| This question <16|4> overall <2|4> AntonioGramsci: <471-2|33>. graded A |
| Question 14: Describe a situation in daily life in which the extraneous relation between wealth and wealth holder becomes an issue. |
| [3] AntonioGramsci: Wealth vs. Wealth-Holder. The most glaring example of the extraneous relation between wealth and wealth holder can be found in the man who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (I wonder if he knows this is his address). After studying his history from childhood to the present, I am astounded at how he has managed to advance from one phase of life to the next with ‘success’, while at every step along the way he has more or less failed. From his pre-adult years (which he counts as anything under 40 years old), Papa Bush constantly shielded him from anything he did not like. He was responsible for running each business he was involved with into the ground while securing to himself a tidy sum. The venture in which he made the most was in a shady deal with the major league baseball team when he duped the taxpayers of Texas, the state where he was later to become governor. Now as the head of the most powerful economic power in the world today, he rules by shielding his wealth and the wealth of his supporters (political donors who have acquired their wealth not from their own efforts but from the course history has taken) from any law that could redirect some of that wealth to the rest of the taxpayers of this country. I consider it a grave issue when the President of the United States treats wealth and wealth holder as one and the same entity. They are separate and until they are treated as such, capitalist society will continue to work to the benefit of the wealth holder and to the detriment of the non-wealth holder. |
| That is merely one example of wealth itself having absolutely no correlation with the wealth holder. There are countless others. No human being to have ever lived, living today, or to live in the future should control such vast amounts of wealth as are now controlled by the fortunate few. Very little of their wealth comes from their own efforts. There is no one alive that is so important or superior to the regular person that he should control more wealth than 10,000 'regular joe's'. Capitalist society today states that if someone has wealth it is because they have somehow ‘earned’ it while those with little or no wealth are just not as smart or are too lazy or some such nonsense. It is easy for those holders of wealth to rationalize in these terms. While in earlier societies, wealth of sheep was only possible by being a capable shepherd, in today's capitalist society all of the land on which those sheep dwell is owned by a corporation or an individual who is incapable of distinguishing a sheep from the Republican elephant or the Democratic donkey. |
| The text states “wealth has become a collection of things”. Wealth should not be confused with money. Money itself is intrinsically worth no more than the paper used to make it. Money is simply used as a medium of exchange, to help facilitate the exchange of commodities from one place to another, i.e., from one wealth holder to another. I do not think that wealth is something one ‘has’, it is rather something one ‘controls’. A given amount of wealth is not intrinsically attached to a specific individual any more than the watch I put on my wrist is intrinsically attached to me. It is erroneous to refer to that person as ‘being wealthy’. It is more accurate to state that that person ‘is currently in the control of wealth’. This is a big stumbling block society has a hard time getting past in this discussion. Capitalism has done an unprecedented job at exploiting the current form of production into something that is seen as fixed and unbreakable, as if somehow capitalism in its current form is the best, right, and only way to run an economy. I hope and pray that we are not forced to live by this propaganda-filled ideal for the next century. |
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