Tweet
Thomas Paine, oil painting by Auguste Millière (1880)
Thomas Paine was one of the more truly revolutionary figures of the first American Revolution. For this reason he traveled to become part of the revolution in France, where he was honored as one of the few foreigners elected to the new post-monarchical National Assembly. In 1795 he proposed what was essentially the first national social security plan for France, to be paid for from taxes on wealthy landowners. He published this proposal as a pamphlet entitled Agrarian Justice.
Today in 2013, the corporate shills who rule us from D.C. are doing their darndest to gut Social Security, and reduce taxes even further on wealthy landowners! Many Americans now recognize it is past time for a second American Revolution. For this reason I’d like to share a few words from Paine’s pamphlet that could have been written yesterday. We can see a brighter future, standing on the shoulders of giants.
http://www.constitution.org/tp/agjustice.htm
“The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together….
Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.
Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence…
The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, that formerly surrounded affluence, is passing away in all countries, and leaving the possessor of property to the convulsion of accidents. When wealth and splendor, instead of fascinating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; no, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult on wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes servest to call the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate security.”
So my fellow Firedoglakers, are you with TPaine? Know justice, know peace. No Justice, No Peace!!
Solidarity,
Antipanglossian
38 Comments
A stirring call to action. Thanks for reminding us of some good common sense. Rec’d
Great diary and a most excellent title. Thank you, Antipanglossian.
Rec’d.
I appreciate your kind words, Isaiah88! And thanks to the nice person who added the cool portrait of TPaine1 to my post!
????!!?
There is a direct line from the Paine to Marx’s carbuncles.
For those not familiar with Marx’s carbuncles, here is the quote:
Count me as one who wasn’t familiar with the carbuncles, TarheelDem! Thanks for the reference
Bravo! Gotta love Thomas Paine. Of course, the Founding Fathers relegated him to insignificance as soon as they could.
They were men of property, after all.
Recc’d.
Thanks Ohio Barbarian! Indeed there is pretty strong evidence that men like Alexander Hamilton may have conspired to try and get TPaine’s neck under the guillotine– when Robespierre and the Jacobins came to power in France. [ Paine, Thomas; Rickman, Thomas Clio (1908). The Life and Writings of Thomas Paine: Containing a Biography. Vincent Parke & Co.. pp. 261–262 ]
The local Dems have an annual Thomas Paine fund-raiser/dinner, and last spring it was focused on the Walker recall, but they then proceeded to work for their glorious commander
in chiefof grief. Thanks for the post. Walker and Obama, the more effective evils, or, maybe long lost cousins?Recc’d.
They are still undead! Thank you, ThD.
No justice, no peace. No war but class war. Recommended, Antipanglossian.
Gov. Walker’s career is a wonderful (horrifying) microcosm for everything that’s wrong in today’s America. I have friends who recently fled FitzWalkerstan because they just couldn’t stomach anymore!
If you start seeing “No justice, no peace. No war but class war.” on banners at protests in the Northeast, you’ll know who to blame, lol
I’ll be watching
. Thanks for your good work.
I remember that sig and still miss the guy.
I’m also a fan (in certain contexts involving NYPD thugs in riot gear) of chanting: “No justice, no peace. No racist police!”
“…All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”
And there you have it in a nutshell. Whilst Obama continues his attempt to wreck social programs in the name of making the poor worse off and the rich amnesticized. (I know, I know – I made that up.)
Recommended!
It’s a great word! Better yet, I can almost spell it *g*.
amnesticized — Indeed. Brilliant.
I had to reread it because my first scan of it reminded me of the phrase “United States of Amnesia”
I am going to try hard and use that great new English word “amnesticized” every chance I get. “Say Juliania, did you notice how none of the criminal HSBC banksters have been prosecuted? Guess they’ve been amnesticized!
Ha! The indigestion the U.S. public feels after listening to corporate shills, all day on the MSM, could turn us into the United States of Milk of Magnesia.
well done, Antipanglossian.
Resisting the urge to blog-whore, I’ll offer that this may be the post-modern Thomas Paine.
Yes, Wendy Davis, Hessel certainly stands out. Although, as far as I know, he didn’t invent any cool new bridge designs like TPaine, lol.
Thanks!
At least one government agency is based in reality. Emphasis mine.
Nice catch twonine! They might as well stop pretending over at DOJ, DHS, etc. and issue the same caveat as a preface to the U.S. Constitution!
A moral argument for progressive taxation is that the rich should be willing to pay more because no one benefits more from the existence of government than the wealthy. Without government you cannot have civil society. Without civil society the creation of wealth is impossible. Therefore, without government the wealthy would be living in hovels rather than in mansions.
The foregoing runs completely contrary to the thinking of Republicans like Mitt “47%” Romney who think it is the poor that are the primary beneficiaries of government and the wealthy who need government the least. However, the TARP bailout makes it very clear who controls government and uses it to promote their own ends.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the 99% colonists did not give their lives in order to trade one set of plutocrats for another.
It is not only that a civil society is necessary for people to be able to accumulate wealth. It is also that the wealthy use more of society’s resources on a day to day basis.
Take a relatively small and lovely waterfront park–designed for the enjoyment of the tourists who patronize the waterfront hotels.
The city spent almost two million dollars to renovate this relatively small and lovely park. When the renovation was done, it looked to me exactly as it had looked before.
When I mentioned that, some locals told me that the renovation had been for the sole purpose of creating more space for yachts to dock (and less park space for the use of the locals).
Nearby happens to be a small, luxury hotel called the Pilot House that markets specifically to yacht owners.
Did they build that (little luxury hotel)? Maybe, in part, but I very much suspect that citizens of the city gave up almost $2 million bucks plus an amount of their precious “public” park to create a watery parking lot for the yacht owning clientele of this waterfront boutique hotel.
Charles convincingly argued in his 1913 “An Economic Interpretation of the Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” that the U.S. Constitution, which overthrew the original Articles of Confederation, was intended to protect the interests of the economic elite of the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Economic_Interpretation_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_Statesoint
Meant to say “Charles Beard” (there’s no edit button!)
This “enclosing of the commons,” for the benefit of the wealthy was one of the factors leading to the English Revolution of 1640. For a more extreme example of this sad trend, see the recent hostile takeover of Benton Harbor, MI. [ http://bluemassgroup.com/2011/04/breaking-news-elected-government-suspended-in-benton-harbor-michigan-and-other-towns/ ]
Well said!
Well, there is that, lol. (But then there’s that bit about him co-authoring the Declaration of Human Rights, so…)
I think we can easily agree that they were both pretty hot stuff!
Their argument would be that the renovation would pay for itself by increasing tourism and hotel tax revenue, but I have a feeling it will prove to be mostly a subsidy for a hotel in which some politicians and their cronies have equity, or that the hotel got a $2-million renovation for about $100,000 in campaign contributions.
The fact is that “small government” politicians are actually very much pro-big government because there is so much money to be made from it. They only oppose “big government” that serves the common good by providing things they personally don’t need the government to provide, such as universal health care, social security and a social safety net. The rubes that vote for the politicians that are the lackeys of the plutocrats are taken in by arguments against “socialized medicine” because socialism is bad (even though there are no free market principles operating in the health care sector) and by resentment (often fueled by racism) that some poor schmuck is getting something (food stamps, for example) he or she didn’t earn.
Microcosm of how corruption works in U.S. politics across the board, with the numbers involved truly astronomical. Thanks for the comment!
Noam Chomsky talks about this. He said that James Madison had to choose a path. He could either expand democracy and promote a welfare state or he could restrict democracy to protect the “opulent minority”. Of course he chose the latter. Chomsky also noted that Aristotle came to the same fork in the road as Madison. The state in which he lived could either expand democracy or restrict it. Aristotle said to expand democracy and to promote the welfare state.