Social Stratification
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In an article entitled "To have and have not: Notes on the progress of the American class war," Michael Lind argues that the key to the success of the American oligarchy is that it "spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist" (1995, p. 35). But, he adds, its success also depends on the "equally strenuous efforts of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight" (p. 35). In avoiding questions related to the stratification of American society the ruling class and the rest of the citizenry collaborate on distractions such as phony ideological issues (should there be a Constitutional amendment banning "flag-burning"?) and the perpetuation of divisive categories (white against black, straight against gay, men against women, religion against religion) that keep the great majority of Americans from concentrating on what they have in common, that is, their near-permanent relegation to near powerlessness while a minority retains (and increases) its hold on wealth and power. As is clear from Lind's subtitle, his approach derives from Marxist conflict theory of stratification which "asserts that capitalist societies are divided into two opposing classes, wage workers and capitalists, and that conflict between these two classes will eventually lead to revolutions that will establish classless socialist societies" (Kornblum, 2000, p. 348). This, however, is a very limited statement that ignores the
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nts a day. (Some crown. Some jewel.)(2)
Owing in large part to the bipartisan preference for regressive over progressive taxation, and despite the cries of anguish from Senator Phil Gramm and the editorial writers employed by the Wall Street Journal, the United States now stands second to last among the major industrialized countries in the rate of taxation on income-and dead last in terms of economic equality. The replacement of progressive income taxation by a flat tax, along with the adoption of national sales taxes (reforms favored by many conservative Democrats as well as Republicans), would further shift the national tax burden from the credentialed minority to the wage-earning majority. Average Americans have not only been taxed instead of the rich; they have been taxed to repay the rich. Borrowing, which accounted for only 5.3 percent of federal spending in the 1960s, increased to 29.9 percent in the 1990s. Interest payments on the debt (which last year amounted to $203 billion) represent a transfer of wealth from ordinary American taxpayers to rich Americans and foreigners without precedent in history.
On the second front of the class war, corporate elites continue to use the imperatives of global free trade as a mean
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Approximate Word count = 7710
Approximate Pages = 31 (250 words per page)
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