Will Capitalism Save Us All?
Will Capitalism Save Us All? Lyrics
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READ OUR BREAKDOWN OF SEN. PAUL’S REMARKS
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So is Senator Paul a champion of the underclasses, a white warrior for Americans of color, the second coming of John Brown? Not so fast.
Rewind to 2010: Dr. Rand Paul has been Senator Rand Paul for mere hours, and he makes the mistake of agreeing to appear on Rachel Maddow’s show to discuss his philosophy. Recent comments by Paul caught the attention of Maddow and she asked him to clarify his position on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Americans of all colors recoiled at the newly elected Senator’s comments, and he was roundly criticized for retrieving racist ideas from what most of us considered to be the dustbin of history.
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WATCH SENATOR PAUL ON RACHEL MADDOW
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But Paul’s ideas are not best described, however, as old. Or even racist. They are, rather, the shiniest new ideas on the table for American conservatism: capitalism without limits. To put it very simply, Senator Paul believes that the capitalist market should replace most of what government does. Democracy, in other words, is insufficient, and the rights of property should replace those of citizenship. The government should be shrunk to almost nothing, believes Paul. He is simply aiming to enact what Republicans have been championing since Reagan.
So when it comes to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most of the law Paul would keep...except one of the central pillars of the landmark legislation: A property owner should still be able to determine who has access to it. So, the entire portion of the Civil Rights Act mandating that white-owned hotels, restaurants, clubs and other businesses permit Black customers is, to Paul, an infringement on the rights of the property owners. Whether it’s race, sexual orientation, or the color of one’s shoelaces, the property owner can deny access on the bases of his or her choosing.
Paul envisions a republic of property, not of birthright citizenship. Paul and his ideological brethren want to expand capitalist property ownership far beyond its already wide expansion. Schools, the military, prisons and policing; all of these should be, according to capitalist purists, run according to the logic of capitalist property, for profit.
Those in Paul’s ideological camp have wanted for years to dissolve the public school system and replace it with a for-profit one. One of the fathers of contemporary capitalism wrote about it, and since then we’ve seen legislators try again and again to effect the coup for corporate and financial interests.
So what happens if a privately owned and operated school decides to restrict access on the basis of race? Is the great work to enact Brown v. the Board of Education lost? And even if a for-profit school does admit students of any social classification into its classrooms, an economic barrier still exists: price. Suddenly, children and their fates are left to the maelstrom of the capitalist market. For-profit schools in a fully privatized system will close just like any other business closes, oftentimes suddenly and without recourse.
Most of us are born into very little or nothing, property-wise. Despite the best wishes and promises of capitalism’s apostles, the economic system has shown itself over its several hundred year history to not distribute wealth very evenly. Those on the bottom tend to stay on the bottom, and a school “system” which immediately sorts childrens’ fates according to the wealth of their parents can’t be hoped to do anything but exacerbate the problem. For all its faults the public school system provides a floor under all citizens.
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READ OUR BREAKDOWN OF DELEUZE’S DESCRIPTION OF CORPORATE CONTROL
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Would capitalism’s completion end racism? Perhaps. A perversion of Dr. King’s dream might prevail, and each of us would be judged not by the color of our skin but by the contents of our bank accounts. It’s been argued that capitalism’s track record is one of destroying old modes of power: feudalism, slavery, patriarchy, even the nation-state. But what sort of power relations has it brought as a replacement? Is it the “freedom” or “liberty” that Paul and his followers promise?