool with placards “Hold Banks Accountable”, protests in campuses. These are a small fragment of discontent now simmering the society.

Hence, the cheaper way out for the dominating capital is fanning hatred: then against “illegals”, and now against a section of believers. But the common people will pay if the hate-politics prospers. The way out from this blind alley is tolerance among and fraternity of all the people.

Farooque Chowdhury, a Bangladesh-freelancer, contributes on socioeconomic issues.