Blog 122c -Non-Causes of Poverty, Jobs, Welfare Responses

Blog #122c – Non-Causes of Poverty, Jobs, Welfare Responses

Why is there poverty in the United States today?[1] Most anti-poverty policies rely on one or more of four theories about the causes of poverty: the lack of jobs, the shiftlessness of the poor, the changing technological composition of production, or the scarcity of resources to provide for all. None of the four holds up.

We don’t have enough jobs. Not so. “Unless we create more jobs, there will be unemployed and thus poverty,” many believe. But unemployment is low, whatever the weaknesses of its measure, and most poor people are already employed. They already have “jobs,” or at least work, and very often hard work, often part- time, insecure, without benefits, almost always devalued. It is the substandard quality of the jobs we have that undergirds poverty.[2]  Killer jobs, not job killers, are the real problem.

And that so many jobs are substandard is not by accident. Simple economics dictates that employers will always push wages as low as they can: wages to workers are income to employees, but expenses for employers.  Matthew Desmond’s trenchant article[3] provides the figures, and lays out the consequences, in well reasoned and human terms. What’s needed are good jobs, paying living wages, secure over time, organized so as to be manageable along with meeting all the other obligations of complicated lives

They are poor because they are lazy. Not so. “They don’t want to work, or they drink, or are addicted, or mentally ill,” some argue. But, as noted above, most poor are in fact working, but at jobs with less than living wages or unsustainable working conditions Blaming the victims for their poverty will not work

Technological change requires workers with skills the poor don’t have. Yes but. A high school education may be increasingly needed to get a good job, but lack of a high school education is not voluntary for most without it. Getting a good education is not so simple for many, and especially for those that begin poor. Lack of good schools, of health care, of transportation, of housing, of physical security, of social encouragement, all play large roles. There is no evidence that, given the opportunity, poor people are not able to handle work that requires a post-high-school education. The poor may indeed have less education than those better off, but not because they are stupid.

Technological advances should in fact increasingly be able to provide enough for all, so that there would be no such thing as poverty, if they were appropriately socially organized.

There will always be winners and losers. The poor are simply the losers. No longer so. “The poor will always be with us is an old argument. It is increasingly wrong. Our societies are able to produce enough so that no one needs to live without adequate housing, food, clothing, rest, security, or the other things a decent standard of living in a technologically advanced society can produce. The statistics on inequality are clear. Even a modest redistribution from the top 1% would mean that all of the other 99% could live well above poverty levels.

 If none of these four explanations accounts for the widespread existence of poverty today, what does?

Two factors basically explain the existence of poverty today.

First, major real conflicts of material interest underlie poverty.  As pointed out above, simple economics dictates that for-profit businesses will always push wages as low as they can: wages to workers are income to workers, but expenses for for-profit businesses. Thus, poverty benefits powerful economic and political interests, powerful both in establishing economic relations, and in politically establishing governmental policies that further business interests opposing the steps necessary to eliminate poverty.  And,

Second, the necessity of dealing with immediate and critical human problems detracts from confronting these real conflicts, creating an incentive to downplay the existence of these conflicts politically as well as ideologically, even among well-meaning advocates of policies challenging the underlying causes of the conditions whose consequences they seek to ameliorate, so-called anti-poverty and social welfare programs.

So what is to be done to reduce and ultimately eliminate poverty from rich societies such as ours?

 Immediate actions. We have some limited but moderately effective social-mobility programs: minimum wage laws, restrictions on hours of labor and unhealthy working conditions, subsidized health care, unemployment benefits, public financing of elementary education. They need to be adequately and securely funded.[4] They should be championed, expanded, and stripped of any draconian and counterproductive work requirements. But more is needed.

Ultimate goals must be kept on the agenda as ultimately needed, goals such as a real right to housing, to free medical care, to free public education through college, an adequate income should be considered, and seen as obvious governmental functions, just as are police or fire services or streets and highways or sanitation or environmental controls or providing for holding democratic elections or public parks or clean water. So one might consider adopting as ultimate asocial goals for social action the elimination of poverty entirely and the provision of a right to a comfortable standard of living commensurate with what society is already in a position to provide, given a commitment to use it so that its wealth is distributed equitably among all individuals and groups in the society, commensurate with individual and group needs and desires. The even broader goal might be expressed as the just and democratic control of the economy as a whole and in its parts.

Transformational Measures. But to achieve such goals, shorter-term steps also need to be pursued, measures that move in these directions but that do not promise more than are immediately political feasible yet can contribute to meeting long-term goals.. [5] We should not neglect the importance of the poverty fixes we already have. Safety-net programs that help families confront food insecurity, housing unaffordability and unemployment spells lift tens of millions of people above the poverty line each year. By itself, SNAP annually pulls over eight million people out of poverty. According to a 2015 study, without federal tax benefits and transfers, the number of Americans living in deep poverty (half below the poverty threshold) would jump from 5 percent to almost 19 percent.[6]

1. Improving minimum wage laws. Moving towards the ultimate goal of stablishing a standard of living for all that guarantees not only the necessities of life but at a level consistent with a comfortable and secure standard of living and a level commensurate with the productive capacity of society, appropriately organized to fullfill social needs and enforced well enough to prevent destructive competition- among businesses based on how little they pay their workers.
2. Strengthening workers’ rights, moving in the direction of fair wages for all, including strengthening requirements for fair labor standards in the work place. Encouraging self- organization workers and poor households along diverse lines needing publii representation..
3. Expanding the public and non-profits sectors, in the direction of recognizing the benefits of using social contribution as the motivation of provision of goods and services, rather than profit to be made by furnishing them, e.g. in housing, health care, education, recreation, transportation, environmental amenities, creative arts.
4. Terminating public expenditures whose motivation is economic development and growth for their own sake, and focusing them on their contribution to meeting social goals, including provision of socially desired levels of goods and services. Publicly subsidized job creation as part of and motivated by economic development interests will simply benefit employers unless coupled with living wage and decent working condition requirements. Adding a work requirement to the receipt of social benefits is likewise a painfully ironic was of reducing such benefits to their recipients in a system in which if they do not produce profits for an employer, over and above their wages they will not be hired.[7]
5. Making the tax system strongly progressive, lower at the bottom, higher at the top, moving towards the broad reduction of inequality and targeting them to the encouragement of socially desirable activities.
6. Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of imaginatively recasting budget priorities, specifically reducing the military budget, funding anew climate -change-centered civilian conservation corps, increasing foreign aid aimed at alleviating conditions that lead to emigration etc.
7. Recasting the public thinking about the meaning and values of work, the causes of poverty, the values implicit in alternative approaches to inequality and injustice. [8]

In Matthew Desmond’s eloquent words, “We need a new language for talking about poverty. ‘Nobody who works should be poor,’ we say. That’s not good enough. Nobody in America should be poor, period.”  He’s right.[9]

[1] The official poverty rate is 12.7 percent, based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 estimates. That year, an estimated 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty

 [3] Matthew Desmond, “Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not,” concludes simply: “the able-bodied, poor and idle adult remains a rare creature “Why Work Doesn’t Work Any More,” The New York Times  Magazine, p. 36ff. Available at                             https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/magazine/americans-jobs-poverty-homeless.html

[4]

[5] For a further discussion of the concept of transformative measures, see pmarcuse .wordpress.com, blogs 81a-81e, 97, and 99, Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

[6] Mathew Desmond, op. cit., p. 49.

[7] Mathew Desmond in a factual, tightly argued, and very persuasive article effectively demonstrates the futility of work requirements attached to the receipt of social benefits. Today, 41.7 million laborers — nearly a third of the American work force — earn less than $12 an hour. the New York Times Magazine of September 11, 2018,

[8] Matthew Desmond, op. cit., writes ”No single mother struggling to raise children on her own; no formerly incarcerated man who has served his time; no young heroin user struggling with addiction and pain; no retired bus driver whose pension was squandered; nobody. And if we respect hard work, then we should reward it, instead of deploying this value to shame the poor and justify our unconscionable and growing inequality.”  And Joanna Scuffs, in a rich and provocative article , writes of ”the slipperiness of the term ”work”, from work  as a daily grind into work as “life’s work “oeuvre, art,  the reason you’re here on earth.” The’Linguistic Chamelion” of Work,In These Times, April  2018, [[. 65ff.

[9] Op. cit., p. 9.

Blog # 117a – Boss Trump and the Uses of Humiliation

Blog # 117a – Boss Trump and the Uses of Humiliation

The manipulation of emotions and their consequences plays a major role in the politics of power i n America today. The emotion of humiliation is a weapon in the hands of Boss Trump, strengthening is power by undermining the resistance to it. Their victims in the broader society litter the landscape of political action. The search for dignity, which may be seen as the opposite of humiliation, is partly in response to humiliation by its direct and indirect victims.  The causes and consequences of humiliation need to be understood by those opposing its human cost.

Calling Michael Cohen “incompetent” as a lawyer is an obvious example, meant to denigrate him and undercut anything he might say. It’s become  standard practice for Boss Trump to let loose twitters aimed at humiliating critics of any of his policies or positions by name. It leaves his victims with a choice between an ongoing contest with someone with a wide audience and a sharp tongue, or endure the humiliation in a silence that is in itself humiliating in its necessity, the choice that Attorney General Sessions seems to be making.  And humiliating his critics directly has a wider benefit for Trump: those witnessing his humiliation of his critics themselves become intimidated by what they see, and restrain any inclination to join in. That they feel thus constrained is itself internally humiliating, and a further defensive reaction can be to accept Trump’s side of the story and persuading oneself of its correctness, a many seem to be doing vociferously at Trump rallies and in interviews. They thus justify a potentially humiliating exchange with an apparent show of support, joining Trump’s reputed hard core loyal base.

But humiliation plays a broader societal role, a role of which Trump is a beneficiary but not a principal cause. It often produces the clichéd “white working class,” response of those who may be active in the work force but still feel insecure, underpaid, working below their capacity or deserts. It can be expressed as a claim to a lost dignity, a feeling of helplessness in conceding to bosses’ power, a feeling that has often fueled labor unrest, but that can also lead to a form of inhibition in its expression by an attribution of the result by defenders of the status quo to lack of ability,  lack of education, laziness, the victim’s own conduct, own fault. That can be a humiliating perception, and because so widely accepted and so insistently reinforced by those in power like but not limited to Donald Trump and his direct entourage, it is also likely to lead to humilitation inhibiting fighting back.

uch self-blaming, such created humiliation and the inhibition to which it may lead is often reinforced by well-meaning critics of the reality it reflects. When Hilary Clinton spoke of “the deplorables,” when the Harvard grads or the lucky investors or those in securely positioned armchairs who view the passing parade and “don’t understand how anyone can swallow Donald Trump’s lies or condone his behavior,” they can easily be perceived as looking down on their fellows, as being members of an elite not recognizing the lived experience of the less fortunate. If many of the “white working class” are emotionally humiliated in the social structure of society as they experience it, so are many of “the elite” inhibited from questioning those social structures that have produced their own advantages for fear of having to face some humiliating causes.  The elite may find it hard to accord to others less well stationed than themselves the dignity that those others feel they also have a right to demand.

Humiliation can also lead to a variety of emotional responses. Opioid addiction, gang membership, street violence, domestic abuse, can  all be read as distorted reflections of a search for a dignity which prevailing relationships do not provide for their  victims.  An unconscious and inhibited identification with the boss can play a role, a desire to be oneself a boss, to have all that freedom which the real bosses have and which they are often faulted for exercising. Such responses often create difficulties of understanding in well-meaning efforts to address their causes

Conclusion: If humiliation is a widespread and debilitating emotion, its existence is not an inherent aspect of human nature. If there is humiliation, there are humilitationees and humilitationors.

When Trump humiliates anyone, what he is doing can be explicitly labeled and condemn as such, without long arguments about who’s right and who’s right in the dispute. Boss Trump can be challenged for simply acting like a bad boss, and who likes a bad boss, even if they’re right every now and then. And if those who are being deprived of their dignity by a bad boss or his lackeys, what is going on can be pointed out without reinforcing it by another form of humiliation in how it is pointed out as a necessary lesson the more well-off need to teach their less understanding others. .

  My thanks to Don Bushnell and Thomas Scheff for the provocation that lead to these thoughts                                                                .          They should not be blamed for the result.

Blog #116 – Robert Mueller’s Report Song to Congress

The Robert Mueller song, as he presents his final Report to Congress.

 

To the Tune of the Chiquita Banana commercial:

I’m Chiquita Banana, and I’ve come to say

Bananas must ripen in a certain way….”[1]

——————–

My name is Robert Mueller and I’ve come to say,

Investigations must be undertaken in a certain way.

You can’t just claim that what so and so did was wrong

You have to have evidence that is clear and is strong.

You have to say what this man or woman did on a certain day

Violated a certain law at a certain place in a certain way.

This is what he did, and this is the person that saw him do it,

This is what he said he did, and this is why it’s obvious his story blew it.

These are the penalties that can be applied  that the law prescribes,

Only made more severe if you try to evade them with lies.

 

So here is my report:  I know that it’s 430 pages long

But what it describes was also very wrong wrong wrong.It’s the Congress that determines what’s wrong and what’s right.

My job is only to see how the facts fit what Congress set out, and how tight.

Now what happens, when, and to whom is up to the courts to determine

Whether those who did it were well-intentioned or were vermin.

I’ve finished the job I was hired to do,

Now it’s up to those that hired me to see the matter through.

 

If I can be of any more help, please do let me know,

Otherwise, I admit, I’m very happy to go.

Good bye, and best wishes.

Robert Mueller.

 

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE    It was a United Fruit commerciaI. If you have trouble finding it, it’s from 1940 and the oldest a google search for Chiquita Banana commercial produces; ‘ll try to get the exact url for it shortly. It;s great on its own.

Blog #95 – Given the Electoral College, who “won” the 2016 Election

#95 – Given the Electoral College, who “won” the 2016 Election

This blog, and the blog after it, Blog #95a – Questioning “So-Called President” [1] Donald Trump’s Mandate: Immediate actions, Long-Term Possibilities, Constitutional Questions,–summarize the findings of Blogs #92a to #95. [1] on “so-called President” Donald Trump’s claim to have won the election as president of the United States, and suggests some Immediately practical reforms of the Election Process in the United States They raise some longer-term issues about the constitutionality of the Electoral College per se, issues whose results in the 2016 election deserve wide discussion

This blog argues that the figures as to who would have won the national election in 2016 if that election procedure had been fair are clear. If every vote was counted fairly, so at every non-Trump vote counted for the same Electoral College vote as every pro-Trump vote, if, for instance, the election were simply decided by the results of the present national popular ,Trump would not have won that election {See Blog #94}.

Under present procedures of the Electoral College:
For Trump, his actual popular vote 62,980,160, produced 304 Electoral College votes
Or one popular vote produced 0.0000048 Electoral College votes.
Thus it took only 207,172 actual votes to produce each of his Electoral votes.

But for Clinton, her actual popular vote, 65,845,063 produced only 227 Electoral College votes,[2]
Or one popular vote produced only 0.0000034 Electoral College votes.
Thus it took all of 290,066 popular votes to produce each of her Electoral votes.
Each of Clinton’s popular votes was worth only 34/48, or 71%, of what one of Trump’s popular votes was worth.

Result: Trump wins 2016 Electoral College vote Trump 304 Clinton 227, and gains the Presidency.

But if every actual vote cast by a voter counted for as much as every other vote, not the 34/48 ratio above,–if all persons’ votes were equal)[3] , Trump would come in a clear second, behind the first place winner by over 2,5000,000 votes. If each vote actually cast for Clinton carried the same weight in the Electoral College as each vote cast for Trump, the Electoral College vote would have been Trump 304, Clinton 314;[4]

Result: Clinton would have won the Presidency.

Trump “won” the Presidency in a procedurally unfair election. Only the distortions of the Electoral College, specifically its abandonment of the one person –one vote principle, permitted his victory.”
What difference do all these numbers (e.g, 71% weight given to a vote in one camp compared to 100% weight given to to the other) make, now that Trump has been inaugurated?
See Blog #95a – Possible Actions for Democratization and Questions of Constitutionality of Trump’s electoral “victory.”

[1 ] The six most relevant recent blogs, all at pmarcuse.wordpress.com, are:
#91 – Explaining the Election in 10 Sentences – Preliminary
#92a – Electoral Reform: Outing the 1%
#93 – Election Figures Show Trump with Only 27.2% of Eligible Voters-What Mandat
#94 – In What Ways is the Electoral College Illegitimate Today?
#95 – Given the Electoral College, who “won” the 2016 Election?
#95a – Questioning “So-Called President Donald Trump’s Mandate, Immediate Actions+
[2] Calculations based on http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2016 . http://www.270towin.com/news/2017/01/06/donald-trump-officially-wins-presidency-as-electoral-votes-counted-by-congress_440.html#.WIQkTn2kyio.
[3] As they are in the popular vote .
[4] Actually, the totals have to add to 538, so this would be 45.94%*538 = 247 Trump and 48.03%*538 = 258 Clinton . In either event, Clinton would have won .I thank Aaron Marcuse- Kubitza- for the point, and help generally on the calculations

Blog #92a – Electoral Reform: Outing the 1%

Blog #92a – Electoral Reform: Outing the 1%

Dealing with the implications of Donald Trump’s victory by pushing for reforms in the way presidents are elected may seem a very mild way to face what are certainly immediate as well as long-range problems ,. In fact, however, they are transformative demands, transformative in the sense that they both logically and politically to deeper but critically related problems, to the questioning they are related to the underlying issues of power and injustice that need to be faced. Yet they do lead straight to such further questions: does not the role of money in the electoral process need to be radically addressed, beyond the mechanics of the election process? And thus further the effects of the growing inequalities of wealth in our society? And an examination of what the results of the skewed election and Trump’s accession to power mean for democracy as a whole? Is not raising the question of a distorted electoral process an organizing issue when it is related to who benefits and who is excluded by the distortions?

For ultimately the distortions in the electoral process, and specifically the use of the Electoral College and the manner of its election to determine the outcome of the presidential election serves the 1%, not the 99% that Trump’s claims to be a populist often puts forward. Just how the electoral process is rigged in favor of the 1% is taken up in the succeeding blogs, but evidence for the rigging in favor of the existing power structure comes from two other sources: the historic origins of the Electoral College in a clear distrust of grass-roots democracy, and the policies of Trump, having used the rigging to be elected, then favoring the 1% in all his appointments and policy decisions.

The results are already very dramatically and symbolically apparent in the early conduct of Trump’s President-elect actions.

Symbolically, Trump is organizing his government, not out of public space available to him, but out  of the Trump Tower, a private 58-story luxury office/residential building on Fifth Avenue in New York City , with his name in giant letters on top of it, a dominant emblem of Lower Manhattan, a global business and financial center.. It will be retrofitted as a Presidential get-away, [1] at taxpayers’ expense, Government agencies will pay rent – to Trump — for space they need to occupy in the building. Condos, on higher floors below Trump’s own three story penthouse, go for up to $11,000,000.  Not an apt setting where ordinary people would feel they would be welcome to participate in the government, as parts of government “of the people.” Rather, homes and offices for the 1%.

But then Donald Trump is hardly himself one of the people. He prides himself on being a billionaire, is a large-scale real estate developer, had properties and investments globally, travels in is own jet, hires and fires people to serve him, some of whom he treats shabbily. He is certainly one of the 1%.

His policies, what we know of them, are largely skewed in favor of the rich: tax cuts for the rich,, insecurity and low wages for immigrants, relaxation of regulations protecting everybody’s environment, luxury resorts, casinos, branding of all sorts of luxury goods aimed at the largest ends of the  market. For the use and enjoyment of the 1%

With fully democratic elections, enabling a fully participatory popular democracy, we might be able to make America democratic again, to give it a government by the people, of the people , for the people,– and make Donald Trump’s government of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1% vanish from the earth.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/18/how-donald-trump-will-retrofit-midtown-manhattan-as-a-presidential-getaway/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.180e8c019787

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Given that the conservative responses to unjust inequality essentially accept its existence, that the liberal  does something to ameliorate the results of unjust inequalities but does not address their causes, and that the progressive response does even more, but both within  severe limits that leave the production of such inequalities essentially untouched, and finally given that radical responses, although  they do address the causes of unjust inequality, are not  on the real world agenda anywhere in the world today, what can be nevertheless be done to achieve a more desirable handling of issues of equality than  our present system presents?

The suggestion here is to push for actions that are immediately possible, but that point transformatively to the more radical proposals necessary to eradicate unjust inequalities.. At least four modest but theoretically promising types of efforts in that direction are already under way, although their transformative potential is not always stressed: 1) transformative electoral activities; 2) transformative demands in the active day-to-day political arena; 3) transformative  pilot projects attempting to model in limited practice solutions  that would be radical if comprehensively adopted; and 4) transformative educational efforts involving teaching , research, writing, public debates, on the real sources of unjust  inequalities and the possible steps to their eradication – and the development of theory. These might be considered four fronts in the effort to tackle the unjust inequalities that characterize our present societies.

1)      Transformative electoral activities.

The progressive democratic-socialist campaign of Bernie Sanders for the presidency in the United States would be an example. If it is seen simply as a normal campaign for the election of a particular individual with a particular attractive platform, it may have limited impact, and may not survive a likely electoral loss. If the electoral campaign is seen as accompanied by a political revolution, as its rhetoric in fact proclaims is necessary, it points to broader and deeper issues, and opens the door to consideration of radical possibilities going beyond the progressive.

Historically , the record of radically-oriented national election campaigns  has not been good, although they have a long tradition behind them, just this  century, the Socialist Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, The Progressive Party, Jesse Jackson’s campaign, all had very limited influence.  Today, the Working Families Party is active in electoral campaigns in some states, but it remains small. In crass political terms, the experience seems to be that the more radical the platform the less effective the electoral impact. Efforts are beginning to evolve to have the Sanders campaign itself lead to some type of on-going organized involvement both in future elections and/or in current political issues. Whether it will be an exception to the rule remains to be seen.

2)      Transformative demands in the active day-to-day political arena

The individual issues that are fought over in any even formally democratic society usually center on specific concerns, but may or may not be seen as parts of more fundamental societal arrangements, and may then, very much context dependent, have a transformative impact.  The criticism of the role of money in political campaigns could point to a full public funding of campaigns, with limits on private money going far beyond simple calls for transparency. Calls for a $15 minimum wage may open the door to an on-going push for a livable wage and beyond, to a truly equitable distribution of compensation for work done, and minimums set on the basis of an expanded definition of what such a wage should provide. Single-payer insurance provision to cover the cost of health care could raise the question of whether health care should not from the get-go be free, not provided on a fee-for-service basis but as a public good, as basic public education is provided, or police or fire protection or the building of streets and highways. Modest proposals for participatory budgeting could raise the question of whether all budgeting decisions could not be made with grass-roots democratic involvement. Support for the creation of Community Land Trusts as owners of land could raise the question of simple public ownership of all land, as a natural resource.[1]

Keeping Liberal and Progressive proposals expanded to their radical fullest regularly in sight, while still getting ones hands dirty in the struggles to achieve what can be done day –too-day, would be a way of making many existing political efforts not only more appealing in the present but also transformative to what might be done in the future to fully end unjust inequality.

3)      Transformative pilot projects attempting to model radical alternatives.

The history of utopian communities is extensive and rich. They are rare today. But the attempt to try out radical ideas on a limited scale, with the transformative goal in mind of leading to their wide-spread and comprehensive adoption, remains important. Indeed, utopian thinking and puzzling out what ideal cities or countries or neighborhoods might look like is an exercise that might be more important now than ever, now that any new idea is likely to be met with the charge that nothing like that has ever been done before, where’s the data to support it, let’s stick to doing things that we know can be done in the world that we have, not the world we want. In limited practice, solutions that seem utopian might in fact be tested and shown to work on a small scale, and would be very radical if comprehensively adopted. The work of Gar Alperovitz and the Democracy Project,[2] and the New Economy efforts, are provocative. Learning from such efforts could indeed be transformative on the way to broader change.

But there are severe limits to most pilot models, involving, viability today in the here and now. Dangers lie in the context of a competitive profit-driven society, with constant down-ward pressures on wage to maintain financial viability. Even short-term, internal democracy in e.g. co-ops, and more, may end up at risk. And how the transition might be made from pilot project to its broader environment. The  temptation and often apparent necessity of building fortified silos of justice in a desert of unjust inequality  to broad social change is under-discussed.[3], [4] Pilot models are a good and helpful step towards a just and equal society, but do not inevitably lead us there.

4)      Educational efforts and the development of theory.

Most of those reading tis blog, and certainly its writer, have not been brought to concerns about the unjust inequalities discussed in these blogs by their own material deprivation, by the kinds of physical exploitation and immiseration that classic images of revolutionary subjects evoke. As this is written, The New York Times headlines a front-page story about “How the G.O.P Elites Lost the Party’s Base” and describes how “Working Class Voters Felt Ignored by Republican Leaders.” The Republican Party having deserted its “traditional blue-collar working class base—“its “most faithful voters, blue-collar white Americans.”[5] The descriptions set conventional social theory about class relations on its head.  But it reflects a current reality: the wide gap between undying material relationships of class and power, on the one hand, and the ideological interpretations and their psychological reflections that characterize so many political disagreements and rationalize the unjust inequalities that we see today. It is a gap that is ideologically, in the broad sense of the term, created, and it requires ideological counters if there is to be any hope of serious social change.

Ideological efforts to confront unjust inequalities have two aspects: one involving educational work, the other theoretical work.

Education is a somewhat awkward term for public information or savvy use of the media to tell a story, to convince readers or listeners or watchers, to convey the news in critical depth, to undo prejudices and stereotypes analyse conventional wisdoms. It may involve letters to the editor, journal articles, phone calls, panels, or, research, funded or not.

Theoretical work overlaps with the educational somewhat, but has a different audience and somewhat different audience: It may be educational, in the above sense, but it is also directed at those already concerned and active, and involve itself in clarify cause and effect relationships as a guide to strategy and tactics in ideological/political confrontations. Research of course has standard of logic and fact-finding that are necessary for credible work, but in the choice of subject matter and willingness to draw conclusions relevant to issues of equality that radical research show its usefulness. As the social psychological processes of one-dimensionalization grow in importance, the counter processes of logical analysis and exposure become ever more important.

****

Transformative might thus be the name of such blended proposals aimed at dealing with unjust inequality in a politically feasible fashion. . It would characterize ideas, demands, program proposals, legislative actions, social movement demands, which would marshal political power behind immediate demands for liberal or progressive measures coupled with a consistent and open consideration of the political feasibility of forwarding the goals of the Radical approach and building the foundation for struggles for radical action

A Transformative approach would add a recurring footnote, as explicit as the political situation will allow, to Liberal and Progressive demands. It can help to maintain awareness of the depth of the problem of Unjust Inequality and of the need for each individual program and proposal to recognize that the ultimate goal is actually the elimination of Unjust Inequality altogether. It can help keep pressure on the arc of history to bend ever more towards social justice and just equality..

 

ds Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

————————-

[1] For further examples of potentially transformative demands , see my Blog #30: Beyond Immediate Proposals: Some Transformative Provocations

[2] See http://garalperovitz.com/ and Gar Alperovitz “The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States”, April 13, 2013 Truth out News Analysis

[3] For my own views of the potentials and limits of the pilot project approach see Marcuse, Peter. 2015 “Cooperatives on the Path to Socialism?” Monthly Review, vol. 66, No. 9, February, pp. 31-38

[4] For a further discussion, see also Blog# 58a: From Immediate Demands to Utopias via Transformative Demands

[5] March 28, p. 1.

—————————

This blog is one of a set of five dealing with Unjust Inequality:

Blog #81a: What’s the Problem? Not Just Inequality

Blog #81b: Inequality: What’s the Answer? Economic or Racial? Conservative or Liberal-Clinton?

Blog #81c – From Clinton Liberal to Sanders Progressive Responses

Blog #81d – Inequality: A Radical Response

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Blog #81c – From Clinton Liberal to Sanders Progressive Responses

 Blog #81c – From Clinton  Liberal to Sanders Progressive Responses

Hillary Clinton’s over-all approach could be seen as a major example of the liberal approach  to inequality, (see Blog #81b), and  Bernie Sanders’ could then be seen  is well on what might be called  the progressive side of liberal, although  stopping short of something more radical (see Blog #81d, forthcoming.). The Liberal and the Progressive share most of the same values, but differ in their political approaches, which I believe leads also to differences in the analysis used to undergird them. The Clinton Liberal approach aims at forming a broad coalition that would move towards consensus by minimizing areas of disagreement and conflict, seeking a practical majoritarian compromise on the liberal side of key disputes. The Sanders progressive approach is more confrontational, seeking a more populist base, and accepts the necessity to confront sharp clashes of interest in achieving its objectives.

Strategically, the Clinton liberal position hopes to avoid direct and painful confrontation with the prevailing structures of power, and hopes to redress unjust inequalities in the system through progressively oriented accommodation with those in power; on the radical side of progressive, the Sanders position is willing to attack the holders of power directly in moving towards the goal of reducing inequality. The liberal view focuses on lifting the lower 99%; seeing redistribution from the top 1% as a simply a means to that end; the progressive view also addresses the disparity between the 1% and the 99%, but sees it as per se unjust and needing redress at both ends. Higher taxes on the rich are seen as a means to help the poor, in the liberal view; in the progressive view, they are also seen as a way of remedying a fundamental unjust inequality. Whether the difference in political strategy leads to a difference in in analysis, or vice versa, in not an easily resolvable or particularly useful debate.

The Progressive response thus accepts the liberal proposals but goes further. It sees gross economic inequality, measured in terms of wealth and income, as being per se unjust. It agrees that poverty should be addressed, but sees poverty as requiring redistribution from the rich to the poor. Higher taxes on the rich are needed not only to keep the middle class safely in the middle and the poor above harmful poverty, but they are also needed  because the extreme wealth of the rich is itself unjust, unjustly acquired by inheritance or exploitation or oppression or pure luck, and it is socially just to reduce it. The quantitatively measured  inequality that we see today is wrong not only because it means the poverty of the poor at the bottom but also because it is linked to the immoral power of the rich, with the top 1% now controlling more wealth than all the bottom households (the bottom 50% or more; the figures vary) taken together. The wealth of the 1% needs to be used to achieve a just and sustainable equality.

Revolution is called for by some progressives, including Sanders, but on the political side as reforms to the electoral processes, and in the end the called-for measures on the two sides differ more in language and in extent than in basic values. A higher minimum wage is supported by both, although both implicitly agree that it can not be so high as to interfere with a reasonable profitability for businesses or entrepreneurship. Abolition of the wage relationship is not suggested by either, nor a recasting of the governmental role in the economy. Public regulation is seen on the liberal side as basically an undesirable necessity to be limited as far as possible; on the progressive side, it is accepted as inevitably needed and an extension of democracy. Redistribution is centrally involved in both; higher taxes are the conventional means to that end. Exploitation is inevitable, but can be moderated. Non-economic unjust inequality is wrong, but a large part of that inequality will disappear if economic inequality is addressed. Everyone in society will not agree to that solution; the rich will object to supporting the poor at their expense. Liberals believe it can and should be reasonably compromised; progressives see consensus as thus not likely, unanimity not achievable; conflict as inevitable

To generalize, the liberal response seeks to address quantitatively measured inequality at the distribution end, after it has been created in the economy, and sees such change as feasible through the existing political processes. The progressive response to quantitatively measured inequality is to address its unjust production in the economy, but within the basic structures of the existing economy, and sees political revolution as the necessary path to undermine that unjustly created inequality.

A radical response would go even further, and seek fundamental changes in existing economic structures. Since such changes do not seem to be imminent in most of the world today, a transformative approach might be a realistic way forward today (See #blog81 d and e , forthcoming).

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This blog is one of a set of five dealing with Unjust Inequality:

Blog #81a: What’s the Problem? Not Just Inequality

Blog #81b: Inequality: What’s the Answer? Economic or Racial? Conservative or Liberal-Clinton?

Blog #81c – From Clinton Liberal to Sanders Progressive Responses

Blog #81d – Inequality: A Radical Response

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Blog #81a: What’s the Problem? Not Just Inequality

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? NOT JUST INEQUALITY

Inequality today is usually equated with the extent of the gap between the 1% and the 99% that that the Occupy movement brought to public attention, or that Bernie Sanders highlights in properly criticizing the distribution of wealth and income in the United States. But this is a mischievously facile definition of inequality. Some inequalities are in fact fair, and result from differences in talent, physical strength, luck, and commendable effort. Gross disparities are a vivid indicator of a problem, but do not draw attention to its causes, which lie in critical social, economic, and political relationships,. To focus on the gap itself and to address it with remedial measures aimed at narrowing its extent detracts attention from those causes.[i]

 Just and Unjust  Inequality: Why the Difference Matters

Equality and inequality are deceptively simple concepts. In the modern era they came into prominence with the French revolutionary slogan of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,[ii] where equality meant political and legal equality, equality of “rights,” equality in relation to the state, as it did in the United States  Declaration of Independence’s “All men are created equal” as to “certain inalienable rights.” [iii] Rights to the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of Man Equality did not mean equality in incomes or wealth or in the distribution of goods and services, which were seen as dependent on equality of legal and political rights, Equality in material distribution of material goods was seen as a concomitant of social justice, not its center.

Comparing equality as a goal to justice as a goal[iv]  brings the realization that not all inequality is unjust. Not all differences are unjust. There is natural inequality, of physical and mental capacities: not all humans are of the same height or weight or prowess, not all are the equals of Einstein or Jacki Robinson or Martin Luther King. We consider some inequality in the distribution of wealth and power fair: it may derive from natural inequalities, it may be earned by hard work, or by social contribution, what Piketty calls the common utility, or be justified by different needs. In some cases unjust inequalities may be built on natural or earned “not-unjust ” inequalities, but their extreme extent then built on power, part of their wealth earned, another part not: Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton? Thomas Edison? Jeff Bezoz?  There is a balancing involved. Granted a Hollywood star or tennis champion or skilled artisan deserves to earn more than the average, how much more is just? A tricky question, but the answer can be one produced through democratic processes, and would, for instance, lead to decisions as to how progressive the tax structure should be. Similarly, a person who is ill, or suffering from a disability, or is limited by conditions end his or her control, might be entitled to more governmental support than the average, and again at what levels is an appropriate subject for democratic decision-making, leading to decisions as to the levels of welfare benefits reimbursement for health care expenses, and so forth.[v]

There is thus “just inequality” and “unjust inequality.” How does one generalize the difference?

What Is The Key Difference?

Inequality is unjust,[vi] I propose, if it derives from the exercise of power used for the exploitation or oppression of one person or group by another. The resulting distribution of goods and  services, of wealth and income , the gap between the 1% and 99% is unjust, not because of its size, but because of its origins. What is “just” is then a matter that is socially defined – Rawls’ definition of justice or fairness could be useful, what would be decided by people acting behind a “veil of ignorance” as to their own position.

The results of not-unjust inequalities in the distribution of goods and services can then e countered by appropriate public policies of redistribution of those goods and services, e.g. by taxes or public provision.

But the results of unjust inequalities need to be addressed at their source in the social, political, and economic relations among individuals and groups which skew the distribution of goods and services, and result from the skewed distribution of power.  Acting on the results of just-inequalities can be guided by democratic procedures, debates on over values, the use of reason. Acting on the results of unjust-inequalities necessarily involves dealing with the distribution of power, and durable consensus of those benefiting from unjust inequality with those suffering from it should not be expected, and should not be an aim of public policy.

Justice is a moral formulation for the prevention of unjust inequalities. Politically, dealing with all forms of inequality, just and unjust alike, through redistribution of their results is can be done by consensus reforms, and should be facilitated by democracy. But dealing with the bases for unjust inequalities likely requires more radical politics. This may be the difference between Hilary Clinton’s and Bernie Saunders’ in the political campaigns of the moment.[vii]

The issues around inequality are complex for practice, as well as theoretically challenging; the answers make a significant difference in matters of immediate policy as well as in philosophy and world outlook.

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[i] For striking examples, see my Blog #48 Writing about Inequality, at pmarcuse.wordpress.com.

[ii] The 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of the Right of Man begins with: “art. 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” [http://www.hrcr.org/docs/frenchdec.html] considers egalite in terms of legal equality and merit-based entry to government (art. 6): [The law] “must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.”

[iii] “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”

[iv] As Susan Fainstein does in The Just City, for example, in a wide-ranging discussion. Fainstein, Susan. 2010. The Just City. Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, P.   36ff.

[v] Rawls definition of justice or fairness as what would be decided by people acting behind a veil of ignorance as to their own position is I believe consistent with this approach.

[vi] Piketty uses a definition, benefitting most those most in need, akin to Rawls’ definition of justice, But he writes that fuller discussion of the meaning of justice is beyond the scope of his tome, and it is well beyond  the scope of this essay.

[vii] This blog is one of a set of five dealing with Unjust Inequality:

Blog #81a: What’s the Problem? Not Just Inequality

Blog #81b: Inequality: What’s the Answer? Economic or Racial? Conservative or Liberal-Clinton?

Blog #81c – From Clinton Liberal to Sanders Progressive Responses

Blog #81d – Inequality: A Radical Response

Blog #81e. – Towards Transformative Approaches to Unjust Inequality.

Blog #80 – Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning: the Good and the Bad

Mandatory Inclusionary Housing: MIH, the Good and the Bad

MIH is an approach to ameliorating housing problems, and it lays an important role in city planning and zoning. It generally permits denser and higher new private development in areas zoned for it, but it requires  developers to set aside a given percentage of the new units for housing affordable  by families of lower income, essentially paid for by the profits of the new market rate housing also allowed. It combines zoning and planning policy with housing policy; both aspects need to be considered in any careful evaluation.

The housing part: A housing system that does not provide adequate decent safe and sanitary housing for all citizens is wrong. It hurts the most vulnerable sections of our society; it is the exact opposite of what Rawls calls the second principle of Justice:[1] it discriminates against those already the least advantaged, those already suffering from hardships in employment, in education, in health care, in finance. And it inevitably overlaps with discrimination on racial and ethnic grounds.

The fact that the effect of discrimination is produced by the market is no excuse for allowing it.[2] Wealth is unequally divided in our society; there is no conceivable moral justification for some acquiring billions and others being homeless; we are rich enough to house everyone, in decent, safe, and sanitary units. Allowing billionaires to play a wildly disproportionate role in politics, and thus in government, in the social decisions that we make through government, permitting them to act in their own self-interest rather than letting government act on behalf of all of us and be guided by a decision-making process that is fully informed and democratic, makes the injustice of a profit-based market housing system even worse.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning can be an effective tool to deal with the injustices of such  a purely market-driven system of producing and allocating housing. I would commend the mayor and HPD for pursing it, and making it an important component of an overall approach to the problem of housing.

But MIH fails if it is distorted to serve as an excuse for segregation and functions by enabling displacement under cover of serving social justice. That’s not a criticism of MIH as such; it’s a criticism of it us without considering it role in the wider task of community–based planning and development. MIH plays this perverse role in two ways:

1. Who is included in the inclusionary part? If it is a program that makes sure that those earning a million a year are include in every enclave of billionaires, that could be called “inclusionary” too, but not what this is intended to be about by its advocates, and I believe not what the Mayor or HPD intend either. The abstract debate about whether those targeted for inclusion are those at 30% of AMI, or 20%, or 10%, is not quibbling about numbers, it is of the heart of the matter. It calls for thoughtfulness, for a recognition of political realities, for some careful analysis of needs and resources, but it seems clear to me that, given where we are, the lower the income groups served and the higher the proportions required to be included, the better. The perfect may be pragmatically the enemy of the good in political negotiations, but the direction of good public policy must be to move as close to the perfect answer as we can get.

2. Where and how MIH is used is the second major issue in the program — in addition to the issue of numeric income limits and proportions – and the two are linked. It is a program intended by is advocates to act against discrimination , to help those excluded from decent housing because of their incomes and their jobs, or the lack of jobs, or by their  race or ethnicity or sexual orientation or religions, from a decent housing in a decent environment, those discriminated against by the functioning of the housing market enforced throughout by government, through its courts and judicial system, its environmental regulations and their presence and absence, through  public investments or disinvestment in physical infrastructure  and social  MIH can promote segregation as well  as integration. The devil knows that too.

Segregation is a form of discrimination. It restricts opportunities, inhibits broad diversity and its benefits, defines the opportunities it provides for community solidarity negatively, by indicating what cannot be done, by whom, with whom, rather than enabling a broad social concept of community as embracing the broad range of the society. MIH, if it is not undertaken in a community -sensitive and spatially-planned way, opens the door to the G word, Gentrification. Gentrification, over-simplified, is the displacement of poorer households by better -off ones, worsening the housing of those at the bottom for those closer to the top. The unregulated market will allow  those with the wealth and political resources to take over desirable locations in our cities that have been historically occupied by working class and poor families and turn them into higher income enclaves from which the or  have been expelled. If a MIH proposal is part of a zoning scheme in which gentrification is rationalized by requiring a smattering of those in need of housing to benefit from the displacement of many of their brethren and sisters, it produces that kind of segregation. Rezoning a particular area to allow more housing to be built in such fashion that the net proportion of higher income households is significantly increased in the community displaces families both on the parcels on which it is built and those priced out of the community by the impact of increased land values resulting from the new construction for the richer will further, not reduce, segregation as the net result.

And MIH will have a natural tendency to produce that result if it is not carefully structured to avoid it. The income levels fixed, the proportions allowed, the resulting net totals, the neighborhood effects, the social guidance of the market setting of rents and, the planning social facilities and social investments, re all involved here. The impacts of specific provisions will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, from community to community, and should be undertaken with the greatest of care and the maximum of community input and decision-making – Rawls’ goals of social justice must be kept  in mind.[1] Diversity, for instance , has specific benefits in itself , in permitting mixing, mutual enrichment, solidarity and mutual support ; but diversifying public housing by introducing higher income household at the expense of those intended to be serve by it, with the result of benefiting higher over low-income families, is not  a just objective of public policy . Likewise with the allocation of public subsidies, using housing vouchers, etc., to facilitate inclusionary occupancy only when it is to the ultimate benefit of its developers and those in less need, is unjust.

MIH may be put forward as a painless no-displacement approach to rezoning empty or grossly technically underutilized land. But again it may be helping solve a housing problem at the cost of increasing segregation and in determining desired zoning and planning goals. The issue is not direct displacement, but secondary displacement: preventing families from moving into an area where they might otherwise find affordable housing and integrated housing by an upzoning that increases housing, specifically land, prices beyond their reach. That process is called secondary displacement, and advances segregation as much, if less visibly than, direct displacement.  Using MIH as part of an upzoning is better than having the upzoning without the MIH, but that’s hardly the only alternative. Good planning would evaluate a range of possibilities. One very promising approach, for instance, is the use of community land trusts or mutual housing associations as owners or decision-making entities of development, making the process of planning and implementation really democratic down to the neighborhood level. Further, the alternatives for any major proposal should be considered in the context of planning for the future of the city as a whole, where future commercial development might best be concentrated — or dispersed – whether the plan promotes or helps overcome the sharp divisions of the city with its internal boundaries of race, income, ethnicity, social status, gender.

In summary: Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, in the context of community-based planning, strengthening inclusionary communities democratically designed by and for those that government justly should serve, has great potential. But it must be carefully designed, both in its own details, incomes to be served, proportions to be reached, and in its broader context, the communities to be served, the planning into which it must be integrated. Depending on its design, it can go badly awry, or be a real instrument for progress in the social good.

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The big picture:

In the best case scenario, Mandatory Inclusionary Housing can be a way of redistributing the benefits of the city’s growth  and sky-rocketing land values, which the city as a whole has created, not the individual land owners benefiting from it, , and letting the city’s people and their communities capture some of that increase in value. It does so in a way clearly meeting the very definition of justice, helping those least advantaged and reducing the advantages of their richer cousins.  Communities, and particularly those most need, can capture some of that socially created increases in land values through MIH. It redistributes from the more fully advantaged to the less advantaged, the very definition of justice. In less advantaged communities, MIH can make sure, given adequate, meaningful community control, that benefits and costs are fairly distributed. In more advantages communities. Think how different today’s suburbs or exclusionary enclaves would look if mandatory inclusionary zoning had been in effect when they were developed!

Or

In the worst case scenario , mandatory inclusionary housing  can be a way of enriching developers and land owners by opening new opportunities for profit for them by building  market rate high rise highly profitable developments in upzoned “undervalued” neighborhoods, at the expense of displacement of families in need of housing , what’s called gentrification. Displacement follows, not only on the site of the new development, but secondary displacement also follows, where land in the newly developed parcels increases development prices in the surrounding neighborhood, putting some of it also out of reach both of its existing residents and of those under normal circumstances likely to move in but unable to at the new higher prices.  And the masters of the new developments can get away with it politically by raising the image of dong good through provision of a limited number of housing units to poorer people, some of whom might actually b those they themselves just displace,. or who might be useful for the rich to have nearby as nannies and cooks and chauffeurs and butlers. In both cases, there is a danger that, at the scale of the city, segregation may increase and, for lack of a comprehensive city-wide planning approach, the desired balance among uses, residential, commercial, manufacturing, public facilities, will be lost.

Even seemingly technical issues, like what % of Area Median Income defines households in need of “affordable“ housing, or what proportion on MIH units in a given development should  be market rate and what affordable, or seemingly procedural planning issues such as the strength of city-wide comprehensive planning and its relationship to community-based plans, and in what communities with what standards, can make the difference between the best case and the  worst case scenarios .

 

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[1] that inequalities in society work to the benefit of the least advantaged

[2] In fair housing law, it is not only acts of intentional discrimination that are banned, but also those having the adverse effect of discrimination.

Blog #75 – “Blaming an Un-named “System” for Police Shooting Blacks

This Blog #75 – “Blaming an Un-named “System” for Police Shooting Blacks Is A Cop-0ut,” argues responsibility rests in three areas: Individual perpetrators (the policeman, in the case of the killing of minorities ), the social institutions (police departments, the criminal justice system, and the underlying social, economic, and political system. All need to be named and addressed. They will not all be resolved at once, but transformative measures may begin to address them within the existing system
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In a recent The New York Times opinion piece ii, Professor Mullainathan, in “Police Killings of Blacks: What the Data Says” seems to be joining liberals, and even radicals. He argues that the data shows that, although African-Americans are only 13.2% of the population, they are 28.9% of those arrested by the police, and 31.8% of those shot by police. As possible explanations he points to the risks of living in “a high-poverty neighborhood,” the social institutions that “tie race to crime,” the economic policies that limited opportunities.” He concludes “removing police racial bias will have little effect on the killing rate,” presumably because of all these other factors.
“. . [After]… accounting for why some of these encounters [of police with blacks] turn into killings, [racial bias] is swamped by other, bigger problems that plague our society, our economy, and our criminal justice system.”
So far so good.
But he ends the piece with
“…there are also [my italics] structural problems underpinning these killings. We are all responsible for those. “
“We are all responsible.” What started out as a fairly radical move to enlarge the approach to the problem beyond the mere bias of individual policemen, ranging over a whole set of social institutions, and finally pointing to the bigger problems that plague our society, ends up with no idea about what is to be done, no conclusions about what it is that produces these plagues, no allocation of responsibility to any human agency. If we are all responsible, no one, no group, no interests, are responsible, no specific forces “plague our societies.” The system is not wrong; it is plagued by a disease. The disease is not named. The sub-headline for the piece summaries it as “finding some blame in persistent systemic issues.” The system is to blame. The system remains anonymous, incorporeal, inhuman, somehow natural, just there. It is not named or addressed. Blaming it is a cop-out.
The formulation “we are all responsible” is simply wrong. Some benefit from it; others suffer under it. It is man-made (less woman-made), defined by those with power, power which is very unevenly distributed. The 99% are not responsible for it, the 1% are. The formulation “blame in persistent systemic issues” is not a radical criticism of the system, but rather a cop-out,iii undercutting efforts to identify who is actually responsible, avoiding identifying the real changes that might address the roots of the problem the data identifies.
Going beyond the cop-out of blaming “the system,” three actions are needed: first, the actors that implement it need to be specified, second, the institutions that are the framework of their actions need to be confronted, and thirdly the system that underlies their actions needs to be named. Finally, of course, the purpose of all this is to formulate a viable political responses to change he present patterns.
We may look at the human agents responsible for these killing of blacks at three levels:
1) the individual perpetrator, the policeman firing the shots in our case;
2) the social institutions which directly produce, promote and constrain the individual perpetrator’s behavior, in our case the police departments, the criminal justice system, the schools, the housing, and
3) the underlying system, economic, social, political, cultural, which for present purposes I would name the racist/capitalist system (more on its definition below).
1. Firstly, as to the individual responsibility:
it is true that it is “too large a problem to pin on any specific individual officers.”iv But it is individual officers that do the shooting. They are at the flashpoint where the damage is done. Do they have the intent to kill blacks? Perhaps not. They are indeed constrained and subordinate to the system. Yet they have a certain amount of free will. But it is not a matter of an intent to kill blacks, but rather of the actual and predictable and known impact of they actually knowingly dov. In Fair Housing legislation, the law prohibits not only actions undertaken with the “intent to discriminate” but also actions “having a disparate impact” on members of the protected group. The standard for a police officer should be no lower than the standard for a planner or zoning administrator or developer. Certainly, the individual police officer is also subject to the social institutions and agencies– the courts, the legislatures, the schools, and the overall set of criminal justice policies, budget cuts, and social patterns. And is further moulded by the underlying system, with its inequalities, its insecurities and fears and perverse incentives. But holding the single individuals responsible for the direct result of their actions when they have in fact a realistic choice would surely be fair and a major help in avoiding those results. The courts are an appropriate institution to do the fact-finding and the balancing of individual choice against the social and constitution constraint required to deal with the specifics of individual situations, and if they are biased, the tools to deal with that bias are certainly known and in general available.
2. Secondly, as to the social institutions:
If, as Mullainathan and many others properly argue, more or better education is required, it should be provided, if the courts are not doing their jobs as they should, then the judicial system should be reformed; if police departments were reformed and trained, controlled, incentivized, not to shoot and kill, there would be less killing; if a gun culture is partly responsible, it should be addressed by appropriate legislation and civil society condemnation. Such reforms will certainly not be adopted without conflict. There are vested interests, both public and private, behind the institutions as they are, and serious reforms will meet serious opposition from powerful opponents. The distribution of power, rather than the search for justice, makes the fair resolution of these issues difficult. But these institutions have been made by human beings, and they can be changed by them.
While underlying systemic factors mould both the actions of specific actors and of specific institutions, placing some blame for their result properly points to the complexity of the problem, “blaming the system” is no reason not press for remedial actions and reforms, which could ameliorate even the most difficult of the issues involved .. They are not all structural systemic, and it is counter-productive to assume they are, or to think they cannot be significantly alleviated even with the existing underlying system.
3. But, thirdly, as to the underlying systemic issues
Systemic structural issues clearly are involved. There are some problems arising from the underlying system that cannot be solved by simple piece-meal reforms, problems such as inequality, poverty, exploitation, and oppression along class or racial or national or cultural lines, perhaps climate change and environmental degradation. The difficulties even of piece-meal reforms, reformist reforms, are immense as the conflicts about racial segregation reveal.vi
Even the Catholic Church, to the extent that Pope Francis today speaks for it, acknowledges that
If the system is to be properly blamed and then addressed, it must first be named and its key characteristics understood. Karl Marx had a comprehensive analysis, and would simply call the system capitalism. In today’s discussion, movements such as Occupyvii and Pope Francis have somewhat similar approaches:
“While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.viii.”
“When money, instead of man, is at the center of the system, when money becomes an idol, men and women are reduced to simple instruments of a social and economic system.”ix
“[S]ome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system.”x
The issues raised here, and underlying the Occupy movements 1%/99% cry, are truly systemic: the level of inequality, the ideology of the free marketplace, the limits on the power of democracy over the state, the role of economic power, the lack of inclusiveness among peoples and groups, are deeply embedded in the system, whichever name is used for it. It is not any old “system” that has the characterisitics of ours today, and should be blamed, but a very specific one that is responsible..
It might take an old-fashioned revolution really to get at the roots of these problems, to do it comprehensively, for they are all interlocked, as the current discussion of intersectionality stresses.
And a revolution is perhaps a theoretical possibility in this period. The new left of the 60’s certainly thought it was fifty years agoxi; the Black Panthers saw themselves as “Vanguards of the Revolution”. Many social activists and their theoretical supporters, from anarchists to Marxists, believed that the seeds of profound change were here then, and their reasoning might well apply today. Today’s systemic economic crisis would provide some grounds for such an expectation. But a revolution does not seem exactly in the cards right now; indeed, one from the right seems much more likely than one from the left, in many places in the world.
The reason revolution is not likely deserves extensive examination, much more than there is room for here xii Those with a vested interest in the present underlying system are powerful, and have convinced many, probably the majority, that they benefit from lt also. The system seems to be producing the goods, as Herbert Marcuse formulated it. But it does not follow that, because we can’t have a revolution right now, nothing can be done to change things as they are, and perhaps even move today to a point in time where the radical changes implied by a revolution could indeed be brought about.
Nor does it help to say: “We are all responsible” for these system-based ills that we are all to blame for them. “We”xiii are not all to blame, at least not in anything like equal measure, and ignoring that fact is both wrong and counter –productive in dealing with the issues. There are specific interests , specific groups, perhaps classes, perhaps the 1% or the .1%, that stand behind the institutions needing change that block that change, block reform. Ignoring their identity undercuts the process of dealing with those who are in fact responsible and to blame for the problem: Their identities are not obscure: the anti—regulators, the low-wage employers in manufacturing and services, the real estate ghetto builders and maintainers, the politicians still seeing advantage in their bigotry, hedge funds and financial speculators. Yes, “we” certainly need to act to change the system, but to get there we need to hold accountable those that are in fact responsible for it’s being the way it is. Much can be reformed within the existing underlying system, even if it is not easy to do and inevitably will be controversial
4. Formulating Responses: Transformative Goals.
But the system is not God-given, nor a natural beast, but one of a number of alternate systems, which may have their own pros and cons, be variably achievable and sustainable, but can be actively pursued here and now by those ill served by the present system. It may take a revolution to achieve the major changes necessary to go to one or another of the alternatives, but it can be done. Legislatures are likely to be the sites of many of these
battles, and the normal mechanisms of liberal democracy, including particularly the electoral procedures, which would need to be used strategically to the fullest extent possible.
“Transformative” is a useful term for the kinds of demands and approaches that bridge the need to deal with all three levels of responsibility outlined above.xiv Two complementary avenues might be envisioned: one pursuing loaded reforms, the other exemplary reforms.
Loaded reforms address directly individual perpetrators and social institutions but stressing their connection with the underlying causes and pointing in the direction of change, pointing out causes, exposing, not only what is happening but why it is happening, who the actors are for and against, what the lines of struggle ultimately are, just who the 1% are, what power they hold and how they benefit from the system, who the 99% are and how they suffer from it. Their hallmarks are seeking the immediately feasible within the system but naming the obstacles to real success: the remaining inequalities and the long-orange systemic alternatives that are ultimately needed for real success.
Such reforms are loaded in the sense that they acknowledge their own limitation, at the same time pointing to the further changes that would be required for substantial structural change. In the shootings of African-Americans by police, reforms in the training of police, in the punishment of offenders, in the availability of guns, etc; but reforms acknowledging that poverty, frustration, misunderstood but real grievances, a search for security as well as safety in the system as a whole, are causes of the police actions and the judicial systems responses that also need to be addressed.
Exemplary reforms bring into existence relationships among individuals and groups , patterns of organization and doing business, rules of behaviour, that pre-figure within the existing system possibilities that can only be fully developed beyond it, but can have real if limited impact within it. Projects such as worker-owned cooperatives, community land trusts, radical educational offerings, participatory budgeting, will not produce structural change by themselves, but will show that real alternatives are available to existing structures and behaviours.
Again, in the police treatment of minorities, projects such as community control of the piece, Planned diversity in housing, full citizenship rights for all residents, are examples that can support movements for more wide-spread and deeper extensions of such approaches.
Blaming “the system,” without naming it, without going beyond addressing individual ills as isolated unrelated problems, will not do. It will not go far to address underlying social issues. Seeing who is responsible for social ills, who benefits from their existence, what institutions need change, are all necessary, and beyond that, pressing for solutions that are transformative, policies that are loaded progressively and exemplary in reality, are needed.

—references

ii October 18, 2015, The Upshot, p. B6
iii I only realized the pun after I used the term: it lets the cop out of responsibility…
iv Mullainathan, supra.
v A paraphrase of the general sense of what creates liability in civil law, on a continuum with culpability in criminal law. For a concise discussion, see Paul H. Robison, Mens Rea, at https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0ahUKEwjmuZCs1L7JAhVKcT4KHfEpB0gQFggvMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.upenn.edu%2Ffac%2Fphrobins%2Fmensreaentry.pdf&usg=AFQjCNFnYj1gAqCw_JFTrIBZBVXDr4MtVQ&cad=rjt
vi See blog #70 – The Causes of Discrimination. And they are global in scope, on segregation alone see most recently https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/02/how-the-rise-of-american-style-segregation-is-feeding-division-in-europe/
vii See Blogs #1-10, supra
viii https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/may/documents/papa-francesco_20130516_nuovi-ambasciatori.html
ix https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-catechism-for-economics/
x http://fortune.com/2015/09/14/pope-francis-capitalism-inequality/. And quotes collected at http://gawker.com/here-are-11-top-screw-capitalism-lines-in-pope-franci-1471888334
xi See Herbert Marcuse, Essay on Liberation, and Peter-Erwin Jansen and Charles Reitz, eds. 2015, Herbert Marcuse’s 1974 Lectures at Vincennes University.
xii See also, even more briefly, Blog #74 – On the Relevance of Herbert Marcuse
xiii See Blog #35 – Watch your Language, Krugman, and the Rest of Us, and Blog #37 – Lopsided Language.
xiv See Blog #30: Transformative Proposals in Nine Areas, at pmarcuise.wordpress.cm.