The Montclarion,October 31, 1996, p. 11

To the Editor:

I'd like to shed a little light on how politics works in the US.

It's important not to take either "conservatives" or "liberals" at face value. By those terms, I mean not working people who identify with either of these categories, but the elitists who control the political process. In this letter I'm going to concentrate on the "conservatives."

Conservatism is an employers' ideology. Every "conservative" organization is funded by large corporations or corporate foundations: Olin, Scaife, Coors, Mellon, Bradley, are among the biggest. No "left-wing" organization is so funded. "Conservatives" do ideological propaganda for corporate interests, and get paid very well to do it. If you mentally substitute the words "propagandist for employers' interests" for "conservative," you'll understand American political discourse much better.

What's wrong with this? The interests of employers and of employees are exactly opposite to each other. Anything that raises the standard of living of employees also raises the cost of labor, and this reduces the profits of employers. This powerful reality is the key to understanding politics. No wonder it's seldom taught in school!

The conservative political agenda can be stated simply: lower the cost of labor. This means: lower the standard of living of almost everyone who works for a living, except top- level managers, cops, and coupon-clippers -- the rich. Every policy the "conservatives" support serves this goal: either (1) to directly lower the cost of labor and standard of living of working people; or, (2) to support authoritarian values that justify exploitation and inequality, and that attempt to pit one section of the working population against another -- in other words, ideologies that justify lowering the cost of labor. That is, the conservatives' concentration on "values" is purely to promote "values" that themselves facilitate the subordination of working people to their bosses. Here are a few examples:

In a future letter I'll go over why "conservatives" oppose abortion rights; feminism, immigration, "political correctness", and always talk about "freedom" while promoting poverty and oppression for the rest of us.

Grover Furr

English Department

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