Posted by Ken Carman for LTS readers
Written by by David Glenn Cox
Personal responsibility is favorite rallying cry among the right wing reactionaries. It is a euphemism to justify their own wealth and to disavow the suffering of millions of others. It is not unlike Marie Antoinette’s “let them eat cake” only it is steeped in the plantation owner’s nascent paternalism. It is the serpent which loves wealth climbing and circling the staff which hates our common humanity.
It is a corollary to the commandment of Jesus Christ who said, love one another. Theirs is the dashboard plastic Jesus preaching the gospel of profit and the mantra of personal responsibility or to love only those who are worthy of it from a genuine celluloid lighted base.
When the poor are sentenced to prison a lack of personal responsibility is to blame. When radio talk show hosts are arrested for drug possession is personal responsibility at issue? When millions of Americans lose their homes it is their lack of personal responsibility which is to blame. When school teachers are laid off from their jobs it is personal responsibility which is to blame. Those college educated teachers made poor career choices just as wounded veterans knew the possibilities when they signed up. Likewise our glorious war dead which the right wing reactionaries love to revere but will not allow their own children to participate in.
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Henry Ford was also smart enough to recognize that people wouldn’t work on an assembly line for poor wages. This was at a time when most folks had the knowledge and ability to go back home and feed themselves. Getting a man to give up autonomy required a somewhat larger carrot.
Now that industry has the vast majority of people dependent on the corporate cow, there are no obstacles to to limiting wages and lowering working conditions while demanding increased production.
I have been working on a book, fiction, that involves the auto industry. Even Ford was no friend of the worker, though far better than some corporate types and pols who are shills for the corporations these days. Odd note: Ford had plans and even started work on creating a “free” enterprise country somewhere in South America if I remember it all right. Posted something on it here before. May have been part of his later dementia.
He loathed labor unions and claimed he loved strikes, probably because he would use them to bust unions. He and GM helped kill indes by forcing their own dealers to take huge shipments of cars so they would have to undercut all the other makers in price to get rid of the stock. Drove some dealers out of the biz and ruined many a salesman: nothing to base commission on prices were so low. Sold at a loss.
But all in all: an odd fellow.
From the Amazon site for the hardcover edition of Fordlandia