Crippling of the individual

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Crippling of the individual				July 26. 2006

We seem to be having one of those wheels-coming-off-the-wagon moments again. The tit-for-tat war is on once more in the Middle East, and Lebanon again is a country reduced to rubble and rife with refugees. Civil war is raging in Iraq, with over 100 people being killed daily.

The Armageddon advocates are packing their bags, and the rapture people, having abandoned their cars, are awaiting the imminent arrival of the next elevator.

Economically speaking, the country is running on a giant Chinese-owned credit card that we’ll never pay off. The national debt and deficit are in numbers too large to comprehend, and the divide between rich and poor grows ever more expansive. While Williamsburg’s wealthy seclude themselves in gated communities, the lower middle class and the poor putter around in low-paying service jobs catering to tourists and wonder why a Republican Congress refuses to raise the minimum wage to $7.00 an hour.

The problem of homelessness in our area has apparently become so acute that the League of Women Voters felt it necessary to undertake a study of the problem. Their report should be issued in the spring. In addition, the dropout rate for blacks in our public schools has become such an embarrassment that number fudging is now the official modus operandi.

Last week we learned from the Department of Game & Inland Fisheries that recent tests indicate that lax, corporate-friendly environmental codes have allowed mercury and bacteria levels in local rivers like the Chickahominy to soar to the point of making fish taken from them virtually inedible.

What to do?

In an article titled “Why Socialism?” in the Monthly Review of May 1949, Albert Einstein noted that there is an oligarchy of private capital that, because of its enormous power, cannot be checked by a democratically organized political society. Members of legislative bodies, said Einstein, are financed by private capitalists who separate the legislature from the electorate. Hence the worst evil of capitalism is what Einstein calls “the crippling of the individual.”

The education system likewise suffers from this evil, in that it promotes a competitive attitude in students who are trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for future careers. Einstein concludes that the only way to eliminate these “grave evils” is to establish a Socialist economy in which the means of production would be owned by society itself and an educational system oriented toward social goals.

Because of its untenable word association with Nazism in Germany and the corruption of communism in the Soviet Union, Socialism is about as palatable today for those on the far right as gay marriage and real science. Yet the fact is that there have been areas of the country where it at one time flourished.

On July 7, Frank P. Zeidler, the father of Williamsburg’s mayor Jeanne Zeidler, passed away at age 93. Zeidler, who was the mayor of Milwaukee from 1948-1960, was an unabashed Socialist and indeed became leader of the Socialist Party, U.S.A. in 1972. Known for his city beautification projects, as well as the development of public housing and slum clearance, Zeidler was a vociferous proponent of civil rights and environmental conservancy and a strong opponent of the war in Vietnam.

In an essay called “Why a Democratic Socialist Party?” Zeidler clearly outlined the problems associated with our two-party system. The highest ruling principle of the Republican and Conservative Parties, he said, is that the “self-interest of the individual –shrewdly pursued – somehow accrues to the benefit of human society. Hence government is to exist only to help the selfish interest of individuals to express itself. In the Democratic Party there is a basic acceptance of this idea that self-interest is the economic engine of society, but that it should be somewhat regulated.”

Democratic Socialists, on the other hand, hold that the “greatest good for the individual in society will come where there is a recognition of a common good for all.”

Can anyone reasonably argue that our Founding Fathers did not have just such a principle in mind when they framed the Constitution and its Bill of Rights? Why is “E pluribus unum” on our coins and “liberty and justice for all” in our pledge of allegiance to the flag?

Is it really the case that what lies at the philosophical heart of this country is an abysmal economic chasm between rich and poor? Are we so at odds with Jefferson’s warning against foreign entanglements that we’re satisfied with a foreign policy that is constituted primarily of swaggering gun-slinging and Iraqi-style political makeovers?

How long shall we tolerate a do-nothing Congress that, having trashed all remnants of historical checks and balances, ignores the needs of its people and putzes away its scant time in Washington on such panderthons of constitutional quackery as gay marriage and flag-burning amendments?

In his review of Zeidler’s book, “A Liberal in City Government,” Milwaukee historian John Gurda remarked that “Frank Zeidler earned strong respect for his integrity, his vision and his unwavering commitment to Socialist ideals.”

Speaking to the press about her father, Jeanne Zeidler said that he taught her how to run a meeting. Given his uncommon interest in the eradication of racism and economic disparity, as well as his insistence on a meaningful education for all and environmental conservancy, I suspect he taught her much more. Would that we all had been there to hear what he had to say.