Written by Michael Potash   

Every nation has a historiography – a narrative; part fact, part fiction – to justify a claim of exceptionalism among other peoples. Examples would include Germany’s story of Teutonic lineage – the Teutons being German tribes during the Roman Empire who were respected as ferocious if merciless warriors. Or, the Jews – a people chosen by God to receive his law and whose numbers trace to an expulsion from their God-given land by the Romans in 70 A.D. The American Exceptionalism historiography tells of a superiority that derives from a creed that places a premium on self-reliance. However; a critical look at American history points to a nation who, by way of its capitalistic pursuits, is heavily reliant on the destruction of the very characteristic it claims to value.

We in the US must be really serious about this self-reliance stuff. Congress has just voted to reduce funding for SNAP disbursements (what we used to call ‘Food Stamps’). As a result, qualified Americans, mostly children, will have to be content with less than $1.40 per person, per meal. Try it if you think that’s too generous. Republicans, referred to the cuts as the “Work Opportunity Act.” Rep. Mike Cramer (R-ND) claimed that food stamps are responsible for “a culture of permanent dependency.” This at a time when 11.3 million Americans are unemployed, 4.3 million are out of work for 27 weeks or more, and 7.9 million are working only part-time. A tone of contempt for these ‘slackers’ permeates every harsh word. Such draconian measures suggest a culture that demands that people do for themselves’ – lift themselves up by their own bootstraps as it were – one that abhors dependence. Is that what Americans really believe?

The Magna Carta, dating back to 1215, was a set of demands forced onto the king by his subjects limiting his powers in order to protect their well-being. The charter became the foundation of codified law in the English-speaking world and the basis for US law when an early America was colonized. In 1297, the complimentary “Carta de Foresta” (The Charter of the Forest) was issued which guaranteed access to the forests, fields, pastures, etc. to all free men. The Carta de Foresta recognized that royal possession of the natural world is a threat to the well-being of ordinary people who rely on it for food, fuel, grazing, timber, etc. Such areas would generically be called the ‘Commons’ – possessed by none in particular but rather by all to benefit from its bounty. The Charter specifically states that "Henceforth every freeman, in his wood or on his land that he has in the forest, may with impunity make a mill, fish-preserve, pond, marl-pit, ditch, or arable in cultivated land outside coverts, provided that no injury is thereby given to any neighbor." The Carta de Foresta, as a binding legal document, lasted until 1971. But the protections it provided to the common man were long ago at odds with an economic system unforeseen at the time of its birth: Capitalism.

David Harvey summarized Karl Marx's description of primitive accumulation: It "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatized mainstream of capital accumulation". From who is land expropriated? and, Why? In modern times, land is typically expropriated from its owners through a legal construct called ‘Eminent Domain’ – essentially depriving the owners of their property rights in the interest of furthering some capitalistic enterprise. Ironically; those owners, who seldom receive the true value of what was taken, are typically citizens with all the rights granted under US law. Now; consider a vulnerable population comprised of people with no rights whatsoever.

The indigenous population of the Americas – ‘Indians’, as we call them, were truly self-reliant. They survived by exploiting the natural world. They were hunter-gatherers who fed, clothed, and sheltered themselves without a pay stub to show for it. They presented two obstacles to their European colonizers that were addressed with sheer brutality. The first obstacle was the fact that they conducted their lives on land that was required for capitalistic expansion – They had it, we wanted it. The second is that Capitalism requires a dependent labor force – one that must serve capitalists in order to ensure its own survival. Earn a paycheck or starve. It’s why most of us get up in the morning – because those are the choices. An indigenous population that has as much use for money as a fish for a bicycle cannot be tolerated. During the 19th century, The US Army sanctioned the slaughter of the American bison as a deliberate assault on the Native American population through extermination of their main food source. Self-reliance could not be tolerated. The effect was to drive the Indian population off of their ancestral lands and onto the reservations.

Skip ahead to today: Although the number of US homeless is decreasing as the economy begins to improve, the current number is estimated at about 634,000. And while some homelessness can be attributed to issues such as mental health, domestic violence, and drug abuse, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless: “In the median state, a minimum-wage worker would have to work 89 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment using 30% of his or her income.” Talk about dependency! What should such people do to ensure the survival of themselves and their families? Perhaps they could do as the Indians and put up a teepee or pueblo near a river – living independently off the land? Sorry – that’s against the law. The truth is; none of us are independent so long as we require a paycheck from somebody else to survive. That dependence is demanded by Capitalism and is the fuel that built the antebellum South, the Empire State Building, and the local Wal-Mart.

Those who advocate for the fictitious ‘free market’ seem to want it both ways. They support a system of capitalistic dependency that pits worker against worker in a race to the bottom (Can you say ‘Hunger Games’?). Yet, as that free market ebbs and flows, millions who would like nothing more than to provide for themselves and their families find themselves unable to find ‘survivable’ employment. And, while Right-Wing diatribes accuse social safety net beneficiaries of preferring to be ‘on the dole’, virtually no one, given the option of hard work that provides life’s necessities and self-respect, would rather stay at home and try to exist on a government-provided pittance. When people go to the State for survival, it’s only because the alternatives are grimmer. To quote John Milton: "They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness."

I’ve been having a protracted email exchange with a buddy who generally sides with viewpoints expressed by the political Right. My leanings are by now obvious. I’ve been arguing that the imbalance of wealth in these United States is as immoral as it is unnecessary. My buddy counters that due to a combination of situational complexity and human nature, ‘messing’ with the status quo will likely make things worse. I argue that if the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top that has occurred over the last thirty-five years is acceptable, a countervailing redistribution from the top to the bottom should be equally acceptable. To that challenge, he posed his own, to wit: “Africa is a poor continent; should we send our wealth there to improve their situation?

I think this misses two salient points. 1. We can and do give foreign aid to countries that provide no labor to American enterprise. That’s very different from having a country in which millions of people serve the US economy but nonetheless don’t receive a living wage, and; 2. Africa was the continent from which humans emerged millions of years ago - its inhabitants living independently until, like the Americas, they fell prey to European colonization. If modern Africans are living in abject poverty it is because of the extinction of their ancestral modes of production through English, French, Spanish, German, Belgian, Portuguese, and Dutch imperialism. Apparently, the reliance of Africans on their own natural resources made them inferior. Now that they’re self-reliant – able to go out and get jobs, they can do much better and merit our respect. If only they weren’t lying around - lulled into complacency by the promise of foreign aid.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.

- Bishop Desmond Tutu