It
is officially time to retire the phrase “class warfare” from our political
vocabulary.
Back
when words actually meant things, “class warfare” was a pretty scary
proposition. Not just anybody could do it; it took a lot of anger and a
critical mass of people—always from the lower classes of society—who were
willing to, well, have warfare. The French Jacobins certainly fit this
description, along with L’ouverture's Haitian slaves and Lenin’s
Russian revolutionaries. By the time a society got around to “class warfare,”
it was pretty much going to change one way or another.
Now,
however, “class warfare” is the first thing out of a conservative’s mouth when
anybody proposes a tax increase. It comes out especially quickly when somebody
wants to raise the capital gains tax, or the maximum tax rate, or let the Bush
Tax Cuts Expire. We don’t want to have “class warfare,” after all, or Mitt
Romney might have to pay the same percentage of his income that I do, and then
he will stop creating jobs.
The
tactic of labeling tax increases “class warfare” appears to have worked well in
America, mainly because very few Americans perceive themselves as being in a
lower class—we are a nation full of people who aren’t millionaires yet. And as
long as this is the case, we certainly don’t want to go around doing class
warfare things to the people who are millionaires, lest they hold a grudge when
we move in next door.
But
it is time to abandon this ridiculous terminology. It was originally designed
to convey contempt for the poor, which was bad enough. Now, however, it simply
conveys contempt for reality.
Here
is some reality to consider:
1. As long as there is a United States government in any form, somebody is going to have to pay expenses. There will always, therefore, be taxes.
2. There is no such thing as a tax plan that affects everybody equally. Whatever we do, whatever we tax, there will be winners and losers. In most cases, the winners and losers will each occupy different places on the economic spectrum. Some kinds of taxes are better for people with low incomes, and some kinds are better for people with high incomes. No system can be better for everybody.
3. Questions about how to structure our tax system are legitimate items for public debate. Talking about who benefits and who does not benefit from a given structure is not “class warfare.” Pointing out that certain tax structures benefit the wealthy more than others is not a hostile act. It is not the same as storming the Bastille. It is, rather, an integral part of the democratic process.
Criticizing
politicians for encouraging rivalries between different social classes is not
new in America, of course. It was one of the primary accusations that
Hamiltonian Federalists routinely leveled against Jeffersonian Republicans. But
Jefferson really deserved the criticism. In his immoderate support for the
French Revolution, our third president really did advocate class warfare of the
“kill-the-aristocrats-in-their-sleep” variety. And he had plenty of good things
to say about early armed rebellions in America (Shea’s Rebellion and the
Whiskey Rebellion) as well. Jefferson had very little use for the rich, and the
rich felt exactly the same about Jefferson.
But
Jefferson was not actually a Jacobin—the writings of Alexander Hamilton
notwithstanding. But he did stand firmly on the side of a government that did not transfer the burden of supporting government from the
wealthy to the poor. How nice it would be if the self-proclaimed “Modern
Jeffersonians”—the acolytes of small government and state sovereignty—would
allow a national debate on the Jeffersonian ideals they reject without
resorting to the kind of martial terminology that Jefferson himself despised.
