In a highly developed
society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of
millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the
soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers,
technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and
communications workers, garbagemen and firemen. These people - the employed,
the somewhat privileged - are drawn into alliance with the
elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between upper and
lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system fails.
One percent of the
nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in
such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property
owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against
foreign born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and
unskilled. These groups have resented one another with such vehemence and
violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very
wealthy country.
Photograph: Jimmy Sime, 1937, Toffs and Toughs
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