Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed mass awakenings of the working class all over the world: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and now America.
These mass awakenings of the working class highlight two significant problems in our country: a financial system that is designed for the benefit of the ruling financial elite and a two-party system that has really become two sides of the same coin, working for the benefit of their financial overlords and not the American people.
There is something rather peculiar about our obsession with capitalism. It resembles a typical marriage (one which eventually ends in divorce) in which spouses put up with many inconsistencies because they are committed.
In such relationships, the emotionally compromised spouse will always be in denial, rejecting any criticism.
However, unlike that typical marriage, capitalism is nothing but inconsistencies. One spouse takes all the benefits of the marital life, leaving constant suffering and readjustment for the other.
That has been the plight of the working class in America. We have bought into a system, demonized its criticism as unpatriotic, constantly denied our basic social rights and are in denial of what has been done to the fabric of our society.
I think it is high time we re-examined our relationship.
The only benefit this financial system has for average Americans is the comfort of a myth that one day they’ll make it. This is a belief that has been rooted in our collective American psyche for a very long time and, quite frankly, is nothing but a myth.
Working-class generations have come and gone, thinking that they have achieved the American dream — as defined by the financial elites. But they ended their lives in wage slavery and debt.
This has been the American way of life: seemingly happy on the outside but terrifyingly sad within. In the richest country on earth, where millions of people are unemployed, the working class has to decide whether to buy food or pay rent.
In the richest country on earth, an entire generation of college students will have no employment prospects. And, for the first time in history, they will do considerably worse than their parents.
How could this happen, you may ask, to a country where “we the people” are, supposedly, the ruling class? How is it possible for everyone to benefit from this financial system except the ordinary, hardworking people? Through a complaisant two-party political system.
There is a solution to the problem of social disparity in this country: The working class must unite. They must organize and form a political party of their own, in which their interests and the interests of their families take priority over the interests of financial elites.
We should come out of our political amnesia and organize ourselves. No longer can we elect and re-elect the same people, thinking, “Now we’ve got someone new in the office, they will do things differently.” It only makes sense for the engine of American prosperity, the working class, to have a unified political voice of its own.
Contact the writer at sbayot@asu.edu
