A Fabian Program For America
Friedenberg, Daniel M.
Preface In the Spring of 1962 a serious attempt was made to create a Neo-Fabian Society in New York City. Spearheaded by Robert B. Silvers, an editor at Harrier's, William Phillips,...
...A total of up to 25 per cent of the total compensation paid during a year to all participating employees can be assigned, which is the reason that pension funds are the most flourishing aspect of the insurance business today...
...Syndication in real estate is the primary method, but recent laws permit corporations in other types of business to be taxed as partnerships, leading to the same result...
...G. The resources allocated respectively to capital goods as distinguished from consumer goods industries must not be left to blind chance...
...The aim of wealth should not be merely to enrich executives and stockholders, but to enhance the lives of the citizens producing this wealth...
...E. Racial and religious discrimination are relics of an outmoded society...
...The purpose of public regulation has in fact degenerated to setting rates at the level of the most inefficient producer...
...The whole vast array of government subsidies for housing—land condemnation, mortgage placements, mortgage guarantees, percentage of builder equity—has led to a proliferation of what might be termed "legal corruption...
...Air travel and space exploration not only fall within the federal fold but are by their nature dependent even on international control...
...The national impact of synthetic products, the deadly nature of chemicals on human tissue— from lip stick to deodorants, from detergents to insecticides, from life-giving wonder drugs to death-giving radiation—require strict government control...
...Similar courts should be established to deal with municipal, state and F.B.I...
...The second revolutionary change through leisure will be a new view of pleasure...
...America has the slowest industrial growth among the advanced nations...
...Much of the identity is also based on less spontaneous grounds...
...I. We live accepting basic absurdities as self-evident truths...
...Closely related to this problem is a more rational policy for birth control...
...It is this intellectual curiosity that has caused his evolution, the prehensile claw becoming a a hand with fingers that grope, the groping that led to his experiments with stones and sticks that have evolved into our most delicate electronic tools...
...Under the circumstances, what legislator wants to upset the applecart...
...An even closer study would involve the function of the stock market as a source of private enrichment unrelated to production...
...If true, this should be reflected in broadened opportunity for the mass of the citizens...
...The "proletariat" of America is not only conservative but on certain issues, like that of Cuba, its representatives often make more shrill statements than the captains of big industry...
...C. Free professional benefits...
...Though based to a large extent on economics, the roots are also placed in pride, prestige, social usefulness...
...It has been said facetiously that the upper classes are above morality, the lower classes below it and the middle class has caused all the trouble...
...Rather than the public being served (if the poor may also be considered part of the public), the public is used by the tacit connivance of housing authorities in a private system of personal profits...
...The third revolutionary change through leisure is perhaps the most important, presuming man can survive the interregnum period of conflict while society is being remade...
...Capital gains is the underground well from which most riches pour...
...Unskilled and skilled workers have divergent interests, as the history of conflict between industrial and craft unions so well shows, and these men together share common views in conflict with those of the enlarging white collar class...
...G. Elimination of competition in heavy industry...
...It has often been suggested that the sluggish economy of the United States is a result of our much cherished liberty...
...Even Walt W. Rostow, whose study The Stages of Economic Growth is the freshest view in our time of the capital accretion process, falls short in attempting to explain the internal dynamics of capitalism...
...The recent Du Pont-General Motors legislation is a particularly illuminating example...
...They are members of the same class, they share the same interests and tend to identify these interests with the good of the nation...
...they are the result of the unjust profits from speculation due to inflation and greater population densities—i.e., profits created by society and not the individual...
...But I take full responsibility for the essay, which basically has not been altered...
...Quite a few stock companies— including such commonly known ones as American Home Products, Connecticut General Life, IBM, McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., Texas Instruments and Zenith Radio—advanced over 500 per cent in market price in the decade of the 1950s...
...slum clearance has become a device whereby middle class and upper class housing is built by government money for the benefit of private individuals at the expense of displaced minority groups...
...The insider, the 'corporate officer, can obtain options on stock which is rising and then exercise them within a prescribed period, to his immense advantage...
...The recent history of the Democratic Party primary fight in West Virginia, which determined Kennedy's candidacy for President, is an excellent example...
...Corporate officers and their financial lackeys can partake of free medical, legal, accounting, educational and miscellaneous benefits of every type, ranging from first night theatre tickets (through charitable contributions) to country club memberships...
...Preface In the Spring of 1962 a serious attempt was made to create a Neo-Fabian Society in New York City...
...The Texas and Oklahoma oil millionaries are a product of this device...
...Business men gain higher corporate office...
...is a beautiful declaration but has no relation to the practices of Soviet state tyranny...
...Holding companies serve to freeze the value of stock at a certain point so that future increases are free of inheritance taxes...
...Only through curtailing this power can our country use its wealth effectively for the general welfare and not for a small minority...
...J. Gift tax exemptions...
...Without doubt many of the glib formulas of the past are mere parochial abstractions, as is quickly shown by reading the passionate rhetoric of Daniel De Leon, the great American radical concerned with this problem...
...And despite successful attempts on the part of the economic elite to avoid the implications of the mid-twentieth century, despite the devices created to put aside the fumbling movements toward an egalitarian application of income and inheritance taxes, new forms must be created to deal with new times...
...Industries will still be in competition for the most efficient productive, management and distributive methods, as well as research into new products, both within the industry and with other industries...
...According to Federal Bureau of Labor statistics, 24 per cent of all Americans have substandard incomes...
...The middle class orientation, even among the poor, is too fixed to expect any sharper approach outside of a general catastrophe...
...When man is freed from his basic wants and the threat of war, with the coming of more leisure, the animal sense of benevolence—the contrary to hostility—will undergo a fantastic change...
...His thesis of "the age of high mass-consumption" avoids this key question: as boom does without doubt create increased demand, so bust can still follow a glut of consumers' goods...
...A primitive symbol of this possibility can already be seen in the architectural contests organized in some cities for the construction of municipal buildings...
...The tremendous outpouring of creativity through leisure time should lead to a return to some of the higher values of the Renaissance —openness to the new, optimism based on human aims and not theology, delight in living for the senses, art and learning—a Renaissance based not alone on earth, but on man's relation to the solar system and then beyond...
...With an income of $50,000 per annum, a 4% return on a municipal tax-exempt bond is the equal of a 16%Jo return on a taxable security...
...It is said that fifty per cent of the expensive restaurants and night clubs would close within the year if corporate expense accounts were eliminated...
...Creative Use of Leisure The second Industrial Revolution on the farm and automation in the factory and office (putting aside the implications of unlimited atomic energy and the seeding of oceans for food) present man with his greatest challenge since he left the jungle...
...The machine is neutral and will produce abundance for any master...
...The control and uses of power must be carefully separated from the ownership of power sources in any new society or the evils of totalitarianism will immediately rise...
...Not only do senators and congressmen get most of the benefits of high corporate officials—subsidized meals and lodging, foreign travel, free publicity, favors to friends through the "pork barrel" system—but they also obtain such items as free medical treatment which they promptly denounce as socialism when it comes to their supposed constituents, the general taxpayers...
...revolutionary era—whose movement can evolve either into tyranny or liberation...
...This specifically refers to protection from technological unemployment...
...For a New Economic Order The ultimate question is power, the ownership, control and uses of power...
...In the last analysis, however, a just society can never be completely achieved until basic industry is owned, or controlled to a degree equivalent to ownership, by the community as a whole rather than by individuals for personal profit...
...Others are possible within the framework of general long-term reform...
...A world view of history and its meaning is thus required to deal with America in midpassage...
...Twentieth century industrial nations stand within the throes of a • The author recognizes the difficulty in using such an expression...
...The recent revelations involving price-fixing of General Electric and Westinghouse are well known, as is the deliberately aborted probe into steel price-fixing...
...Organizations such as TVA and the Port Authority are profit making in the sense that they must employ standard methods of cost accounting, they must operate efficiently in order to show a return and, most important, the relation between operation and ultimate control is clearly delineated...
...Books on Israel and the Scandinavian countries are replete with illustrations...
...oligarchy in the sense that the economic elite attempts to, and often succeeds in diluting the public will by assimilating all measures to its own needs through devices such as previously outlined...
...The theme of the "naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation" of the paid wage laborer by the bourgeoisie, evangelically preached by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, was so removed from the actual course of events that already Karl Marx in his later years modified the thesis as applied to England, France, Germany and the United States...
...The written documents are of secondary importance: the 1936 Constitution of the U.S.S.R...
...Caribbean immigrants of recent date and the last remaining wash of the illiterate foreign-born of Southern and Eastern European origin are also afflicted by substandard conditions...
...These superhighways and double-deck bridges permit the white middle class and the rich to flee to the suburbs without paying a fair share of taxes to the urban core where they make their money...
...Congressman Patman of Texas has indicated many examples of this practice in his recent probe of foundations...
...B. Depletion allowances...
...This illustrates the whole process in capsule...
...This traditional and laudable aim of socialists, unfortunately, can lead to the creation of a new and terrible system of injustice...
...But this is only one egregious example...
...At bottom, what is needed is a movement from a philosophy of fragmented and alienated competition, each man sensing every other man a potential enemy, to a cooperative society with a structure of different natural interests, the coordinating element being the democratically expressed will of the people exposed to and participating in decisionmaking and accessible to all points of view provided they are concerned with the common weal...
...The managers or officers of these corporations work with a dual function: primarily for themselves, their salaries (as well as the many enormous side benefits touched on previously) and prestige in the community...
...The award system for superior work is another guide: not only incentive payments for output within the frame of the guaranteed social minimum wage, as well as longer vacation periods, but medals and other social recognition in its many forms from our Distinguished Service citations to the Royal categories in Great Britain...
...training as a citizen concerned both with the nation and the world...
...Overseas earnings of foreign subsidiaries are not taxed until returned to the United States as dividends...
...Key interests, such as those groups concerned with the depletion allowance, are represented by one of their own, as, for example, the late Senator Robert S. Kerr, Democrat of Oklahoma, whose personal wealth was said before his recent death to be over $35 million compared to only $1 million a decade ago...
...And everywhere, whether farm or big city ward, that socalled rock of democracy, the primary process, can be influenced to the point that most candidates are controlled or determined before the actual electoral contest...
...B. A just society must provide job security...
...Leon Keyserling, a leading American economist, claims that 40 per cent of the families live in poverty or deprivation...
...We might more logically ascribe the stability of modern capitalism to the demands of the cold war...
...We have reached a point in human history for the first time where both the moral and scientific element convene to emphasize that cooperative effort is both just and efficient...
...B. Stock options...
...other example of this same technique...
...To deter U.S...
...F. Special legislation...
...E. Favoritism...
...And when lobbying by a private company fearful of expropriation can almost upset the entire Alliance for Progress program in Brazil, it indicates that legislative patriotism is often equated with the financial statements of a few select corporations...
...Artists (including writers, who bear an important function as propagandists for any status quo) have most often been an indigestible element in the body politic...
...It is simple...
...The young married couples, often imprisoned by poor education and early babies, are another underprivileged group...
...H. Inside knowledge...
...their spiritual descendants are the dwindling Cuban activists still backing Fidel Castro...
...On the most sophisticated level, almost the entire press and communication media—itself a leading element of the economic elite—is organized to ignore or slant news, including false information, thus creating a general apathy toward the real issues...
...For automation is the double-headed hydra of our time...
...To a large extent it is the low wages of the urban and rural poor that make our cities and farms rich, and the poor are entitled as a matter of right and not charity to basic protections—to adequate housing, equal access to medical and maternal assistance, social security for the very young and old...
...under Eisenhower...
...And due to increased publicity and a resultant disgust with the antics of the very rich (such as the Fords throwing a party for their daughter costing over one-quarter million dollars while many thousands of Ford workers were jobless) the most outrageous tax gimmicks and the gross inequities of income and inheritance taxes shall be greatly curbed if not eliminated...
...If our century teaches us one thing it is that flagrant social injustice will no longer be tolerated...
...Yet how different the forms through which these societies operate...
...The reason for this contradictory set of affairs must be sought beneath the cliches spilled out by our popular press, radio and television networks...
...Putting aside hopeful and subjective prophesy, however, there is little empirical evidence in American history for assuming the emergence of a distinct Labor Party with a concrete socialist program...
...F. Federal subsidies...
...Because of war threats, entire new industries are organized and subsidized by the state, while the older basic industries are dependent on state contracting...
...These bonds, which return up to 5 per cent, are totally excluded from taxation...
...Expanding populations have increased the value of land to the point that the condemnation and taxing power of municipalities, as well as subsidy financing, are features of most significant construction today...
...Yet the market as a balancing price system will not be abandoned...
...Federal stockpiling of precious metals has also been a gimmick by which favored individuals get a tremendous return on a guaranteed investment, as witness the recent Hanna Company scandal involving George M. Humphrey, Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury...
...And how to take power, who uses the power for what purposes and how to control those who have such tremendous power—these are the burning questions of our time...
...Classical capitalism, buffeted by the enormous sums of money needed for the exploitation of energy sources and complex tools, must turn to the government for aid...
...which, ironically, are already operating on a favored tax position not available to small business in the United States itself...
...For the tools now created to increase production are equally capable of implementing a new way of life which will lead to a higher conception of democracy, true economic and political freedom, or a caste system of totalitarian socialism in the twisted name of democracy...
...We give men Purple Hearts when wounded in battle and Medals of Honor for killing the foe...
...Richard M. Nixon, a poor man, became Vice-President of the U.S...
...Movements, especially in the stock market affecting certain stocks and in real estate due to decisions involving roads, bridges and tunnels, create sharp rises in values...
...Yet, despite technological unemployment, business cycles of prosperity and recession and the artificial support of war armaments which a modus vivendi with Russia some day may cut off, the concept of class war in its original Marxist form among advanced nations has receded as a practical threat...
...they alone can "deliver" the primary vote...
...It is man, and man alone, who will shape the future as government through special interests is curtailed and the reorientation of power in society proceeds...
...the few truly radical groups, like the Black Muslims, are reverse racists with little future...
...Already in our society we have corporate bodies which illustrate this point...
...George Romney, a Republican "people's candidate," received stock options at less than $10 a share from American Motors in 1954...
...These benefits are then passed along generation to generation in the form of superior education and opportunity, creating an internal stability which is mistaken by the superficial observer to indicate a beneficent social order...
...Indeed, the system tends to be self-perpetuating...
...overseas companies from meddling in the politics of other nations, a system of compulsory insurance against foreign nationalization ought to be established before companies would be permitted to expand into underdeveloped areas...
...That great producer of electric power, the Tennessee Valley Authority,* is a prime example of the decentralized administration of centralized power, the separation of public ownership from working control...
...The United States of America today is a country which has 6 per cent of the world population and produces 40 per cent of its wealth...
...they are outside the American evolution...
...Any new economic order in America should build on this experience, for the present corporate separation of stock ownership and the actual working control can likewise be applied to state imposition...
...The Puritan and Jansenist code of values are incompatible with the modern world...
...Usually foundations have the equivalent of Class A and B stock, voting rights and ownership so adjusted that individuals get enormous benefits...
...Since these come at no cost whatsoever, instead of being paid for after taxes at high brackets, their value is almost incalculable...
...1I A. Pension and life insurance funds, as well as profit sharing plans...
...For another, the virulent aggression built into these totalitarian states aids the forces striving to maintain the status quo in the world...
...why cannot we also give medals of honor, with great fanfare in the community, to those men who distinguish themselves in the service of life...
...These theorists, despite their use of phrases such as "revolution by the ballot," "the general strike," etc...
...The present societal view of pleasure is a historic creation in order to preserve institutions, both ecclesiastical and propertied, and one which must be transformed and made more human as these institutions in turn change...
...Dignity and Honor Within society itself, there are natural differences which can be harnessed to work in common and yet afford a source of healthy friction restraining tyranny...
...Certainly our narrowing of morality to the forbidding of sensual pleasure has not only twisted but, indeed, reversed the true meaning of morality, as basic concern with humane conduct...
...And new goals must be sought to make our values less money-ridden, to free us from the automatic identification of money with success, to create a new vision of the American as a man who cherishes the comforts of life but, acknowledging they must be available to all citizens regardless of birth and background, still views these comforts as only a part of the good life, as a basis and a basis only upon which the good life is built...
...He announced at the time he would use much of this cash to exercise additional options...
...and the use of free time in a creative and satisfying manner...
...Competition in our society for the most things as expressed by greed money, and fear of war, enhances this hostility...
...the derelicts of wage differentials and old machinery created by the flight of textile mills from New England to the South...
...Spearheaded by Robert B. Silvers, an editor at Harrier's, William Phillips, co-editor of Partisan Review, Stanley Plastrik, an editor of DISSENT, Dennis Wrong, sociologist, and myself, a group of writers and editors met several times in an attempt to set up a serious forum which might deal with socialist ideas and ideals...
...To move from a government of special interests, the present modified oligarchic system of America, to an unfettered government embracing total state power, would be a step backward...
...Below these levels, taxes ought to be lowered so that, even given the fact that managerial, professional and artistic abilities should receive higher monetary rewards, the spread between rich and poor will be sharply reduced...
...Many of us know what is wrong and what would be better...
...Oil interests have now been indicted by the Federal government...
...Professionals—teachers, architects, engineers, doctors, scientists—are a distinct group...
...Rate setting" is a racket all by itself, covered over by rationalizations concerned with technical bookkeeping operations such as replacement costs, depreciation and the base on which profit percentages are calculated...
...D. Expense accounts...
...This control would seem to thwart the leveling purposes implied by graduated income and inheritance tax rates...
...An enlarged system of international scholarships and exchanges (the Peace Corps is a step in this direction) will aid in promoting the identity of interest of decent men everywhere...
...will be one great seacoast belt city within fifty years—demands political changes in the concept of city and state organization, as well as the taxing authority, as radical as the economic changes created by the industrial revolution...
...have proved completely inadequate in attempting to anticipate mechanisms through which a shift in economic power can occur in advanced nations...
...But the aim of this competition will be directed toward integrated societal goals and not a series of private objects dictated solely by the profit motive...
...Lawyers are assured of more prosperous clients...
...In 1900 there were 3,000 millionaires in the United States...
...The top of the wealth pyramid gets bigger but the base does not change...
...The trick of these apparently decent and innocent devices is that the benefits steeply rise for the higher salary brackets, and the plan rules can be juggled by qualifying limitations of age, length of employment, etc., to weight them heavily in favor of highly paid old-time executives...
...The United Housing Corporation, which constructs an enormous number of apartment buildings in the New York area as a * It is no accident that Senators Gore and Kefauver, the two most progressive men in the United States Senate, come from Tennessee...
...The advantages are even greater in that the pension money can be taken at policy maturity in a lump sum, subject only to an individual capital gains rather than a normal income tax...
...For one thing, the harsh realities of present Communist societies make social injustice under the existing mixed economy of capitalism seem preferable to most persons...
...All men are entitled to free medical attention as they are to free air and sunshine...
...All religions have emphasized the essential brotherhood of man but degraded this vision by making its mandate a kind of gimmick through which one could enter eternal life, a species of sordid exchange for the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven...
...F. Cooperation among nations is essential to destroy the basis fot war—in its more traditional imperialist form and the newer imperialism cloaked by fake Marxist terminology...
...For example, a rich couple, with four married children respectively having three children of their own, can give away free of all taxes $120,000 per year—four children with their respective mates are eight adults...
...The process is not, with minor exceptions, direct corruption in the manner of Latin America...
...In a moment of cynicism, Henry Adams once defined democracy as a system of government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of senators...
...And the working class, unlike capital, cannot protect itself through a hedging process against rising costs by setting up subsidiary plants or buying controlling stock in foreign countries where labor is cheaper and the heavy costs necessary to automate are avoided...
...These groupings should not be destroyed— and their differences will not "wither away" despite economic change— but rather harnessed to the needs of the new society...
...There are strong indications this practice permeates almost all basic industry...
...No sound common stock provides a yield anywhere near 16...
...When, for example, the Du Pouts are adversely affected by a court decision regarding their stock holdings in General Motors, Congress suspends all other business of state and passes a special law allowing them to treat the receipt of General Motors stock as a distribution of capital—thus lowering the tax very considerably...
...It should be made a criminal offense to discriminate in any form, with special courts created to handle this problem...
...the former bituminous and anthracite coal miners of West Virginia and Pennsylvania...
...The staggering problems of Megalopolis—Boston to Washington, D.C...
...In 1958 he borrowed money to exercise his options, bringing him $900,00 without a cent of personal investment...
...yet not so much a return to Renaissance values but standing on the shoulders of these values to create larger ones, resembling them as an eagle does a mole...
...Modified Oligarchy Our system of government might then technically be defined as a modified oligarchy: modified in the sense that the general electorate through the vote does possess the theoretic power to ameliorate the rigor of the economic elite and does so in spasms, mainly during periods of depression...
...Though the rich get richer, it is apparent the poor stay far behind in the classic land of freedom and opportunity...
...To restrict this trend, laws must be passed prohibiting the hire of high military personnel in private industry...
...Actually, most war research and production are on a 100 per cent cost-plus profit basis, and fields such as communications satellites, munitions and aircraft are in effect guaranteed a good profit regardless of results...
...and the sardines the Latin American countries) is wrong in considering as one body the Pentagon, the State Department and Wall Street, there is sufficient smoke to identify some fire...
...It is the illumination, rather than the brutalization of the instincts toward equality of men, that is demanded before we slough off outmoded forms to embrace new ones...
...New Zealand, Sweden, Israel, (even Yugoslavia, with its Workers' Councils), are all states with varying degrees of economic and political democracy, often more expressed in words than acts...
...These managers perform a useful social function while the stockholders add next to nothing after creating the initial working capital...
...The future demands a change from the obsession with money as the end of life, money as the measure of success and the symbol of power, to the realization that though a just society insists all men must be equal regardless of origin and background, benevolence, beauty and intellectual curiosity are the underlying paramount values...
...Elements of the latter traditionally supported radical views and formed the hard core of the Marxist parties from the turn of the century to the Depression...
...Stock warrants and convertible bonds have similar advantages...
...Similar tax-free allowances are bestowed on holders of improved real estate, machinery and certain other capital goods...
...Regardless of such developments as profit-sharing, dual worker and managerial control, and mixed or part public and part private corporate entities, the function of state control and/or ownership follows from contemporary industrial society...
...It is due to the fact that the underprivileged in our society form no single common cohesive element...
...Not only domestic policy, but foreign policy as well, is conducted in the interest of this economic elite...
...In 1961, 86 per cent of Defense Department contracts were awarded without competitive bidding...
...Joseph P. Kennedy, the President's father, stated the victory was no accident—and he ought to know...
...But this is only one index...
...To know in advance is very lucrative...
...The old order, in its laissez faire sense, is dead...
...The economic elite stays in power through control of the legislative branch of government...
...The history of the tie-in between the United Fruit Company and the organs of state is too well known to bear repeating...
...These will be threefold...
...The people of Tennessee are not afraid of "public power": it benefits them...
...The concept of the medieval guild, especially as adapted by the Guild Socialists of England, is also a useful guide, one based as much on a sense of organic function as economic protection...
...But their protest is usually muted by reasonable job opportunity and they have nothing in common with minorities suffering discrimination or old people...
...Land values in Florida, New Mexico, Arizona and much of California have been shooting up between 25 and 50 per cent a year since 1950...
...The curious aspect of present American capitalism gives a broad hint as to how this may be accomplished...
...For the creative use of leisure is concomitant with and inseparable from the ideal of economic democracy...
...The flowering of the artistic element in man that must come with release from outmoded rules of pleasure will be as important as the more obvious implications...
...For to become a congressman or senator is also a way of rising in the world and there are few of these men who leave office poorer or with poorer expectations than when en tering...
...A recent study has indicated it costs the American public $275,000 each year to keep a member of Congress in Washington...
...People are not rusty gears to be thrown away after depreciation...
...H. The entire philosophy underlying present road building and other transport in relation to urbanization requires a fresh view...
...and the submersion due to large scale farming of the small freehold cultivators throughout the Middle West...
...More millionaires have been created in real estate since World War II than in any other field, almost exclusively due to this provision...
...D. Freedom from double taxation...
...This is a new vision of man himself through the function of intellectual curiosity...
...Space travel, still in its bare infancy, will draw the spirit of men to visions that make our parochial color prejudices and wars grotesque and absurd...
...the victims of automation in the motor factories of Michigan and of winged aircraft in California and Connecticut...
...Economic Cycle Moreover, the tendency of capitalism to go through cycles of pros perity and recession has riot been eliminated...
...A national policy decision is required which should, through a system of penalties, inhibit misuse of investment capital...
...Far from being brutalized, organized labor today contentedly supports the system and most of its leaders know every trick in the tax-gimmick book to enrich themselves...
...three children each of four couples makes twelve children, or a total of twenty persons, all of whom can receive $6,000 exempt from gift taxes...
...The measure of the value of regulatory agencies can be seen by noting the names of the persons appointed to these agencies...
...C. Housing authorities...
...Silvers and Wrong in a creative spirit, and the program was rewritten...
...And contacts, those keys to the kingdom of finance, are established and nurtured...
...The Port of New York Authority, though a darling of the financial community since its absolutely secure tax-exempt bonds yield around 3%2% is an example of how road, tunnel and bridge building can be handled by an autonomous agency...
...A study of the rise in value of insurance stocks reveals this immediately...
...Possibly distinguished writers and editors do not have time for such endeavors...
...We can always try again...
...The most obvious is the Negroes, whose "radicalism" —despite the dreams of the New Left—consists precisely in desiring to be just like everybody else, "to make white" in the vulgar phrase...
...Some of these reforms are possible in present society...
...America giving food would make more friends than giving weapons...
...These varied groups, soon to be joined by the white collar workers dispossessed by new calculating machines, do have a grudge in common, do fit the categorization of the socially disinherited, do respond to the cry for greater social justice...
...Automation is a curse, not a blessing, when human beings are merely considered one of several factors in the cost of production...
...In 1960, despite graduated income and inheritance taxes, the number of millionaires rose to 27,000...
...I. Tax-exempt foundations and holding companies...
...These earnings are taxed at a much lower rate in many foreign countries, leaving a great total differential or benefit...
...In less than a decade, over a million dollars can be passed through three generations free of inheritance taxes by means of this device...
...The future demands a shift in values from power over other men through competition to power over ourselves and the environment through cooperation...
...The first result was analyzed by Messrs...
...And the development of science and industrialism, free of European feudal restrictions, served to raise the standard of living to the point where the general white American population continues to feel a positive identification with this modified oligarchic structure...
...It is no accident that rich men tend to be almost the only candidates for the highest offices...
...What's good for General Motors is good for the country" is a genuine expression of this view...
...What is involved in this leisure time implies a new revolutionary set of values...
...If Juan Jose Arevalo's famous book Fable of the Shark and the Sardines (the shark being the U.S...
...On the other hand, the poorest third of the population, when lumped together, owns just one per cent of the material assets—and it is astonishing but true that 20 per cent of the homes in the United States still lack plumbing...
...Henry Pachter and H. Brand, editors of DISSENT, added further sharp criticism, some of whose points were incorporated into the finished text...
...One per cent of all families in the 1960s own almost 80 per cent of all individually-held corporate stocks...
...The reverse is apparent...
...The economic dominance is maintained by methods varying with the particular sources of wealth most capable of being tapped at any specific historical moment...
...But the creative use of leisure —travel, meditation, and friendship—will make this increased benevolence a possibility on earth...
...For public ownership of industry relates directly to the problem of power...
...Destroying the power of the economic elite to dominate the legislative process for its own benefit, is the cornerstone on which a more rational society can be created in America...
...The urban workers as a whole and the executive managers have divergent desires, contradictory in our society but at bottom incapable of final egalitarian reconciliation...
...He recently purchased a cooperative apartment on New York's Fifth Avenue for $135,000...
...For modern society is based on the scientific education of workers to operate complex machinery and it is actually to the benefit of the productive industrial process to train workers in cooperative activity for this purpose...
...C. Accelerated depreciation...
...This is the reason why certain intelligent and sensitive students and intellectuals are either attracted by the actionist programs of the totalitarian Marxist parties or sink into despair and cynicism...
...freedom of individual choice and freedom from economic coercion...
...Since 1945 the value of all the land in the United States has almost tripled, and the suburban lands around big cities have risen far more in proportion...
...The present Administration tried to curtail expense accounts, but the attempt was to the large extent abandoned under heavy pressure from the business community...
...Assuming no serious crisis in the present order—nuclear war, military coup d'etat, violent depression— it is most likely that meliorism is the American way, that the country will just "drift"* step by step into some of the changes I am anticipating here, through a series of pragmatic measures having to do with specific problems like the ailing railroad system, the tremendous working capital demands in fields such as rocketry and interplanetary communication, the overt need for more control over foundations, etc...
...The standard of living of many of the citizens and their cultural contribution in no way reflect this imbalance...
...The system of political democracy in America, today as from its inception, is the outer wrapping for a continued economic dominance on the part of a small group which in reality controls the legislative process and adjusts the laws that ensure its supremacy...
...and then, we shall only begin...
...It is true that its promise is infinite...
...In our society, these differences tend to express themselves in special interest organizations, Chambers of Commerce, unions, managerial societies, cooperatives, university and professional groupings...
...because of it we almost had a Communist regime (and still may have) in Guatemala...
...police brutality, as well as illegal procedures like mail opening, wire tapping and search without warrant...
...As our economic and philosophical view of life is bound to our terrestrial environment, so will these change and transmute themselves when all men can participate in the new awesome adventures ahead...
...On the crudest level, as in the South (as was true throughout the rest of the country in earlier periods), this control is maintained by disenfranchising a large part of the electorate...
...This wealthiest one per cent owns 28 per cent of the nation's entire personal wealth...
...One can see why President Kennedy put his recent trust fund receipts (derived themselves from real estate) into municipal bonds...
...But such "liberal" views are only a surface judgment...
...C. The right to education lies at the root of social justice...
...III A. Insurance companies...
...Bureaucrats enter a more elevated level of the government machinery...
...But if the readers of DISSENT feel they might be interested in another attempt, based on a set of values similar to those expressed in this Program, please communicate with me through the magazine...
...A society that is pluralist is less liable to become totalitarian...
...The managers will have to produce a profit, but production will be related to the over-all needs of society rather than based on conspicuous consumption, planned obsolescence, fake advertising and fragmented market factors...
...Prisons should be considered therapeutic and retraining institutions rather than agents of societal revenge...
...At bottom, no one has yet invented a technique to solve this problem...
...Some of these groups can be clearly delineated...
...It is not usually realized, but the Port Authority's investment in the arterial system connecting land areas of metropolitan New York and New Jersey will soon reach two billion dollars...
...The problem, thus, when seen in historic perspective, is as much the tyranny lurking in monolithic power and bureaucracy as it is who owns or controls industry...
...The attempt to create this Neo-Fabian Society failed due to skepticism...
...the "watchdogs" most often come from the ranks of those they are supposed to watch...
...The Public Service Commissions are largely projections of the private groups they aid...
...Real estate and stock sales are among those principally benefited by this law...
...Laws are often passed benefiting a special group of the rich...
...The need is great...
...But no means are available other than a general and diffused "do goodism" which stifles more than it lifts hope for a just society...
...secondarily for the stockholders, since their jobs would be imperiled if the companies did not show a reasonable profit...
...The reason lies deeper than the general political passivity of Americans...
...The common factor to all, and the fundamental point, is that the ownership, control and uses of power must have clear organizational limits...
...The first step toward this can already be seen in big cities where tolerance, the initial or passive form of benevolence, has been created by the needs of vast numbers of persons of different origins to work together...
...The result was an imposition of a New Class, whose use of total power has been as naked and brutal as the worst excesses of early capitalism...
...Some of these may be tentatively suggested: A. Social equality within more reasonable limits is demanded simply because it is just...
...Enormous tax-free allowances are granted in certain favored fields, particularly oil, coal, timber and metals...
...On a proportionate basis, the millionaires expanded at a rate over three times population growth during the period...
...But sensuality has two levels, for aside from the tactile there is also the artistic...
...Almost 6 per cent of all American adults are permanently unemployed, the proportion more than doubling among minority groups, and at least 10 per cent of factory capacity is idle...
...And then...
...Shift of Economic Power Probably the most difficult problem facing the proponents of a shift of economic power in American society is that of practical implementation...
...The aged are bitter, it is true, but if European experience is any guide, they are more attracted by quasi-fascist solutions—by "order" and "renewed status...
...With a large part of humanity starving, mechanisms must be created to bypass the ridiculous practice of stockpiling food and artificially restricting food production...
...Corporation profits are taxed and dividends to the individual stockholders taxed again personally, but exceptions are allowed to this rule...
...19th century radicals and utopians felt that once the economy was taken over by the state, freedom would follow—despite their understanding of the industrial process, they were incredibly naive in the psychology of man...
...As there are "cotton" senators and "silver" senators and "sugar beet" senators and "oil" senators and "private utility" senators, elected and reelected to protect the interests of their clients, so the benefits of being legislators in themselves are sufficiently delightful to ensure subservience to the status quo...
...D. Tax gimmicks and legislative favoritism for the rich, touched on before, must not only be curtailed but maximum income and inheritance levels should be established...
...When men come to view each other as they view their children, where sympathy and love are at their best, then the world will at last change...
...This indicates the close relation btween politics and economics, for once on the affirmative side...
...The first will be an enormous increase of benevolence, in the best sense of the word...
...Keynesian economics is nothing but a high class panacea to flatten out business cycles...
...In a way we thus have a perverted species of socialism, what might be called ironically Socialism for the Rich, in reality state capitalism...
...I was given the task of drafting a program for the group...
...far from being an exaggeration, this estimate is conservative...
...To a great extent, our animal hostility is concerned with self-preservation, its social aspect being tribal, linking oneself with one's own group and against the rest of the world...
...E. Foreign tax havens...
...All men, as citizens of a democratic community, are entitled to a guaranteed social minimum wage—an idea which involves not only rights but also responsibilities...
...Such "foreigners" in present-day America bring more noise than light...
...It is man, and man alone, who can make the value judgments necessary to use the machine as he wills...
...Perhaps not the least role of such an education is to teach the meaning of a better future society, one with a more rational economic and social order...
...Probably the threat will never be eliminated until all munition and related industries are either owned or thoroughly controlled by the nation...
...Those involving farming (and today farming is dominated by a small group, like any other big business) and the merchant marine are the most obvious...
...Indeed, much of the identification of legislators with this elite is automatic and unreflective...
...subsidiary of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, is an...
...Certainly these senators draw great benefits out of their allegiance with the economic elite, which they either belong to or become absorbed in...
...If the past is any indication of the future, charismatic individuals like Franklin D. Roosevelt will rise and implement specific reforms...
...Towards a Policy But radical changes are necessary before such a new meaning can rise out of the heart of America...
...A conflict of interest exists between the producers and consumers of food, one which ironically—considering the muchvaunted superiority of planning announced from total state-directed economies—the American nation has adjusted with greater success than the Communist countries...
...Job retraining must be offered to the old as well as the young...
...For the truth is that loopholes to exempt the economic elite are deliberately written into legislation...
...Title I" in real estate is creating a new group of millionaires feeding on the condemnation power of the municipalities, the work being assigned through personal contacts rather than sealed bids...
...It is also true that, through spreading job obsolescence, it may trigger vast economic and social change...
...In our present society they may be broken into three categories, with the most obvious devices briefly touched on: A. Capital gains tax...
...Today the ownership of stock in the vast majority of great corporations is completely separate from the actual working control...
...J. The tie-in between the military and industrial apparatus is one of the most frightening trends of present-day America...
...Yet it must be recognized that the imposition of the state in "basic" or "heavy" industry is a consequence of modern technology...
...The distributing element has an outlook far removed both from the producers and consumers...
...High rents must be eliminated...
...Sale of property after six months is subject to only 25 per cent tax on the profits, regardless of the tax bracket of the individual or corporation...
...The one depressed element which corresponds to classic radical formulas is the technologically unemployed...
...In normal practice, it is through organized pressure groups: real estate operates through the National Association of Real Estate Boards, big farmers through the Farm Bureau, medicine through the American Medical Association...
...Our entire policy in the Caribbean area has been poisoned by these special interests, Cuba being only the latest and sharpest illustration...
...And this emphasis is not merely ethical...
...When all is said, however, the quality that separates one society from the other is an intangible inheritance of dignity and honor that uses the traditional name of spirit...
...Individually or in combination, these various methods lead to a continued domination of the economy by the select few...
...The underprivileged groups, composing at least 25 per cent of the total population, are dispersed and often antagonistic in interest rather than socially related in one depressed class...
...A new look should be taken at the custom of using gold, uselessly buried in large holes, as a basis for the value of national currency and a guarantee of debt balances...
...The laws regarding this matter have recently been tightened but the loophole has not been completely eliminated...
...Stalin may have done the same for the United States...
...Tax-sheltered pensions for the self-employed were authorized by the last session of Congress, which increases the range of this particular gimmick...
...But those who serve a master get paid in some coin of the realm...
...The role of education itself must be interpreted in its threefold aspect: preparation for work in a complex industrial age...
...The state itself can supply additional needed working capital and earn "dividends" that will go to the government...
...Possibly the intellectual climate of the United States is too anarchistic, the economic structure too rich in times of prosperity, to support such a body...
...Besides a lifetime gift tax exemption of $30,000 per person (or $60,000 if the wife joins in), a married taxpayer is allowed to give $6,000 to as many different individuals as he likes each year free of gift tax...
...B. Utility companies...
...And introducing "an atmosphere of confidence" as a source of motivation is as unscientific as the dens ex machina through which the Greeks resolved their thespian art...
...Congressmen and senators are beholden to these overpowering economic interests...
...Sidney Webb, the English Fabian Society leader, once remarked that the French Terror and Napoleon set back the reform movement one hundred years in his country...
...The next large dispossessed group is the aged, those persons over 65 years whose income has suddenly dropped...
...G. Tax-exempt municipal bonds...
Vol. 10 • July 1963 • No. 3
