Quayle's Morals and Ours

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ACTION Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, Gerry Foley, Joni Jacobs, MayMay Gong, Malik Miah, Hayden Perry, Barbara Putnam, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $8 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3425 Army St., San Francisco, CA 94110.

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Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These 2 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1992 Besides criticizing Murphy Browa for becoming a single mother ("thereby mocking fatherhood"), some other things vice-president Dan Quayle said last month were pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the media's focus on Murphy has let Quayle get away with some pretty outrageous comments.

Quayle's speech was a classic example of how the ruling class uses morality to justify social institutions that benefit its interests.

According to Quayle, the riots in South Central Los Angeles involved a violent underclass of people living in chronic, longterm poverty who have "far too little upward mobility, because the underclass is disconnected from the rules of American society." "I think the time has come to renew our public commitment to our Judeo-Christian values," Quayle said. "For the poor, renewing these values will give people the strength to help themselves by acquiring the tools to achieve self-sufficiency, a good education, job training and property."

Translation: Judeo-Christian values are a means to an end, this corner By Joni Jacobs that end being the accumulation of property. Because the underclass is immoral (disconnected from the Judeo-Christian rules of society), they don't accumulate property.

In a nutshell, Quayle said that poor people are poor because they are immoral. The flip side of this is, of course, that rich people are rich because they are more moral than everyone else.

Of course, that can't be true. If immorality leads to poverty, the Kennedys would have been on welfare long ago. They're one of the richest families in the world, yet they've had more than their share of sexual indiscretions, divorces, mistresses, and even rape charges.

Obviously, the family values that Quayle espouses aren't meant for the rich.

In "Their Morals and Ours," Leon Trotsky explained how abstract notions of morality always have a class content; they benefit one class against another.

He wrote, "Bourgeois evolutionism halts impotently at the threshold of historical society because it does not wish to acknowledge the driving force in the evolution of social forms: the class struggle. Morality is ends as immoral."

Thus, when Quayle raises his abstract notions of family values, he's trying to stop the class struggle before it sweeps his class out of power.

But what of the institution of marriage, which Quayle lauds as a cure for the inner city blues? Do unstable families breed poverty and anarchy? If all the single mothers in L.A. found husbands and played by society's rules, would they be rewarded with property?

Well, it seems to me that the looters in L.A. accumulated property the only way they could-they took it—given the staggering unemployment rates in the African American community.

Besides, unstable families don't create poverty; poverty creates unstable families. And the policies of this capitalist government create poverty, thereby destabilizing the very families Quayle shed crocodile tears for.

This government's bi-partisan phony war on drugs has done more to destabilize African American families than any "immorality" could.

That abomination has put more Black men in prison in this country than in any other coun try of the world, including South Africa.

The welfare system also destabilizes families by refusing to pay benefits if an able-bodied male is in the household. Given the high unemployment rate, that's like kicking the men out of survival.

The capitalist system itself destabilizes families.

In "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx exposed the hypocrisy of the capitalists quite well. He wrote, "The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed corelation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of modern industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of Quayle is no different.

Quayle's speech was a rhetorical call to arms for conservative Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER, JOSEPH RYAN Business Manager: BARRY SHEPPARD Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

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expressed in editorials. destruction of property.

That's Quayle's morality-the rights of private property over the rights of everybody else.

His morality condemns thousands of people with AIDS to death because it costs too much to find a cure.

His morality caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people to die so U.S. corporations could maintain control of the world's oil supply.

His morality would rather see women die from botched, illegal abortions than allow them to control their own reproduction.

If it takes Quayle's kind of morality to get into heaven, I'd rather burn in hell.

Closing date:

June 1, 1992

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to organize mass picketing at the hospital site. Two days later, on June 1, hundreds of strikers and supporters closed down several of the main entrances to the hospital. Plans are being discussed to call a mass rally in the coming week, reaching out to the entire community and Bay Area labor movement.

Several labor officials indicated that if management's efforts to secure injunctions