The Bourgeois Blues

This piece re-published here with permission from the author Christopher W Helton

Lead Belly's song "the bourgeois blues" ironically resonates the current economic phenomena in the United States, where the emergence of American pauperism is so extensive that it has extended its reach beyond the 19th century pauper, and has moved onto the proletariat and petty bourgeois. A pauper owes money (negative equity); while the traditional proletariat has his or her labor and no debt, and the petty bourgeois has some surplus capital. The current American banking system of credit (student loans, unsecured debt, mortgages) and speculation has transformed the proletariat and petty bourgeois into paupers, because these classes under this system of credit cannot easily remove the burden of debt. "Conflicts over the credit system, speculation, etc, are nowhere more acute than in North America" (Marx, 7). This uniquely American economic irony is not only that pauperism has been extended two more classes; but also that this extension has placed the American system of credit in a very precarious position, insofar as it has extended credit to people, who do not have the assets or wages to cover their respective debts. 

Unlike traditional Western European countries which have definite class systems, America has the political pretension that "there are no privileged classes, where all classes of society have equal rights" (Marx, 7). The American system of credit uses the political rhetoric of the American constitution, which pontificates beautifully the self evident natural rights of liberty and equality, to whitewash the true and immense inequality of American society. Nowhere in Europe is the disparity between those who are "paupers" (negative equity) and the plutocrats (surplus capital) greater than America, because the American system of credit is organized around the principle of return on equity. American plutocracy deflects from this grim economic reality by saying that everybody has equal opportunity and everybody is equal before the law. Walt Disney could not have written a better script with a happier ending. 

Ironically, the constitutional rhetoric of equality and liberty contradicts itself, because the former is never possible as long as the latter co-exists. In the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau excellently points out that liberty inevitably contradicts equality, because the former allows one to have more private property than another, hence, inequality. Hypocrisy of the American Constitution is nothing new. Lincoln says that he would rather "live in Russia with its self evident despotism than live with the hypocrisy of America, which stipulates that all are equal as long as one is a white man" (Lincoln, 121). Maybe, his moral intuition about this disgusting hypocrisy may have motivated him partially to write the emancipation act. Who knows?  

Accordingly, the proletariat or the petty bourgeois no longer has true equality, because of the American system of credit. The proletariat can no longer collectively negotiate his or her labor due to the destruction of unions, which has forced him or her to take on substantial amount of credit card debt. The petty bourgeois is not free to choose how to practice his or her profession, because of student loan debt and credit card debt. If these two classes are not free, how can they be equal to the American plutocracy? Will another Lincoln emerge to write another emancipation act to free the American proletariat and petty bourgeois from the current American system of credit, which fetters them to their debt? I doubt it, because American plutocracy absorbs the extra-ordinary members of the lowers classes as an insurance policy to maintain the current system of credit and speculation.

The propagandist of American plutocracy could always say that proletariat and petty bourgeois irrespective of their negative equity and pauperism still have the right to vote. Cynically speaking, just as Marx says that "religion is the opium of the masses," so "voting is the opium of the masses in America," because voting has a worse probability than winning the lottery. A less clever propagandist, such as Thomas Cooper, suggest "(1) that the property-less should not be allowed to marry, and (2) that universal suffrage be abolished" (Marx, 8). Cooper, first of all, is writing in 19th century, when pauperism is not as extensive as today; secondly, he ignores the fact that paupers need to reproduce more paupers, so to be exploited by the American system of credit and speculation; and thirdly, the proletariat and petty bourgeois require the delusion of being free by having the right to vote in order to preserve social order. 

In any event, the American two party system of Coke (Democrats) and Pepsi (Republicans) guarantees that the American system of credit and speculation will be preserved, because both parties agreed to the incredible Bank bailout of 2007, where the threat that finally the American system of credit of over extending its borrowing relative to assets to the proletariat and petty bourgeois may have collapsed. The speculation of selling those debts may also collapse. Why did Democrats and Republicans mutually agree to this massive bailout of Wall Street, because where do they receive most of their political contributions, not from the American proletariat and petty bourgeois, but Wall Street?    

Underlying the rhetoric and ideology of the American system of credit and speculation is the enduring Plutocratic belief that "society is established for the protection of property" (Marx, 8). Understood in this way, if the proletariat and petty bourgeois cannot repay their loans today, then the government is obligated to protect the creditors (Wall Street and American plutocracy) by having the future earnings through taxes guarantee those loans. Inevitably, however, the American system of credit and speculation will over extend itself so far in its exploitation of the proletariat and petty bourgeois that the American government will not able to protect their property. Once the property rights of American plutocracy are no longer guaranteed by Coke and Pepsi, Lead Belly's "bourgeois blues" will be a reality.