The Rich Stay Rich (2018)

From the July 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part Two

Part three of our series on ‘philanthrocapitalism’

If ‘self-made billionaires’ tend to be ‘more willing to give their money away than those who inherit their fortunes’ as Bishop and Green contend then, seemingly, the prospect of philanthrocapitalism making a larger impact on society depends to some extent on a relative increase in the proportion of wealthy individuals who allegedly made their wealth in this way. In other words, on the degree to which individuals are able to become upwardly ‘socially mobile’. On current trends, however, this seems unlikely. If anything, what seems more likely is that the significance of inherited wealth is going to grow in relative terms.

What helps to sustain the myth of ‘self-made men’ is precisely the belief that we live in a socially mobile society in which inheritance plays only a negligible role. This discounting of the importance of inheritance is a characteristic feature of conservative sociological analysis and its barely concealed aim of wanting to justify the existence of gross inequalities. Such inequalities will tend to be more tolerated insofar as it is assumed they reflect the workings of a meritocratic principle. The rich are rich because of hard work, runs the argument. That’s quite true, of course, except that it omits to mention that it is other people’s hard work that made them rich.

In a sense, then, the argument about the role of inheritance in perpetuating gross inequalities is a distraction. Whether the capitalists inherited their wealth or ‘made’ it, that wealth overwhelmingly derives from that portion of the labour performed by working people that is effectively unpaid or unreciprocated. The only virtue in drawing attention to the significance of inheritance in modern capitalism is that it helps to clarify this point and make it all the more obvious.

How significant a role does inherited wealth play in modern capitalism, then? This is a difficult question to answer. Partly this is because what is called ‘inheritance’ is not simply what it is often imagined to be asLisa Keister and Stephanie Moller explain in their article, ‘Wealth Inequality in the United States’:

  ‘We know very little about how wealth is actually inherited because data on inheritance is virtually nonexistent. Indeed, Menchik & Jianakoplos (1998) estimated that between the 1970s and 1990s, as little as 20% and as much as 80% of total wealth may have been inherited. Those who study inheritance typically refer to three forms of inheritance: inheritance at the death of a parent or other benefactor, inter-vivos transfers of money and other assets, and transfers of cultural capital (Miller & McNamee 1998:3) While we typically think of inheritance as occurring at the death of the benefactor, Kurz (1984) estimated that inter-vivos transfers account for nearly 90% of intergenerational wealth transfers’ (Annual Review of Sociology, August 2000, Vol 26: 63-81).

Study after study has confirmed that, far from ‘social mobility’ in America (and elsewhere) increasing, it is on the wane (and, along with it, faith in the ‘American dream’). This seems to have gone hand in hand with the steadily widening gap between rich and poor. If you are born poor today you are more likely to remain poor than was the case with your parents or grandparents but the corollary of that is that, if you are born rich, your offspring are more likely to remain rich, too. Meaning that the role of inheritance is likely to loom ever larger as an explanation for the extremely skewed distribution of income and wealth. Consequently, if it is true that the ‘self-made’ super-rich give more to charity than those who inherit their wealth, this would seem to imply that a relative long-term decline in charitable donations from the super-rich is in prospect.

According to Thomas Piketty, author of the best seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), the recent growth in inequality augurs a return to the ‘patrimonial capitalism’ of the Gilded Age and the dynastic wealth of a rentier economy.In America, for example, the share of total wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent increased from 7 percent in late 1970 to 22 percent in 2012. This is approaching levels of inequality to be found in the era of the Robber Barons.

What is driving this process, argues Piketty, is the simple fact that the rate of return on capital has been consistently exceeding the rate of economic growth over the past few decades, meaning the super-rich have been appropriating a steadily growing slice of the economic pie. A kind of positive feedback loop is at work which ensures that, to those who have, shall more be given, simply by virtue of the fact that they have the capital to invest which the rest of us don’t. If you are securing a rate of return that exceeds the rate at which the economy is growing, then, logically, that can only mean you are accumulating wealth at the expense of others who lack capital. Inequalities in the distribution of wealth and income will thus grow. That, in turn, acts to slow down or impede social mobility and thus boost the significance of inheritance. The recipients of this inherited wealth not only benefit directly but indirectly too by capitalising on all advantages that great wealth bestows upon them in terms of social capital, having connections with the right people and so on.

The problem is, as Piketty suggests, that while some of the super-rich might claim to have earned their wealth by the sweat of their brows, plainly the same could not really be said of their offspring inheriting this wealth. The corollary of reduced upward mobility is obviously reduced downward mobility – meaning an increased capacity for the super-rich to hang on to their huge fortunes and thus to pass them on to their heirs.

Inheritance is thus the cuckoo in the nest of capitalist ideological legitimation. With the rich getting increasingly richer at the expense of the rest, more and more discrediting the myth of upward social and intergenerational mobility, it is going to be increasingly difficult to justify their huge fortunes in the face of these stubborn realities. The disconnect between ‘merit’ and ‘reward’, which were never closely linked to begin with, will become ever more apparent.

This is where the ideological significance of philanthrocapitalism comes into the picture. It represents an attempt to shore up a failing mechanism of ideological legitimation by projecting an image of the philanthrocapitalist as a generous benefactor and of capitalism itself, as a system that can be philanthropic, working for the good of mankind  (http://philanthrocapitalism.net/about/faq/). It is the application of a fresh lick of paint on a crumbling façade that barely conceals the stark structural reality of capitalist exploitation.

Exploitation and charity

While philanthrocapitalism focuses on what the rich give to the poor it would be far more to the point to focus on what the poor give to the rich. According to Barbara Ehrenreich the appropriate response to such giving ought to be one of ‘shame’:

  ‘shame at our own dependency, in this case, on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on — when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently — then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect’ (Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, 2001).

However, the problem with Ehrenreich’s way of framing the whole question is that it is seriously misleading. She is focussing only on the lowest paid members of the working class, those who are ‘underpaid’. The presumption seems to be that were they not ‘underpaid’ but paid at the going rate they would have no cause for grievance. Her perspective is the suppressed view of a ruling class which she faithfully echoes in talking of ‘our’ dependency on the ‘underpaid labour’ of others. She ignores completely the unpaid labour that workers in general contribute towards the accumulation of capital even when they are not ‘underpaid’. Her sympathy for the ‘working poor’ is the sentiment of a guilt-ridden liberal trying to eradicate the more unpalatable aspects of contemporary capitalism and to soften some of its rough edges.

What makes the working class – not just Ehrenreich’s ‘working poor’ – ‘the major philanthropists of our society’ is the brute fact of surplus value, the value which our class creates over and above what it receives by way of a wage. As Friedrich Engels put it: ‘It is infamous, this charity of a Christian capitalist! As though they rendered the workers a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then placing themselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when they give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them!’ (The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845).

But even if we look at philanthropy in its more conventional sense as the voluntary donation of money and effort to others, it is quite misleading to portray this as the prerogative of the rich alone. Workers likewise give handsomely in this sense.

Indeed, according to one survey, individuals with incomes below $25,000 gave away around 4.2 percent of their income while those on an income of $150,000 or more gave away around 2.7 percent. Research carried out by Dacher Keltner revealed that ‘lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it’ (LINK.)

Robin Cox

(Next month, concluding article: No Such Thing As A Free Gift)

Sex and socialism (1985)

From the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

A tangled web of myths and double standards still enmeshes the subject of sex and sex roles in our “liberated” and developed form of capitalism. For centuries, there has been a peculiar tendency to assign to women one of two equally extreme and repellent roles, that of either a solely sexual being — “whore” — in her relationship with men (whether this has ever been an enjoyable sexuality is doubtful) or a de-sexed and “decent” wife and mother, glorified and put on a pedestal. This division of women into prostitutes and madonnas has been surprisingly persistent. Agony columns still contain letters from men finding it difficult to enjoy sex with their wives/cohabitees after the arrival of a baby, because they feel the woman is now on a higher plane of sanctified motherhood and should not be debased by primaeval lust. The notion that sex is sinful and that women are to blame when men succumb to “sinful” practices runs through the three religions originating in the Middle East: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Until recently it was only prostitutes who committed a punishable offence, not the men using them. Rape victims are still told they were “leading a man on” if they were not “appropriately dressed” at the time; it would seem that only a full purdah is good enough for our courts of law.

First, for most women sex is still a means to power. Achieving the conventional standards of beauty, for example, still holds the greatest promise of power available to most women, and so we cultivate and package our individual attractiveness in order to trade it for economic gain, advances in status, and love. This is true even in radical and even feminist circles.) Heterosexual relationships, no matter how “equal” in bed, still represent contact between members of a dominant and a subordinate group. Most women are still dependent on male favour for their economic survival, whether at home or work.

(The Politics of Sexual Freedom, Peace News, 25 March 1978.)

It would be misleading to put all men in the “dominant” group, if this dominant economic group is understood to be the capitalist class (which consists of men and women). However, a lot of men are dominant in a domestic situation in as much as they hold the purse strings and the women depending on them can be properly characterised as “slaves of slaves”. In preparation for eventually trading their attractiveness for economic “security”, girls are strongly encouraged to take an interest in clothes and make-up from an early age. Their faces, their bodies and their hair are never quite good enough to measure up to the stereotyped, eighteen-year-old, Page Three girl, so chemists and department stores are crammed full with remedies from chemical and cosmetic companies which make enormous profits.

Several myths concerning women’s sexuality persist. Women are supposed to need to be “in love” with a man to enjoy sex. This is a complete fallacy; women are as capable as men of separating sexual enjoyment from any deeper feelings. Another prevalent myth is that women are supposed to find sex repugnant during pregnancy and after giving birth. This may show individual variation, of course, according to how the pregnancy affects the woman and the difficulty of the birth. But largely this is another superstition tied in with the “purity of motherhood” myth.

As for men, another set of sex roles are inculcated by society and another set of myths hold sway. As the capitalist class relies mostly on men to kill and torture for them in war and to compete for the top jobs in the labour market, we would expect the myths to be of a kind that encourage the belief that men are inherently brutal, cruel and domineering. Robert Briffault, for instance, argues as follows in an otherwise interesting chapter on love in his book Sin and Sex:

Every expert in matters erotic knows that tenderness, affection, and even respect are sentiments opposed to the full biological operation of the predatory and pugnacious masculine sexual urges. Their fulfilment requires, in whatever measure, a reversion to the brutal, dominating attitude of the animal male. It requires in some degree the elimination of love.

Although there is no doubt about humans being part of the animal world, it is naive to think that animals capable of writing the sonnets of Shakespeare and developing the scientific theories of Einstein will not show more sophistication and nuances in their sexual play than two ferrets mating in a subterranean tunnel. In the case of ferrets, rough treatment of the female is necessary for ovulation; the biology of humans is completely different.

Although 40 per cent of the workforce are now women, who are making inroads into education and jobs that were formerly reserved for men, it is still men who are expected to “succeed” financially. Under capitalism, their whole self-esteem is so closely tied in with their earning capacity and their jobs that unemployment or failure to get promoted can result in serious depression or even suicide. Stresses and strains at work find their outlet in violence in the home; if a man can’t be the boss at work, he can at least increase his efforts at being the boss at home. In a relationship, men are expected to take the first step; sexually, they are expected to “perform” and emotionally they are expected to be severely deficient, not to show fear, to be brave, not to cry; in short, to avoid too much display of sensitivity.

Another explanation for the strange myths surrounding women’s sexuality was put forward by Garrett Hardin in an article in the Ecologist of January 1974, entitled “Parenthood: Right or Privilege?” The effect of prostitution on the one side and “decent” women remaining virgins until marriage would be reduced fertility. Apparently, large families of between 8—16 children were only common in America at the time of the settlers and in Europe in the 19th century. Before that, families of four children were more common than those of twelve:

Delayed marriage, lifetime celibacy, prostitution, venereal disease, and sanctions against bastards and the mothers of bastards constituted a powerful system of population control at the family level. To mitigate any one element in such a system was to diminish its effectiveness in keeping population under control.

The shift of opinion regarding sex outside marriage (as well as women’s “right” to sexual fulfilment on an equal level with men) which has taken place in the West over the last few decades has been revolutionary. It is worth remembering that only about 20 years ago, many doctors still would not give unmarried women the contraceptive pill for moral reasons. Being able to easily control their fertility has undoubtedly been a significant step for women although the real "sexual liberation” will not take place until we have a society where neither men nor women will be dependent on a dominant class for their survival.

The way “sexual liberation” has been exploited and to some degree created by capitalist society is explained in the following two quotes from The Politics of Sexual Freedom, by Deirdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich:

      Obsession with sex can only be understood in the context of the extreme privatisation of people’s lives. Very few people have meaningful work-lives and many people have never experienced a supportive community or sense of collectivity in any realm. Unfulfilled needs for social relatedness, and for creativity, are chanelled into the zone of "private life”, where they can’t do any harm. (Just try demanding more creativity or richer social relations in most jobs.) The less the collectivity or social satisfaction experienced by people in the public realms of work and community, the greater the pressure on the sexual relationship to provide life with meaning.
. . . This new emphasis on sex can be seen as part of an attempt to shore up the monogamous marriage, or to free it up slightly, to save the family. What all this adds up to is that the human need for sex is made to bear the burden of all our bodily starvation for contact and sensations, all our creative starvation, all our need for social contact, and even our need to find a meaning in our lives. In the face of overwhelming alienation, the emphasis on sex is used to encourage people to individualise and trivialise their problems — looking for the cause of their unhappiness in their sex-life, rather than in the world around them. Of course, the dominant culture would like us to believe that we can achieve happiness through personal, sexual satisfaction. This is what it will strive to provide if it will keep us quiet. For women . . . especially, every effort will be made to channel our demands away from the social and political realm (where they cannot be satisfied without thorough-going social and economic changes) and back towards some version of a "liberated” private life. This is a trap.

In capitalism, sexuality is for sale, exaggerated in importance and manipulated in the interest of the state and capital. Europeans today are three times as likely to get divorced and twice as likely to have illegitimate children as they were a generation ago. Most divorce suits are now filed by women and it seems more than a coincidence that literature concerned with the sexual fulfilment in marriage has been on the increase at the same time. If marriages are breaking up, more marriage counsellors and sex therapists can be employed to encourage workers to get their sex lives in order, accept monogamy and stay together.

Humans need to satisfy their basic need for adequate food, clothing and shelter; for a happy and well-balanced emotional life they must also form deep and lasting relationships with other people. These need not be of a sexual nature (if sex is narrowly defined as sexual intercourse only), although at the earliest stage in our life a close, physical relationship with a grown-up is absolutely essential.

Today, a lot of misery is caused by people having to live together for economic reasons when they would rather not. Some people spend a lifetime wearing each other down mentally and emotionally, wasting their lives away in an undignified relationship. The worst irony is when some claim it to be an unconditional success that two people have stayed together for forty years; the quantity is praised, the quality is not questioned.

It is difficult to envisage the complete liberation of human relationships which socialism will bring about. Free access to everything that is produced will mean economic security for all members of society; independence of men and women from employers; economic independence of children from parents and of women from men. Nobody will have to accept an intolerable situation for the sake of satisfying their basic needs. Men and women in socialism will be able to enjoy their lives as full, not fragmented, human beings; satisfying not only their sexual, but all kinds of affectionate and other needs as they occur, not the least being the need to spend our time doing useful work in the companionship of friends.

In socialism, the stereotyped sex roles imposed on men and women under capitalism will disappear. These are equally damaging to both sexes as the similarities between them are far greater than the differences. Both have the same need for companionship with others, for expressing and receiving affection and for feeling secure, both have the same capacity for getting upset and hurt.

Socialism will probably not distinguish between heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual relationships. Everybody will be free to adopt the life style and sexual preference of their choice; the attitude to sex will be relaxed and in proportion to all the other things that make life pleasurable. Perhaps the designations “homosexual”, “heterosexual” and “bisexual” themselves will even disappear, as people will find it superfluous to distinguish between various kinds of loving relationships.

Relationships will be entered into freely, nobody will regard another human being as his or her property. It will be generally understood that when one partner does not want a relationship to carry on any more, the relationship has in fact ceased to exist and any feelings of jealousy are futile. The total shift of attitudes this involves, will be taking place while the ideas of socialism are growing and will make the acceptance of these ideas as well as others a gradual one before socialism is introduced. There is no reason to expect that people in socialism will be more "promiscuous” than they are today although this would not incite moral condemnation. On the other hand, because of our complicated mental make up, we are much more likely to form lasting relationships.

Torgun Bullen

Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed'

Just finished reading Barabra Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed'.

I love the passage below that closes the book. It's a shame that the excerpt is too long to be emblazoned on T shirts and bumper stickers. It hits the nail squarely on the head:

"Guilt, you may be thinking, warily. Isn't that what we're supposed to feel? But guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame - shame at our own dependency, in this case, at the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when she, for example, goes hungry so you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor", as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant co-workers put it, "you give and you give and you give."

Someday of course - and I will venture no predictions as to when - they are bound to tire of giving so little in return, and demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption. But the sky will not fall, and we will all be better off for it in the end."

Writers Strike, Silence Falls by Barbara Ehrenreich

From The Nation Website

In solidarity with the striking screenwriters, there will be no laugh lines in this blog, no stunning metaphors, and not many adjectives. Also, in solidarity with the striking Broadway stagehands, no theatrics, special effects or sing-along refrains.

Yes, I realize the strike could deprive millions of Americans of news as Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, and the rest of them are forced into re-runs. If the strike and the re-runs go on long enough, the same millions of Americans will be condemned to living in the past and writing in Kerry for president in 08. But are re-runs really such a bad thing? After opening night, every Broadway show is a re-run in perpetuity, yet people have been known to fly from Fargo to see Mamma Mia.

And yes, it's a crying shame that so many laugh-worthy news items will go unnoted on the late night talk shows: The discovery of Chinese toys coated with the date rape drug. The news that pot-smoking Swiss teenagers are as academically successful as abstainers and better socially adjusted. Bush's repeated requests for Musharraf to take off his uniform. Could there be a simple explanation for the powerful affinity between these two men?

True, a screenwriters' strike is not as emotionally compelling as a strike by janitors or farmworkers. Screenwriters are often well-paid--when they are paid. All it takes is for a show to get cancelled or reconceptualized, and they're back on the streets again, hustling for work. I know a couple of them--smart, funny women who clamber nimbly from one short-lived job to another, struggling to keep up their health insurance and self-respect.

But my selfish hope here is that the screenwriters' action will call attention to the plight of writers in general. Since I started in the freelancing business about thirty years ago, the per-word payment for print articles has remained exactly the same in actual, non-inflation-adjusted, dollars. Three dollars a word was pretty much top of the line, and it hasn't gone up by a penny. More commonly in the old days, I made a dollar a word, requiring me to write three or four 1000-word pieces a month to supply the children with their bagels and pizza. One for Mademoiselle on "The Heartbreak Diet." One for Ms. on "The Bright Side of the Man Shortage." One for Mother Jones on pharmaceutical sales scams, and probably a book review thrown in.

There was a perk, of course--the occasional free lunch on an editor's expense account. These would occur in up-market restaurants where the price of lunch for two would easily exceed my family's weekly food budget, but I realized it would be gauche to bring a plastic baggie for the rolls. My job was to pitch story ideas over the field greens and tuna tartare, all the while marveling at the wealth that my writing helped generate, which, except for the food on my plate, went largely to someone other than me.

For print writers, things have gone steadily downhill. The number of traditional outlets--magazines and newspapers--is shrinking. Ms., for example, publishes only quarterly now, Mother Jones every two months, and Mademoiselle has long since said au revoir. You can blog on the Web of course, but that pays exactly zero. As for benefits: once the National Writers' Union offered health insurance, but Aetna dropped it and then Unicare found writers too sickly to cover. (You can still find health insurance, however, at Freelancers Union .)

So, you may be thinking, who needs writers anyway? The truth is, no one needs any particular writer, just as no one needs any particular auto worker, stagehand, or janitor. But take us all away and TV's funny men will be struck mute, soap opera actors will be reduced to sighing and grunting, CNN anchors will have to fill the whole hour with chit chat about the weather, all greeting cards will be blank. Newspapers will consist of advertisements and movie listings; the Web will collapse into YouTube. A sad, bewildered, silence will come over the land.

Besides, anyone who's willing to stand up to greedy bosses deserves our support. A victory for one group, from Ford workers to stagehands, raises the prospects for everyone else. Who knows? If the screenwriters win, maybe some tiny measure of respect will eventually trickle down even to bloggers. So in further solidarity with striking writers, I'm going to shut up right now.

Barbara Ehrenreich