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This wonderful egalitarian woman is declaring her aim to remove the rich from power. To successfully do that means nothing less than winning the class war. Refusing to fight the class war means refusing to remove the rich from power. Go here to see 500+ photos of more wonderful egalitarians in my zip code.
Forgive me for, yet once again, calling your attention to the latest words of Robert Reich, this time when he writes:
“Not all wealthy people are culpable, of course. I am not advocating class warfare, although America’s latest oligarchy has waged it against everyone else.”
We need to have a large public conversation about what’s wrong—very wrong!—with these words of Robert Reich. Let me try to join that conversation.
To start with, I wish to point out that in his Substack with the above-quoted words, Reich devotes LOTS of words to describing how the wealthy oligarchs, including the most liberal-sounding ones such as, to quote Reich, “Jamie Dimon — chair and CEO of JPMorganChase (the largest and most profitable bank in the United States) and the most influential CEO in America” treat ordinary Americans like dirt (that’s my wording) or, to use a small sample of Reich’s words:
The abuse has occurred at the nexus of wealth and power, where those with great wealth use it to gain power and then utilize that power to accumulate more wealth. This is how oligarchy destroys democracy.
As oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates and deploy platoons of lobbyists and public relations flaks, they buy off democracy. Oligarchs know that politicians won’t bite the hands that feed them.
What follows these words is a long focus on specific wrong-doings of Jamie Dimon, concluding with:
“But his job is to do whatever he can to boost the profits of JPMorgan, even if and when that goal conflicts with the public interest. And one of the ways he achieves that goal is to exercise significant influence over government.”
Then Reich names some of the main oligarchs: “Dimon and his fellow oligarchs — Elon Musk and his billionaire bros; Brad Carp and many of America’s elite corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Ellisons” and says what we need to do about the problem that they have so much power, with these words:
“As long as the oligarchy is in control of America, there will be no meaningful response to the failure of most people’s paychecks to rise, nor to climate change, nor to the emerging dangers of Artificial Intelligence, nor racism, nor the soaring costs of health insurance, college, childcare, and housing.”
etc., with lots more similar examples.
Reich concludes with:
“The only way to disempower the oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and take power back.
“This will require a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy and fighting against concentrated wealth, power, and privilege.”
There is a two-part explanation for why Reich says this.
It is perfectly true that Reich is not advocating class warfare. The proof of this is that he does not do the most important things one would do if one were trying to win the class war. What I mean is that he never refutes the lies that the ruling billionaire plutocracy uses to divide-and-rule the have-nots in order to maintain its power. I have criticized Reich often in the past for this.
For example, Reich never refutes the BIG LIE about why there are so many illegal immigrants, as this poster does:
By censoring the truth about why there are so many illegal immigrants, Reich HELPS the oligarchs divide-and-rule the have-nots and thereby remain in power over us.
Another BIG LIE that the oligarchs use to divide-and-rule the have-nots is the lie that says Israeli government violence against Palestinians has been and is now for the purpose of making Israeli Jews safe, and therefore criticism of the Israeli government’s violence is criticism of what is done to make Jews safe and hence is objectively, if not intentionally, antisemitic. I refute this lie here and here and here. Reich never refutes it.
Another BIG LIE that the oligarchs have been using for centuries to divide-and-rule the have-nots is the lie that says ordinary whites BENEFIT from racial discrimination against non-whites. The truth, the UNIFYING (of the have-nots) truth, is that racial discrimination against non-whites HARMS ordinary whites as well as non-whites. I refute this Big Lie about race here and here and here, among other writings. Reich never refutes it.
Furthermore, Reich tells the have-nots that they should NOT remove the rich from power to have no rich and no poor. Reich, on the contrary, tells the have-nots that what they really need and want is Equal Opportunity, meaning an equal opportunity to enter the ranks of the oligarchy themselves. This is what Reich lectured at the Occupy Wall Street folks, as I wrote about here. This explains Reich’s remarkable statement:
“Charles and David Koch should not be blamed for having more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans put together. Nor should they be condemned for their petrochemical empire. As far as I know, they’ve played by the rules and obeyed the laws.” --Robert Reich, in his since-taken-down blog article which I took a screenshot of here and which is still online at the web archive here.
I accuse Robert Reich of secretly working to keep the oligarchs in power, by doing his best to censor refutations of the Big Lies they use to remain in power.
So yes, when Robert Reich says, “I am not advocating class warfare,” he speaks truthfully.
The second part of the explanation for why Reich says, “Not all wealthy people are culpable, of course. I am not advocating class warfare, although America’s latest oligarchy has waged it against everyone else” is this. Reich is trying to persuade us that, in spite of what we know to be true and what he must express in order to have any real influence on us at all—namely all the ways that the oligarchs treat the have-nots like dirt with their undeniable anti-democratic power—we should nonetheless not wage class war, meaning we should not aim to remove the rich (the ruling billionaire plutocracy, or “oligarchs”) from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
Why not? Why the hell should we NOT aim to remove the rich from power, which is what it means to wage the class war?
Well, according to Reich we shouldn’t “advocate class warfare” because, as he says, “Not all wealthy people are culpable, of course.”
But wait! I myself, strong advocate of class warfare that I am, have written an article titled, “Some Rich People ARE Good.” Clearly the fact that some rich people are good is NOT a logical reason for not advocating class war. If this is not clear, then let me explain.
As I write in my article about some rich people being good:
Yes, some rich people are good people.* Just as some poor people are bad people. Likewise, in the course of human history no doubt some kings and queens were good and well-intentioned people. But monarchism means the king or queen rules whether well-intentioned or not. Likewise, our present society based on class inequality in which money is power means that the richest people have the real power no matter if they are well-intentioned or not. The reason for removing the rich from power is the same as for abolishing monarchism. It’s not because there have never been good kings or that there are no good rich people. It’s because ordinary people should have an equal say in making important social decisions.
A good person, no matter if rich or poor, wants society to be based on the Golden Rule, which is what egalitarianism is all about. A good person therefore wants the economy of society to be based on “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire, with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.” This is what “no rich and no poor" means. It is what an egalitarian economy is based on.
A good person, including a good person who for some reason is extremely rich, will—if they are really a good person—want the have-nots to WIN the class war, and will support this class war goal, if not openly then secretly.
Reich is not an idiot. He knows this as well as you and I. But he is hoping that his “Not all wealthy people are culpable, of course” refrain will do the job, persuade us that it is wrong to advocate class warfare, to advocate what billions of people on the planet want, to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor.
The oligarchs were never elected and so they cannot be un-elected. If voting could seriously threaten the power of the oligarchs (the ruling billionaire plutocracy) then they would have the politicians (all of whom, in order to be successful politicians, must be beholden to the billionaire class) make voting illegal. Most people understand this and, if they vote at all, it is with the knowledge that their vote will not remove the rich from power but only—at best!—make some very small difference in how the dictatorship of the rich operates.
Yes, it is likely true that removing the rich from power will entail some violence. Certainly removing the slave-owning class from power entailed violence—it was the Civil War. Who believes that Americans back then should have left the slave-owning class in power in order to avoid violence? Who, for example, thinks that this violence should have been avoided that way?
Yes, the ruling billionaire plutocracy has a very strong military force and we, the have-nots, do not. But the notion that, in order to remove the rich from power, the have-nots with some rifles and such stuff would have to throw themselves into battle against U.S. military tanks and missiles and F-35s and what not, is a false notion, as I explain in “How We CAN Remove the Rich from Power.”
If you are an advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence then I ask you to read here about what that philosophy actually says and then decide if you really subscribe to it. Robert Reich is hoping that you won’t read this article and that you will believe that it is wrong to remove the rich from power because doing so would entail some violence.
Your call.
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