The True Left approach to environmentalism is not preservationism (i.e. forbidding exploitation from occurring within a designated area, while allowing it outside) or conservationism (i.e. allowing sustainable exploitation within designated areas, with the goal of allowing exploitation to continue infinitely. Some conservationists even argue for such insanity as "sustainable growth" via conservation management!). Rather, our approach is reducing every form of exploitation, everywhere it occurs geographically. The preservationist/conservationist approach results in the outsourcing of environmental exploitation from wealthier Western nations who are able to purchase consumer items produced non-Western nations (where the extraction of raw materials and industrial production of consumer goods wreaks havoc on the environment). Only an anti-consumerist approach has any chance of reducing environmental exploitation globally.
With this anti-consumerist mindset, it becomes apparent how the concepts of labor and economics follow. Historically, many Americans have advocated anti-consumerist attitudes and ideologies such as self-sufficiency, agrarianism (i.e. an agricultural subsistence lifestyle where the economy is not complex enough to demand large quantities of luxury consumer goods), and autarky (the condition where a nation is self-sufficient and able to support the needs of its people without dependence on others. This does not require trade be stopped, merely that the amount of goods being traded do not give another nation leverage to disrupt a nation's economy).
The Back-to-the-land Movement, Counterculture intentional communities, the food sovereignty movement, and urban farming initiatives are examples of recent agrarian/subsistence initiatives. Freeganism, the degrowth movement, right-to-repair movement, tinkerer subculture, etc. are examples of recent anti-consumerist initiatives. Although it should be noted these movements and subcultures are not necessarily exclusively leftist.
To achieve national self-sufficiency and minimize exploitation of the environment will require a radical restructuring of our economy and use of labor. Although we reject Capitalism, the True Left differs from the False Left by also rejecting Communism/Marxism as a basis for restructuring our economic system. In short, Communism is not a radical replacement for Capitalism, since it does not reject consumerism (merely positing government management of the economy will provide a more efficient form of consumerism where there is less human exploitation per consumer good produced).
Going further beyond self-sufficiency, we arrive at the logical conclusions from philosophies such as Transcendentalism. The only way to stop consumption (and hence exploitation) entirely is by transcending material existence altogether. Although in the mean time, before the population reaches a high enough level of quality to achieve transcendence, we can focus on reducing, reusing, and recycling (in that order of importance). We can reduce exploitation of humans, animals, and the rest of the ecosystem by achieving a way of living where consumption is minimized. Change begins at the personal level, but will not have any meaningful impact unless our entire economic structure changes along with us.
With respect to labor and wealth, we have entered into an era where economic inequality is, by some estimates, even higher than it was during the age of the Robber Barons 100 years ago and the French Revolution in the 1780s-90s. Estimates suggest the wealthiest 1% of US citizens own nearly half of all the wealth in our nation, while the bottom 80% own less than 10%. Billionaires pay their employees a minimum wage carefully engineered to cause them to live paycheck to paycheck, while they themselves live in unimaginable excess. The situation is not much better in most other North and South American nations.
Whether it be plantation owners of the 1500s-1800s or billionaire CEOs of multinational corporations today, the disgusting reality is that individuals and families who have contributed minimal productive labor have been able to siphon away tens of thousands of times more wealth than the individuals who do provide productive labor to society. They amass fortunes from tactics such as speculation and usury (in short, making money simply by having pre-existing money--which is often inherited, allowing no chance for regular citizens to live in a level playing field).
Americans throughout the centuries have asserted that individuals willing to work hard and contribute their labor to society should be able to thrive and triumph over parasitic speculators who do not contribute productive labor to society. Unfortunately, the plutocracies which plagued the Old World have found their way to the New World as well, despite so many warnings.
"Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither, who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value; but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do? If he has any useful Art, he is welcome; and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by all that know him; but a mere Man of Quality, who, on that Account, wants to live upon the Public, by some Office or Salary, will be despis'd and disregarded. The Husbandman is in honor there, and even the Mechanic, because their Employments are useful. ...and he is respected and admired more for the Variety, Ingenuity, and Utility of his Handyworks, than for the Antiquity of his Family. ...According to these Opinions of the Americans, one of them would think himself more oblig'd to a Genealogist, who could prove for him that his Ancestors and Relations for ten Generations had been Ploughmen, Smiths, Carpenters, Turners, Weavers, Tanners, or even Shoemakers, and consequently that they were useful Members of Society; than if he could only prove that they were Gentlemen, doing nothing of Value, but living idly on the Labour of others, mere fruges consumere nati, and otherwise good for nothing, till by their Death their Estates, like the Carcass of the Negro's Gentleman-Hog, come to be cut up."
"With regard to Encouragements for Strangers from Government, they are really only what are derived from good Laws and Liberty. Strangers are welcome, because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently, so that they have no need of the Patronage of Great Men; and every one will enjoy securely the Profits of his Industry. But, if he does not bring a Fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live. One or two Years' residence gives him all the Rights of a Citizen; but the government does not at present, whatever it may have done in former times, hire People to become Settlers, by Paying their Passages, giving Land, Negroes, Utensils, Stock, or any other kind of Emolument whatsoever. In short, America is the Land of Labour"
“Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry.”
"I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country."
"...merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
"I am fully sensible of the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation. But for a year I have been attached to the army, and have not rendered any material service, while receiving a compensation for which I make no return. Yet I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward; I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claim to perform that service are imperious."
"In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. ...
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of the community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people, of all colors, are neither slaves nor masters; while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their families — wives, sons, and daughters — work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital — that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.
Again, as has already been said, there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States, a few years back in their lives, were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all — gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. ...Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all of liberty shall be lost."
"Am I mistaken in thinking that we are drawing near the time when we must decide to limit and control great wealth, corporations, and the like, or resort to a strong military government? Is this the urgent question? I read in the [Cleveland] Leader of this morning that Rev. Dr. Washington Gladden lectured in Cleveland last night on “Capital and Labor.” Many good things were said. The general drift and spirit were good. But he leaves out our railroad system. Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? Shall the interest of railroad kings be chiefly regarded, or shall the interest of the people be paramount?"
"Strikes and boycotting are akin to war, and can be justified only on grounds analogous to those which justify war, viz., intolerable injustice and oppression."
"In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. It is not yet time to debate about the remedy. The previous question is as to the danger — the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found. Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for his remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property."
"Mayor Hewitt, of New York, is complimented by the newspapers for brave words spoken on the labor question. They are all in criticism of the Labor men. Some obvious blunders of the leaders and mistakes in the methods are easily pointed out. But there is no bravery in it, and I suspect not much wisdom. The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. — How is this?"
Therefore, when a small group of men approach Congress in order to induce the committee concerned to concur in certain legislation, nobody knows the ramifications of the interests which those men represent; there seems no frank and open action of public opinion in public counsel, but every man is suspected of representing some other man and it is not known where his connections begin or end.
...I merely say that, by certain processes, now well known, and perhaps natural in themselves, there has come about an extraordinary and very sinister concentration in the control of business in the country.
...A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men...
...I have seen men, who, as they themselves expressed it, were put "out of business by Wall Street," because Wall Street found them inconvenient, didn't want their competition.
...The organization of business has become more centralized,vastly more centralized, than the political organization of the country itself. Corporations have come to cover greater areas than states; have come to live under a greater variety of laws than the citizen himself, have excelled states in their budgets and loomed bigger than whole commonwealths in their influence over the lives and fortunes of entire communities of men. Centralized business has built up vast structures of organization and equipment which overtop all states and seem to have no match or competitor except the Federal government itself."
[...]"For I understand it to be the fundamental proposition of American liberty that we do not desire special privilege, because we know special privilege will never comprehend the general welfare.
...Shall we try to get the grip of monopoly away from our lives, or shall we not? Shall we withhold our hand and say monopoly is inevitable, that all that we can do is to regulate it? Shall we say that all that we can do is to put government in competition with monopoly and try its strength against? Shall we admit that the creature of our own hands is stronger than we are? We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high finance would be greater than the power of the government. Have we come to a time when the President of the United States or any man who wishes to be the President must doff his cap in the presence of this high finance, and say, “You are our inevitable master, but we will see how we can make the best of it”?
We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavour into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world--no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Got to capture the government? They have already captured it. Are you going to invite those inside to stay inside? They don’t have to get there. They are there. Are you going to own your own premises, or are you not? That is your choice. Are you going to say: "You didn’t get into the house the right way, but you are in there, God bless you; we will stand out here in the cold and you can hand us out something once in a while?""
"I quote from the Progressive platform: "Behind the ostensible Government sits enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. . . . This country belongs to the people. Its resources, its business, its laws, its institutions, should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest." This assertion is explicit. We say directly that "the people" are absolutely to control in any way they see fit, the "business" of the country."
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson--and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States--only on a far bigger and broader basis."
"...although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to coöperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life. The world is sown with good; but unless I turn my glad thoughts into practical living and till my own field, I cannot reap a kernel of the good."
"As my college days draw to a close, I find myself looking forward with beating heart and bright anticipations to what the future holds of activity for me. My share in the work of the world may be limited; but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Nay, the desire and will to work is optimism itself.
...I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all. I used to think I should be thwarted in my desire to do something useful. But I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless. The gladdest laborer in the vineyard may be a cripple. Even should the others outstrip him, yet the vineyard ripens in the sun each year, and the full clusters weigh into his hand."
"Some people are grieved because they imagine I am in the hands of unscrupulous persons who lead me astray and persuade me to espouse unpopular causes and make me the mouthpiece of their propaganda. Now, let it be understood once and for all that I do not want their pity; I would not change places with one of them. I know what I am talking about. My sources of information are as good and reliable as anybody else's. ...I have entered the fight against preparedness and against the economic system under which we live. It is to be a fight to the finish, and I ask no quarter."
"I think the workers are the most unselfish of the children of men; they toil and live and die for other people's country, other people's sentiments, other people's liberties and other people's happiness! The workers have no liberties of their own; they are not free when they are compelled to work twelve or ten or eight hours a day. They are not free when they are ill paid for their exhausting toil. They are not free when their children must labor in mines, mills and factories or starve, and when their women may be driven by poverty to lives of shame. They are not free when they are clubbed and imprisoned because they go on strike for a raise of wages and for the elemental justice that is their right as human beings.
We are not free unless the men who frame and execute the laws represent the interests of the lives of the people and no other interest. The ballot does not make a free man out of a wage slave.
...As civilization has grown more complex the workers have become more and more enslaved, until today they are little more than parts of the machines they operate."
"But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position. ...
No, the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.
"To clear the muddle in which our education is at present, we shall obviously have to define our values. Unless we can agree on what the values in life are, we clearly can have no goal in education, and if we have no goal, the discussion of methods is merely futile."
"It is easy to say a better and richer life for all men, but what is better and what is richer?
In this respect, as in many others, the great business leaders are likely to lead us astray rather than to guide us. For example, as promulgated by them, there is danger in the present popular theory of the high-wage scale. The danger lies in the fact that the theory is advanced not for the purpose of creating a better type of man by increasing his leisure and the opportunity for making a wise use of it, but for the sole and avowed purpose of increasing his powers as a "consumer." He is, therefore, goaded by every possible method of pressure or cajolery to spend his wages in consuming goods.
...If we are to regard man merely as a producer and consumer, then the more ruthlessly efficient big business is, the better. Many of the goods consumed doubtless make man healthier, happier, and better even on the basis of a high scale of human values. But if we think of him as a human being primarily, and only incidentally as a consumer, then we have to consider what values are best or most satisfying for him as a human being. We can attempt to regulate business for him not as a consumer but as a man, with many needs and desires with which he has nothing to do as a consumer. Our point of view will shift from efficiency and statistics to human nature. We shall not create a high-wage scale in order that the receiver will consume more, but that he may, in one way or another, live more abundantly, whether by enjoying those things which are factory-produced or those which are not. The points of view are entirely different, socially and economically."
"If the American dream is to come true and to abide with us, it will, at bottom, depend on the people themselves. If we are to achieve a richer and fuller life for all, they have got to know what such an achievement implies. In a modern industrial State, an economic base is essential for all. We point with pride to our "national income," but the nation is only an aggregate of individual men and women, and when we turn from the single figure of total income to the incomes of individuals, we find a very marked injustice in its distribution. There is no reason why wealth, which is a social product, should not be more equitably controlled and distributed in the interests of society. But, unless we settle on the values of life, we are likely to attack in the wrong direction and burn the barn to find our penny in the hay.
Above and beyond the mere economic base, the need for a scale of values becomes yet greater. If we are entering on a period in which, not only in industry but in other departments of life, the mass is going to count for more and the individual less, and if each and all are to enjoy a richer and fuller life, the level of the mass has got to rise appreciably above what it is at present. It must either rise to a higher level of communal life or drag that life down to its own, in political leadership, and in the arts and letters. There is no use in accusing America of being a "Babbitt Warren." The top and bottom are spiritually and intellectually nearer together in America than in most countries, but there are plenty of Babbitts everywhere.
...The point is that if we are to have a rich and full life in which all are to share and play their parts, if the American dream is to be a reality, our communal spiritual and intellectual life must be distinctly higher than elsewhere, where classes and groups have their separate interests, habits, markets, arts, and lives. If the dream is not to prove possible of fulfillment, we might as well become stark realists, become once more class-conscious, and struggle as individuals or classes against one another. If it is to come true, those on top, financially, intellectually, or otherwise, have got to devote themselves to the "Great Society," and those who are below in the scale have got to strive to rise, not merely economically, but culturally. We cannot become a great democracy by giving ourselves up as individuals to selfishness, physical comfort, and cheap amusements. The very foundation of the American dream of a better and richer life for all is that all, in varying degrees, shall be capable of wanting to share it. It can never be wrought into a reality by cheap people or by "keeping up with the Joneses." There is nothing whatever in a fortune merely in itself or in a man merely in himself. It all depends on what is made of each.
...If we are to make the dream come true we must all work together, no longer build bigger, but to build better. There is a time for quantity and a time for quality. There is a time when quantity may become a menace and the law of diminishing returns begins to operate, but not so with quality. By working together I do not mean another organization, of which the land is as full as was Kansas of grasshoppers. I mean a genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life. In a country as big as America it is as impossible to prophesy as it is to generalize, without being tripped up, but it seems to me that there is room for hope as well as mistrust. The epic loses all its glory without the dream. The statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless I could still believe in the dream."
"There is no better omen of hope than the sane and sober criticism of those tendencies in our civilization which call for rigorous examination. In that respect we are distinctly passing out of the frontier phase. Our life calls for such examination, as does that of every nation to-day, but because we are concerned with the evil symptoms it would be absurd to forget the good. It would be as uncritical to write the history of our past in terms of...Benedict Arnold, “Billy the Kid,”...Jay Gould, P. T. Barnum, Brigham Young, Tom Lawson, and others who could be gathered together to make an extraordinary jumble of an incomprehensible national story, as it would be to write the past wholly in terms of John Winthrop, Washington, John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison, General Gorgas, and others to afford an equally untrue picture.
The nation to-day is no more all made up of Babbitts [a conformist and consumerist character from the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)] (though there are enough of them) than it is of young poets. There is a healthy stirring of the deeps, particularly among the younger men and women, who are growing determined that they are not to function solely as consumers for the benefit of business, but intend to lead sane and civilized lives."
"I take, for the most part, but little interest in the great gifts and Foundations of men who have incomes they cannot possibly spend, and investments that roll like avalanches. They merely return, not seldom unwisely, a part of their wealth to that society without which they could not have made it, and which too often they have plundered in the making. That is chiefly evidence of maladjustment in our economic system. A system that steadily increases the gulf between the ordinary man and the super-rich, that permits the resources of society to be gathered into personal fortunes that afford their owners millions of income a year, with only the chance that here and there a few may be moved to confer some of their surplus upon the public in ways chosen wholly by themselves, is assuredly a wasteful and unjust system. It is, perhaps, as inimical as anything could be to the American dream. I do not belittle the generosity or public spirit of certain men. It is the system that as yet is at fault. Nor is it likely to be voluntarily altered by those who benefit most by it. No ruling class has ever willingly abdicated. Democracy can never be saved, and would not be worth saving, unless it can save itself."
"We can look neither to the government nor the heads of the great corporations to guide us into the paths of a satisfying and humane existence as a great nation unless we, as multitudinous individuals, develop some greatness in our own individual souls. Until countless men and women have decided in their own hearts, through experience and perhaps disillusion, what is a genuinely satisfying life, a "good life" in the old Greek sense, we need look to neither political nor business leaders. Under our political system it is useless, save by the rarest of happy accidents, to expect a politician to rise higher than the source of his power. So long also as we are ourselves content with a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions, it is absurd to think that the men who can utilize that public attitude for the gaining of infinite wealth and power for themselves will abandon both to become spiritual leaders of a democracy that despises spiritual things. Just so long as wealth and power are our sole badges of success, so long will ambitious men strive to attain them."
"There are not a few signs of promise now in the sky, signs that the peoples themselves are beginning once again to crave something more than is vouch-safed to them in the toils and toys of the mass-production age. They are beginning to realize that, because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound a sane philosophy of life. We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal road."
"That dream was not the product of a solitary thinker. It evolved from the hearts and burdened souls of many millions, who have come to us from all nations. If some of them appear to us to have too great faith, we know not yet to what faith may attain, and may hearken to the words of one of them, Mary Antin, a young immigrant girl, who came to us from Russia, a child out of “the Middle Ages,” as she says, into our twentieth century. Sitting on the steps of the Boston Public Library, where the treasures of the whole of human thought had been opened to her, she wrote, “This is my latest home, and it invites me to a glad new life. The endless ages have indeed throbbed through my blood, but a new rhythm dances in my veins. My spirit is not tied to the monumental past, any more than my feet were bound to my grandfather’s house below the hill. The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big; just as the little house in Polotzk, once my home, has now become a toy of memory, as I move about at will in the wide spaces of this splendid palace, whose shadow covers acres. No! It is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me. America is the youngest of the nations, and inherits all that went before in history. And I am the youngest of America’s children, and into my hands is given all her priceless heritage, to the last white star espied through the telescope, to the last great thought of the philosopher. Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future.”"
"As we shall see later, though our riches have enabled us to do much, the dream of growing rich quickly has likewise had its bad effects ...Fortunately, it has not been the only dream which has inspired those who have come from foreign lands or who have been born among us
...Down through our history they have come here, and have struggled afterwards for greater liberty. They have sought freedom to manage their own affairs, freedom to think and freedom in religion; freedom to rise in self-respect and the respect of others; opportunity to educate themselves and their children, to take part in governing themselves. And in these later years they have come to feel the need of economic security as being more important than many of the other pried elements of the dream
They have wanted to build a country in which they could be looked upon for what they were and what they could make of themselves. They wanted a country in which the prizes of a good life would go to those who could win them and not just be given to those who happened to be born rich or titled or otherwise privileged. This is "the American Dream."
"Probably Jefferson did more than any other of our leaders to make the American Dream clear to the ordinary man. His phrases in the Declaration of Independence had rung in all men's ears and have never passed from the American consciousness. He did not believe that all men are equal in the sense that they are equally honest, wise, able, capable of higher education, or fit to govern others. He did believe that they should all be equal before the law and as far as possible have an equal chance to make the most of themselves, and he was strongly opposed to special privilege for some at the expense of others."
"The American Dream is faced by changed conditions. Ever since this early period, there have always been two forces in our national life--one force which tends to set up privileges and other barriers to the rise of the ordinary man, and another force which tends to do away with these barriers and keep the field clear for all. ...The social part of American history is chiefly made up of the story of the constant struggle of those two forces against each other for mastery. We may consider the struggle as that of the Old World view against the making of the American Dream real in our New World life.
...The newer leaders who have tried to save the basis of our Americanism have each found the problem more complicated. If some of its aspects have changed, it still remains really the same. It is to find some way of keeping certain individuals, groups, or classes from getting such a permanent hold on privileges that the gates of opportunity will close to those who otherwise might be capable of rising and being of use to the general life of the nation."
"But we need not despair. If at times foreigners have come in faster than they could be absorbed into the national life, vast numbers of them have made good citizens. It must be remembered that in the past the new comers of many races were shamefully exploited by both our business leaders and our politicians."
"The Industrial Revolution has made for greater inequality of wealth. In our early society a man who was honest and willing to work was fairly certain of a reasonable degree of comfort and security. This is no longer so. The ordinary American has come to feel helpless against the enormous power of concentrated wealth in the hands of individuals or corporations. A man of extraordinary ability might still make his way; but most men are not extraordinary and for the ordinary man who has yet wished to work and be honest the doors have seemed to be closing on the American Dream. During the depression following the crash of 1929, some corporation presidents were getting a million dollars or more a year in bonuses in addition to their salaries while millions of Americans could not find jobs.
Along with the many economic problems which we share with the rest of the world, the problem of a fairer distribution of wealth created by capital, labor, and managerial ability working together is especially an American one. It is so not only because the distribution has become more unequal in America than in almost any other country but also because we claim that greater equality of opportunity should distinguish America from other countries. The true American does not claim that all men should have equal incomes but that privilege should not be given to certain men or groups to restrict the opportunities of others to acquire a fair share in the total social product."
"To endure, a democracy must strive for the good of all. Either such a form of representative government or a pure democracy clearly demands that the people and their representatives must place the good of the whole above their individual interests, and that there must be a general unselfishness, wisdom, and honesty in relation to public affairs. In the nineteenth century, the prevailing theory was that if all individuals acted for what they thought in their own best interests the result would somehow work out for the best of all. This has proved a false theory. Unhappily, however, it is hard for most human beings to put the good of the whole against their personal gain. All modern democracies have been subject to this difficulty but America has had its peculiar temptations."
"Most Americans of ability prefer business to public life. Never before in the history of the world has there been a greater opportunity for so many people to get rich quickly than in America in the past hundred years. ...In the North, the opportunities in business were so great that most men of great ability preferred to turn politics over to those whom they might control while they devoted themselves to the more profitable and bigger "game" of business.
The professional politician arose, the "boss" and the man who could "deliver" votes at the polls or in the legislatures. ...Especially after the election of Jackson, the doctrine of "to the victor belong the spoils" became firmly embedded in our minds. A party victory meant turning out the office holders of the opposite party and rewarding the successful party workers with their jobs. Politics offered so little of a permanent career that fewer and fewer men of first-rate ability and high honest went into public life.
Power in the hands of a few tends to stress rights instead of duties. At the same time, while economic power has been concentrating in the hands of fewer great business magnates, so has the political power been concentrating in the hands of the bosses and professionals.
Yet since the beginning more governing power has been turned over from time to time to the people. The people now practically vote directly for the President, though they were never expected to do so when the Constitution was written.
......the average citizen in a nation of almost 140,000,000 people has come to be rather hopeless of his ability to change things for the better by his individual vote. Until the eighteenth century much was always heard of the duties of men and citizens, but since the time of the Declaration of Independence it has been their rights which have been stressed and little has been heard of duties. Partly in consequence of this and partly under the temptation of the chances in all branches of life to acquire wealth rapidly, one of the most marked tendencies of our later democracy has been to form groups to bring pressure on Congress to gain something for themselves without considering the rest of the people."
"Political and economic problems are closely connected. ...as the economic problems have become great and dangerous, the tendency throughout the world is to count more and more on governments in helping to solve them, whether through Socialism, Fascism, or our own type of democracy. If governments are to solve the economic problems, it would seem to be of the utmost importance what these governments are, how wise and honest are those who run them, and how they get and hold office. ...
In a democracy it comes back to what the people as a whole want. If the people want an honest government they can get it, but if all the way up from the little man to the magnate, each group prefers to get what it wants regardless of the way of getting it or the interests of others, then we shall never have honest government, never end organized crime, and never be able to solve economic problems under any form of government."
"The United States has built up a character of its own. Throughout our history there has been constant interchange of influences between the Old World and America. ...American painting, music, drama, letters, and thought no longer mainly reflect European tendencies, but are to a large extent genuinely native. The collecting of early American furniture and folk art, the rapidly growing interest in our own history, the gathering of our own folk-lore and songs, are all signs that we have become an independent people culturally as well as politically.
Science and art are universal, and no nation should, in a spirit of false nationalism, shut itself off from the best which others have to give. Like an individual, however, it must use all things to build a mind and character of its own.
The United States gains faith in the American Dream. The American Dream has been a distinctly American contribution to the world. It has been to millions of our people even more than a dream, a faith that has ever kept us restless and aspiring, as we have seen some of it come true and more appear within our reach. Although we have largely fallen short of the ideal, we have made the Dream to a great extent a living thing. We have not solved the social problems, but we have built a society in which the ordinary man has had more of a chance to rise and make the most of himself than in any other country."
"The future of our country lies in the hands of our boys and girls.
...America has long been known as "the Land of Opportunity." What that opportunity may be in the future, and whether our democracy may succeed or fail in solving the many problems pressing upon us will largely depend on the minds and characters of our citizens, the future voters who are now boys and girls in high schools studying this or other books about our past history. We should know that story, not only because it is a great story in itself but also because we cannot understand the present or plan for the future unless we know how we became what we now are."
"Last year's congressional session was the longest in peacetime history. With that foundation, let us work together to make this year's session the best in the Nation's history.
Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States; as the session which finally recognized the health needs of all our older citizens; as the session which reformed our tangled transportation and transit policies; as the session which achieved the most effective, efficient foreign aid program ever; and as the session which helped to build more homes, more schools, more libraries, and more hospitals than any single session of Congress in the history of our Republic.
...We have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligation--to prove the success of our system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question our purpose and our competence."
"Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope--some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.
It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest Nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. ...
Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the State and the local level and must be supported and directed by State and local efforts."
"Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.
But whatever the cause, our joint Federal-local effort must pursue poverty, pursue it wherever it exists--in city slums and small towns, in sharecropper shacks or in migrant worker camps, on Indian Reservations, among whites as well as Negroes, among the young as well as the aged, in the boom towns and in the depressed areas.
Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it. No single piece of legislation, however, is going to suffice.
We will launch a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of Appalachia.
We must expand our small but our successful area redevelopment program.
We must enact youth employment legislation to put jobless, aimless, hopeless youngsters to work on useful projects.
We must distribute more food to the needy through a broader food stamp program.
We must create a National Service Corps to help the economically handicapped of our own country as the Peace Corps now helps those abroad.
We must modernize our unemployment insurance and establish a high-level commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon and not a bane to humanity."
"I would like to suggest, secondly, something that I consider a very important challenge. We are challenged to achieve excellence in our various fields of endeavour. ...And this is particularly true for those of us who have been on the oppressed end of the old order. Somewhere along the way we must recognise that we do have a real dilemma. Many of our forebears have known years of oppression through slavery, or colonialism, or racial segregation and discrimination. This threw us way behind in the cultural race, so to speak. And so we live with the legacy of slavery and segregation, and how history is saying to us that we must be as productive, as resourceful and as responsible as the people who have never known such years of oppression.
This is a difficult dilemma. It means that we will have to study harder. It is just a practical fact that he who gets behind in a race must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.
...And so we must go all out to achieve excellence in our various fields of endeavour. The American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson said in a lecture back in 1871 that if a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, even if he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door. This will become increasingly true, and so we must set out to discover what God called us to do, and after we discover it we must set out to do it with all of the strength and all of the power that we can muster. We must set out to do our life's work so well that nobody can do it better. We must set out to do it so well that the living, the dead and unborn couldn't do it any better, and so to carry it to one extreme, if it falls to your luck to be a street-sweeper, sweep streets like Raphael painted pictures. Sweep streets like Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry and like Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street-sweeper, who swept his job well."
This is what Douglas Malloch meant when he said:
"If you can't be a pine on the top of a hill,
Be a scrub in the valley--but be
The best little scrub by the side of the hill;
Be a bush if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a highway, just be a trail,
If you can't be the sun, be a star
For it is not by size that you win or you fail
Be the best of whatever you are."
If we will do this we will be meeting another challenge of the New Age."
"The unemployment of Negro youth ranges up to 40 percent in some slums. The riots are almost entirely youth events-the age range of participants is from 13 to 25. What hypocrisy it is to talk of saving the new generation-to make it the generation of hope-while consigning it to unemployment and provoking it to violent alternatives.
When our nation was bankrupt in the thirties we created an agency to provide jobs to all at their existing level of skill. In our overwhelming affluence today what excuse is there for not setting up a national agency for full employment immediately?
The other program which would give reality to hope and opportunity would be the demolition of the slums to be replaced by decent housing built by residents of the ghettos.
These programs are not only eminently sound and vitally needed, but they have the support of an overwhelming majority of the nation-white and Negro. The Harris Poll on August 21, 1967, disclosed that an astounding 69 percent of the country support a works program to provide employment to all and an equally astonishing 65 percent approve a program to tear down the slums.
There is a program and there is heavy majority support for it. Yet, the administration and Congress tinker with trivial proposals to limit costs in an extravagant gamble with disaster."
