THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512150686
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
In the waning light of the 20th century, American citizens find themselves angry, frustrated and afraid of everything.
We fear crime, job loss, change and other people. We huddle in our homes applauding Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. Convinced we live in the greatest country in the world - a strong, rich and free democracy - we look for scapegoats on which to blame our increasing powerlessness and the dwindling quality of our lives.
We vote, but nothing changes. We target welfare recipients, the elderly and those who resort to crime for economic purposes. We attack the Democrats, the Republicans, affirmative action, big government, the media, crack, homosexuality, abortion and the breakdown of the ``family.''
We build more prisons and pack them with people. We bring back chain gangs, step up executions, join militias, buy guns and wolf down Prozac. Nothing improves. Why?
Charles Reich has a theory.
Author of the 1970 classic, The Greening of America, and a later, self-exploratory novel, The Sorceror of Bolinas Reef, Reich has clearly spent the past 25 years deep in thought. The result, his new book, Opposing the System (Crown, 219 pp., $23) represents ``what I have to offer,'' Reich told the Boston Globe last summer. ``It'll be published even if I get hit by a truck. That's very satisfying.''
To read a book so clearly and carefully conceived, and so illuminating, is also very satisfying. Reich's theory, simply put, is that we no longer live in a democracy. Ruling us in its place is an invisible alliance of private economic government and public government - two entities that function together to form a system of control almost feudal in its absolute scope and strength.
This ``System'' has no name. And because we are blind to its existence, it thrives unchecked at our expense. In so doing, writes Reich, it has ``circumvented the Constitution, nullified democracy and overridden the free market. It usurps our powers and dominates our lives.'' It does this, he says, with an infallible weapon: absolute control over our livelihoods.
``It is the System which now controls the right of livelihood,'' writes Reich. ``In its indifference to individual human beings it treats many people as surplus, others as disposable or of little value, and everyone else as though their interests and happiness matter only to the extent that they are useful to the System. ...
``As people lose power over livelihood, they are forced to accept a loss of democracy as well. . . the daily lives of those who work for a living are spent under authority, not in democratic settings. Gradually, democracy has ceased to exist in practice, and we have become accustomed to taking orders, not giving them.''
Thus, the economy prospers and corporations make huge profits while workers are downsized into poverty. Those fortunate enough to be paid a living wage are forced to worker harder and longer at the expense of their families and children. Those with lower-tier jobs cannot survive or support their families with any kind of dignity.
Got a problem with that? The Constitution guarantees free speech and due process rights, but not on the job. Those who speak out risk dismissal and economic banishment.
Employers, Reich notes, ``have limited the free speech rights of employees, they invade employee privacy by surveillance and random drug testing, and . . In consequence, the employee's status as subordinate supersedes the citizen's status as sovereign.''
In our current wilderness of anger and struggle and blame, Reich's book is a gentle, thoughtful voice of reason. Beautifully written and flawlessly argued, it reminds us that the system we created is supposed to benefit and serve us.
Not the other way around.
We can change it. But first we must look at it in the light. MEMO: Laura LaFay is a staff writer. by CNB