Introduction

All knowledge is, ultimately, concerned with improving the human condition--either directly or indirectly. (The assumption here is that those seeking knowledge are not motivated by evil designs.) Even an astronomy topic as seemingly remote from daily human concerns as the origins of the universe is, in the final analysis, still about improving the human condition (albeit indirectly: through self-knowledge (where we have come from, where we are going, etc.) we hope to become a better human race.

Consequently, the knowledge I am concerned with in this course is, ultimately, aimed at improving the human condition. How? By using your quest for the means to achieve your "U.S. American Dream" (or the U.S. Capitalist Dream), namely, your college education, as a vehicle to generate within each one of you dissatisfaction with the status quo, and simultaneously a desire and a willingness to transform it for the better (either now or perhaps after you have graduated, or even after you are dead and long gone--your children would carry on the task). Why should you be dissatisfied with the status quo? The reason is that although the human race has come far in its journey of civilization (see definition below), it has still a long way to go. Greed, violence, selfishness, oppression, etc., etc., continues to plague us.

Second: I am assuming in this course that we all agree on one thing: that we must not treat others any differently, merely because they do not look like us, or do not share the same culture as the one we have, from the way we, ourselves, would like to be treated (in terms of obtaining a job, finding a place to live, going to school, where we shop, who we associate with, etc., etc.). To put the matter in another way: I have assumed in this course that all of us share (or ought to share) one common principle: that no person has a right to deny another person his/her fundamental human rights merely because that person is different (or is perceived to be different) in terms of race, or is different in terms of sex (male or female), ethnicity, culture, religion, etc., etc.

By human rights I am referring to all those universal rights that all societies subscribe to and over which there can be no disagreement because these are rights that ensue merely from enjoying the status of a human being. (E.g. freedom from hunger; freedom from murder; freedom from torture; freedom from arbitrary imprisonment; freedom to earn a living; freedom to marry and raise a family; freedom to worship; freedom of movement; freedom to oppose tyranny; etc.; etc.) On this one principle, there should be no disagreement; and if you do have one, then you forfeit your membership of the human race. In fact, I will go one step further and say that you forfeit the privilege of living on this planet. With this introduction, let me now proceed with a summary of the main points that I have tried to get across to you in this course.

1(A). This course is more important than the courses for your major, not necessarily from an academic or career point of view, but in terms of life in general. Why? Because this course is about human relationships; it is about society; it is about freedom; it is about democracy; it is about dignity; it is about human rights; it is about living. Without these things you cannot have a truly successful career or a job, because success also includes something the materialist U.S. American Dream does not appear to acknowledge: an organic involvement in a network of loving human relationships. Imagine this: say, you were sent to the moon because you were a brilliant scientist, and once there you would have access to every kind of material comfort you would ever want, except that you would never have any direct human contact of any kind whatsoever. Is that the kind of career "success" you could live with? Would you consider that your "U.S. American Dream"?

1(B). This course is, of course, also important from an academic point of view, in at least two ways: first, it permits you to acquire new thinking skills that are going to be useful in all the other areas of your academic career; and second, it is important from the point of view of your QPA. About the latter: why would you want to lower your QPA by not doing well in this course? Reminder: your QPA is going to be extremely important, as the job market gets tighter and tighter due to technology and other factors, for landing that first job after graduation.
 

2(A). History is much too important to ignore; we must make a special effort to learn it--but not necessarily by becoming history majors, but by studying it on our own. However, we do not learn history in order to avoid past mistakes (it would be nice if this was possible), but in order to understand the present. Without history there is no present. The present is always a product of the past; and without the present there is no future. And the future is always a product of the present.

2(B). There is no single history that can be considered as the only true and valid history. True history is made up of multiple histories: his-story; her-story; their-story; my-story. Consequently, we must learn history from the perspective of not only the conquerors, the powerful, the rulers, but also from the perspective of the conquered, the powerless, the ruled. Remember that most of us are descendants of the latter group; regardless of the myths we have built up in our heads concerning who our ancestors were. In the case of the U.S., U.S. history must incorporate the perspectives of not only the first European colonizers (the Hispanic people, and later the English and the French), but also the Native Americans, the African-Americans, and those who came later, such as the Irish, the Jews, the Germans, the Italians, the Asians, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Russians, and so on. Moreover, we must also learn history from the perspective of women, not just men. Any other type of history would be a distorted history; it would be a lie about the past because it would not be the whole truth.

2(C). One of the tragic consequences of not learning history (not just any history, but true history) is the gross misrepresentation of the human experience--a misrepresentation that even academic disciplines in universities have not been immune from. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that as the Westerner gazes around in wonderment at the technological artifacts that he/she believes is the product of only his/her efforts, a deep feeling of racial superiority vis a vis blacks and other peoples in other parts of the world, gushes forth. Juxtaposing the complexity, power and the wondrousness of, say, the U.S. NASA space shuttle with, for example, the bullock-drawn cart of a World-Majority peasant, is it surprising that the Westerner should strut upon the earth as among the chosen, divinely mandated to uplift the benighted World-Majority blacks?

Yet, leaving aside the very important questions in their own right of whether the worth of the human person ought to be measured in terms of material artifacts, or whether it should be measured in terms of conduct as it relates to other human beings and other living things, or whether the invention and deployment of weapons of irreversible planetary destruction, the conversion of the oceans of air and water into global toxic cesspools, the extinction of many species of fauna and flora in the name of capitalist profit, all constitute progress and civilization, underlying this arrogance is a deep ignorance of human history.

For, in truth, whether Westerners like it or not, the Western civilization is no different from other civilizations in that it has emerged out of the contributions of diverse peoples and civilizations--present and past--spread out all across the planet. Was it not only yesterday when Marco Polo, upon returning from China with accounts of his very real wondrous life-experiences, would be castigated as a deranged and dangerous liar--such was the technological backwardness of Europe at the time. As Burman (1989:ix) reminds us, a major consequence of the European occupation of the 'Holy Land' after the First Crusade was that ''[f]rom that moment, accounts of the mysteries of the East began to filter through to Europe, together with foodstuffs, spices and other imports which radically changed the medieval way of life.'' He continues: ''It was with this expansion that the mind of the medieval man first looked out from its limited feudal context, sought information, and transformed European life by importing ideas which had not previously existed along with merchandise.'' (Emphasis added)

It is not surprising, in fact, that not long ago the view held by people in other parts of the world of Europe was that it was inhabited by a backward and primitive people. As one Muslim historian writing in the 11th century observed: "The other peoples of this group who have not cultivated the sciences are more like beasts than like men. For those of them who live furthest to the north, between the last or the seven climates and the limits of the inhabited world, the excessive distance of the sun in relation to the zenith line makes the air cold and the sky cloudy. Their temperaments are therefore frigid, their humors raw, their bellies gross, their color pale, their hair long and lank. Thus they lack keenness of understanding and clarity of intelligence, and are overcome by ignorance and apathy, lack of discernment and stupidity....'' (Quoted in Lewis, 1982:68) To gain some understanding of the diverse sources of the so called Western civilization one would do well to read Bernal (1987), as well as the responses to his work in a special issue of the journal Arethusa (Fall 1989). Bernal's work is an effort to begin demonstrating the significant contribution of Egyptian [African] and Semitic civilizations to the development of the Greek language and civilization. (See also Brodhead, 1987 and White, 1987).)

Thus not withstanding the spurious incantations of Western eugenicists --somehow they keep on resurfacing in various guises even at the close of the twentieth century--an evaluation of the sum total of all human achievements, from the dawn of human history to the present, reveals a fundamental truth: that there has not existed and never will exist a single group among humans (be it demarcated in terms of color, gender, religion or whatever) that has been, or will be, the repository of all human intelligence and creativity. Yet, to understand this fact one must be conversant with world history and one that is not written exclusively from a Eurocentric point of view.

2(D). Those who have become powerful in history did not become so because they were more intelligent than others; that is, they were genetically superior. For, if this were so, then history would not be littered with the carcasses of fallen empires and civilizations. Even in this century alone we have witnessed the collapse of three major empires: the Turkish, the British and the Russian empires. The powerful achieved power through a combination of fortuitous circumstances that had their roots long in the past and quite often elsewhere. Take the example of the mightiest empire in history, the British empire. The rise of the British empire rested on the development of a powerful navy. This navy became powerful because of superior artillery. Yet, it was not the British who invented artillery, they merely learnt to produce it cheaply (by using cast iron instead of bronze) before others. And notice that the Europeans helped to perfect a technology that they acquired from the Chinese (via probably the Muslims), who were the first to produce artillery.

2(E). Although the dictatorship of the monarchy has given way to capitalist democracy in Europe and North America, the monopoly over wealth, resources and power is still held by the elite few descendants of the old aristocracy and nobility from centuries past. Moreover, the European and Euro-American working classes of today are the direct descendants of the serf and peasant classes of the past, who themselves were descendants of slaves and peasants in the Roman empire. In other words, the inequality of the past not only continues to remain with us up to the present, but more importantly, it is historically rooted in injustice and violence (and not in the hard work, or intelligence of the Decision Making Class (DMC) as the ideology of classism falsely suggests). Consider, for example, the historical circumstances of Native Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian-Americans and those Euro-Americans (Italians, Poles, Germans, Russians, Scandinavians, Greeks, etc., etc.) who flooded the U.S. by the millions while escaping the collapse of the feudal system in Europe. All these peoples were victims, in various and often brutal ways, of the DMC.

Consequently, it is a big myth to believe that everyone in this society started equally on the same footing, and then those who were lazy became the working class and the unemployed, while those who worked hard became the DMC. Plus remember, it is in the supreme interest of the DMC to have this big lie, which makes up the cardinal tenet of the classist ideology, accepted by all (including the working class) as common sense.

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NOTE: I have coined the term Decision Making Class (or DMC) in this document in order to refer to that part of the social structure of capitalist societies that has the power to make life-governing decisions for the other elements of the social structure (e.g. the working class). There are three basic parts that make-up the DMC: the corporate capitalist class (ranging from highly wealthy business individuals to transnational monopoly conglomerate corporations); the political elite (ranging from presidents and prime ministers to influential members of the government, legislature and the judiciary) and the psuedo-intellectuals (ranging from professors in universities to influential members of the arts and the media). These three parts within the DMC do not relate to each other on an equal basis, but rather are arranged in a rough hierarchical order: at the top is the corporate capitalist class and at the bottom the psuedo-intellectuals; in between is the political elite.
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3(A). While naked power (and to some extent religious ideology) was the main mechanism by which the DMC retained power in the past; today, newer ideologies have been developed, including the ideology of classism, the ideology of racism, the ideology of sexism, etc. to do this job. These ideologies help to allow the DMC to retain power--even though we supposedly live in democratic societies today. Taking the example of racism: it is an ideology that helps to divide the working classes; as well as serve as a means of deflecting opposition to the DMC through the mechanism of scapegoating racial minorities (not to mention the fact it also permits them to directly exploit racial minorities). Consequently, although the white working classes today are fervent adherents of racist and sexist ideologies, they are not only helping to oppress others, but they are also helping to oppress themselves by neutralizing their ability to improve their quality of life through the expansion of the public wage (as well as the personal wage).

The white working class, in other words, "buys" its own oppression (inflicted on it by the DMC) in exchange for the opportunity to oppress others: specifically, racial minorities--and in the case of males, women too. Consider the following, for example: while the white working class (with support from psuedo-intellectuals) moans and complains about such minor things as welfare and affirmative action policies for racial minorities and women, they fail to see the real source of their economic difficulties: the activities of the corporate capitalist class, which include, among other highly egregious activities:

• massively draining the federal budget every year through corporate giveaways, tax cuts, and subsidies;
• exporting millions of jobs to countries with a super exploited labor force;
• continuously weakening the bargaining power of labor unions;
• relentlessly obliterating jobs through computerization and the use of robot technology;
• continuously lowering real wages by refusing to raise wages in tandem with inflation;
• obtaining government bail outs worth tens of billions of dollars (e.g. for the mismanaged savings and loan banks);
• pushing on to the tax-payers the costs of repairing massive environmental damages created by the activities of the corporate capitalist class;
• substituting workers with full-time pay/benefits with workers with non-full-time pay/benefits through the gimmick of part-time employment status.
• successfully lobbying Congress every year, through legalized political bribery, to heavily skew the budget in favor of projects that benefit almost exclusively the corporate capitalist class (such as weapons production).

3(C). Although ideologies arise to serve the needs of a specific group of people (e.g. the DMC), the actual job of creating ideologies is handled by another group of people within the DMC: the psuedo-intellectuals. (Psuedo-intellectuals are people who lack political consciousness--see below.) Members of this group are found among people such as: writers of school and college text books, novelists, poets, writers of theater plays, writers of film screenplays, film and television directors, journalists, writers of music, artists, scientists, teachers, preachers, etc. If you are an aspiring artist, then you must not become a psuedo-intellectual spreading falsehoods in the form of classist, racist, sexist ideologies.
 

4(A). My criticisms of the capitalist system as we know it today should not be taken to imply that I am entirely opposed to it. I am opposed to it only to the extent that it makes false claims about democracy. There is no relationship between democracy and capitalism. (Ask the Chinese students who were slaughtered at Tiennemen about this, or the thousands upon thousands of Latin Americans tortured to death by their military dictators, or the European Jews who were butchered in Nazi Germany, or the enslaved Africans who toiled in the U.S. South, and they will confirm this for you.) Personally, I think capitalism is wonderful--as long as we can all become capitalists! Sadly, history shows us that for the vast majority of the population--and that includes you, by the way--(that is, 90% and above) in any capitalist society, this is not in the cards; and what is more, the people who constitute the tiny minority of the population that make up the DMC have, throughout history, always been, with rare exception, the same class of people: the historically DMC and the privileged (that is those who used to, and continue to, own and control over 90% of a society's wealth and resources).

In other words, even in a capitalist democratic system such as this one, the political and economic system has been designed to operate in such a way as to ensure the protection and survival of the same class of people that make up the DMC, decade after decade, century after century. And the geniusness of the system is that it operates in this way with the full cooperation of the excluded, the working class. How is this possible? Through the ideological manipulation of the working class via three principal ideologies: classism, racism, and sexism.

4(B). A capitalist system is not possible without inequality, since you have to have a percentage of the population (the majority, called the working class) available to work for others (the minority, called the DMC). Therefore, in a capitalist democratic society such as this one, equality and social justice simply means that there would be equal class representation among the two other major social divisions: race and sex. For example: given that 51% of the population are women, 51% of the poor should be women, just as 51% of billionaires should be women. Note, however, that this is not true equality; it is a flawed equality since we still have the existence of the poor. (Remember, capitalism requires inequality.) The question, then, is who or what decides as to who should be available to become the poor?

4(C). All the economic rights we take for granted today (such as minimum wages, 8-hour working day, 40-hour work weeks, a safe work environment, paid holidays, etc., etc.), were not willingly granted by the capitalist classes; they had to be fought for by the working classes through, often, brutal political struggles. Capitalism, in other words, is not about democracy it is about profits, at any cost.

4(D). There is considerable confusion in this country as to who constitutes the working class. The most important factor that you should take into account when determining your class position is economic power. If you do not have the economic power to make such decisions as opening or closing or moving a factory, for example, then you are a member of the working class. To take another example: if you do not have the administrative power to hire, fire and promote workers then you are a member of the working class. What confuses people a great deal is the issue of income. In a capitalist society such as this one, it is quite possible for a working class person to earn more than a middle class person. In other words, income alone does not determine your class position.

If you do not know what kind of a job a person has, then a good indicator of a person's class position is his/her cultural lifestyle. Historically, the hallmark of the cultural lifestyle of the working class has been mediocrity (in contrast, the hallmark of the cultural lifestyle of the DMC has been decadence). For example, the working class, regardless of their income, do not, generally, read books (and the few who do will read stuff such as, what I call, "supermarket fiction)." When they watch television programs or films they prefer those that are escapist in content (e.g. those whose entertainment value depends largely on vicarious violence and/or sexual titillation). In other words, the working class prefer activities that involve minimal thinking. For them ignorance is bliss. That is the reason why they and their forebears, have, throughout history, always been available for ideological manipulation by the DMC (or its historical equivalent, the nobility) in order to do the bidding of the DMC on projects that are almost always in the exclusive interests of the DMC, and against the interests of the working class. Look at any period in history and look at any society and consider the following question: Who decides to go to war, and once war commences, who does the dying?