Chapter Five: Navigating Abundance and Scarcity; Class Conflicts and Economic Justice
Part Two: Class Conflicts and Economic Justice
Readings:
Scott, J., & Leonhardt, D. (2005). Shadowy lines that still divide. The New York.
Chart: “Hidden Rules Among Classes” by Ruby Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, 1996 (Online site for this course)
Key Dilemma of Part Two:
Given human nature, as we know it, is economic justice possible, and can class conflicts be resolved?
Review of List of Navigation Strategies for Seemingly Intractable Conflicts, Differences, and Dilemmas:
Example to help us work through this dilemma:
Across the U.S., Native Americans have turned to gambling casinos to fund the needs of tribal members. Since tribes own their land in common, banks and outside investors cannot mortgage tribal land as collateral. Therefore, banks and investors are only willing to invest in casinos because they assure massive financial returns, making collateral unnecessary. Tribes know that casinos contribute to the rich investors getting richer, gambling addictions, and indebtedness amongst the poor, but their tribal interests are paramount in their minds. Does this suggest that human nature is somewhat resistant to economic justice?
Glossary:
Market Value: This value is determined by the principle of supply and demand. If demand exceeds supply, then market value increases; if supply exceeds demand, then market value decreases.
Questions:
1. How can we address class conflicts to achieve economic justice?
In the news during 2010, we learned that Goldman Sacks, an investment firm, seemed to have been running a gambling casino on top of our economy. Through a kind of wagering, the firm, and its wealthy investors, benefited hugely as the economy tanked—even betting against the interests of their investors. The original intent of the stock market was to generate needed capital for the expansion of productive elements of our economy. Relatively recently, financial “instruments” have been created that are geared to simply increase the wealth of the already wealthy. As conflict resolvers, we want to resist demonizing the wealthy or their handlers, but we also want to offer a conflict analysis of the widening gap between Main Street and Wall Street.
First, it is important to remember that the mainstream global economy centers around one central value: market value. Advertising increases demand, and supplies can be restricted; by doing both, those in control of advertising and the restriction of supplies control the means to increased market value—and therefore, wealth. This scheme works well for the creation of wealth for those in control of advertising and supplies, but it also concentrates wealth in the hands of a small elite. It also increases the gap between the rich and the poor. It is important to understand that, even though our mainstream economy is based on public participation, the wealth that is generated is private. Therefore, the public generates private wealth, and wealth gets concentrated into the hands of the few. If economic justice depends on returning publicly produced wealth to the public, we currently live in a state of economic injustice. How we recreate the economy to return publicly produced wealth to the public is a conflict that must be addressed in nonviolent conflict processes, if at all possible.
Second, it is also important to remember that it is an extreme idea to place so much of our lives into the marketplace. The ethos of tax reduction and privatization is to eliminate public services and replace them with private and competitive services. In other words, public necessities become marketplace purchases, rather than entitlements. The public good becomes an opportunity for private profit, not a social responsibility. This notion is extreme because it rejects any balance between the public and private sectors. It also minimizes the role of wealth redistribution and debt forgiveness as elements of economic justice.
In our culture, we have we have tax-generated government programs and private charities rather than economic justice. Interestingly, both of these institutions tend to fund the wealthy or the middle class. Low- or no-income people are often the least served by these programs. Witness the rising homeless rate, affordable housing shortage, and decaying low-income neighborhoods, while billions of tax dollars are siphoned to military contractors and other private contractors to government agencies.
Union and leftist organizing in the 1930s helped to fashion Roosevelt’s New Deal that followed. The more recent Occupy Movement has put the wealth divide into the public consciousness. Further progress for economic justice will require larger mass movements, legislative action, and public dialogue, so that wealth redistribution becomes a household word, as well as a homeless camp demand.
Economic conflicts take many forms. In the following, we will consider the conflicts that occur between and among the traditional economic classes, working, middle, and upper. However, I will relabel them to reflect the different experiences, rather than the traditional abstract labels:
Struggles of Survival (SOS)
Over-Stressed (OS)
High Anxiety (HA)
2. How does CR have a middle-class bias?
I think that CR suffers from OS biases in mediations with SOS. Because SOS people are often engaged in transgenerational struggles for survival, they may be emotionally explosive, conflict avoidant, storytellers, who often resort to leveraging their conflict positions to win, avoiding their sense that their lives are on a losing streak. This modus operandi runs counter to OS sensibilities of transparent interests and civil dialogue. OS experiences SOS conflict as another stressor in their stressed lives. Whereas, SOS experiences OS conflict as another entrapment game that the privileged play to win fights.
Discussion Questions:
1. How is the “wealth gap” also a “wealth gumby,” stretching incomes across a wider and wider height, enriching few, and making more people financially insecure?
2. How are class labels both abstract and experiential?
3. How can navigating difference address the wealth divide?
