When is a
Right not a Right?
By Mike Kendall
Is a theoretical right a real right if 90% of our
citizens lack the economic ability to exercise that right? Most liberal capitalists would say “yes” and all
social democrats would say “no.” This is
the fundamental division in the American left.
Its origins go back to the late 19th Century, and the
division has grown broader and deeper since 1968-1974. Both liberal capitalists and social democrats
support the same theoretical political and civil rights. They part company on whether economic
opportunity is enough, or economic rights are essential to make the civil
rights real.
The social democrats see no rights where the rich
man and the poor man have equal rights to sleep under the bridge at night. Words like “civil rights” and “constitutional
rights” are dear to the traditional liberal and socialist alike, but
unaccompanied by words like “income equality,”
“guaranteed living wage,” “wealth redistribution,” and “distributive
justice” they are an illusion to the thinking of social democrats. Liberal
capitalists support the protection and expansion of individual civil rights,
but social democrats believe you can’t have meaningful civil rights and if you
don’t have relative economic parity and economic justice.
There is an example in our own state
among the left that illuminates the division.
Liberal capitalists are an enormous part of the LGBT coalition. They and the social democrats both support
amending Indiana’s Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based upon
sexual orientation. However, the social
democrats want the Act greatly strengthened as part of the amendment. Merely including sexual orientation as a
protected category will not provide any more substantive protection to LGBTs,
nor raise an economic legal threat against discriminators, because the Indiana
Act is toothless. Merely adding sexual
orientation to the Act’s protected categories will be a huge symbolic victory
for the LGBT community. However, it will
have no life changing benefit for middle class and less prosperous LGBTs. Not a single lesbian worker, gay wait
staffer, bisexual retailer, or transgender person will be any better off than
they are today. It will only make the left
feel good, the right feel bad, and the capitalist managerial class feel relieved.
There
are also examples in our nation. The
Supreme Court is more racially diverse and gender diverse than at any time in
its history. But it is not as
jurisprudentially diverse and socially democratic as it was from the 1930’s to
the 1970’s. This summer it is poised to
abolish the right of public sector unions to charge non-members money for
representing them in collective bargaining about their jobs and terms of their
employment, even where they are not charged for union funds spent on political matters. In fact the union has to work for non-members
and members alike to protect their free riders’ employment under the guise of
free speech.
Such a ruling is myopic and class biased. Virtually the same justices disdain allowing
shareholders to ask for money back or dividends awarded for their corporation’s
use of the shareholders’ investment for political activity. The straight-faced rationale—lawyers call it
a “factual distinction”—are ‘it's easier to quit and find a new job in protest
than it is to sell stock.’ This is a characteristic
liberal capitalist position repugnant to every social democrat. It reflects some justices’ view from Mt.
Olympus where they hold life-time jobs, hire and fire at will, and put their
investments in blind trusts.
The left needs to stand for equality
and liberty meaningful to those who are not rich. The left should eschew self-identification
with the more cultured, feted, affluent, and sophisticated social strata and
class. Cowboy capitalism’s free-market
economics is protected and supported by, and intertwined with this class, in
and out of government.
The liberal capitalist works very
well with the conservative capitalist. Corporate capitalist interests are advanced
by social stability, especially if it produces political and economic
acquiesance. At the end of January, a
group of eight U.S. Senators—four Republicans, three Democrats, and one
Independent—introduced legislation to slow and complicate regulatory oversight
of business and industry by federal agencies such as the Financial Protection
Bureau, bank regulators, and product,
investor, environmental, and workplace, safety regulators. The Democrats
were Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Joe Manchin
(D-W.Va.), and the “Independent” Angus King, Jr. (I-Ma.).
Social democrats believe the right
of the LGBT community to invest, buy a home, or have a job is chimerical if the
investment, home, job, and pay are unavailable to 90% of the LGBTs. Such a right for 10% is a wrong for the 90%
who lack the economic right to make it real.
Civil rights and economic rights together make Human Rights, the only
real rights.
