Another day, another small, symbolic victory for the masses in the class war. It is from symbolic victories like these that real victories are often launched.

Five years after the measure was passed by Congress, the SEC, in a party-line vote, has finally approved a rule requiring public companies to disclose the ratio between their CEO pay and the median pay of their workers. The pay of public company CEOs is already public; this measure will put that pay into perspective.

One Republican SEC commissioner complained that this rule will be used for “naming and shaming.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page, a reliable organ of the economic ruling class, derides this rule as “a political weapon.” Clearly, they are both right. Even more clearly, the beleaguered 99% of American workers, who have been soundly losing the class war for more than three decades now, can use all the political weapons they can get. This rule is more of a slingshot than an atomic bomb, but anything helps.

Public companies must now stand up and publicly explain why it is fair that the average US CEO is paid 373 times what his average worker is paid (and some CEOS are paid much more).

Since any honest person can see that such a system is not fair, public companies must either suffer the shame and outrage of the public actually thinking about this stuff, or make their CEO pay more fair.

And that’s the point.

[Photo: Flickr]