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NEWS & LETTERS, March-April 2005Black/Red View
What is freedom?
by John Alan
We could use an historical perspective to illuminate not
just the lies the Bush administration is spreading about Social Security, but
also how the national debt has been a part of the struggle of African Americans
for freedom. One hundred and forty years ago (in 1865) Henry Highland
Garnet, an African-American abolitionist minister, preached to a packed chamber
of the U.S. House of Representatives. He called upon members of Congress to:
"Emancipate, enfranchise, and educate" the African-American slaves and
to call for the ratification of the 13th Amendment banning slavery. By the end
of the year, the 13th Amendment was ratified. Compared with how the original founders of this nation
fumbled with the issue of slavery, the 13th Amendment appears as a great leap
toward African Americans' freedom. However, once slavery ended, the question
"what is freedom" for the emancipated slaves was immediately raised.
Slaves were, after all, the source of the crucial labor power that the Southern
economy needed. According to John Hope Franklin: "Most Southern
whites, although willing to concede the end of slavery even to the point of
voting for the adoption of the 13th Amendment, were convinced that laws should
be speedily enacted to curb the Negroes and to insure their role as a laboring
force in the South. These laws bore a remarkable resemblance to the ante-bellum
Black Codes and can hardly be described as measures which respected rights of
Negroes as free men." The radical Republicans in Congress, in order to protect
the civil and political rights of the emancipated slaves, drafted at once
another amendment, which granted state and federal citizenship to all persons
born and naturalized in the U. S. (with the exception of Native Americans). Its
purpose was to nullify the 1850 Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court
ruled that neither slaves nor their descendants were citizens. Thus the 14th
Amendment gave a legal foundation for the federal government's active and
compelling interest in the civil rights and freedom of all citizens. ON THE 14th AMENDMENT What is in the headlines, however, is the provision of
the 14th Amendment which set the ground for a truly national economy by holding
that national debt obligations were, as Senator Wilson of Massachusetts put it,
"as sacred as the blood of our heroes poured on battlefields" (speech
to the first session of the 39th Congress in 1866). Over time that provision of
the 14th Amendment has been used primarily for the benefit of corporations, as a
secure instrument to park their resources for future investment. However, in
1866 debt obligations included not just business investments but pensions for
millions of veterans, widows and orphans who paid the price for concretizing the
idea of freedom in the Civil War. An important part of the post-Civil War debate over the
14th Amendment focused on the issue of repudiation of debt. The provision was
included and passed to totally repudiate debts incurred by the traitorous
slavocracy while holding the national debt sacred. Wily Southern sympathizers
were floating the idea of repudiating the national debt if not outright, then
through the back door by taxing federal bonds or inflating the currency by
printing money. In addition, they still wanted to tax everyone to pay off the
Confederate debt. The importance of honoring the national debt was a part
of the price of securing national liberty—or as Representative John Bingham
put it, "the Nation that won't keep faith with its defenders, living and
dead, is not fit to have defenders, and cannot have them long" (speech in
Bowerstown, Ohio, Aug. 27, 1866). I remember, when I was a child, seeing
African-American Civil War veterans who were still living, even if poorly, on
those meager pensions. ORIGIN OF SOCIAL SECURITY It is my generation that was the first to include in the
social benefits not just veterans but all citizens by establishing Social
Security in August 1935. On the heels of the Great Depression that left millions
destitute, and in fear of a revolution, the Roosevelt administration proposed a
collection of modest taxes on wages, which would allow older workers to receive
pensions. That program changed the experience of old age in America from hell
for the poor, to somewhat secure retirement for many millions, including myself. Today, far from being even near bankruptcy, as President
Bush claims, American workers have $1.6 trillion accumulated in a Social
Security trust fund, which holds U.S. government debt obligations. According to
the Congressional Budget Office this surplus is able to fund Social Security
pensions fully until at least 2052 and maybe longer. Republicans in Congress
like Senator Allard in Colorado now say that that surplus, which is pension
money taken from workers, doesn't exist. BUSH'S BIG LIE The new repudiators of the national debt, when it comes
to workers, are Bush and today's Republicans who are manufacturing a big lie
that Social Security is in crisis and care little about honoring the 14th
Amendment, although they are sworn to uphold the Constitution. The only part of
debt honoring today that interests Republicans is that held by business
interests. Bush tremendously expanded the national debt for war and through huge
tax cuts for the wealthy. What repudiators then and now have in common is the sacrifice of the welfare of the ordinary worker. Today we need to expand the idea of freedom beyond what was articulated by the 14th Amendment to not stop at civil rights and political freedom, but to work out freedom and self-determination that begins with workers in their everyday lives. |
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