Donald Trump’s Great Border Wall is as much, if not more, of a racist and nationalist symbol as it is a barrier.

High barrier walls and fences define and divide, even though some fences can be easily “hopped” or climbed over. Many fences, say that surrounding a home, can be efficient for confining children or pets as well as for deterring thieves and other intruders. Many fences, however, are ornamental or symbolic in that the provide only an easily surmountable barrier to any determined intruder. This type of fence nonetheless delineates property: it does so by outlining the property and by doing so is still a symbol of who owns what and who is permitted to enter without permission. So even a fence that is easily jumped serves as a signal and a symbol.

Fences and high walls not only block and delineate but they also make strong political statements when they are made by powerful political authorities. They can do so just as statues honoring cultural heroes and grandiose public buildings do.

Walls and fences also say things as powerfully as words can. Hadrian’s Wall was built to divide Roman Britannia from ancient Scotland, which was populated by a fierce people called the Picts whom the Romans could never entirely conquer. Built during reign of the Emperor Hadrian, this wall was fortified and manned at many points yet could not be defended throughout its extent because it was simply too long (77 miles) and the Romans had a finite number of soldiers in Brittania. Nor was it insurmountably high against any determined assault–about 13 feet. Hadrian’s wall served an important purpose even if it was vulnerable at many points: south of the wall, the Romans were masters, and in their own eyes the Romans stood for what they considered civilization and on the other side the land of the Picts was a land of barbarians. Hadrian’s Wall probably served as more of a political and cultural symbolic statement –but not racist as we understand it today– that probably scared the hell out of a lot of Picts but made the Romans on their side very proud.

Nonetheless the most famous wall built for similar purposes but immensely more effective as a barrier was the Great Wall of China. While it was a far more militarily impregnable barrier (yet ultimately failing even in that purpose) the Great Wall of China also served a very important symbolic purpose. One thing that comes obviously to mind is that any would be invaders to the north of then Imperial China had better have their act together or just stay on their side of the wall–any earthly power that build such an incomparably impressive structure was absolutely wealthy and could command hosts of laborers of all types, and was otherwise certified totally badass. The Great Wall was also symbolic for the tremendous population it protected because it represented “unity on the China side” as well as “separation from the rest of the world on the other, along with the lengths a nation will go to preserve their culture and keep invaders out” (Chinahighlights.com, “Great Wall culture”).

I believe that the proposed Border Wall has a similar purpose. Although it is a formidable barrier to any unauthorized or undocumented crossing by desperate, and in my opinion, admirable and even heroic, immigrants, it is not unbreachable, and its main purpose is sever white from brown peoples, at least in the mind. It is very heavy symbolism. This is of course stupid in the only real sense that counts, the biological, because biologically race as an entity does not exist. Race is a social construct but sadly it is an important one. And it is totally untrue that the U.S.A. is a “white” nation although that is the predominant culture and most of the nation’s assets are owned and controlled by Americans of northern European. Many different ethnic groups have built the United States, especially in the most important way, actually doing the physical and intellectual work that the assembly required. No, the U.S.A. is already a very diverse nation. Furthermore, and most important to this post, the U.S.A. is becoming and increasingly brown or at least a non-white nation. In fact by 2060, 56 percent of the population is projected to be non-white and when “no group will have a majority share of the total and the United States will become a ‘plurality’ [nation] of racial and ethnic groups,” the U.S. Census states. (U.S. News & World Report, July 6, 2015). This is of course a trend that terrifies many whites today and I feel one of the reasons that so many white men and women voted for Donald Trump and his openly racist and white supremacist agenda.

The Great Border Wall is meant to say that the U.S.A. will be permanently separated, cleaved apart from the non-white and often poorer peoples of Latin America and we will forever prevent ourselves from becoming like you, which we perceive is inferior. It is as much a cultural and racial separation, no much more than, any supposed economic separation from those being accused of taking from this country but in reality have always helped to build it and make it prosper. It is also meant to contest the browning of the United States.

The more monumental the appearance of the border wall, the more decorative and less utilitarian the appearance of it, even if it’s only in some sections, the more its political and cultural symbolism function will be valid and true. Contractors are now submitting bids for aesthetic wall designs, examples of which can be found on the Internet.

So it does not matter whether “that fucking wall”, as Vicente Fox called it, keeps any undocumented from entering the United States. It will already be serving its purpose. Surely it will make it more difficult to cross but in the end it will not prove effective for even that purpose, nor can it be manned along its entire length anymore than Hadrian’s Wall could. Even if it is ineffective as a barrier, those hoping to benefit from it will feel all the safer from the ‘swarthy hordes’ and their ‘inferior’ ways’ as they no doubt see them.

Has anyone ever thought the problem with workers is the fact that they are workers, and being such, have the individual and social ethics of a worker? Meaning, in identifying as hard-working, reliable, clever, etc., do workers (employees) have a very strong tendency to disdain those that are not, or whom they perceive are not? Possibly even, work itself, which leads, even generationally, to identifying as ‘hard-working’  leads to not having much of a social conscience with fellow workers at all, especially those that are less successful, such as the frequently unemployed.

Is individualism itself bound up in the identity of the “worker”? Perhaps the belief and practice of self-reliance have a flip side that causes us to not be concerned with those outside ourselves. Or to constantly make the excuse that ‘why can’t they be successful as I have?’, completely ignoring all systematic and historical causation.

In Marxism, “man” (human beings) is Homo Fabor, or “Man the Maker”. Marx’s characterization of humankind is in the most creative as well as productive sense–he doesn’t mean that human beings are born drudges, as some his detractors and even practitioners and disciples say.  To Marx, as well as factually, human beings produce socially and culturally, both the former and the latter being brought to us by history, or earlier generations. For Marxism, it is inevitable that the working classes in capitalism, the Proletariat, would become conscious of their overwhelming political, social, and technical power over all the machinery of their civilization. Their oppression under capitalism (as in all previous class-bound socioeconomic systems) would nonetheless make them experts at doing the ‘real work’ of production and finally shrug off the Bourgeois profiteers of the system.  Identity, both individual and collectively lead to class consciousness on the part of the working classes and the realization of their power. This is only the very simplified version but it will suffice to help make the proposition in this post.

But what if individual, expertise, pride in work, etc. among workers leads not to identifying socially with other workers in a class consciousness but to more individualist consciousness. Productivity and expertise themselves might lead to this and not to class consciousness.

I’ve got an idea for the 2016 holiday season. As you know, the country is undergoing a very drastic and scary time because of the stunning electoral victory of all-around shitbag, “the workingman’s billionaire” (?!?!!) Donald J. Trump. I forgot where I read that quote, but the very idea of a workingman’s billionaire is just mind-boggling. They must have forgotten how he refused to pay some of the said workingmen/women for work completed and the fact that he is one of those who reaps the benefits of what is coordinated societal production. Refer to the “Global Working Classes” post for an understanding about sort of pyramidal, grotesque socioeconomic organization under which we live.

But back to my idea that opened this post, an idea for the 2016 holiday season. What if all of us who are committed to resisting Trump and his administration agree to forgo receiving Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa or other unmentioned year-end gifts but instead accept a donation made in your name as your gift. Instead of giving a gift or gift card, make a donation in that person’s name if they feel the same outrage over the outcome of the election. If this is done en masse, this could have quite a regional or national impact and would be a huge manifestation and demonstration of popular discontent and resistance. We could turn a ‘season of giving’ into truly giving for the good by giving resources to those persons and American and global institutions that will be hurt and damaged (or destroyed) by the Trump regime. One of these institutions might be Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. You might remember that Trump has penchant for suing or threatening to sue people and during his campaign he threatened  “that if elected president he will change the nation’s libel laws in order to make it easier to sue news organizations” (CNN.Money.com, 2/26/2016). Other threats to free expression and dissent may take less civilized shape in the form of threats from individuals and groups that support Trump, as some of his rabid supporters physically assaulted and made death threats to journalists (Jewish journalists are often the target). (See Newsweek, 10/7/2016, by K. Eichenwald).

Imagine, then a gift to someone you love being a donation to the American Civil Liberties Union or The Committee to Protect Journalists, where you could donate at https://www.cpj.org/about/donate.php. Perhaps you can make a donation in your co-worker’s name, a parent, sibling, or your spouse. We don’t have to stop at these organizations, of course. One to which I will donate a gift in someone’s name is CHIRLA, or the Coalition for Humane Immigrants Rights Los Angeles. Here there name says it all and they have been around doing exactly as they are named for since 1986–they’ve been around the block. You can get more specifics on the actions they take and how you can donate at https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=118896.

I cannot list all suitable organizations to whom to donate, of course. I will stop with these three suggestions. The point is that we can use our gift dollars to fight Trump and help people, create solidarity with others, and even to become connected with persons and organizations that will facilitate and articulate our struggles in the time ahead. And your gift of this form is still a gift to the person you love or like.

So my Christmas wish is that we donate to the fight against Trump instead of giving gifts and cards that may simply not be used, be disliked or returned. A donation would truly be a meaningful and practical gift.

Bring your gift dollars to bear against the Trump regime. It could make a yuge difference. Stay connected to the struggle.

I have for the overwhelming majority of the last 22 years been the quintessential armchair socialist and radical. This means that I have studied economics, especially radical political economy, for about 22 years now, both formally and on my own and out of my own passion and interest and yet I have never been much of an activist to bring about progressive social change. I have, however, been quite active for brief periods of time, such as during the movement against the Iraq War, and with other city workers to resist cuts, layoffs, and closures threatened by the Great Recession and how that decimated the budget of the City of L.A. It is not like I have never chipped in. And any democratic movement for progressive socioeconomic change absolutely needs its scholars and theorists. In previous posts I have tried my best to bring my own ideas as they have formed from the teachings of others and of course my own life experience into a coherent whole that may be of some good to teaching others and to the movement.  Although it is true that I am an ardent scholar for socialism I have done precious little to actually help nudge any favorable form of it into being. This has bothered me a great deal, although studying on its own is also to be highly valued, not thought worthless. People battle over ideas and to win or least hold your own you have got to know what you are talking about.

Into this mental state of affairs came November 8th, 2016, at about 10:00 p.m., PST. The election of Donald Trump is an absolute catastrophe to this country and to the world. I was taken totally by surprise, I thought the U.S.A. would wake up the next day to its first woman President, a progressive thing all by itself even though Hillary Clinton is far from being the ideal progressive or liberal candidate. I physically sickened and sunk into an empty feeling of despair–not unlike the sinking in of the death of a loved one–came over me as I knew that the worst had happened. I felt afraid for my wife, an American citizen but born in Mexico City, because of the hate that she might be subjected to as militant racists and nativists were surely to be empowered by the election of their repulsive champion. I felt afraid for the poor, for unions, for Muslims, for women for whom it might be just a little more O.K. to sexually assault and harass. I was profoundly disillusioned with my working-class countrymen–they actually thought a monomaniacal billionaire capitalist would be their savior? Unless he or she is unusually enlightened, billionaire and other capitalists want to rule over you, control the means to your survival, and pay you the least amount that they can get away with–a power they have because they control the very means to your existence. Donald Trump is far from an enlightened human being as he has proven countless times, and as he will prove countless times as this nation’s president.

This Donald J. Trump catastrophe has really awoken my political senses as perhaps nothing else in the past has.

In left-wing, progressive, or liberal circles I have often heard the phrase, to “get organized” as a way to bring about positive social change. Often, we are implored to ‘get organized’ without any sort of explanation as to how, although this is not always the case and contact information of relevant organizations, etc is often provided. Still, what exactly did this mean, I often wondered. To get organized and do what? Sure, organize to take political action of some kind but how and for what? After November 8th the answer comes to me loud and crystal clear: organize for action. Organize for action to resist Donald Trump, his coming administration, and the utterly racist, white supremacist, nationalist, misogynist and overall reactionary (that word meant in the strictest political sense: driving things back to the past) movement he has created and awakened (although not ‘from scratch’; in the socioeconomic and or political realm, nobody creates anything ‘from scratch’).

This is what organizing, or at least the beginnings of organizing, means: to organize means to CONNECT AND STAY CONNECTED with people who feel the same way as you do and want to see the change you want to see. For starters, inform yourselves, and keep those in your circle informed as they also strive to keep you informed.  Connect, talk. Those in your circle or group ultimately converse and argue with many outside of it and so what needs to be know will get further exposure. Write emails and Facebook posts. Read relevant articles and books from good sources and share. This is at the core of organizing, sharing information that can lead to action.

For example, an article in the L.A. Times today explained how it is not known what faction of the Republicans, more traditional or Trumpist (right-wing, authoritarian populist) will make up Trump’s cabinet and administration. This has an effect on what many of us want to do, as well as determining the exact form of suffering for the majority. If Trump has essentially lied to those who supported him during the campaign, then we might be faced with a more austere Republican administration. The economy in this case will contract, jobs will be lost, working and poor persons squeezed. If he governs according to his campaign promises, then we will probably see the formation of a right-wing authoritarian or even Fascist regime in the United States, which may even (probably?) include those conditions in the more ‘traditional’ Republican regime. (Come to think of it, the Democrats and their regime are actually similar.) Really in either scenario opposition from us must be intense, committed, and well organized. It must also involve the greatest number of people possible. But in the Fascist scenario, civil liberties, such as Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly may be severally curtailed. One of the key features, the defining features of Fascism, is how repressive, often violently oppressive, to any resistance to its reactionary economic and social objectives. Of course, we may get a system with features of both options mentioned here.

The goal of political organizing is of course being organized to take political action in order to achieve favorable (e.g., socially just, revolutionary) objectives. For starters, imagine all of the threatened persecution of religious, racial, and ethnic minorities during the Trump campaign and how that persecution is becoming a fact (notice the rise in Hate Crimes against racial and religious minorities, for this see the Southern Poverty Law Center site) and how much worse it will get. We can create quite a tragic list of those who are going to be victimized by the regime of Trump and his henchman.

What is just as scary will by the activities of  Donald Trump’s ‘support’ groups, who might not be using non-violent tactics and their vigilantism. These will most likely be legion, well-organized, funded, armed to the teeth, and may be indirectly supported or willfully ignored by law enforcement. Much support for Donald Trump will also take ostensibly, non-violent forms such as demonstrations and boycotts. I say ostensibly because even non-violent support from someone who is probably a Fascist is to support the violence, e.g., against immigrants and Muslims, that Fascists carry out.

I hope I am wrong about how bad this can all get, but stay in the game. Get connected. Get organized. You may not even like everyone in your political club or organization, yet be faithful to your cause and keep your eyes on your goals. Chances are, however, you will get along quite well with others in your group and even make quite a few friends. We can even have some fun. As they say, “don’t mourn, organize”. We will be stronger, invincible, together.

This guy [a campaigning Barack Obama on TV] wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business. Now fucking pay me.

                                                 Brad Pitt as hit man Jackie Cogan in the film Killing Them Softly

I did a Google search for the phrase “What is the obligation of society toward business?” and all that came up was results such as ‘what do corporations owe society’ and what is the responsibility of business to society?’. Nothing about what we might ‘owe’ business as ordinary citizens. The “social responsibility” results I did find of course also raise important questions and debates for another time perhaps, but I found nothing going the other way as to what society, namely all the working classes of society, owe to businesses of all types. Ah, no, a on the fourth pages of my search something did come up and that was “What the social classes owe each other” by the famous anti-socialist Ludwig Von Mises. But that was all I found in four pages. Since I could anticipate what Mises will say about what the working classes owe the higher classes—that we have to be good and appreciate all that business provides for us, and that the owners of business large and small indeed have the final say in how anything shall go—I’m going to leave him aside for awhile and say my own piece about him, but I promise to discuss his take on it later.

I think that society is indeed obligate to supply businesses of all types a profit, on scales large and small, and that this is indeed a sorry state of affairs. Almost all persons in the world seeking employment would not be employed if there is no possibility of their employer (and the business ownership) earning a profit at the very least in the long run. No businesses provide jobs or are “job creators” unless they can make a profit. Profit is the life’s blood of our socioeconomic system. Capitalism is based on making a profit. No profits no businesses, at least as we know them now. We have all experienced economic recession and depressions which occur because profits, for a time, cannot be made. Since most working people in the world (when they can find work, anyway) are employees and not employers, and therefore their income does not come from profits, it is the obligation of most people to make business a profit. In fact, from our first day of school we are trained to do so, as we become literate and numerate, and as we learn to become obedient to authority, endure boredom, follow instructions, work continuously, diligently, etc. This is because almost all people (in the U.S. and the world) are going to work for somebody and have to become employable. Employable means productive and productive means profitable to employ. True we can learn good skills in school but much of this is to train us for becoming good employees and managers. Very few of us will go on to become business owners, ‘self-made millionaires’, or even members of the capital-owning class. Of course, the young student’s zip code has a lot to do with his or her life chances. Most of us become workers of varying degrees of success, and often hard work and intelligence—inborn, developed, or both—have very little to do with that degree of success. Zip code does more so.

If this is all so, then most of us exist to make business, present and future, a profit. Profit makes the world go ‘round. Therefore, a large part of the world’s people are here in order to be used for the sake of something else. They are a means to an end, and this is why I think this is a very sad state of affairs. This is why I think that it is true that the working classes of society, no, all of society is obligated to produce profits. It is our primary reason for existence and all the rest is secondary, tertiary, etc. As Marx would have put it, economic production (based on profit and accumulation) is the “structure” (foundation) and all the rest of society’s culture and institutions are the “superstructure” (that built up from the foundation). Most of us live for an elite minority and ultimately have no real control over our livelihood because we do not own the means to continually sustain it. So we sell ourselves, rent ourselves out. It’s the way it is. But will it always be that way? I seriously doubt it, although I can’t prove it, of course. I do know that in the developed countries, life has become better for the common people, although it was far better in the recent past. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”. People, when they become conscience of their power, can change things in their favor. One day in the future it may well be that the fact that most of us make profits for an elite minority[1] of wealth holders, year after year, century after century, will be looked upon as an uncivilized, primitive state of affairs, much as we now look back on the Middle Ages, another age of rulers and ruled, classes who worked and that elite minority benefitting the most from that work.

Many of you might ask: “How can it be that all of society is geared toward making a profit? Does not government do a lot of things on a non-profit basis, and what about non-profit institutions?” The answer is that yes, many things, mostly from government, are done without an eye to profit. But even these economic activities rely on taxes from individuals and businesses and as we know, businesses hire individuals because there is a possibility of at least a long run…profit. Again, profit maximization is the structure on which our society is based. The same is true of stalwart non-profit institutions such as Doctors Without Borders or Habitat for Humanity—they exist within a system of donations derived from incomes and profits, as well as a lot of dedication and hard work.

Well, you may ask, “What about things such churches, or the fact that many people do things for their own pleasure, enlightenment, and development?” Leaving aside that many churches are indeed corrupt, money-making operations, or often supporting belligerent policies of their native governments, it is true that spirituality and belief can exist or be pursued outside the drive for profit by individuals and corporations. The point is that many exceptions, including the small business owner who is a devotee to a particular skill or craft and just needs to make a comfortable income, can surely be held up as counter examples. Others include mastering a musical instrument, which for almost all who do so never means big money. Still, the overall, overarching, drive for profit is the most powerful social force of all under capitalism. As the late economist Robert Heilbroner puts it in his The Logic and Nature of the Capitalism[2]…

 The attribute of wealth [capital] that distinguishes it from prestige goods[e.g., luxury goods that confer prestige] is that its possession confers on its owners the ability to direct and mobilize the activities of society, although it does not necessarily also confer the repute or authority of distinction [emphasis added] (p. 45, 1985).

It is not the prestige goods that which most socialists have the biggest problem when it comes to great wealth, but the social power inherent in it. This distinguishes our struggle from the many accusations of jealousy made by mud-slinging right-wing critics of socialism and puts it squarely as a struggle for social justice and emancipation.

Must we always live in a society that is “just a business” and instead, live in one whose “profit’, its driving force, is fulfilling employment for employment’s sake, individual and social development, and of course economic development and abundance to be shared democratically by all? That new system, that next phase, that next age, is socialism, but not as we have ever understood the word before.

[1] No, I do not mean the owner of the corner bakery. I am taking about a much larger scale, the so-called One Percent, who, if memory serves, own about 45 percent of the wealth in the United States. Even worse, the top ten percent of wealth holders control 75 percent of our national wealth (mybudget360.com).

[2] In retrospect, I owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Heilbroner’s Logic and Nature of Capitalism for many of the ideas in this post.

‘It takes two to tango’ so the old and truthful saying goes, and it goes a lot farther then I ever dreamed it would. Funny, when I was young, I thought the saying went ‘It takes two to tangle’ as it seemed to be used only when explaining the causes of a physical altercation, in the sense of two persons in a combative ‘tangle’.

But it does indeed take two persons to dance the tango, just as it takes two teams to have a National League Division Series playoff game, students and teachers to have a class, man and woman to have a human race, employers and employees to have a workplace, fat in order that we can refer to skinny, the color black that there may be white, and individual and society in order to have a human mind. In all of these examples, you cannot have one without the other; they are interdependent. Individual and society are of course the subject of this post. But before I go on about individual and society, it would be beneficial to explain a few concepts.

Opposites are in most cases, as the word implies, ‘opposed’ to each other. While these opposites, such as the opposing baseball teams in a playoff game, do indeed oppose each other, they are at the same time dependent on each other. You cannot have a game with one team.

The color black, the opposite of the color white, does not exist without its opposite. White exists because there is black. These are the basics of a science and philosophy called dialectics (not to be confused with “Dianetics”) in which interdependent opposites make individual things what they are and more importantly, describe how they change.

Dialectics, or the dialectic, however, is not supposed to be some overarching force in the universe that controls it all. It is simply one of the best ways that our human mind can understand the phenomena of life and the physical universe. Still, it seems like many things in nature do take this pattern of opposing forces. Take an atom, of which all matter is made. A molecule is composed of positively charged protons (and yes, neutral neutrons) and negatively charged electrons. The atom, and then the molecules that make our elements, the foundation of all chemistry, is impossible without an interdependence of opposites. A very good presentation of dialectics can be seen in the highly underrated and not-well-known film Half-Nelson, starring Ryan Gosling. A great drama as well, this film is highly recommended.

Now I want to present two opposites that go on to make up the human mind and allow it to interact with other human minds because human beings are social animals in a majorly sophisticated way. The opposites are individual and society. I want to make the case first of all that society as an entity does indeed exist. If not ‘society’ as a single entity, then certainly social forces are real. Margaret Thatcher, the Tory Prime Minister, is an example of a person that denies that there is no such thing as society, only an amalgamation of individuals. This position is wrong-headed. If it was true society does not exist, then where did the mind of Margaret Thatcher come from? She did not become who she is all by herself, obviously. Something was done to the individual named Margaret Thatcher; that something can be called ‘society’ or, social forces. All the human interactions appropriate to her at her schools, such as lectures, discipline, friends, activities, ect., at that point in history are the result of social forces. At her schools, not only was the knowledge transmitted from the past but also it was the product of social institutions that have a life beyond that of any one individual or group of individuals. True that the social institution of education is not a solid thing—aside from the buildings where people are educated anyway—that you can go up and kick as you would your tires, but no one would deny that educational institutions of various kinds, at all levels, exist.

Education is just the beginning; we have the culturally bound institution of the family, the neighborhood, your friends and enemies, the workplace, your own place in your social system that is indeed a hierarchy. Your place in the social class hierarchy influences your psyche. These social influences not only make us what they are but neither do they stop at any given point. They are influencing and changing us now. Not all of these forces are nurturing. Some are detrimental, but they all go in to making us what we become. In fact, an American sociologist or philosopher, I do not remember who, said that from the very day we are born, from our mother’s first glance, to our first steps, the disapproving or suspicious looks from an adult, and again on to our family and social life and the world of work, we as individuals are being developed by others aside from ourselves. And we need this to be the case; it’s how the human mind works.

We know what happens to individuals (mammals, anyway) who are isolated from others: the mind simply does not work or they go crazy. Think of the prison punishment of solitary confinement. Think of Genie (b. 1957), who is considered a “feral child” (Wikipedia) and never developed into normal adulthood. Think of plain old loneliness. Most mentally ill people, I have read, describe themselves as lonely. The fact of the matter is is that we simply don’t work (function) unless our own mind has other minds to interact with. Culture is ingrained into us and goes on changing us. Therefore, our own healthy mind is dependent on other minds not only for its development but also for its continued function and sanity. Our self is nothing without others or, in more expanded form, social forces or what many simply refer to as society. We do not function without others. We can also go on to describe our economic reliance on others. In a past post, I described how much we are connected to others economically, how many persons are involved in order for your breakfast foods to be brought to you, etc. Perhaps under capitalism following your individual interest and pursuing your own gain makes the world go ‘round, but others still need to exist in order for the goal of social welfare and economic development to be accomplished, a social goal of capitalism, according to its advocates.

What I have been attempting to describe in a very simple way is what makes us human and that individual and society—an interdependence of opposites—is the best way to describe what we are. It is a conceptual description. Much of how I described us is psychological and sociological; I know far more about the former than the latter, but there is some overlap. Heck, social psychology is even its own separate discipline.

Others, or society, influence and make the individual what it is, but what is the place of the individual? Unique, individual personalities exist, obviously. Now I had been discussing a unity of opposites and that these opposites both depend on, and compete with, each other. Since the individual starts out as an infant, it is society that begins to make it what it is to become. The individual assimilates the social forces according to their own make-up determined by genetics, one’s temperament, intelligence, and unique situation, such as their environment, or wealth of the country into which they are born. Different people go on to respond to social forces in different ways and voila!, we have unique individuals, although because of culture and authoritative forces of social control, similarities among individuals abound. As the individual matures, they in turn go on to directly or indirectly, consciously and unconsciously, influence others. The individual does this whether they are looking out for their own hide or cooperating with others.

When you as an individual, say as a teacher, you are a good or bad influence on individuals, you are in fact a social force (an other) that influences the individual minds in your classroom. Impact of the individual on others can of course be large or small, depending on the audience. At my job, for example, I may try to influence good conduct on younger members of the public, say, by prompting a ‘thank you’ after rendering service. These things can stick in a person (or they might resent it). Even little interactions (e.g., a disapproving look) go into the accumulating wealth of the individual psyche, or single personality, making a mind into what it is and what is becoming. All human interaction among individuals, groups, or institutions form a very complicated web indeed. Sure, we can all recall individuals in our lives that were influential (e.g., a sibling), but we can never recall all the (millions?) of social interactions we’ve experienced.

Interdependence: that is why social forces influence us and we, as individual agents, influence it right back. This is why our society can become so complex, so much so beyond other social animals, such as birds; individual birds are not dramatically influential to the flock. We can pass on our past learning, our ways of doing things, e.g., such as language or arts, and our civilized way of life depends on the fact that we have this ability. We know this as culture and it is our way of adapting to the environment and surviving as a species is dependent upon it. Culture, is a result of human intelligence and the individual/social interdependence. You cannot have one without the other. This combination of individual/society in the human mind is extremely powerful. Along with our big brains, it is our strength. On a larger scale, our species has dominated the globe, for better and for worse. Our ingenuity knows no bounds, except when the laws of physics and human nature are violated. We are one and both at the same time. I am operating as an individual right now, although as you can see, the influence of other minds is obvious. Yet my mind is on what I want to write. But again, when I stand back and analyze my actions, all of what I have written so far is true. My mind is a product of my culture and my genetic make-up. It takes two to tango.

So we need both individual and society, or social forces, to be who we are. In an ironic way, it is others who create the individual. Again, as the individual matures, she goes to be an influential force on others, and so the cycle goes on.

In the next post I will argue that some form of socialism would be a better system, and perhaps an inevitable one, for human beings, because capitalism has us neglect the social aspect of our nature, has us under-appreciate it, or even demeans the role of others or society. The trick, which has so far proved difficult, is to develop the right kind of socialism, which of course might vary from culture to culture.

What we earn and deserve are often difficult and sometimes heated topics of discussion among persons, so much so that these discussions seldom take place in our everyday lives. Earning and deserving are often argued topics in the economic and political spheres, whether these are discussed in the media (news, shows on public events and topics) and in the course of lawmaking and various types of research, to give a few examples. In fact, politics itself is sometimes characterized as the process by which ‘who gets what and where’ or something to that effect. Of course, what one can earn and own, or what accrues to a person or a group is one of the major things that make the world go ‘round. That our present system is believed to be ‘fair’ by some is largely based on what is earned and deserved. It is often the source for political conflict, or more precisely, class struggle, as Marxists would define it. Earning and deserving are certainly not polite topics in everyday conversation. Many workplaces forbid employees to discuss relative pay on pain of termination of employment. Please note the topics of what is earned or deserved, however, is not really the same as discussing pay, come to think of it—we do this more often and it is not always impolite to ask. A sample conversation: “Oh, you work at Teledyne. Pretty good man, great company! Do you mind if I ask what you make there?” But it is totally out of the question to ask: “Do you earn and deserve that $80k you pull down there?” Readers can quickly see the difference. Not that I go around asking such questions—ever—because it would be downright rude. But it is the economist’s and their fellow social scientists job not only to research these matters thoroughly but also to develop—sometimes very elegantly—highly detailed and complex theories of wealth and income distribution. One of these is the Marginal Product Theory of Income Distribution, which is one of the bases of mainstream economics, and which will be discussed in later posts as it relates to this first post.

In this post I will discuss the word and socioeconomic meaning of the word root earn. Earn and deserve are really two different things; a person can deserve something certain material goods without having earned them, e.g., as a child certainly deserves a nice house, school, clothes, shoes, etc.

Once, I drove to a coffee place out in the Valley to sit out some traffic after my shift at work. While stopped at an intersection, a short reverie concluded in the thought that I could never have truly earned the 2009 Nissan Versa 1.8 that I was driving. It is something that I had been mulling over for sometime, nonetheless, and I am pretty well read in economic theory, both orthodox and heterodox, but far more of the latter. Why did I not think that I truly did not earn my own car in the truest sense? One reason, but not a totally satisfactory one, is that it is impossible for me to build one, even in a lifetime. Embodied in my tough little car is a history of automotive development over, say, the last 100 years in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere. It is knowledge that a single person is very unlikely to accumulate and put into action in a lifetime. The old adage, “no one person can make a pencil”, a task that involves logging and milling wood, mining graphite, extracting rubber or using some synthetic substitute, assembling, painting, etc., is ever so more true concerning a car. Building a single car requires the coordination of thousands of people in several different countries, not to mention maintenance of factories, etc. Since a socioeconomic system (yes, and markets) is required for me to have ‘earned’ this car, me being here in that very particular time and place that I am has a great deal to do with what I can earn. Many of these things we use and enjoy were unavailable in the past, and will on the other hand, will perhaps be a bit of a joke in the future. Isn’t the mobile phone you may have used in 1998 a bit of a joke and obsolete by today’s standard?

Anyone, even Larry Elder and other cheerleaders of the capitalist system, will agree that we have no choice over when and where we are born. When we are born, however, has a lot to do with what we can earn and the lifestyle we can enjoy or not enjoy. For example, I was born in the 1960s and the material standard of living I can enjoy are a product of the level of development in my lifetime. A person born in the 1860s, however, could never have earned a car, no matter how hard he or she worked, or how brilliant or enterprising they were. I can earn something far more remarkable than our friend from the 1860s and in less time. To a person born in the 1860s my modest Nissan Versa would indeed be a miracle. Yes it is true that we partly have capitalism to thank. Capitalism has led to unprecedented economic development, although it is truer to say that mixed-economy capitalism (major involvement of the state in the economy) has led to unprecedented economic development. The historical period of the mixed economy, the current one that started around 1930 has led to the greatest increase of living standards ever. At least in the developed world. Still, we have to be born and we have absolutely no control over the time and place of our birth. Most of us reading this were born from the early 20^th Century up till the early 21^st. We should also note that where you are born is a crucial factor, too, in what standard of living you would be able to enjoy. Given the choice of where, or what country you would be born in, which would you chose?

No matter how dedicated one is to what one does, no matter how passionate one is about it one is a product of their time and is bound by the level of economic development and production technology and any other resources available in that period.

Now for the future. Barring any kind of global cataclysm, caused by humans, such as a war, or natural causes, such as an asteroid impact, we can expect the standard of living for some people to greatly improve, hopefully throughout the world. If productivity gains are shared among the producers—they are not being shared much now—the average person can expect to have things that will absolutely dazzle us if we were able to see them and use them. Our descendants will hopefully not be working 14-hour days, but possibly and reasonably only about five or six hours a day—the working day might continue to shorten. Let’s say that in the year 2114 the eight-hour day prevails. Our descendants will be able to earn, if not a better income, better things than we enjoy that would again make our tablets, hybrid cars, air conditioning, cameras, lawn mowers, you name it, fill in the blank, seem a bit of a joke, or absolutely quaint. These should be better and more useful products. If mixed economy capitalism and its belief system prevails in the year 2114, then workers, managers, etc., will most certainly hold fast to the notion that they, all by themselves, earned what they own because they ‘worked their fingers to the bone’ or ‘slaved’ to have what they will then have. They will as individuals insist that their wealth and income were all their doing and that they were the ones that made it happen. Others may be more modest, and of course, there will at least be those who are not so egotistical and that acknowledge that without others, they are nothing—unless you consider the Robinson Crusoe alternative. In all likelihood, our descendants will have probably worked fewer hours to enjoy a better standard of living. Will they insist that they have earned what they will have? Given that the world will continue to develop and capitalism or some similar system holds, many of our descendants will assert that they earned what they possess.

None of this so far means that we can’t possibly earn anything. Obviously, some people work harder than others. Some people, a definite minority, I believe, are not ambitious or simply lazy. Others certainly make an honest effort to the genuine best of their abilities and thereby should earn and deserve as anyone else would. Nor is this an argument that everyone should have exactly the same income and wealth no matter their effort or dedication. What I am arguing is that the standard of living we can enjoy is not entirely our own doing, though of course we do have autonomy within economic and legal bounds. I also mean to say that some people, even me at times, need to get over themselves, at least a little bit when it comes to what they earn and deserve. Other reasons for doing so will be explored in future posts.