The 2017 Hampton Reader: Selected Essays from a Working-Class Think Tank 1641135417, 9781641135412

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The 2017 Hampton Reader

A volume in Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society Curry Malott, Brad Porfilio, Marc Pruyn, and Derek R. Ford, Series Editors

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The 2017 Hampton Reader Selected Essays From a Working-Class Think Tank

edited by

Colin Jenkins

INFORMATION AGE PUBLISHING, INC. Charlotte, NC • www.infoagepub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data   A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress   http://www.loc.gov ISBN: 978-1-64113-541-2 (Paperback) 978-1-64113-542-9 (Hardcover) 978-1-64113-543-6 (ebook)

Copyright © 2019 Information Age Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

PA RT I CRIMINAL JUSTICE 1 Doing Ferguson and Baltimore at the Intersection of Racial Oppression and Hopelessness............................................................... 3 Jason Michael Williams 2 For Abolition: Prisons and Police Are More Than Brutality, They’re State Terror............................................................................... 7 Frank Castro 3 Spider Webs for the Rich and Mighty: An Anarchist Critique of Criminal Law.................................................................................... 17 Colin Jenkins

PA RT I I EDUCATION 4 Pedagogy of the Oppressed Against Trump: Communist Pedagogy in the Emerging Mass Movement...................................... 31 Derek R. Ford 5 Academia’s Other Diversity Problem: Class in the Ivory Tower........ 37 Alfred Vitale and Allison L. Hurst 

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6 Marxism, Intersectionality, and Therapy........................................... 43 David I. Backer 7 Freedom to Dissent From Delhi to Ferguson..................................... 49 Meghna Chandra 8 The Courage of Hopelessness: Democratic Education in the Age of Empire....................................................................................... 53 E. Wayne Ross 9 Against Zombie Intellectualism: On the Chronic Impotency of Public Intellectuals.......................................................................... 71 Derek R. Ford 10 Consequences of the “Post Truth” Era............................................... 75 Brayden White 11 Democracy, Higher Education, and the Ivory Tower Critique of Neoliberalism................................................................................... 83 Jacob Ertel

PA RT I I I GENDER STUDIES 12 Gentrification Is a Feminist Issue: A Discussion on the Intersection of Class, Race, Gender, and Housing............................ 91 Cherise Charleswell 13 ”How Much Do You Cost?” A Story of Sexual Neocolonialism......... 97 Sonasha Braxton 14 Interdisciplinary Feminism: Why Building Alliances Is Critical.... 101 Cherise Charleswell

PA RT I V LABOR ISSUES 15 Capitalism, Exploitation, and Degradation..................................... 109 Nicholas Partyka 16 Deconstructing Workplace Hierarchies: On the Paradox of Contrived Leadership and Arbitrary Positions of Power................. 127 Colin Jenkins

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PA RT V POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 17 “Our Revolution” is Not a Revolutionary Movement....................... 137 Dan Arel 18 American Cartel: How America’s Two Major Parties Helped Destroy Democracy............................................................................ 141 Frank Castro 19 Notes on the Peaceful Transition of Power: The Continuity of Violence in America’s Imperial Democracy................................. 149 Bryant William Sculos 20 Power Politics and the Empire of Economics: An Introduction..... 155 Andrew Gavin Marshall 21 Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism..................................... 221 Ava Lipatti 22 The Question of Hierarchy: An Interview With Colin Jenkins....... 235 Brenan Daniels 23 The Working Class, the Election, and Trump: An Interview With Sean Posey................................................................................. 245 Brenan Daniels

PA RT V I RACE AND ETHNICITY 24 Salt in the Wounded Knee: Psychopathy in the Commemoration of Genocide.......................................................... 251 Sonasha Braxton 25 The Ancestors, Africanism, and Democracy.................................... 265 Nyonsuabeleah Kollue 26 The Black Working Class and the Early Civil Rights Movement.... 273 Devon Bowers 27 The Monarchy of Materialism: Understanding White Fragility..... 279 Sonia Calista

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PA RT V I I SOCIAL ECONOMICS 28 “Thuggin” in Baltimore City: Capitalism and the Political Economy of “Breaking Slaves”........................................................... 291 Asha Layne 29 Expropriation or Bust: On the Illegitimacy of Wealth and Why It Must Be Recuperated..................................................... 297 Colin Jenkins 30 The Bosses’ Utopia: Dystopia and the American Company Town....341 Nicholas Partyka 31 The Science of Corrosive Inequality................................................. 355 Nicholas Partyka

PA RT V I I I SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 32 Americanism Personified: Why Fascism Has Always Been an Inevitable Outcome of the American Project............................. 373 Colin Jenkins 33 Identity, Inc.: Liberal Multiculturalism and the Political Economy of Identity Politics.............................................................. 385 Jacob Ertel 34 Rethinking the Marxist Conception of Revolution......................... 397 Chris Wright

PA RT I X SOCIETY AND CULTURE 35 Eternal Fascism and the Southern Ideology.................................... 411 Jeremy Brunger 36 Gangsters for Capitalism: Why the U.S. Working Class Enlists...... 427 Colin Jenkins

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37 Institutionalizing Lone-Wolf Terrorism: How Fascist Organizations Inspire Mass Violence............................................... 441 Shane Burley

PA RT X SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION 38 Islamophobia and the Rise of Trump............................................... 455 P. Joshua Hatala 39 Religion and the Russian Revolution................................................ 459 P. Joshua Hatala 40 A Critique of David Harvey’s Conception of the People’s Republic of China............................................................................... 469 Collin Chambers

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PART I CRIMINAL JUSTICE

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CHAPTER 1

DOING FERGUSON AND BALTIMORE AT THE INTERSECTION OF RACIAL OPPRESSION AND HOPELESSNESS Jason Michael Williams

This summer (2015) I made several trips to Ferguson and Baltimore, not only as one in great solidarity with protesting efforts but as a researcher too. My several trips to both locations have impacted me tremendously as a criminologist. Though I have had perfect training in critical theory and, not to mention, my biography, which informs me (as it does anyone else), I have been more enriched by stepping into the intersectional realities of others whom are like myself (in racial heritage, etc.), but who exist in different social categories and spaces. While matriculating through these very racially oppressed and hopeless spaces, I was suddenly awakened to my privilege—to the fact that my academic credentials have allowed me to ascend my previous status, which in many ways was akin to what I am now studying

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in Ferguson and Baltimore. The combination of my experiences and the life stories of those whom I interviewed have forced me to drift away into a deeply induced state of introspection. At this moment, I was forced to recognize that I was angrier now than I was before—that me being able to achieve self-determination and actualization was not enough so long as others were still being oppressed and left hopeless. I began my research in Ferguson long before I decided to include Baltimore in my study. My first trip to Ferguson was deeply revolutionary. I was amazed at the organizing that had been going on, and the unification (albeit sometimes shaky) that I was observing. A unique caveat, however, was that the organizing was largely being done by millennials, a generation within which I belong. Seeing all of this was deeply revolutionary and impressive to me, as millennials are typically stereotyped as apolitical and unbothered by government and its goings-on. However, in this moment, they were coming together to resist state violence, an undemocratic function of the U.S. government that many of them (and their forebearers) have long had to experience. In this intersectional and educative moment, the true complexity of American injustice and inequality is captured. While mainstreamers would prefer a one-size-fits-all conception of what was going on, protestors in Ferguson and beyond were taking the narrative back and sticking to their humanity and their right to tell their story. Ferguson and the shock surrounding Brown’s death for me, and many of those whom I interviewed, highlighted many inconsistencies within the administration of American democracy and justice. While many congregated there in defense of Michael Brown, several people were also making interconnections between Brown and a myriad of others (especially Black women) killed due to state violence. These expressions helped to jump start a large-scaled movement, #BlackLivesMatter, which would later shock the moral consciousness of America and beyond. Moreover, the mainstream narrative surrounding these instances of state violence is that the victims (disproportionately of color) somehow deserved their deaths, that the protestors are just lawbreaking “troublemakers” who have no respect for authority; and therefore, are not deserving of participation in American democracy let alone humanity. Thus, the underpinnings of American democracy and justice, as shown now and throughout history, are to always other those who are excluded, and legitimate the majority’s indifference to outsiders whenever possible and at all costs. These tactics are the foundation that keeps oppressive ideologies like white supremacy alive and well. The irony in what appears to be a battle of legitimacy and power is that the protestors are, in fact, well knowledgeable of power dynamics and governance. They regularly make very sensible arguments against the status quo which often highlights countless inconsistencies in the mainstream image of America. It is these heartfelt firsthand kind of experiences living in

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the belly of the beast that compels mainstreamers to immediately move to discredit the excluded, much like past government counter-initiatives such as Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). While Ferguson and Baltimore are two very different locations, they both exist within manufactured, oppressed, and hopeless spaces at the behest of white supremacy. Genuinely stepping into these spaces as one looking to understand the residents’ experiences forces one to stand at the intersection of racial oppression and hopelessness. As I walked the streets of Baltimore and witnessed racialized abject poverty, despair, and disorganization, I had to ask myself, “Why, America?” This country can waste money on imperialism overseas, but it cannot make its inner cities and other oppressed areas whole. Through my research narrators (participants/interviewees), I experienced a lot of vicarious traumas. For example, from talking with some individuals whose family members were killed by state agents, to talking with forgotten and stigmatized single mothers, and seemingly desperate, detached, and unemployed yet able-bodied young men, the dominant theme was that hopelessness was the end result. And whether intentional or unintentional, mainstreamers, to many of my narrators, do not seem to care. Thus, the underlying assumption is that those occupying these manufactured oppressed spaces operate under subjective citizenship. Moreover, the everyday reality for those residing in these manufactured spaces of oppression and hopelessness is one of constant (a) delegitimization (physically, mentally, economically, and socially), (b) state-sanctioned surveillance via manufactured police occupation due to intentional non-preventative crime measures that ensures crime and disorganization, and (c) facing of othered apathy maxim of excluded versions of American democracy and justice. For many of my narrators, getting through life is a day by day traumatic experience of not knowing what may happen tomorrow, or if one’s child is going to make it to adulthood, or whether or not one can afford to provide for his or her family. Though my narrators are what Joe Madison would call “underestimated, undervalued, and marginalized,” many still find it necessary to believe that total inclusion is just around the corner; after all, for many of these individuals, hoping for a better future is all they have to hold on to besides engaging in the sometimes more advertised self-fulfilling prophecy and trap laid out by mainstreamers.

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CHAPTER 2

FOR ABOLITION Prisons and Police Are More Than Brutality, They’re State Terror Frank Castro

In his speech “Terrorism: Theirs and Ours,” now deceased Professor Eqbal Ahmad elucidated five types of terrorism: state, religious, mafia, pathological, and political terror of the private group (Norton, 2014). Of these types, the focus in mainstream political discourse and media has almost always centered itself on discussion of just one: political terror of the private group (organizations like al-Qaida, the Taliban, and ISIS). But as Ahmad (and Ben Norton) pointed out, this is “the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property” (Norton, 2014, para. 7). Rarely discussed is state terror, which has the highest cost in terms of human lives and property. According to Norton, Professor Ahmad estimated that the disparity of “people killed by state terror versus those killed by individual acts of terror is, conservatively, 100,000 to one” (Norton, 2014, para. 8). Undoubtedly, the professor’s observations were meant to provide insight into the material costs of global militarism, where millions, if not billions, have found themselves caught in-between or on the receiving end of state

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domination. While this may invoke imagery of American drones scalping the Middle East and North Africa for resources, its aircraft carriers patrolling international waters, or even thousands of refugees huddled into camps outside cities under siege, these are only instances of the United States’ most visible crimes. They are the sites of its most demonstrative, and yet least diffuse, violence. In the turmoil and spectacle of U.S. foreign policy, often other forms of state terror remain relatively unknown, their intersections with overarching structures of oppression obscured beneath overt cruelty. But Professor Ahmad’s analysis of state violence can be applied directly to operations within state borders as much as it can be applied internationally. Militarism outside America, paired with its domestic institutions of terror, ought to be viewed inseparably as two sides of the same coin. Here, imperial power compliments prisons and policing as institutions for producing obedient, governable subjects, both locally and globally. It does so in a variety of ways: By supplying local police departments with an ever-escalating arsenal of repression, by constantly reconstructing the context for social control, and by extending White supremacy and colonial rule into the 21st century. Combined, governments like the United States have been responsible for far more terror than any private group, possibly, in history. Our task is to understand and to decide what we are going to do about it. BIGGER THAN POLICE Though widely used, police brutality is an isolated term. In some ways, and for many people, it obscures the more encompassing descriptor of state terror. Criticizing police is not necessarily an indictment of America’s entire patriarchal, White, and capitalist power structure, but rather it pinpoints only that structure’s enforcers. It compartmentalizes state violence and creates a focal point that, perhaps, is more comfortable since it feels manageable, more capable of bringing in line with a vision of the world that is not so painful that we can move through it without feeling its weight. On the other hand, state terror drafts far more questions into our hearts, the answers to which would indict everything about the world in which we live. And like Pandora’s box, once you see you can never again claim ignorance. Police are meant to enforce the law. But law in any society reflects the values and prejudices of the empowered class, and therefore provides a measure of control to its benefactors. Crimes in Western society have ranged from atheism to murder, homosexuality to bribery, miscegenation to sedition. The intent of bourgeois law has been to uphold a specific moral code inline with a patriarchal, White, and capitalist status quo. And though criminal acts are committed by all sorts of people, the overwhelming number

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arrested, convicted, and imprisoned are poor, Black, Brown, Native, and/ or LGBTQIA. They are disproportionately imprisoned not because they are “criminal” and White, upper class people are not, but because they have been made targets of “law enforcement” and are discriminated against by police, by courts, and within prisons. We have long known that police have been, first and foremost, an institution of terror erected to control the political and economic potential of the labor class in the North and slaves in the South. In the Carolinas in particular, slave patrols modeled the evolution of its police force by providing a form of organized deterrence to potential runaways and slave revolts. Yet a critique of police alone is insufficient if it does not dislodge the entire edifice which mandates its existence. Our analysis must include a broader view of state violence which challenges its moral and ideological underpinnings, and which excavates its techniques of power from the imperial to the interpersonal. After the death of T.T. Saffore, a Black, trans woman from Chicago, organizers published a statement that captures the scope necessary to reimagine a world without police: State violence is more than just police shootings. It is the police and prison systems themselves. It is the criminalizing of sex work, of the survivors of abuse. It is a legal order which treats Black, trans, and cis women who defend their lives as insolent, in need of punishment. It is homelessness. It is the calculated impoverishing of Black communities. It is the closing of public schools and mental health clinics, the slashing of HIV prevention and other healthcare services, while militarization devours the lion’s share of public funds. It is gentrification. It is the poisoning of natural resources. It is all the structures-including the police and prison systems-which uphold and depend on violent masculinity, reinforcing the disposability of women and femmes, of trans and [gender nonconforming] communities, of the earth itself. (Hart, 2016, para. 6)

FROM BATTLEFIELD TO BATTLEFIELD War profiteering has a formulaic pattern. No conflict? No problem. The Pentagon will just create one and enrich a tiny minority (remember the Bush administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction”). The pattern continues by pointing out the devastation of war, then, like a revolving door, it uses the conflict it stirs as justification for more. This is how the United States has been embroiled in the Middle East for the better part of 50 years, how it armed and supported Osama bin Laden as a “freedom fighter” against the Soviets only to later have cultivated the forefathers of al-Qaida and ISIS. Meanwhile, weapons manufacturers have steadily supplied arsenals to the battlefield, and like any capitalist enterprise, it requires new markets-and new battlefields-to survive.

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In 1971, President Richard Nixon introduced the ultimate market to arms manufacturers. The War on Drugs provided increased federal funding to local police departments. But more importantly, in 1990 Congress enacted the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which enabled the secretary of defense to “transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the secretary determines is (a) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities, and (b) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense.” Section 1208 states further, under the “Conditions for Transfer,” that any property transferred must be “drawn from existing stocks,” meaning any purchased surplus can be offloaded to local police agencies with little to no obstruction. The consequences of which have been far reaching. Today, municipal police departments serve as a release valve for the overflow of military grade weapons produced by arms manufacturers. Amended versions of the NDAA have provided local law enforcement agencies with armored personnel vehicles, grenade launchers, high-caliber assault rifles, and an ever-escalating stockpile of combat-ready equipment. It is not just weapons either. Imperial war has imported the ideology of military combat, blurring the distinction between the rule of law and the rules of engagement, and brought it to bear upon the intimate details of everyday life. We have seen an escalation of military-styled “special ops” teams within police agencies, the dismantling of the Fourth Amendment, and heightened advocacy for complete submission to the state in the name of national security, no matter how intrusive. But no matter what manifestation state violence takes, as physician Gabor Maté accurately observed, it is never waged against inanimate objects, it is waged against people (Maté, 2013, para. 33). In the case of the War on Drugs, “we are warring on the most abused and vulnerable segments of the population,” an observation that remains true internationally as well. If there were no wars waged against the most vulnerable of the planet, none to constantly supply with arms to subjugate the poor, it stands likely that there would be drastically less weapons to be wielded against the addicted and destitute in our streets. EXPANDING STATE TERROR As New York State prisoner David Gilbert noted, there is simply no way the War on Drugs was a “well-intentioned mistake” with Prohibition having proven such an abysmal failure. Rather, he writes, it “was conceived to mobilize the U.S. public behind greatly increased police powers, used to cripple and contain the Black and Latinx communities, and exploited to expand the state’s repressive power” (The CR10 Publications Collective, 2008, p.

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35). Gilbert’s poignant observations notwithstanding, the War on Drugs did not mark the first time the U.S. government used drugs as an instrument to develop state dominance. It has been done many times before. In Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics, Professor Curtis Marez (2004) demonstrates how the United States has historically wielded the drug trade not to end it, but to channel its flow in order to enhance imperial power: The use of drug traffic to support the state is evident in a number of ways. First, the United States has supported drug traffic to finance imperial wars. U.S. participation in the cocaine trade, as a means for funding Right wing military proxies such as the Contras could be viewed as the refinement and expansion of the strategies first deployed during the Vietnam War, in which the United States promoted heroin trade in order to support anti-communist Hmong forces in Laos. Second, at the same time as it fostered drug traffic internationally, the state used the “drug problem” as an excuse for the criminalization and suppression of domestic dissent . . . And finally, the United States has indirectly promoted drug consumption as a method for controlling people of color . . . Drugs have been deployed, in other words, as weapons of counterinsurgency that aimed to dissipate or sedate oppositional energies.

The techniques of wielding the drug trade have roots closer than Vietnam or Central America. They rest in U.S. attempts to disrupt and destroy indigeneity, first with alcohol through the 1800s, but more recently through substances such as peyote. By prohibiting or restricting access to drugs, the government creates the pretext for selective enforcement and criminalization, and ultimately generates substantial leverage for social control. Marez (2004) reveals the circularity of this process, noting that “criminalization generates the very forms of criminality it is supposedly meant to prevent, which in turn provides new opportunities for further criminalization.” In other words, “the law does not work simply through the prohibition of crime” but also through a “production of criminality” placed principally upon minorities. Political prisoner Leonard Peltier once wrote, “When you grow up Indian, you don’t have to become a criminal, you already are a criminal” (Flanagin, 2015). Through the drug trade, U.S. government has effectively marketed the policing and imprisonment of minorities as the key to public safety, and therefore marked them as targets of state terror. This unearths how Native men can be incarcerated at four times the rate of White men, how Native women can be incarcerated at six times the rate of White women. It demonstrates how the flooding of crack cocaine into Black communities during the 1970s correlated with a sharp increase in minimum sentencing laws that helped put 1.7 million Black people under some form of correctional control. It reveals how native Hawaiians, who represent just 20% of the state’s population, can comprise 40% of the incarcerated.

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It also explains, in part, how America’s imprisoned population exploded to 2.4 million since the start of Nixon’s War on Drugs—an increase of 700%. But mass incarceration, like most drug policies, has little to do with safety and everything to do with the maintenance and expansion of state power. With the exception of capital punishment, the ability to revoke a person’s freedom, to condemn one to a lifetime in a cage, is the ultimate exercise of state violence. To visit Michel Foucault’s seminal text Discipline and Punish, “There can be no doubt that the exercise of the [state] in the punishment of crime is one of the essential parts of the administration of justice. [. . .] The right to punish . . . is an aspect of the [state’s] right to make war on [its] enemies: to punish belongs to ‘that absolute power of life and death.’” As we have seen, however, when “crime” is engineered around selective enforcement it is constructed to control the political and economic aspirations and the very bodies of the oppressed. Indeed, of minorities and the poor it fashions enemies of the state with the intent to exercise terror. From the origins of police, to the school-to-prison pipeline, to the vast network of U.S. incarceration, this has been the enduring legacy of the American judicial system—not safety and certainly not justice. For the legal system— which reigns over the poor, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised— has not been of their own design but was created entirely by a White, patriarchal, upper class that is incapable of expressing anything but malcontent for those who struggle against it. FOLLOW THE MONEY Answering a nationwide call to stop prison slavery, September 9, 2016 marked the beginning of the largest prison strike in U.S. history. According to Popular Resistance, an estimated “72,000 incarcerated workers in 22 states refused to provide their labor to profit the prison industrial complex” (Prison Strike, 2016, para. 1). One of the first of its kind, the nationally coordinated effort has targeted combating what many workers identify as slave-like labor conditions. The U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment abolished slavery, at least partially, but it left a loophole for people convicted of crimes. This means that prison workers can legally be paid little to nothing for their labor. Prison administrators, in response, have attempted to break the strike by shutting-off access and communication to the outside world. Private prisons have morphed into a multibillion dollar industry since the War on Drugs started. The companies reaping the largest profits from America’s prison industry are Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), operating upwards of a 170 incarceration facilities with juvenile and undocumented detention centers included. Earlier this year the Guardian reported that “CCA made revenues of $1.79bn in 2015, up

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from $1.65bn in 2014” while “Geo Group made revenues of $1.84bn, a 9% increase on the previous year” (Neate, 2016, para. 27). How the private prison industry continues to increase profits can be explained in one of two ways: increasing the incarcerated workforce (meaning jail more people) or squeezing existing laborers for more production. For many years it has pursued both. Of course, it is not just private prisons that incentivize incarceration. There is an entire supporting cast dedicated to its proliferation as well: The aerospace industry and arms manufacturers (which supply drug enforcement planes, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and surveillance technology), chemical companies (which produce the poisons often used to sedate and execute prisoners, as well as the tear gas used in prison strikes and protests), the bail bonds industry (which finance the ability or inability for a person to await trial in or out of jail), U.S. banks (which launder billions of dollars for drug cartels and finance the prison industry), and of course numerous politicians (which accept money from these industries in exchange for pushing favorable legislation). The end result is a sprawling cornucopia of state violence supported at every level of America’s social structure—and which relies principally on police for enforcement. After all, we should never forget that every single person convicted for a violent or a nonviolent crime, every single person wrongly convicted, every single person corralled for simply being different or standing up for justice, every single person unable to navigate poverty, homelessness, or addiction, who is placed in a cage to work in servitude or slavery, was put there by a cop. It follows that if ever we are to mobilize to dismantle mass incarceration, it must also be a movement to extract the final breath from policing itself, and to abolish for all time every manifestation of state terror. TOWARDS ABOLITION In the struggle for freedom, an abolitionist framework is indispensable. It enables us to identify the correlations between the imperial, the police, and the prison, and to say the name of its intersections aloud. Doing so illuminates how separate deployments of state terror scaffold each other; how, like a relay race that never stops, each cannot begin or end with itself but must always recruit and pass on power. It also teaches us how to better build and sustain the communities necessary to fight back, and how to generate movements that do not create silos of resistance but identify fulcrums to dismantle oppression for the benefit of all. As Dan Berger (2015) wrote, abolition “pushes us to think and act better than the systems that confine, cage, and kill,” and it “names a past as well as a future: it reminds us . . . that structures of violence have a beginning and can therefore have an ending” (para. 1).

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Because the edifice of state violence rests atop a myriad of oppressions, accepting that any effort to uproot the entanglements of its power centers on confronting dangerously racist, gendered, and classist hierarchies is the first step towards abolition. It recognizes that battles will be waged both within ourselves, as we attempt to deconstruct everything we once believed about policing and incarceration, and in the world around us as we confront state institutions with our minds, our energy, and our bodies. And though our task is enormous, we cannot let the daunting reality of our ambition swallow us. If ever we feel lonely, it is not a testament to our inability to impact the world, it is a testament to the need for connection. The place where we realize our fullest capacity to generate change is in communion with each other. In 1974, Ursula K. Le Guin reminded us that collective strength is the only path towards freedom: “The individual cannot bargain with the State,” she said. “The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.” When we understand the magnitude of state terror, we must remember that we are not meant to suddenly feel inspired to challenge it alone. There is an unavoidable degree of loneliness and helplessness embedded within its realization. And refusing to confront these feelings is part of how the system functions to subvert resistance, by substituting isolation and alienation for opportunities to collectively learn, live, and fight for freedom in ways we may have never dreamed possible. But we must always reserve room in our hearts to build bridges—too many depend on us for it. In the words of prisoners themselves: We need support from people on the outside. A prison is an easy-lockdown environment, a place of control and confinement where repression is built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they come down on us, and the only protection we have is solidarity from the outside. Mass incarceration, whether in private or state-run facilities is a scheme where slave catchers patrol our neighborhoods and monitor our lives. It requires mass criminalization. Our tribulations on the inside are a tool used to control our families and communities on the outside. Certain Americans live every day under not only the threat of extra-judicial execution . . . but also under the threat of capture, of being thrown into these plantations, shackled and forced to work.

Abolition, then, is the only answer to a system whose currency is terror. REFERENCES Berger, D. (2015, July 15). Abolition is a call to throw ourselves full force into the struggle. Retrieved from https://abolitionjournal.org/abolition-is-a-call-to-throw -ourselves-full-force-into-the-struggle-dan-berger-on-abolition/

For Abolition    15 Flanagin, J. (2015, April 27). Native Americans are the unseen victims of a broken U.S Justice system. Retrieved from https://qz.com/392342/ native-americans-are-the-unseen-victims-of-a-broken-us-justice-system/ Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Random House. Hart, B. (2016, October 5). #Turnup4TT: A public statement from the organizers. Retrieved from https://radfag.com/2016/10/05/turnup4tt-a-public-statement/ Le Guin, U. (1974). The dispossessed: An ambiguous utopia background. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Marez, C. (2004). Drug wars: The political economy of narcotics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Maté, Gabor. (2013, May 28). Capitalism makes us crazy: Gabor Maté on illness & addiction [Transcript]. Retrieved https://www.radioproject.org/2013/05/ capitalism-makes-us-crazy-gabor-mate-on-illness-addiction/ Neate, R. (2016, June 16). Welcome to jail inc.: How private companies make money off US prisons. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/ jun/16/us-prisons-jail-private-healthcare-companies-profit Norton, B. (2014, October 8). The Jewish state in Israel and the levant. Retrieved from http://socialistworker.org/2014/10/08/jewish-state-in-israel-and-the-levant Prison Strike Having Major Financial Impact on California. (2016, October 12). Retrieved from https://popularresistance.org/prison-strike-having -major-financial-impact-on-california/ The CR10 Publications Collective. (2008). Abolition now! Ten years of strategy and struggle against the prison industrial complex. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

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CHAPTER 3

SPIDER WEBS FOR THE RICH AND MIGHTY An Anarchist Critique of Criminal Law Colin Jenkins

As human societies have developed over the course of history, so too have corollary systems of order. In the most basic sense, the often informal development of customs, norms, and ethics become inevitable in spaces where groups of human beings come together to interact with another. However, as the scales of human interaction have grown—from tribes to communities to nation-states—these informal codes of conduct have become formal systems of rule and order which have taken on physical identities in the form of states and governments. In his influential essay, “Politics as Vocation,” Max Weber provided one of the most important analyses regarding the sociological development of the state. Weber introduced the concept of rational-legal authority in his attempt to explain the rise and justification of the modern bureaucratic nation-state. As a self-described “bourgeois theorist,” Weber provided a strong breakdown of the modern state, tended towards justifying its purpose, and recognized the inherently forceful nature of its existence: The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 17–28 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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18    C. JENKINS “Every state is founded on force,” said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of “state” would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as “anarchy,” in the specific sense of this word.1

Perhaps most crucial was Weber’s notion of a “monopoly of violence” for which he viewed as a legitimate power of the state: Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that “territory” is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the “right” to use violence.2

Weber’s justification is predicated upon two important assumptions: (a) that a distinction between authority and coercion exists, and that authority becomes legitimate when “individuals accept and act upon orders that are given to them because they believe that to do so is right”;3 and (b) that rational-legal authority itself is legitimized, via the political process, by the people under its rule. Despite the questionable nature of these assumptions, Weber’s hierarchical structure has come to dominate our world. The formation of criminal law, while not just a modern phenomenon, has provided further justification for rational-legal authority. And the formidable development of modern criminal justice systems equipped with the means to carry out this “monopoly of violence” on a daily basis has assured the maintenance of Weber’s state. These legitimized systems of violence, authority, and coercion have reached a point where they are accepted by most without hesitation: a common acceptance that begs to be questioned. LAW AS MORALITY Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them. —Assata Shakur

There has been an ongoing, centuries-long societal experiment to equate written laws with morality. The historical development of human societies have made laws necessary for reasons that will be discussed below, and the need to house these laws in justifications centered within authority and domination (also discussed below) have relied on an institutional “rebranding” of these hierarchical relations. One of the main tools in this

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rebranding process has been the inclusion of morality-based conditioning, which exists everywhere from parenting to public education. This is not a new phenomenon, but yet persists as a main tool in shaping customs and norms which are amenable with living under systems of domination. In his 1886 classic, Law and Authority, Peter Kropotkin touches on this deep conditioning process used to create an obedient population: We are so perverted by an education which from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence under the ferule of a law, which regulates every event in life—our birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship—that, if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all habit of thinking for ourselves. Indeed, for some thousands of years, those who govern us have done nothing but ring the changes upon “Respect for law, obedience to authority.” This is the moral atmosphere in which parents bring up their children, and school only serves to confirm the impression. Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels.4

This cultural conditioning seeks to establish widespread consent, or at least the appearance of such, through the construction of an artificial system of morality. As opposed to ethics and morals which are innate attributes of the human race—live and let live, treat others as you would expect to be treated, cooperate and coexist, and so on—these artificial systems of morality have been designed to make “rights” synonymous with things like authority, order and obedience, and “wrongs” as being synonymous with any and all dissent from this established order. Governments play a major role in this cultural process, and modern systems of liberal democracy aid in this construction. In The Individual, Society, and the State, Emma Goldman sheds light on this phenomenon: Political government and the State were a much later development, growing out of the desire of the stronger to take advantage of the weaker, of the few against the many. The State, ecclesiastical and secular, served to give an appearance of legality and right to the wrong done by the few to the many. That appearance of right was necessary the easier to rule the people, because no government can exist without the consent of the people, consent open, tacit or assumed. Constitutionalism and democracy are the modern forms of that alleged consent; the consent being inoculated and indoctrinated by what is called “education,” at home, in the church, and in every other phase of life. That consent is the belief in authority, in the necessity for it. At its base is the doctrine that man is evil, vicious, and too incompetent to know what is good

20    C. JENKINS for him. On this all government and oppression is built. God and the State exist and are supported by this dogma.5

This artificial notion of morality, and the modern creation of “manufactured consent” via systems of “constitutionalism and democracy,” is what Howard Zinn aptly referred to as The Conspiracy of Law. In transitioning the deliverance of authority from the “rule of men” to the “rule of law,” according to Zinn, the power brokers have not only created their own sets of “natural law,” but have also made such laws nearly impossible to question: The modern era, presumably replacing the arbitrary rule of men with the objective, impartial rule of law, has not brought any fundamental change in the facts of unequal wealth and unequal power. What was done before—exploiting men and women, sending the young to war, putting troublesome people into dungeons—is still done, except that this no longer appears as the arbitrary action of the feudal lord or the king; it is now invested with the authority of neutral, impersonal law. Indeed, because of this impersonality, it becomes possible to do far more injustice to people, with a stronger sanction of legitimacy. The rule of law can be more onerous than the divine right of the king, because it was known that the king was really a man, and even in the Middle Ages it was accepted that the king could not violate natural law. (See Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, Notes 127–134.) A code of law is more easily defied than a flesh and blood monarchy; in the modern era, the positive law takes on the character of natural law.”6

The repackaging of authority into morality (written law as natural law), and the arbitrary nature of this new authority, also make it nearly impossible to target: Under the rule of men, the enemy was identifiable, and so peasant rebellions hunted out the lords, slaves killed plantation owners, and radicals assassinated monarchs. In the era of the corporation and the representative assembly, the enemy is elusive and unidentifiable; even to radicals the attempted assassination of the industrialist Frick by the anarchist Berkman seemed an aberration. In The Grapes of Wrath, the dispossessed farmer aims his gun confusedly at the tractor driver who is knocking down his house, learns that behind him is the banker in Oklahoma City and behind him a banker in New York, and cries out, “Then who can I shoot?”7

LAW AS AUTHORITY As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. —Noam Chomsky

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The need for written laws is something that is rarely, if ever, questioned. It is a common belief that such laws are necessary, and that “the need for law lies in the history of the human race.”8 In popular college textbooks, like Essentials of Criminal Law, this common acceptance is housed in a rationality that can be summarized by the following: (a) People are individuals, and their desires, needs, and wants differ from those of others; (b) These differences cause conflict; (c) When people began to live in groups, communities, and societies, laws became necessary; and (d) Law became necessary as a means of social control, either to alleviate conflicts or to settle them in a manner most advantageous to the group.9 When viewed in this manner, laws are presented as a mechanism designed to serve the community for which they are applied. The assumptions for applying them under this rationale are numerous: For example, we must assume that all individuals within a given community/society are allowed equal access to basic necessities; we must assume that all individuals are treated equally under the law; and we must assume that material conditions (or the base economic system for which society rests) allow for free association among all members. Without this foundation, as summarized by these basic assumptions, the justification widely used in support of written laws becomes null and void. Therefore, when applied to societies that are shaped by flawed economic systems—systems that disenfranchise members and fail to allow many to fulfill basic needs—laws no longer serve the community, but rather serve the most powerful members of that community. In this instance, laws are transformed from statutes designed to enhance the common good to statutes designed to control the disenfranchised members. When this transformation occurs, laws become weapons of authority, essentially losing their legitimacy within a given community or society. Kropotkin describes this transformation which is based in the need to establish the domination of the minority over the majority: The desire to dominate others and impose one’s own will upon them; the desire to seize upon the products of the labour of a neighbouring tribe; the desire to surround oneself with comforts without producing anything, whilst slaves provide their master with the means of procuring every sort of pleasure and luxury—these selfish, personal desires give rise to another current of habits and customs. The priest and the warrior, the charlatan who makes a profit out of superstition, and after freeing himself from the fear of the devil, cultivates it in others; and the bully, who procures the invasion and pillage of his neighbours, that he may return laden with booty, and followed by slaves; these two, hand in hand, have succeeded in imposing upon primitive society customs advantageous to both of them, but tending to perpetuate their domination of the masses. Profiting by the indolence, the fears, the inertia of the crowd, and thanks to the continual repetition of the same acts, they have permanently established customs which have become a solid basis for their own domination.10

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The establishment of authority and domination becomes necessary when a minority section of society decides that it is deserving of owning wealth and land far beyond the purpose of its own use. This development naturally leads to the disenfranchisement of a multitude of members whose size grows in a perpetual manner alongside the constant pursuit of more wealth and land by the elite. As this development continues, laws are reduced to serving this dominant minority. Kropotkin explains: But as society became more and more divided into two hostile classes, one seeking to establish its domination, the other struggling to escape, the strife began. Now the conqueror was in a hurry to secure the results of his actions in a permanent form, he tried to place them beyond question, to make them holy and venerable by every means in his power. Law made its appearance under the sanction of the priest, and the warrior’s club was placed at its service. Its office was to render immutable such customs as were to the advantage of the dominant minority.11

As time goes on, these laws become customs that are widely accepted even by the majority population for which they are designed to control, and to prevent from accessing basic human needs, through violence and coercion. This gradual process has led to the modern justifications given above, all of which ignore the historical process of minority rule via the disenfranchisement of the majority, to the point where the legitimacy of such laws are no longer questioned. As Kropotkin concludes: Such was law; and it has maintained its twofold character to this day. Its origin is the desire of the ruling class to give permanence to customs imposed by themselves for their own advantage. Its character is the skilful commingling of customs useful to society, customs which have no need of law to insure respect, with other customs useful only to rulers, injurious to the mass of the people, and maintained only by the fear of punishment. Like individual capital, which was born of fraud and violence, and developed under the auspices of authority, law has no title to the respect of men. Born of violence and superstition, and established in the interests of consumer, priest and rich exploiter, it must be utterly destroyed on the day when the people desire to break their chains.12

CRIMINAL LAW IN A CAPITALIST SYSTEM Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread. —Emma Goldman

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As with all societies, written laws become the primary mean of maintaining the status quo. The most fundamental purpose of such laws is to create and maintain a minimal degree of stability or at the very least a semblance of stability within certain areas of society. In the modern United States, the status quo has been shaped by a base economic system of capitalism that is characterized by multigenerational poverty, extreme inequality, and high concentrations of wealth and power. Therefore, when applied to this base, criminal laws are essentially statutes that are developed by legislators who either come from or are tied to those concentrations of wealth and power, and are placed upon the at-large population which has already been disenfranchised by the economic system. Because of this, a critical theory of criminal law becomes vital in deconstructing the nature and purpose of such laws. In his essay “Crime Control in Capitalist Society,” Richard Quinney provides us with important assertions that must be understood before moving forward with this breakdown: • American society is based on an advanced capitalist economy. • The State is organized to serve the interests of the dominant economic class, the capitalist ruling class. • Criminal law is an instrument of the State and ruling class to maintain and perpetuate the existing social and economic order. • Crime control in capitalist society is accomplished through a variety of institutions and agencies established and administered by a government elite, representing ruling-class interests, for the purpose of establishing domestic order. • The contradictions of advanced capitalism—the disjunction between existence and essence require that the subordinate classes remain oppressed by whatever means necessary, especially through the coercion and violence of the legal system. • Only with the collapse of capitalist society and the creation of a new society, based on socialist principles, will there be a solution of the crime problem.13 The process of transforming laws into weapons of authority to be wielded by the wealth and landowning minority over the disenfranchised majority, as touched on by Kropotkin, has reached its current stage via the promulgation of this “advanced capitalist economy” in the United States. This system, as an economic base, has allowed for the historical continuation of separating the masses from access to basic needs, while also fusing the lawmaking apparatus (the government) nearly completely with the wealthowning elite (the former private sector). When examining criminal justice systems found under capitalism, Marxist gatekeeper theory is invaluable. The most basic application of this Marxian

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analysis proves helpful in illustrating the positions of those who commit crimes versus those who create and enforce laws. Basic tenets of this theory include: • Deviance (as determined by the artificial morality described above) is partly the product of unequal power relations and inequality in general. • Crime, as established by the ruling class (with their own interests in mind) is an understandable response to the situation of poverty and mass disenfranchisement. • Crime is often the result of offering society demeaning work with little sense of creativity. • The base (economic system) disenfranchises the working-class majority; the superstructure (government and law creation) serves the ruling-class minority. • The capitalist class (minority) co-opts the capitalist government to create laws that seek to maintain its power through coercing and controlling the working-class majority. • “The heart of the capitalist system is the protection of private property, which is, by definition, the cornerstone upon which capitalistic economies function.”14 Thus, written law reflects this fundamental value of property and profit over people. In the United States, the dominant ideology that espouses “individualism” and “exceptionalism” has been successful in merging manufactured morality and consent to the economic “virtues” of capitalism and patriotism, which are also manufactured in the same ways. Goldman explains the cultural effects of this process: This “rugged individualism” has inevitably resulted in the greatest modern slavery, the crassest class distinctions, driving millions to the breadline. “Rugged individualism” has meant all the “individualism” for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking “supermen.” America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as “unAmerican” and evil in the name of that same individualism.15

This merger serves to not only fortify the justification for written laws as tools of authority and domination over the majority, but also the unquestioned consent of those (in this case, the alienated working-class majority) being controlled and oppressed by such laws. In direct contrast to a common belief in the need for law to address “natural” conflict in human societies, it is crucial to recognize the manufactured

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conflicts created by capitalism. The justification presented in the dominant paradigm possesses two fundamental flaws in this regard: the first of which lies in the view that conflict is in fact “natural” within all human societies; and the second being in the exclusion of material conditions as a factor in creating conflict. In order to be legitimized, this justification must rely on basic assumptions related to material conditions, most specifically the presence of an economic system which allows for equal and broad access to basic necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and so on. Much like the false assumptions in Weber’s analysis of the modern state, any premise that fails to consider the manufactured conflict stemming from the material conditions of a society’s mode of production finds itself lacking legitimacy and justification. In reality, capitalism creates widespread conflict by alienating the majority. Therefore, in such a system, “crime” (especially regarding that which is routinely enforced) represents the actions of people who have become dehumanized, dispossessed, stripped of human creativity, and left without the means to fulfill basic human needs. CONCLUSION The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. —Audre Lorde

If human beings are in fact individuals with “different desires, needs, and wants,” as described even by the dominant criminological paradigm, then we must question the existence of hierarchical societies based in authority and domination. Such societal arrangements persist and have been accepted as “common sense” despite the inherent contradictions they impose. Within these arrangements, written laws have been identified as “social controls” needed to “alleviate natural conflict” and settle such conflict “in a manner most advantageous to the group (society/community).” However, when applied to societies that have been shaped by flawed economic systems (like capitalism) and historical processes that have led to wealth and land-owning minorities “governing” disenfranchised majorities, laws have taken on a different identity, mainly one that serves as a weapon of unquestioned authority. Authority, in itself, is not a wholly illegitimate concept. Authority as a measure of competence or expertise may be extremely useful when serving society. However, when it becomes a means of social control, of domination by one over another, its legitimacy should come into question. Mikhail Bakunin perhaps explained this best in his treatise, “What is Authority”:

26    C. JENKINS Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the boot-maker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the boot-maker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.16

Because they are constructed for the purpose of controlling the disenfranchised masses of people, modern laws represent authority of the illegitimate kind. Speaking of such laws, the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously proclaimed: I recognize none of them: I protest against every order which it may please some power, from pretended necessity, to impose upon my free will. Laws! We know what they are, and what they are worth! Spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the weak and poor, fishing nets in the hands of the government.17

In the modern United States, Proudhon’s vision plays out every day. Under capitalism, laws are created by millionaire legislators who are financially supported by billionaire interests, enforced by hired guns of the working class (police), and ruled on by wealthy elites in black robes who are largely detached from their subjects. As capitalism naturally leads to greater concentrations of wealth and power, along with greater numbers of dispossessed citizens, crime and punishment becomes solely directed at the most marginalized of these masses. In the United States, this includes the poor, the working poor, and people of color. This correlation has never been more evident than in the neoliberal era (roughly 1980 until now), which is widely recognized as an intensification of the capitalist system. Since 1980, the total adult correctional population (those in prison/jail and on probation/parole) has increased from two million to seven million.18 During this time, the prison population itself has increased 470% (from 320,000 in 1980) to 1.5 million in 2013.19 Those scooped up by ruling class “fishing nets” and placed in “steel chains” are disproportionately poor and Black.20

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This scenario that has developed over the course of centuries has delegitimized any attempt to establish state authority, coercion, and its “monopoly of violence” via the criminal justice system. As long as capitalism is used to shape the social relations that are to be monitored and controlled, the state remains as nothing more than a tool to be wielded by the wealth and landowning minority. And as long as the state remains a coercive extension of these social relations, the notion of criminal law will remain nothing more than a camouflaged totalitarianism designed to keep its boot on the neck of the disenfranchised majority. NOTES 1. Weber, Max (1919), “Politics as a Vocation,” p. 1. Accessed online at http:// polisci2.ucsd.edu/foundation/documents/03Weber1918.pdf 2. Ibid, pp. 1–2. 3. Best, Shaun (2002), Introduction to Politics and Society (SAGE Publications), p. 24. Accessed online at https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/ 9547_017533ch2.pdf 4. Kropotkin, Peter (1886), “Law and Authority,” para. 3. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/ library/petr-kropotkin-law-and-authority 5. Goldman, Emma (1940), “The Individual, Society and the State,” para. 16– 17. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http:// theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-the-individual-society-andthe-state 6. Zinn, Howard (1971), “The Conspiracy of Law,” p. 273. Appeared in The Rule of Law, edited by Robert Paul Wolff (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster). 7. Ibid, p. 277. 8. Chamelin, N. and Thomas, A. (2009) Essentials of Criminal Law, 11th edition (Prentice Hall) 9. Ibid. 10. Kropotkin (1886), section 2, para. 1. 11. Ibid, section 2, para. 8. 12. Ibid, section 2, para. 10. 13. Quinney, Richard (1975), “Crime Control in Capitalist Society: A Critical Philosophy of Legal Order,” p. 16. Appeared in Critical Criminology, edited by Ian Taylor (Routledge). 14. Covington, Jeanette (2000), Marxist Perspective on Crime, p. 2. Accessed on November 29, 2015 at http://www.sociology.org.uk/ 15. Goldman (1940), para. 14. 16. Bakunin, Mikhail (1871), What is Authority?; p. 14. Accessed online at the Anarchist Library on November 12, 2015 @ http://theanarchistlibrary.org/ library/michail-bakunin-what-is-authority 17. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (1851), General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, p. 133. Republished by Courier (2013).

28    C. JENKINS 18. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), U.S. Office of Justice Programs (2014). Accessed online at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf 19. The Sentencing Project: Research for Advocacy and Reform (2014). Accessed online at http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=107 20. BJS (2014).

PART II EDUCATION

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CHAPTER 4

PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED AGAINST TRUMP Communist Pedagogy in the Emerging Mass Movement Derek R. Ford

Education is a central component of revolutionary activity, especially during nonrevolutionary times, and especially for cadre in a Leninist Party. In fact, Lenin’s (1902/1987) seminal work on organization and leadership— What Is to be Done?—touches on many educational issues, including consciousness and theory. As a polemic against economism—which held that the working class develops its own revolutionary consciousness spontaneously as a result of daily struggles with the bosses—Lenin (1902/1987) argued that spontaneity was only consciousness “in an embryonic form,” and that something more was needed. Spontaneity is necessary but is ultimately limited to “what is ‘at the present time’” (p. 67). In other words, spontaneity by itself isn’t able to look beyond isolated daily struggles and forward to a new society. Lenin called the spontaneously generated mindset “trade union consciousness.”

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 31–35 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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This analysis is what led Lenin (1902/1987) to state that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice” (p. 69). By this he meant that without a theory capable of connecting individual struggles and issues to the totality of the social and economic system, struggles would be limited to reforms within the existing system. Revolutionary theory is developed not by intellectuals holed up in university classrooms but through the communist party, which is composed of workers who become “socialist theoreticians” (p. 82). In the party, he wrote, “all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals . . . must be obliterated” (p. 137). Lenin (1902/1987) believed that workers were capable of more than trade union consciousness. He actually derided those who insisted on appealing to the “average worker:” “You gentlemen, who are so much concerned about the ‘average worker,’ as a matter of fact, rather insult the workers by your desire to talk down to them when discussing labor politics and labor organization” (p. 153). He wrote that organizers had actually held workers “back by our silly speeches about what ‘can be understood’ by the masses of the workers” (p. 156). PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED The question of pedagogy comes into the picture here. Pedagogy names the process by which we enter into educational engagements with others. It’s a question that communists in the United States have to take seriously, especially at this moment, when a new truly mass movement is brewing. Of course, it is important not to dismiss those who are either new to the struggle or who are limited by liberalism or trade union consciousness, but we need to think beyond our attitude and toward our pedagogy. Paulo Freire’s (1970/2011) book Pedagogy of the Oppressed can be helpful in this regard. Freire was a revolutionary Brazilian educator who was jailed and exiled from his homeland in 1964 for his activities as a teacher. Like any good revolutionary book, it is a reflection of actual experience. In Freire’s case, the book is a reflection of his work in literacy campaigns, where he taught poor peasants how to read and write and how to, as he put it, “name the world” (p. 167). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1970/2011) has been targeted by the Right wing in the United States (it is currently banned from public schools in Arizona). It addresses the educational components of revolutionary movements and, as such, it is littered with references to Marx, Lenin, Guevara, and others. In fact, Freire uses Castro and the Cuban revolution as an example of the pedagogy he advocates. Specifically, the book is concerned with how the revolutionary leadership pushes the struggle forward, or how it teaches the mass movement.

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Interestingly, the book is mostly referenced in academia, and its tight connections to revolutionary leadership are rarely, if ever, mentioned. THE PROBLEM: BANKING PEDAGOGY The pedagogy of the oppressed has two stages. During the first stage, “the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and through praxis commit themselves to its transformation” (Freire, 1970/2011, p. 54) During the second stage, which is after the world of oppression has been transformed, “this pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed and becomes a pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation” (Freire, 1970/2011, p. 54). The first stage of Freire’s (1970/2011) pedagogy addresses how the oppressed view and relate to the world. It begins by acknowledging that the oppressed possess both an oppressed consciousness and an oppressor consciousness. The oppressor consciousness is the enemy that needs to be liquidated: The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time-everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal. (p. 58)

This is what capitalism does: It takes everything and makes it into private property, including our ability to labor. This has a profound impact on the world, even instilling the oppressor consciousness in the oppressed. Thus, we have to distinguish an oppressor consciousness from the oppressed person, and we have to transform that consciousness. The way that we engage in that transformation is absolutely crucial, and this is where the question of pedagogy comes into play. The traditional form of pedagogy Freire (1970/2011) calls “banking pedagogy.” In banking pedagogy, the teacher is the one who possesses knowledge and the students are empty containers in which the teacher must deposit knowledge. The more the teacher fills the receptacle, the better teacher she is. The content remains abstract to the student, disconnected from the world, and external to the student’s life. Banking pedagogy—which is what most of us in the Untied States have experienced in public schools—assumes that the oppressed are ignorant and naïve. Further, it treats the oppressed as objects in the same way that capitalism does. Importantly, banking pedagogy can happen regardless of the political nature of the content. Even communists and other revolutionaries can engage in banking pedagogy and objectify the people. This is what happens when

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alleged revolutionary groups talk down to the people, telling them they must read their newspapers for the correct analysis, deriding them when they don’t chant their slogans or follow their directions. This is an elite form of education wherein some enlightened individuals or sects feel that they, and only they, are equipped to “name the world.” Freire (1970/2011) calls this “manipulation” and “cultural invasion” (p. 181) and it can happen regardless of our attitude and our politics. Thus, it is not enough that we be friendly to newcomers and that we welcome them to the struggle. We have to can engage them in an authentic, educational relationship. THE SOLUTION: DIALOGIC PEDAGOGY The correct educational method for revolutionaries is dialogue, which means something very specific. To truly engage in dialogue means becoming partners with the people. In this situation, “the teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow” (Freire, 1970/2011, p. 80). The task of revolutionaries is to engage with our class and our people in true, authentic dialogue, reflection, and action. If we have dialogue and reflection without action, then we are little more than armchair revolutionaries. On the other hand, if we have only action without dialogue and reflection, we have mere activism. Revolutionary organizers, therefore, are defined not just by the revolutionary ideals they hold or actions they take, but by their humility, patience, and willingness to engage with all exploited and oppressed people. It is not possible for us to “implant” the conviction to fight and struggle in others. That must be the result of their own conscientização, or coming-to-critical-consciousness. This is a delicate and contingent process that can’t be scripted in advance. Still, there are a few general components to it. First, we have to truly get to know our people, their problems, and their aspirations. This means that we have to actually learn from people, acknowledging that, even if this is their first demonstration, or even if they voted for a democrat in the last election, they might actually have something to teach us. The more experiences we learn from the people, the richer our theories are and the more connection they can have to the daily realities of workers and oppressed people today. Our class is bursting with creative and intellectual powers that capitalist society doesn’t allow us to express or develop. The revolutionary party is stronger the more it cultivates these powers.

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Second, we have to provide opportunities for others to understand their problems in a deeper and wider context, and to push their aspirations forward. Freire (1970/2011) gives a concrete example of this: . . . if at a given historical moment the basic aspiration of the people goes no further than a demand for salary increases, the leaders can commit one of two errors. They can limit their action to stimulating this one demand or they can overrule this popular aspiration and substitute something more far-reachingbut something which has not yet come to the forefront of the people’s attention . . . The solution lies in synthesis: the leaders must on the one hand identify with the people’s demand for higher salaries, while on the other they must pose the meaning of that very demand as a problem. By doing this, the leaders pose as a problem a real, concrete, historical situation of which the salary demand is one dimension. It will thereby become clear that salary demands alone cannot comprise a definitive solution. (p. 183)

Through this process, both the people and the revolutionary leadership act together and collectively name the world. Genuine knowledge is produced and authentic action is taken, and real conviction for the struggle is strengthened. Slogans and newspapers are crucial tools in the revolutionary struggle, but not because they instill the truth in the people. Rather, they are tools that—in addition to crystallizing demands and analysis—initiate a dialogue with others. We engage in this dialogue and action with hope and conviction, because ruling powers are overthrown, and because the masses do make history.

REFERENCES Freire, P. (2011). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. (Originally published in 1970) Lenin, V. I. (1987). What is to be done? In H. M. Christman (Ed.), Essential works of Lenin (pp. 53–176). New York, NY: Dover. (Originally published in 1902)

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CHAPTER 5

ACADEMIA’S OTHER DIVERSITY PROBLEM Class in the Ivory Tower Alfred Vitale and Allison L. Hurst

“How can you know anything about the working class?” asks Ernest Everhard, the protagonist of Jack London’s 1908 dystopian novel, The Iron Heel (p. 19) as he addresses a group of liberal do-gooders and college administrators. They can’t possibly know the working class, he argues, because they don’t live where the working class live. Instead, they are paid, fed, and clothed by the capitalist class. In return, they are expected to preach what is acceptable to that class and to do work that will not “menace the established order of society.” While this was written over 100 years ago, for many working-class academics (those of us who grew up poor or working class and climbed into academia), this conversation rings true. Many of us have presented some variation of it at one time or another to our more privileged academic colleagues. Watching this past election cycle has been difficult for us. It has reminded us of the gap between the places we currently inhabit (the so-called ivory tower) and the places we originally came from, which we still visit from The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 37–41 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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time to time. We cheered Bernie when he came on the scene, because he appeared to understand this gap and promised to make things better for the people we loved. When Trump began overtaking other candidates, we were not as surprised as the people around us seemed to be, because we understood that his message, cloaked as it was in misogyny, nativism, and racism, was directed at real issues long overlooked by the Democratic Party. We held our breaths, hopeful that Sanders would take down Trump, that his message was the message of change and kindness rather than change and hate. After the primaries, we crossed our fingers but felt the DNC had made a major blunder in nominating a candidate who stood for everything that people seemed to be fighting against—business as usual, neoliberalism, paternalism. Both academia and the DNC have a class problem. They don’t know anything about the working class because they have isolated themselves from working-class people. We have been struggling for years to change this within academia. In 2008, after a few years of discussion among comrades, a group of us formed the Association of Working-Class Academics (AWCA), a group for people like us with lives that straddled the working class and middle class. We wanted to bring class into the academy, to get people talking about it, aware of it, doing something about what we saw as an unsustainable growth of economic inequality. We had parents without retirement income, brothers with backbreaking jobs, sisters without the ability to pay for childcare, generations who faced joblessness or an attempt at a local college with accompanying debt. We knew firsthand that things had shifted somewhere in the promise of the American Dream, that good jobs were harder to come by, that many people didn’t have the luxury to plan and save and think about retirement. We thought that having more faculty with backgrounds like ours would provide natural checks-and-balances on academic discourses that tend to move far away from the reality of class as lived by the overwhelming majority of the population. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. Discussion of social class has always been relegated to the margins of academia. In turn, public discourse about class is muted. By denying the opportunity for social class to be a valid academic subject in itself, or to be considered an authentic form of social identity, educated folks (academics, pundits, campaign managers, and journalists) didn’t just silence the voices of the poor and working class, they also denied the possibility of critically engaging the problem of affluence. How to critique Trump without this? His status as a member of the billionaire class was not seen as problematic, despite all we know about the power and impact that class has on the very real experiences of the vast majority of Americans. He was lampooned as a buffoon, then excoriated for his bad manners, and finally deplored for his many bad acts, all of which left the essential issue of a billionaire running on a platform of economic populism

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relatively unquestioned. When we saw the picture of the Trumps and the Clintons hobnobbing in evening wear, we thought, “This will nail him!” But that picture was never used by the DNC, because it would target their candidate as well. Plus, it wouldn’t have been polite. A society more sensitive to the complicity of the ruling classes, more willing to eschew the sycophancy and reverence given to the already overwhelmingly privileged, more capable of resisting the urge to lionize the affluent, and more attentive to the ubiquitous power handed over to the 1%, would have appropriately vilified Trump and dismissed him well before his name went on the ballot. We can spend time looking at any number of reasons for his victory, but we must ask the bigger question of why an unabashedly greedy billionaire glided through the primaries and general election without any real resistance. Could it be the case that we have consistently neglected to blame, unequivocally, the economic elites for inequality and to hold them accountable for it? Where was the critical intellectual attack on the damages reaped by the excesses of the 1%? This takes us back to Jack London’s (1908) protagonist Mr. Everhard, and his suggestion that such critique would “menace the established order of society” (p. 20). It may be true that many university researchers have studied poverty and made it their social justice duty to try to understand and ameliorate it. But the lens is most often focused downward, to poverty, and there has been virtually no research directed upward at the practices and mechanisms by which the affluent cause, exacerbate, benefit from, and rely on the steady continuation of inequality. And the occasional whispered squeaks of condemnation for the wealthy fade quickly, subsumed by the jingoistic, pragmatic liberalism of the well educated in an academic world increasingly shaped by the whims of the donor class. This form of economic censorship, justified by the neoliberal fabric of institutions of higher education, ensures that no acceptable critique of affluence will become sewn into the fabric of pedagogy. It is our contention that if academia was proportionately represented by faculty and students from the poor and working classes, the influence of the donor class on the institutional structure could be counteracted at the immediate level of teaching and research as a matter of course, rather than as an occasional garnish on the obligatory “race, class, gender” courses offered in many college departments. Discourse would create a resistance to the universalizing narratives compressing “poverty” and equalize it through a reciprocal comingling with intersectional narratives condemning the oppressive presence of affluence. If social class is duly acknowledged as salient, we will have to problematize and identify the systemic sources that shape the dominant narrative. Such a critique will require an indictment of capitalism as it stands, and therein lies the problem: How can we expect a real,

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class-sensitive critique of affluence in a milieu that tacitly condones its pursuit and happily reaps its benefits? But, you may be asking, is there some problem here? We all know that academia can seem far removed from the day-to-day social worlds of most people, so what does it matter if academia doesn’t want to indict affluence? Let’s consider this question in light of the recent failures of the Democratic Party, and its slow slide away from economic populism and into neoliberalism since the days of Bill Clinton. Let’s acknowledge that the increased dismissal of social class discourse in academia coincides with the current chasm in understanding between those who run the Democratic Party and those whom it purports to represent. In many ways, the Democratic Party is like the ivory tower. They have both distanced themselves from a class awareness that they profess to have—so much so that they have forgotten and refused to acknowledge what social class means to actual people in the world. They have nominally acknowledged oppression, but have not really invited the oppressed into their circles; consequently, they assume they will have the support of the oppressed when it’s needed. Diversity (or rather the lack thereof) remains a major problem in both academia and the Democratic Party. Both the party and academia have come to rely on a cadre of affluent donors, thereby shifting their priorities to fund-raising, advancement efforts, and the doling out of reciprocal favoritism, influence, and rewards to the philanthropist class. This diminishing attention to social class, both culturally and academically, paralleled the decline of unions in the United States, the crumbling of rust belt cities, and a sweeping upswing in inequality. The poor and working classes ceased to have even a small amount of power, and were picked clean by things like predatory lending, healthcare costs, student loan debt and skyrocketing college costs, jobs moving overseas, and major cutbacks in the social safety net. Relatedly, while scholarly attention to other factors in human experience such as race or gender grew exponentially and it is true that there are deliberate efforts at most universities to invite more faculty from diverse race and gender backgrounds—there remains a relative and concerning scarcity of minorities as faculty members or students, and in particular, of working class and poor faculty and students. It may be the case that the very structural class dynamics most liberal professionals have neglected could help explain why they’re having such a hard time ensuring equitable racial and gendered distributions in the university and the meritocratic beyond. Although access to higher education has helped some members of the poor and working classes “move up” in the world (we are witnesses to that), the numbers remain stubbornly small. Our colleges continue to serve children of the elite, or at least children of the highly educated. Proportionately speaking, faculty in universities do not reflect the existing social class strata

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that exists outside the walls of the ivory tower. This is not likely to change. Many academics from poor and working-class backgrounds are in disproportionate amounts of debt because they had to pay for the academic entry fee themselves, and the tuition prices went up as the lines got longer. As it becomes more expensive to fund a graduate education, we will continue to find a smaller percentage of employed academics that come from poor or working-class backgrounds. The academic system keeps out the rabble, as it always has. This, in turn, comforts the donor class, who are assured that their role as instrumental philanthropists (i.e., manipulative tax-avoiders) will continue to garner them the reverence that their economic power naturally deserves—all without any means for resistance by the masses. Thus it stands that the absence of real class awareness and the glacial pace of diversity efforts plague both the Democratic Party and institutions of higher education. Perhaps both the ivory tower and the DNC shouldn’t be publicly trying to recruit the poor and working class to become members of the liberal elite, and privately insulting them if they aren’t. Instead, maybe we should ask ourselves what we can do to make academia privilege the voices of disenfranchised people, rather than the elite group speaking on behalf of them. Perhaps then, maybe in 2020, our collective voices will shout to the elites the same words spoken by Jack London’s (1908) Ernest Everhard: We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor. So we have preached power. By the power of our ballots on election day will we take your government away from you. (p. 97)

REFERENCES London, J. (1908). The iron heel. New York, NY: Grosset & Dunlap.

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CHAPTER 6

MARXISM, INTERSECTIONALITY, AND THERAPY David I. Backer

Intersectionality and Marxism are not on great terms, supposedly.1 While some thinkers and activists recognize the need for intersectional insights in research and organizing, others maintain more negative attitudes and analyses towards such insights. The negative attitudes and analyses combine a new resent with the old tension between feminist and post-structuralist critiques of Marxist theory and the latter, sometimes named identity politics or identarian politics. While intersectionalists claim that race, class, and gender (and other categories and discourses) compound, mingle, and mix in unique ways during particular events and experiences, Marxists allege that class trumps all with respect to oppression. The intersectionalists call for specific and particularized redress of compounded oppressions which sometimes do not include class or, in other cases, are lost when class is the sole focus (or any single category of oppression by itself). The Marxists, on the other hand, call for changing the relations of production focusing on class. Racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and other oppressions will

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be ameliorated, or at least the conditions for their amelioration can only begin, after that shift in exploitative, alienating, and degrading relations of capitalist production. The debate leaves two conflicting camps on the left. One with a particularized sensitivity to the complex layers of oppression, and the other with a fervent clarity regarding the link in the chain of domination which, if broken, will release the people from their bonds. The choice is ultimately a false one, though the divisiveness it inspires is real. The matter deserves special attention, and some have begun to seriously consider it.2 I want to focus on the term relations of production, since, for the Marxists, everything comes down to a shift in these relations. Thinkers as diverse as G. A. Cohen and Louis Althusser confirm, in their readings of Marx, that relations of production are what defines a social formation as any given moment: You can have any set of productive forces, but the kind of society you have—the modes of production—is largely defined by the relations of production. Looking at the term relations of production again shows that the tension between intersectionality and Marxism is, frankly, dumb. Marx defines production, at least in the Grundrisse, as tackling nature and making our lives together.3 A “relation” of production is a kind of dynamic which forms between people when making their lives together, as well as a dynamic which forms between people and nonhuman things (like the means of production).4 Marx’s German word for “relation” in relation of production is verhältnis. In the Grundrisse and the crucial opening chapters of Capital Vol. 1, the term has two meanings which fit with the definition I just gave.5 The first meaning is in the sense of a mathematical ratio: A relation of production can mean an absolute or relative value of commodities in terms of other commodities, like prices or wages, for example. The second meaning is in the sense of person-to-person interactions like speech, action, and working together. This division is useful for distinguishing different kinds of Marxist critique that have evolved over the years, one example being the critical theorists’ distinction between recognition and redistribution (Nancy Fraser’s is the best articulation of this).6 Take exploitation of labor, for example. Exploitation, in its distributive sense, occurs as a mathematical allotment based on the value of work completed and value received in exchange for that work. It is a mathematical relation between employer and employee. The value of work completed is always greater than the value in wages received, leaving employees bereft of the full value of their work. You can never be paid fully for what you do when you work for a wage, since the wage relation is an exploitative relation of production. Exploitation in its recognitive sense, in contrast (sometimes called alienation), refers to what it’s like when people are exploited, both subjectively and intersubjectively (think Hegel’s master-slave dialectic). The distributive sense of relation of

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production is mathematical, and the recognitive sense of relation of production is more subjective, identarian. Here’s my claim. We should read Marx as saying that relations of production are both recognitive and distributive: that a single relation of production has a recognitive and redistributive aspect. There are two meanings of relation of production, so why shouldn’t the term mean both? Making our lives together in production requires both recognition between persons and mathematical ratios in the distribution of resources among persons. Recognition and distribution are two senses of the same notion, two moments of one dynamic, two sides of the same coin: They are simultaneously occasioned in any given relation of production. If a relation of production is both redistributive and recognitive, then changing the relations of production requires changing both recognition and redistribution. To reverse oppression, in other words, both are necessary and sufficient. Neither on its own is enough for revolution. Making life together justly—an emancipatory production—means having just distributions and just recognitions. The verhaltnissen in a just society has to have each of these, conjoined, not a disjunction or causal implication. Thinking one is more important than one or the other, or that somehow one must be antecedent to the other, is dumb. Changing relations of production means changing ratios of distribution and changing interative practices so that they are recognitive and not misrecognitive. Radicals in the past have understood this point clearly. Fred Hampton understood it very clearly, as did many members of the Black Panther Party and others in the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Even Lenin and Marx showed evidence of understanding this point, specifically regarding the United States. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor talks about this inclusive tradition in her excellent new book, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.7 Though they may not have put it in these terms, some of the most effective activists and deepest radical thinkers in the leftist tradition understood that relations of production are dynamics composed of recognition and distribution, especially in the United States context. There are at least two important kinds of oppression which flow from the two senses of relation of production, whose conceptual relationship has been poorly formulated: distributive oppression and misrecognitive oppression. The dumb question to ask is: “What causal role does an exploitative mathematical ratio of distribution play in oppression, generally speaking; How important is the first sense of verhaltnisse to the second?” One position, taken by some Marxists, is that there is a direct causal link between the two, going one way. If the mathematical ratio is evened out, if there are widespread nonexploitative distributions, then oppression’s chokehold is broken. All the recognitive problems will collapse, like a body without bones, as soon as the correct ratios are put in place. Another position, taken

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by critics of the Marxists, is that the two are not causally linked. Other oppressions will survive and thrive (in fact, have survived and thrived) changes in the distributive ratios: women, people of color, marginalized sexualities and genders, and others will face the same recognitive oppressions whether or not they own the means of production together with others. That these are two opposing positions is dumb. Rather than constituting some kind of crisis for the soul of the Left, they merely delimit two important aspects of liberation that both need to occur in tandem if the goal is changing the relations of production. Recognitive (misrecognitive) oppression must be redressed, and the way in which it is redressed must focus on the complexly layered, compounded experiences, and events of those who face it by finding ways to unlearn old recognitive patterns and learn new ones. Distributive oppression must be redressed, and the way it is redressed must focus on securing the right kinds of mathematical ratios in distribution through changes in ownership of the means of production. Perhaps “dumb” is too dumb a label for this false dichotomy. Given that distribution and recognition are both necessary and sufficient for relations of production, and the point of our work on the Left is changing relations of production, I propose the following: Whenever you start to think that a relation of production is not both recognitive and distributive (or you hear someone else talking like it is more one than the other), this a therapeutic issue, not a political one. By “therapeutic” I mean a kind of problem which is adjacent, but not identical, to the kinds of oppression activist work seeks to change. Therapeutic issues are made of traumas, desires, frustrations, projections, conflicts, and ambivalences. They are social and individual, and they are important for politics, but they are not political. These issues are not rational, but rather unconscious and implicit, and can compel you and others to think that relations of production are either recognitive or distributive, rather than both. My proposal is that conflict over the hierarchy of distribution over recognition (or vice versa) in relations of production results from therapeutic problems in the relations of activism and not political problems in the relations of production which the activism is trying to change. I think more people should go to therapy in general, but perhaps Leftists in particular would benefit from examining unconscious ambivalences and conflicts, specifically around this issue. Why would you come to think that redistribution is more important than recognition, or vice versa, rather than part of a singular relation of production? Therapeutic issues create disagreements about the relations of production when left unaddressed, like thinking there is some hierarchy between recognition and redistribution. Most likely, these “hierarchies” are just reified feelings of loss, frustration, or disappointment which neurotic persons have insinuated into the theoretical record.

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I have been in therapy for years and I consider it part of my liberation, but not identical to my activism. The therapy helps me distinguish the conjuncture from my own baggage; or, better yet, therapy mobilizes my baggage so it compels me to take a more inquisitive approach to thinking about the conjuncture. These things—baggage and conjuncture—get confused, and the confusion trickles into how we work together to make another society. Too long has activism not been accompanied by liberatory therapy; too long have therapeutic issues been mistaken for political issues; too many political spaces have been hijacked for therapeutic purposes; too many meetings and debates have been spent going in exhausting circles. The confusion can lead to unhelpful splinters, petty fractions, and mismatching views of the conjuncture. Unfortunately, unaddressed therapeutic problems in the relations of activism can ultimately leave oppressive relations of production in place. A unified and inclusive view of relations of production as both recognitive and distributive, while creating access and then going to therapy, might help. It may show that Marxism and intersectionality are on the same side and more powerful when they work together. * * * David I. Backer is an author, teacher, and activist. For more about him, here is his blog: https://davidbacker.com/ NOTES 1. Eve Mitchell, “I am a Woman and Human: A Marxist-Feminist Critique of Intersectionality Theory, Unity and Struggle, http://unityandstruggle.org/ 2013/09/12/i-am-a-woman-and-a-human-a-marxist-feminist-critique-of-intersectionality-theory/; “Is Intersectionality Just Another Form of Identity Politics?” Feminist Fight Back, http://www.feministfightback.org.uk/is-intersectionality-just-another-form-of-identity-politics/ Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” The North Star, www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle Julie Birchill, “Don’t You Dare Tell Me to Check My Privilege,” The Spectator, http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/02/dont-you-dare-tell-me-to-checkmy-privilege/ ; My own thinking about this question was spurred by a tweet passed along by Benjamin Kunkel, which said “let them eat intersectionality.” 2. Kevin B. Anderson, “Karl Marx and Intersectionality,” Logos, http://logosjournal.com/2015/anderson-marx/ 3. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Penguin: New York, 1993, p. 85–90. We might reasonably stipulate that most mentions of “relation” (85, 99, 108, 109, 159, 165) are occasions of communicative recognition, though more study of the German could reveal otherwise. Marx appears to write the word Verhältnis for “relation,” which can mean “ratio” as well as “relationship.” The former sense is a

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4. 5. 6. 7.

correlation between ideas while the latter implies a correspondence between speakers. G. A. Cohen distinguishes the term like this in Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Penguin International, London, England, 1996, pp. 45–50. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange. New York, NY: Verso. Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor (2015). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. New York, NY: Haymarket, see Chapter 7 pp. 205–209.

CHAPTER 7

FREEDOM TO DISSENT FROM DELHI TO FERGUSON Meghna Chandra

On February 12, 2016, the Delhi police arrested the Jawaharlal Nehru Student Union President, Kanhaiya Kumar, and eight other students on sedition charges. The students gathered on the hanging of a Kashmiri dissident, Afzal Guru, who was charged on bogus terrorism charges. During the event, a few unknown students chanted anti-India slogans. In fact, the same student leaders that were arrested intervened against those slogans. The government used this disruption as an excuse to enter the campus and arrest Kumar. Just a few weeks earlier, students fiercely protested the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula, an Ambedkarite activist who committed suicide after persecution by the University of Hyderabad administration in cahoots with the ruling Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. On Monday, February 15, students, journalists, and teachers who were protesting at the courts were brutally attacked by Hindu nationalist goons. The police repression continues even as the protests swell, and my friends in India tell me they are gearing up for a long fight.

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INDIA AND THE UNITED STATES: TWIN EMPIRES I studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) from 2013–2015, where I got a marvelous education in Indian history and student activism. The unofficial motto of JNU, “study and struggle,” inspired me to use my education to draw connections between what was happening in the United States and India, which respectively consider themselves the “greatest” and “largest” democracies on Earth. As a student, my comrades and I realized that both countries have embraced neoliberalism and “trickle down” economics. From Afghanistan to Kashmir, they violently occupy territories in the name of bringing them “secular governments.” They brutalize their indigenous, religious, and racial minorities to make way for corporate loot. They both persecute Muslims—in 2002, the current prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, oversaw pogroms against Muslims in Gujarat in which 2,000 Muslims were killed. They both have racial caste systems. While the Black Lives Matter movement has spoken out against the epidemic of police violence in the United States, Dalit Women Fight activists have pointed out the continuing regime of caste apartheid in India, which is the worst for the so called “untouchables” at the bottom of the system. Every week, 13 Dalits are murdered, 5 Dalit homes are burnt, and 21 Dalit women are raped. As in the United States, where Blacks and Latinos disproportionately make up prison population, in India, Muslims, Dalits, and indigenous peoples make up 39% of the population and 53% of all prisoners in the country. PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS AND FASCIST BACKLASH When Michael Brown was murdered and the United States erupted in protests in 2015, we as American citizens abroad organized a protest in solidarity with the people of Ferguson. JNU students came out in full force in solidarity with the movement for Black lives. Students chanted “Malcolm, Martin, Bhagat Singh, we shall fight, we shall win!” and “Ferguson se aaye pukaar, nasalvaad pe patthar mar!” (“A cry is heard from Ferguson, it strikes a blow at racism”). Dalit, Communist, and anti-racist groups spoke at our rallies and showed us what international solidarity of the oppressed against neoliberal capitalism looks like. Because of student militancy and unwillingness to compromise our right to protest, we successfully reached the American embassy, despite every attempt of the Delhi police to stop us and reroute us to a more innocuous spot.

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Now, I watch with horror as the same students who fearlessly came out with us are under attack. My friends have deleted their Facebook accounts in fear of reprisal. Student activists whom I marched with are being threatened with lynch mob justice. We have our own fascist tendencies in the United States. In the election year of 2016, Donald Trump’s election campaign has stoked bigoted hate speech against Blacks, Muslims, and immigrants. Donald Trump has galvanized a section of Americans with his calls for Muslims to wear ID cards, smearing of Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers, and denouncement of the Black Lives Matter movement. The beating of students, teachers, and even journalists who were standing in solidarity with Kanhaiya Kumar outside the courts of Patiala House is in the same spirit of the beating of a Black Lives Matter protestor at a Trump rally. Left unchecked, these forces have the potential to destroy the fabric of American and Indian democracy that people’s movements have fought so hard to build up and protect. TOWARDS A GLOBAL PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT We stand with the students of India against the fascist crackdown on freedom of speech, the same way they stood against us in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. With them, we ask fundamental questions of the countries we call home. When we call out our countries for occupying territories against their will, persecuting Muslims and other religious minorities as part of a global War on Terror, and perpetuating racial caste systems, we are not “anti-national,” but “pro-people,” especially people’s movements. Shuddhabrata Sengupta (2016) writes for Kafila, I could not help thinking as I passed the hostels with their beautiful riverine names—Ganga, Sutlej, Kaveri, Mahi-Mandavi, Lohit and Chandrabhaga— that we, all of us assembled were like a tidal bore, surging upstream from the ocean to deep inland territories, irrigating wastelands, laying the foundations of a new civilization, a new civility that the RSS-ABVP hordes will never be able to come to terms with. The ebb and flow of this mighty river carried the evening. (para. 16)

While I am not in JNU to participate in the protests, my comrades and I in Philadelphia send our love to the student movements in India. We stand with the students on the forefront of a global process of social evolution, one that will pave the way for a world free from oppression, exploitation, and empire.

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REFERENCE Sengupta, S. (2016, February 15). Spring comes to JNU: Love, laughter and rage. Retrieved from www.kafila.online/2016/02/15/spring-comes-to-jnu/

CHAPTER 8

THE COURAGE OF HOPELESSNESS Democratic Education in the Age of Empire E. Wayne Ross

The post-9/11 world is depressing for anyone who values freedom and equality. In the wake the heinous 9/11 attacks, we have experienced assaults on civil liberties and human rights in the name of protecting freedom. The Patriot Act (2001) in the United States significantly expanded the authority of government to enhance surveillance of individual behavior and communication, seize assets, conduct warrantless and secret searches, and detain individuals indefinitely without charge. The “war on terror” has produced horrors such as the extraordinary rendition program (e.g., the case of Maher Arar), the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, U.S. citizens held as “enemy combatants,” criminalization of refugees, and so on. In a recent MSNBC interview, retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark even called for the revival of internment camps for “disloyal Americans,” advocating for a return to one of the most shameful

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 53–70 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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chapters in American history, the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens. Post-9/11 policy shifts are not limited to the United States. Canada’s Anti-terrorism Act of 2015 (aka Bill C-51) follows in the Patriot Act’s (2001) footsteps, by drastically expanding the definition of “security” originally outlined in Ottawa’s 2001 anti-terror law. The bill also lowers the threshold for preventative arrest and detention of citizens; criminalizes speech acts that have no connection to acts of violence; provides new, sweeping powers to police and prosecutors; turns the national intelligence agency, CSIS, into a police force; engages in domestic spying on citizen groups who oppose resource extraction and then turns the information over to the energy industry; allows secret court proceedings to use secret evidence to compile secret no-fly lists; and allows federal courts to limit the Charter Rights of Canadian citizens, including the right to return to Canada after traveling abroad. The human, social, environmental, and economic costs of U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since 2001 are astronomical. Nearly 400,000 people (including over 200,000 civilians) have died due to direct war violence. One million U.S. veterans have been disabled. Veterans also suffer from psychological and cognitive at an astronomical rate, including what as been described as an epidemic of PTSD-induced suicides , nearly 8,000 per year. Indirect deaths of people in war zones, related to malnutrition, damaged health infrastructure, and environmental degradation, are likely many times more. Eight million people have been displaced and are living in inadequate conditions, and Iraq’s health and education systems are devastated. These wars have produced major human rights and civil liberties violations including “a program of indefinite secret detention and the use of brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values” (“The Senate Committee’s Report,” 2014). The environment is another casualty of the U.S. wars in Iraq. Radiation from the depleted uranium in hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs and other ordinances dropped on Iraq has created a toxic environment, poisoning soil and water, making the environment carcinogenic, and creating abnormally high cancer rates. The toxic legacy of the U.S. assault on Fallujah has been described as “worse than Hiroshima” (Cockburn, 2010). After the “shock and awe” bombing campaign in Iraq, a fourfold increase in the levels of depleted uranium was measured in the atmosphere in Europe, transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia. Estimates suggest these wars have cost $4.4 trillion, a figure that will double in the next 40 years as a result of government borrowing to finance wars that not only failed to bring democracy to these countries, but has produced even more death and destruction as wars spread to Syria and Yemen. No expense is spared when it comes to the war front. Meanwhile, income and wage

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inequality continues to grow with the 1% leaving everyone else in the dust. We are now in a new Gilded Age, with massive concentrations of wealth at the top, while the people in the bottom 40% are becoming poorer (“The Top 10 Charts of 2014,” 2014). The gap between the rich and poor in developed countries is at its highest level in three decades. In the United States, the wealthiest 0.1% is worth as much as the bottom 90% (Zucman, 2016). Oxfam reported this month that the 62 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world. Sixty-two individuals hold wealth equal to the 3.5 billion poorest people in the world and that’s down from 85 just last year. A 2014 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report confirms what the rest have long known—trickle-down and austerity economics only makes the rich richer. The OECD reports data that neoliberal economic policies have not only failed to create economic growth, they have “curbed economic growth significantly.” OECD argues that inequality matters because it undermines education opportunities, lowers social mobility, and hampers skill development for the disadvantaged. (It is interesting to note this OECD report also argues that tackling inequality through tax and transfer policies does not harm economic growth; that redistribution of wealth should focus on families with children and youth and promotes skills development and learning across people’s lives. OECD’s perspective is one of enhancing human capital, these are decidedly not the recommendations of a left wing, socialist outfit.) Oxfam (“Working for the Few,” 2014) points out that the concentration of economic resources presents a significant threat to inclusive political and economic systems, specifically that “people are increasingly separated by economic and political power, inevitably heightening social tensions and increasing the risk of societal breakdown.” Obviously, the world is at a crisis point we have never seen the likes of before (and this survey does not begin to encompass all of the concerns we face. For example, there is the climate crisis; serial police violence, especially against people of color; and an apathetic electorate, of which 82% disapprove of Congress). The French theorist Guy Debord, to whom I will return later, often cited a letter written by Karl Marx in which he says, “the hopeless conditions of the society in which I live fill me with hope” (“Letter From Karl Marx,” 1843). Philosopher Giorgio Agambem adds : Any radical thought always adopts the most extreme position of desperation. Simone Weil said ‘I do not like those people who warm their hearts with empty hopes.’ Thought, for me, is just that: the courage of hopelessness. And is that not the height of optimism? We certainly have plenty of fuel for our hopes. The challenge we faces as social studies educators is to not warm our students’ hearts with empty hopes, but rather confront what are seemingly hopeless times for freedom and equality with a pedagogy and curriculum that come from a courage of hopelessness. (Skinner, 2014)

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DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS In Brave New World Revisited Aldous Huxley (1958) wrote: . . . by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest±will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mindmanipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit. (Chapter 12, para. 4)

From Democracy to Plutocracy Huxley was prescient. His description accurately captures the landscape of post-9/11 politics. A landscape where democracy as a concept and as a thing, has less to do with its actual content as an egalitarian system of political-economic values than it does with the neglect of this content for its mere form. “More simply put, the concept of democracy in the West is the mere distillate remaining after the actual content (equality, egalitarianism, justice, rights, etc.) has been boiled away” (Smith & Sperber, 2014). In the Society of the Spectacle, Debord (1967) argues, “in societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation” (para. 1). That is, our democratic experiences have degraded from being, to having, to merely appearing to have. The lofty, Deweyan ideal of democracy as a social phenomenon, what he called an associated way of living, which he understood as an end-in-view, something to be striven for, is first reduced to a political phenomenon (e.g., weak conceptions of democracy, such as representative government). Then is degraded further to a spectator democracy, where a specialized class of experts identifies what our common interests are then acts accordingly, leaving the rest us spectators, rather than participants in democracy. Today the United States behaves nothing like a democracy. As Noam Chomsky (2013) explains: Roughly 70% of the population—the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale—have no influence on policy whatsoever. They’re effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which is maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e., they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy; it’s plutocracy. (para. 5)

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In 2014, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page reported an empirical study in the highly respected journal Perspectives on Politics that attempts to answer the questions: Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? This work is particularly significant because, despite a large body of empirical research on the policy influence of one or another set of actors, until recently it has not been possible to test contrasting theoretical predictions against each other in a single statistical model. Using a unique data set that included measures of key variables for 1,779 policy issues, Gilens and Page (2014) were able to accomplish this task. Their multivariate analysis indicates economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. Overall, evidence strongly favored political theories of Economic Elite Domination and Biased Pluralism (that is where corporations, business associations and professional groups dominate), but there was little evidence to support descriptions of the United States as a majoritarian electoral democracy. These findings contradict the central tenet of the social studies curriculum in North America. The evidence confirms the United States not a functioning democracy, rather it is a plutocracy as Chomsky has claimed. Do we need statistical analysis to tell us this? For example, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission cemented the false doctrine of “money = speech” that allows the richest to buy government influence and set policy agendas. Citizens United is merely the latest way in which the United States protects itself from too much democracy. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were keenly aware of the threat of democracy. According to James Madison, the primary responsibility of government was “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Madison believed the threat of democracy was likely to increase as “the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessing” (Madison Debates, 1787). In crafting a system giving primacy to property over people, Madison and the framers were guarding against the increased influence of the unpropertied masses. As expressed by John Jay, first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, “the people who own the country ought to govern it” (Whitney, 2015). Donald Trump updated this principle in the August 2015 Republican Presidential Debate when, in his two minute exchange with Fox News’ Brett Baier, he said the rich own the political process: Baier: “And when you give [money to politicians], they do whatever the hell you want them to do.” . . .  Trump: “You’d better believe it.”

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As Paul Street (2014) argues in They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy, Washington runs on corporate and financial cash, connections, reach, and propaganda—not public opinion. The “unelected dictatorship of money” is not interested in crafting policy that responds to public opinion polls that show: • Two-thirds (66%) of Americans think that the distribution of money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among more people in the United States. • 61% of Americans believe that in today’s economy it is mainly just a few people at the top who have a chance to get ahead. • 83% of Americans think the gap between the rich and the poor is a problem. • 67% of Americans think the gap between the rich and the poor needs to be addressed immediately, not as some point in the future. • 57% of Americans think the U.S. government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. • Almost three-quarters (74%) of respondents say that large corporations have too much influence in the county, about the double the amount that said the same of unions. • 68% of Americans favor raising taxes on people earning more than $1 million per year. • 50% of Americans support limits on money earned by top executives at large corporations. (pp. 176–177) The disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of democracy (and equality, justice, rights, etc.) in North America is a direct challenge to our work as social studies educators. We can no longer rely on the old tropes of democracy and freedom that have dominated the curriculum and classroom discourse; to do so to sell students a lie about history and contemporary life. DANGEROUS CITIZENSHIP Yes, citizenship—above all in a society like ours, of such authoritarian and racially, sexually, and class-based discriminatory traditions—is really an invention, a political production. In this sense, one who suffers any [or all] of the discriminations . . . does not enjoy the full exercise of citizenship as a peaceful and recognized right. On the contrary, it is a right to be reached and whose conquest makes democracy grow substantively. Citizenship implies freedom . . . Citizenship is not obtained by chance: It is a construction that, never finished, demands we fight for it. It demands commitment, political clarity, coherence, decision. (Freire, 1998, p. 90)

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Our challenge, particularly in a time of standardized curriculum and heightened surveillance of teachers’ work is to have the courage to reimagine our roles as teachers and find ways to create opportunities for students to create meaningful personal understandings of the world. What we understand about the world is determined by what the world is, who we are, and how we conduct our inquiries. Education is not about showing life to people, but bringing them to life. The aim is not getting students to listen to convincing lectures by experts, but getting them to speak for themselves in order to achieve, or at least strive for an equal degree of participation and a more democratic, equitable, and justice future. This requires a new mindset, something I call dangerous citizenship. The practice of critical, or dangerous, citizenship requires that people, individually and collectively, take on actions and behaviors that bring with them certain necessary dangers; it transcends traditional maneuvers such as voting and signing petitions, and so on. Citizenship today, from this perspective, requires a praxis-inspired mindset of opposition and resistance, an acceptance of a certain strategic and tactical stance. The implication is that dangerous citizenship is dangerous to an oppressive and socially unjust status quo, to existing hierarchical structures of power. In a post-9/11 world, however, it is also a risky practice for teachers, students, and citizens. For me, dangerous citizenship is a radical critique of schooling as social control and a collection of strategies used to disrupt and resist the conforming, anti-democratic, anti-collective, and oppressive potentialities of society and schooling that includes: • political (non)participation; • critical awareness, what Freire called conscientization and class consciousness, which is something to be achieved; and • intentional action-behaviors designed to instigate human connection, the true engagement with everyday life, meaningful experience, communication, and change. Philosopher Michel Foucault (2013) argued that a critique is not merely a matter of saying that things are not right as they are: It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought, the practices that we accept rest. Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as one believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult. (p. 154)

Dangerous citizenship challenges assumptions about the state of the world and requires exploration of questions that make some

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uncomfortable: Given what we know about the lack of democracy in the United States and world today, is it even possible to teach for a democracy that is not dominated by capital? Do we want to teach for capitalist democracy? Is there an alternative? Is the concept of democracy bankrupt? Is democracy as a concept and practice even salvageable? If democracy is salvageable then it seems to me that teaching about and for democracy in contemporary times cannot be done without engaging the complexities and contradictions that have come to define what really existing (or nonexisting) democracy is. It is a practice that must be understood as difficult, risky, and even dangerous. PREMISES OF DANGEROUS CITIZENSHIP How do we break free of the tropes that have come to dominate our conceptions of democracy and define what it means to be a democratic citizen? Four fundamental premises inform dangerous citizenship. First, democracy and capitalism are incompatible. There is a fundamental contradiction between the ideals of democracy (people rule) and what capitalist democracy actually delivers (rule of the rich). Too often democracy and capitalism are conflated in our discussions of and teaching of both. In short, democracy does not dominate capital; it submits to capital. Many people work to make capitalism less hostile to democracy (social democrats, for example), but as the history of the United States illustrates capital will always trump democracy. The second premise is teachers and curriculum have both been subject to ever intensifying policy regimes that attack academic freedom and discourage critical social analysis. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” are U.S. variations on a worldwide phenomenon that includes: • marketization and privatization of education, • human capital policies for teachers, and • regulation of what people know and how they come to know it. (Gibson & Ross, 2007, p. 1) The third premise is that schools in capitalist societies are capitalist schools aimed at social control. That is winning over children to be loyal, obedient, dutiful, and useful, to the ruling classes under a variety of lies: • We are all in this together. • This is a multicultural society. • Democracy trumps inequality, we all can be president/prime minister, etc.

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The fourth premise is neatly captured in the words of historian Howard Zinn (1970): Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders . . . and millions have been killed because of this obedience . . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves . . . (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem. (p. 439)

Lastly, dangerous citizenship is meant to call attention to the need for new pedagogical imaginaries for teaching because traditional conceptions of democratic citizenship are bankrupt, perverted by capitalism’s triumph over interests of the public(s). Before I sketch out some of these possibilities for dangerous citizenship in the classroom, let me address most predictable objection to what I am proposing. IDEOLOGY OF NEUTRALITY, OR WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE PROTECTING STUDENTS FROM? Educators often eschew openly political or ideological agendas for teaching and schools as inappropriate or “unprofessional.” The question, however, is not whether to allow political discourse in schools or to encourage particular social visions in the classroom, but rather what kind of social visions will be taught? There is a misguided and unfortunate tendency in our society to believe that activities that strengthen or maintain the status quo are neutral or at least nonpolitical, while activities that critique or challenge the status quo are “political” and inappropriate. For example, for a company to advertise its product as a good thing, something consumers should buy, is not viewed as a political act. But, if a consumer group takes out an advertisement charging that the company’s product is not good, perhaps even harmful, this is often understood as political action. This type of thinking permeates our society, particularly when it comes to schooling and teaching. “Stick to the facts.” “Guard against bias.” “Maintain neutrality.” These are admonitions or goals expressed by some teachers when asked to identify the keys to successful teaching. Many of these same teachers (and teacher educators) conceive of their roles as designing and teaching courses to ensure that students are prepared to function nondisruptively in society as it exist. This is thought to be a desirable goal, in part, because it strengthens the status quo, and is seen as being an “unbiased” or “neutral” position. Many of these same teachers view their work in school as apolitical, a matter of effectively covering the curriculum,

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imparting academic skills, and preparing students for whatever high-stakes tests they might face. Often these teachers have attended teacher education programs designed to ensure that they were prepared to adapt to the status quo in schools. The irony is that teacher education programs like our own repeated teach future teachers the importance of maintaining neutrality while waving the flag of “social justice education.” Anyone who has paid attention to the debates on curriculum and school reform knows that schooling is a decidedly political enterprise. The question in teaching (as well as teacher education and school reform) is not whether to allow political discourse in schools or whether to advocate or not, but the nature and extent of political discourse and advocacy. It is widely believed that neutrality, objectivity, and unbiasedness are largely the same thing and always good when it comes to schools and teaching. But, consider the following: Neutrality is a political category—that is—not supporting any factions in a dispute. Holding a neutral stance in a conflict is no more likely to ensure rightness or objectivity than any other and may be a sign of ignorance of the issues. Philosopher Michael Scriven (1991) puts it this way, “being neutral is often a sign of error in a given dispute and can be a sign of bias; more often it is a sign of ignorance, sometimes of culpable or disabling ignorance” (p. 68) Demanding neutrality of schools and teachers comes at a cost. As Scriven points out there are “clearly situations in which one wants to say that being neutral is a sign of bias” (p. 68). For example, being neutral in the debate on the occurrence of the Holocaust, a debate on atomic theory with Christian Scientists, or a debate with fundamentalist Christians over the origins of life and evolution. To rephrase Scriven, it seems better not to require that schools include only neutral teachers at the cost of including ignoramuses or cowards and getting superficial teaching and curriculum. Absence of bias is not absence of convictions in an area, thus neutrality is not objectivity. To be objective is to be unbiased or unprejudiced. People are often misled to think that anyone who comes into a discussion with strong views about an issue cannot be unprejudiced. The key question, however, is whether and how the views are justified. A knowledge claim gains objectivity as a result of exposure to the fullest range of criticisms. Or as John Dewey (1910) argued, thoughts and beliefs that depend upon authority (e.g., tradition, instruction, imitation) and are not based on a survey of evidence are prejudices, prejudgments. Thus, achieving objectivity in teaching and the curriculum requires that we take seriously alternative perspectives and criticisms of any particular knowledge claim. How is it possible to have or strive for objectivity in schools where political discourse is circumscribed and neutrality is demanded? Achieving pedagogical objectivity is no easy task. The objective teacher considers the most persuasive arguments for different points of view on a given issue, demonstrates evenhandedness, focuses on positions that are supported by evidence, and so on.

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This kind of approach is not easy, and often requires significant quantities of time, discipline, and imagination. In this light, it is not surprising that objectivity is sometimes regarded as impossible, particularly with contemporary social issues in which the subject matter is often controversial and seemingly more open to multiple perspectives than in the natural sciences. However, to borrow a phrase from Karl Popper (2017), objectivity in teaching can be considered a “regulative principle,” something toward which one should strive but which one can never attain. The “ideology of neutrality” that dominates current thought and practices in schools (and in teacher education) is sustained by theories of knowledge and conceptions of democracy that constrain rather than widen civic participation in our society and functions to obscure political and ideological consequences of so-called “neutral” schooling, teaching, and curriculum. These consequences include conceptions of the learner as passive, democratic citizenship as a spectator project, and ultimately the maintenance of status quo inequalities in society. MAKING TROUBLE: CREATIVE DISRUPTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE CLASSROOM I have long been intrigued by the public pedagogy of politically inspired performance artists who aim to creatively disrupt everyday life through creative resistance (see for example Thompson & Scholette’s The Interventionists: User’s Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life; Andrew Boyd’s Beautiful Trouble, www.beautifultrouble.org). In this section I briefly present some theories and tactics relevant to teaching social studies that can serve as imaginaries for a pedagogy of dangerous citizenship. Tactics of Everyday Life French scholar Michel de Certeau is a great place to start when thinking about the creative disruption of everyday life in the classroom. De Certeau (Goff, 1984) argued that developing strategy (grand designs) is the purview of power; strategy assumes some measure of control (e.g., management, administration, governmental authorities). Tactics on the other hand are the purview of the non-powerful (e.g., teachers, students, etc.), an adaptation to the environment that has been created by strategies of the powerful. The practice of everyday life is about responding to the immediate situation with tactical agility, not long-term transformation of circumstances. (And here I’m departing from the standard line of many critical pedagogues.)

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There is no reason to wait for the “ revolution” or for “better” colleagues or more supportive circumstances before you take action. Observe your surroundings, orient the most important developments in the environment, decide on a course of action, and repeat. This is the OODA-Loop; it is a way to take advantage of unpredictable situations and destroy obstacles to meaningful learning while creating spaces that are responsive to the interests and desires of students instead of external imposed goals. Consider what de Certeau called la perruque [wig], the diversionary practice of using the employer’s resources for personal use. In other words, the worker’s own work is disguised as work for the employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of value is stolen. The worker who indulges in la perruque diverts time from the factory for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit. De Certeau’s illustrations include the secretary who uses company time and equipment to write a love letter and the cabinet maker who “borrows” a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room. La perruque is a subversive mode of resistance in which schooling can be seen as “our time” and not simply a managed or enculturating time, unquestioned labor work, controlled by authorities. The rationale for enacting la perruque ought to be consistent with promoting democracy, collectivity, and authenticity and opposed to oppression. Lastly, la perruque should be about capabilities and solidarity, that is, it should empower teachers and students to chase their interests, desires, skills, and abilities while simultaneously encouraging them to connect and form communities with one another—within and across classrooms and within and across schools. How can we use the resources (time and materials) of the school to teach social studies in ways that are directed toward interests and desires of students and local communities, rather than privileging the narrow and often exploitative interests of the elite, which are embedded standardized curriculum, corporate textbooks, and examinations that regulate what students learn which restricting teachers’ autonomy as decision-makers? Temporary Autonomous Zones The idea of Temporary Autonomous Zones (T.A.Z.), created by Hakim Bey, is closely related to de Certeau’s conception of tactics. T.A.Z. are an alternative to traditional models of revolution. T.A.Z. are not revolutionary moments; they are an uprising that creates free, ephemeral enclaves of autonomy in the here-and-now, avoiding direct confrontation with the state or authorities. Bey describes T.A.Z. as mobile and stealthy—appearing, disappearing, then reappearing. While the physical classroom may be fixed, we can think about creating temporary “liberated” spaces within (and beyond) the classroom. T.A.Z. are

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“an eruption of free culture where life is experienced at maximum intensity. It should feel like an exceptional party where for a brief moment our desires are made manifest and we all become the creators of the art of everyday life” (Jordan, n.d.). What can we learn pedagogically from liberated spaces like Occupy, Burning Man, Fiume, or Freetown Christiania? Society of the Spectacle Debord’s theory of the spectacle is at the heart of the idea of dangerous citizenship and much of my thinking about education and schooling. The key idea is that capitalism exercises social control through images, mass media that turn us into spectators. What we feel, what we believe, how we express desire, what we believe is possible—all are filtered through, and constrained by, the media we consume and produce. If you are familiar with Adbusters’ style culture jamming, you already know one of the tactics Debord and his colleagues in the Situationist International created, détournement. Détournement involves capturing images and turning them around in a new presentation to subvert the authority of the sign and the significations it sets in order. In other words, détournement is a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created one has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. What would happen if you taught a lesson or two using what has been called “the most dangerous social studies textbook in America”: Jon Stewart’s (2004) America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide To Inaction? What images, artifacts, objet d’art, and texts might be rerouted, misappropriated, hijacked or otherwise put to something beside its normal purpose in order to raise questions or disrupt conventional ways of thinking about social issues? For example, how might a concept such as war (or empire, freedom, capitalism, etc.) be explored through the detourned image below? The Propaganda Model Developed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988) to examine the behavior of corporate media, the propaganda model explains how the mass media consistently produces content that reflects the interests of economic and political elites. The basic hypothesis of the propaganda model is that corporate media will generally produce news content that serves elite interests. Corporate media serve these interests not as a result of direct control or censorship of the media, but as the result of filters existing within the institutional

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structure of corporate media organizations. The model proposes five filters through which the “raw material of the news” passes: 1. Concentration of media ownership and the profit-seeking imperative of the dominant media corporations. 2. Advertising as the primary source of income. 3. Sourcing of news relies on “expert” and official sources (the “moral division of labor” where officials give the facts and the reporters merely get them). 4. Negative commentary to a news story (flak) disciplines journalists and news organizations. 5. An external enemy or threat creates fear. (e.g., anti-communism, anti-terrorism, anti-Islam). By measuring the volume, sourcing, and tone of news output the model attempts to empirically demonstrate how the political economy of the mass media generally serves the centers of power that own and control the media and related interests. The propaganda model predicts that media coverage will favor the United States and its allies, while hiding or downplaying their crimes and emphasizing their plights, while doing the opposite for states or regimes seen as U.S. enemies. The model has been a valuable contribution to media studies and has helped scholars better understand the propaganda function of the media. The propaganda model argues that corporate media functions to “manufacture consent.” It allows us to understand, in part, how diverse societies can be dominated by a ruling class; how beliefs, explanations, perceptions and values are manipulated to justify the social, political, and economic status quo; what Chomsky has called “thought control in democratic societies.” The propaganda model in and of itself is an excellent way to engage students in critical media analysis of current issues (e.g., wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria). The model is also a useful framework for analyzing official curriculum documents, textbooks, and the entire enterprise of schooling, exposing hegemonic curriculum that serves the same centers of power and interests as corporate media. Consider how students might employ the propaganda model to reveal the political economy of textbooks or government-mandated curriculum. How might the propaganda model reveal the political economy of education reform? Examples of existing studies that employ the analytic spirit if not the rigid application of the model include Montaño and Aoki ‘s analysis of charter schools in Latino/a communities; Alan Singer’s ongoing critique of educational publisher Pearson; Susan Ohanian’s deconstruction of education reform discourse in The New York Times; the Critical Education article series “The Media and the Neoliberal Privatization of Education”; as well as a series of articles I wrote in Z Magazine from 1999–2003 (with Kevin D.

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Vinson), deconstructing the creation and impact of the corporate-driven education reform in the United States. The Alienation Effect Teaching and drama/acting certainly share some commonalities. Dramatist Bertolt Brecht’s (1930) idea of making the familiar strange has great potential as a strategy for disrupting the alienating routines that can dominate classroom experiences. As teachers we are almost always engaged in an efforts to provoke responses from students. Brecht’s criticism of theatre was that it took the audience on “an uncritical emotional roller coaster ride, crying when the main character cried, laughing when s/he laughed—identifying with him/her even when the character had nothing in common with them or their interests” (para. 1). The alienation effect aims to disrupt emotional manipulation with a “surprising jolt” such as when actors break down the imaginary “fourth wall” by speaking directly to the audience (now commonly seen in film and television, e.g., Frank Underwood in House of Cards). Another technique is social gest, described by L. M. Bogad (n.d.) as “an exaggerated gesture or action that is not to be taken literally, but which critically demonstrates a social relationship or power imbalance. For example, workers in a corporate office may suddenly and quickly drop to the floor and kowtow to the CEO, or the women in a household may suddenly start to move in fast-motion, cleaning the house, while the men slowly yawn and loaf around” (para. 4) This tactic can be used to illustrate how the social studies education (and schooling in general) functions less as an democratizing influence and more as means of social control. Imagine interrupting your own civics lesson to inform students that what they have learned about democratic citizenship is merely an attempt to convince them to be loyal, obedient, dutiful, and useful servants to the ruling class under a variety of lies such as: • “We all in this together.” • “This is a multicultural society.” • “Democracy trumps inequality (e.g., anyone can be president or prime minister).” Making the familiar strange to opens the door for students (and teachers) to confront the emotional manipulation that is part and parcel of traditional narratives presented in social studies curriculum (e.g., democracy trumps capitalism and inequality) and at the same time create a classroom that is surprising, critical, and appealing to students. What happens when the familiar social studies narrative of American exceptionalism—national policy guided by an interest in protecting freedom, democracy and justice

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worldwide—is exposed as policies of advancing empire and global domination economically and militarily? In most cases, I think it’s fair to say students would experience Brecht’s “surprising jolt.” Brecht’s challenge as dramatist, as described by Bogad, has pedagogical implications too: How do we confront emotional manipulation while creating a stimulating, surprising, radically critical, and appealing social studies classroom? The Ethical Spectacle Andrew Boyd, the editor of Beautiful Trouble, and Stephen Duncombe argue that to be politically effective we need to engage in spectacles that are ethical, emancipatory, and faithful to reality. Sounds like an excellent social studies class to me. Drawing inspiration from Debord and the Situationists as well as Zapatistas, Yes Men, and Iraq Veterans Against the War, Boyd (n.d.) describes the ethical spectacle as striving to be: • Participatory: Seeking to empower participants and spectators alike, with organizers as facilitators. • Open: Responsive and adaptive to shifting contexts and the ideas of participants. • Transparent: Engaging the imagination of spectators without seeking to trick or deceive. • Realistic: Using fantasy to illuminate and dramatize real-world power dynamics and social relations that otherwise remains hidden in plain sight. • Utopian: Celebrating the impossible—and therefore helping to make the impossible possible. According to Debord, boredom is always counterrevolutionary. A classroom that incorporates the ethical spectacle should then have revolutionary potential. Imagine what a social studies classroom looks like when it is participatory, open, transparent, realistic, and utopian. What principles, tactics, and strategies would be necessary to achieve the ethical spectacle in a classroom? What would go by the wayside? What risks are involved in striving for an ethical and spectacular social studies curriculum? Is it worth the risk? Is the safe alternative worth pursing? BEING HOPEFUL IN HOPELESS TIMES The post-9/11 world does much to encourage hopelessness. It is crucial for social studies educators to engage students in learning about our world in ways that are realistic but that also fashion hope. Yet, this hope should not

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take the form of the false hope that is embedded in the tired tropes of democracy and freedom that only exist in social studies textbooks and other propaganda outlets. In his latest book, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt, Chris Hedges (2016) argues we are in a revolutionary moment, and while the status quo is doomed, it is unclear whether the future will be progressive or reactionary. The one certainty in this world is things change. Finding courage in hopelessness means teaching and acting in ways that support participatory democracy, freedom, and equality even when the opposition is ruthless. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness . . . And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory (Zinn, 2006, p. 270). To teach now as we think we should teach, in defiance of all that is bad in society (and schools) is to be courageous in the face of hopelessness. REFERENCES Bogad, L. M. (n.d.). The alienation effect. Retrieved from www.beautifultrouble.org/ theory/alienation-effect Boyd, A., & Duncombe, S. (n.d.). Ethical spectacle. Retrieved from www.beautifultrouble.org/theory/ethical-spectacle Chomsky, N. (2013, August 17). The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy. Retrieved from the Salon website: https://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/ chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/ Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). Retrieved from www.supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310 Cockburn, P. (2010, July 24). Toxic legacy of U.S. assault on Fallujah ‘worse than Hiroshima.’ Retrieved from the Independent website: www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-Fallujah-worse-thanhiroshima-2034065.html Debord, G. (1967). “Society of the spectacle.” Retrieved from https://www.marxists. org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. Lexington, MA: Heath Foucault, M. (2013). Politics, philosophy, culture: Interviews and other writings, 1977– 1984. New York, NY: Routledge. Freire, P. (1998). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gibson, R., & Ross, E. W. (2007, March). The role of schools and of No Child Left Behind in a rotting imperial system: How educators should resist. Counterpunch, 15(5), 1, 4–6, Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/4654075/

70    E. W. ROSS The_Role_of_Schools_and_No_Child_Left_Behind_in_a_Rotting_Imperial_ System_How_Educators_Should_Resist. Gilens, M., & Page, B. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(3), 564–581. Goff, S. (1984). The tactics of everyday life. Originally from M. de Certeau’s “The practice of everyday life.” Retrieved from www.beautifultrouble.org/theory/ the-tactics-of-everyday-life/ Hedges, C. (2016). Wages of rebellion: The moral imperative of revolt. New York, NY: Bold Type Books. Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of mass media. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Huxley, A. (1958). Brave new world revisited. Retrieved from www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited Jordan, J. (n.d.). Temporary autonomous zone. Retrieved from www.beautifultrouble. org/theory/temporary-autonomous-zone/ Letter From Karl Marx to Arnold Ruge. (1843, May). Retrieved from https://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05-alt.htm Madison Debates. (1787, June 26). Retrieved from www.http://avalon.law.yale. edu/18th_century/debates_626.asp Scriven, M. (1991). Evaluation thesaurus. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Skinner, J. (2014, June 17). Thought is the courage of hopelessness: An interview with Philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Retrieved from VERSO website: https://www. versobooks.com/blogs/1612-thought-is-the-courage-of-hopelessness-an-interview-with-philosopher-giorgio-agamben Smith, R. C., & Sperber, E. (2014). Democracy in crisis: Toward a foundational, alternative theory of participatory democracy. London, England: Heathwood Press. Street, P. (2014). They rule: The 1% vs. democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press. The Senate Committee’s Report on the C.I.A.’s Use of Torture. (2014). The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/ world/cia-torture-report-document.html The Top 10 Charts of 2014. (2014, December 18). Retrieved from the website of Economic Policy Institute: https://www.epi.org/publication/ the-top-10-charts-of-2014/ U.S. Patriot Act. (2001). H.R. 3162. Retrieved at www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/ hr3162.html Whitney, M. (2015, August 7). Trump’s Triumph: Billionaire blowhard exposes fake political system. Counterpunch. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch. org/2015/08/07/trumps-triumph-billionaire-blowhard-exposes-fake-politicalsystem/ Working for the Few: Political Capture and Economic Inequality. (2014, January 20). 178 Oxfam Briefing paper. Retrieved from https://www.oxfam.org/sites/ www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf Zinn, H. (1970). The problem is civil obedience. In The Zinn reader: Writings on disobedience an democracy (pp. 403–411). New York, NY: Seven Stories Press. Zucman, G. (2016). Top wealth shares in the United States. Retrieved from www. gabriel-zucman.ed/uswealth/

CHAPTER 9

AGAINST ZOMBIE INTELLECTUALISM On the Chronic Impotency of Public Intellectuals Derek R. Ford

I’ve just read yet another think-piece decrying the sad state of affairs in the United States and ascribing it to a depoliticized, docile, stupid populous that is “easily seduced.” It came out on June 24, 2017 and I read it on June 25, 2017 as people took to the streets across the country for Pride (to celebrate it and to push back against pinkwashing). This is just a few days after people across the country took to the streets to protest the acquittal of the cop who murdered Philando Castile. What is to explain this disconnect? The piece I’m referring to is “Manufactured Illiteracy and Miseducation: A Long Process of Decline Led to President Donald Trump,” by cultural critic and public intellectual Henry Giroux (2017). It’s one of many articles of its kind, and is exemplary in its general representation of a certain brand of politics. In it, the distinguished professor Giroux mourns for a long-lost “civic culture,” “public life,” for the “foundations of democracy,” and a time

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before “the corruption of both the truth and politics.” The Trump administration, he admonishes, has “turned its back on education as a public good.” Even more so than formal institutions of school however, we have a wider cultural pedagogy that manufactures ignorance and illiteracy—our inability to see or read the truth: Cultural apparatuses that extend from the mainstream media and the diverse platforms of screen culture now function as neoliberal modes of public pedagogy parading as entertainment or truthful news reporting. (Giroux, 2017, para. 9)

This isn’t just a bias against intellectuals and academics. It’s more: “It is a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the political and economic forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives” (Giroux, 2017, para. 12). What we—progressives and the Left—need to do is to understand that education can empower people, it can give the people tools to critically understand their lives so that they can overcome their ignorance and complicity, hold power accountable, and transform the world. With the election of Trump, we can’t wait. We need to foster the “ideological and subjective conditions that make individual and collective agency possible” (Giroux, 2017, para. 31). Once, apparently, this was just “an option,” but now it is “a necessity.” THE PEOPLE, NOT INTELLECTUALS, MAKE HISTORY What this piece ultimately does is whitewash the long history that has led to this climate. It rests on a triumphalist account of American democracy that is only now under attack. It denies any historical and existing agency that the people have. And it offers no real solutions. I call it zombie intellectualism because it feeds off of existing political struggles but serves only to demotivate and demoralize them. We’re all guilty of it from time to time, but the fact that it has become a niche in its own right should be alarming to those of us on the left. Giroux is right that Trump has been a long time coming. But the decline didn’t begin with Fox News or Facebook. It began in 1492. It began with the genocide of the indigenous peoples. It accelerated with the slave trade and the formal institutionalization of white supremacy and slavery. It intensified during each war of colonial and imperial conquest—from the war against the Philippines in the late 19th century to the ongoing war against Syria. The conditions that allowed for the rise of Trump didn’t originate with the neoliberal attack on the public sector in the early 1980s. They are inscribed in the foundations of American democracy.

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And yet this history of oppression has equally been a history of resistance. The legacies and fruits of this resistance are what we should be remembering, celebrating, and fighting to strengthen. And resistance is what we have seen since the election of Trump. I don’t exactly know why radical academics often fail to bring this into the narrative. It may be because of their general disconnection from political struggles and protest movements. But it may also be because academics have had little to do with this narrative. Distinguished professors have never made history strictly through their work as public intellectuals. History has been made by the masses, by organizers, by activists, by everyday people. Sometimes, these people have held professorships, but that has always been incidental. This is not to brush off the ways that academics with radical politics have been attacked by the right wing, as Yasmin Nair has done. They must be defended. (But it is interesting to note that the ones who are attacked are not propagating liberal myths of American democracy.) This is also not to say that spontaneous resistance is enough, or that there is no role for theory. On the contrary, theory is absolutely crucial. But theory doesn’t come from the universities; it comes from the social movements themselves. Anyone who has helped organize in any way even the smallest of protests or political actions knows that there is no lack of theoretical debate that take place in our movements. There has never been a time when the truth or politics have been uncorrupted or pure. And truth has never corresponded with politics in any straightforward manner. If anything, politics is the struggle to produce new truths, new realities, and this is ultimately a struggle over and for power. That’s what we need to focus on building right now: power. Giroux (2017) comes close to admitting this, writing that truth and politics are now corrupted because “much of the American public has become habituated to overstimulation and lives in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images” (para. 5). Jodi Dean (2009) has dubbed our current era that of communicative capitalism, a merging of capitalism, networked technologies, and democracy that traps us in a reflexive circuit of information and critique. The answer, then, is not more information and more critique. The answer is to organize, to build, to multiply, and to intensify. DON’T MOURN OR JUST WRITE, ORGANIZE! I share Giroux’s wish that there was more resistance. But I can’t erase the incredibly hard work of the grassroots organizers and resisters in the United States. I know the discipline they have and the incredible sacrifices they make. Their labor should be honored, supported, and highlighted.

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One current example of this is an initiative called The People’s Congress of Resistance. It’s a campaign uniting radical activists and organizers from a range of struggles, and it will convene at Howard University in Washington, DC on September 16–17, 2017. The initial conveners are from organizations like the American Indian Movement, the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition, the Muslim American Alliance, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. There are people organizing for all 50 states. Exposing the U.S. Congress as the congress of millionaires and billionaires, it is building an alternative congress of the people, a true form of counterpower. If radical academics want to see the organic intellectuals they have read about in theory books, then they should be there. And if anyone wants to not just witness the beauty of the people in motion, but be a part of it, then you should be there. It will be yet another manifestation of the collective agency of the people. REFERENCES Dean, J. (2009). Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism and left politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Giroux, H. (2017, June 24). Manufactured illiteracy and miseducation: A long process of decline led to president Donald Trump. Salon. Retrieved from https:// www.salon.com/2017/06/24/manufactured-illiteracy-and-miseducation-along-process-of-decline-led-to-president-donald-trump/

CHAPTER 10

CONSEQUENCES OF THE “POST TRUTH” ERA Brayden White

Pedagogy, much like driving a car, has necessary conditions. When attempting to drive a car it must have all the necessary parts: wheels, a motor, a steering mechanism, a radiator, gas, and many other things. When missing one of these the car does not drive. Pedagogy is no different. There are a few conditions that allow for the process of information to be passed from one to another. Time and shared space, whether physical or metaphorical, are two conditions currently under attack by capitalism, democracy, and the 24/7 consumer economy. The way we value knowledge has shifted from appealing to metanarratives in the modern era to the postmodern era that values the performativity criterion. Knowledge and the truth are now valued by their input to output ratio creating resistance for these preexisting condition of pedagogy. Revolution is needed. Pedagogy must change the classrooms physical structure, curriculum and entire educational philosophy.

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BACKGROUND/SUPPORT Lyotard (1984) set the foundation for my understanding of the postmodern era of knowledge in his work The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. The way in which society processes information and judges its validity has dramatically changed. Performativity criterion-based thinking allows information to hold the greatest value when it is transmittable in the shortest amount of time. Quantity is emphasized rather than quality leading to misguided or misused statistics found in exclusive data banks held by the few that hold power over the many. Knowledge is a commodity. It has a has a use value and an exchange value. Commodities also hold power. Knowledge becomes power with the potential of danger. Dangers occur when knowledge is withheld from individuals. This is terrorism. Capitalism is filled with experts that hold the control of databanks and claim knowledge. Instead we should shift our understanding of knowledge. There is an need for a change from expert knowledge to philosophical thinking. Philosophers refuse to claim knowledge and instead use language games to come to a better understanding of the truth. Language games come from philosophers conception of knowledge as a commodity that comes from human experience. Knowledge goes beyond data of the individual and is created in the social world. To understand language games one must know it is a game. No move is right or wrong. It is not something that is practiced of ritualized. The game has rules that are ever changing or added upon. Each utterance is considered a “move.” The last rule of the language game is there must be rules or else there would be no game. We should use these moves between senders, receivers, and referents coincided with open databanks to create and open discourse. This is possible through the use of paralogy. This allows for multiple formations of logic to operate simultaneously while searching for the unknown and justice. As pedagogy shifts into the postmodern era, paralogy should be present itself in curriculums created by officials, but most importantly teachers themselves. Structural changes can be administered as well that aid in the coexistence of divergent thinking paths. Margret Grebowicz (2015) provided another conception of knowledge in the postmodern era in her work The National Park to Come. This book troubles the understanding of nature and the “natural.” National parks are societies’ authority for the natural. However, what is natural? Why is this not questions? To answer these questions one must look at how national parks come to exist. National parks are the creation of democracy. Democracy produces and protects the “natural.” Rarely questioned though is how this affects the natural. She troubles the existence of the natural at all. Nothing is untouched by the effects of democracy. Citizens of the democratic nation unthoughtfully perpetuate democracy as natural through pictures.

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Think about images of nature. How many images included gravel trails, power lines, bathrooms, railings, check-in booths, or visiting centers? Each of these items are products of democracy imbedded in what society sees as “natural.” National parks provide democracy with a mode to naturalize itself and reduce differing ideological conceptions of government. With a change in the way one understands the natural, one can begin to see the unseen. The search for what is beyond images or facades provided can elicit further understanding of what is. This search for the unseen has the potential to affect pedagogy in administrative functions as well and curriculum changes. Jodi Dean contributes to the understanding of the postmodern era in a similar manner. In her work Aliens in America, Dean (1998) takes questions the impact of the conspiracy culture in American society today. She takes the readers through the production of these connections and demonstrates how the “real” is created. The truth itself is allusive and alien. We have shifted from consensus reality to virtual reality. Technologic progression has produced a society that is no longer bound to the constraints of the transistor radio or 6 o’clock news networks. The public is no longer existent. Instead information is readily available in all forms on the internet. At any moment there is quick and easy access to educational articles, economic information, automobile deals, or yes, even pornography at the touch of the fingertips. The same device can open up two conflicting realms anywhere at any time. This is how the “real” is created. Information in the postmodern era must be verifiable through multiple forms of media to hold any validity. This is how cyberspace becomes a place of abduction, and American politics become Cyberia. As one surfs the web they are only a few clicks away from anything. Just as in alien abduction you can lose yourself in cyberspace. The only difference is you never leave your seat. Conspiracies then attempt to go beyond the abundance of information presented to them by the government or popular media as shine light on the unshown. Pedagogy in the post truth era can no longer be satisfied with accepting what is. Instead pedagogy must look at what is and question why this is happening, what is causing it, if this a good thing or bad, what does it mean to be good, is there action that needs to come from this, how to go about doing something if needed, and what could exist in its place? The administration can take actions to show the unshown by opening informational barriers with the teachers, students, and the community. Teachers can make changes to lesson plans, as well as the curriculum that focus on educational platforms or foundations rather than information consumption. Johnathan Crary (2014) adds the discussion of the postmodern era as well in is work 24/7. The 24/7 is the culture surrounding capitalism. This is indicated by economic demands that force around the clock production and consumption schedules. Technology aids capitalism assault on time by creating platforms for faster interactions with others to occur. It has also

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created a marketplace where consumption and production can happen simultaneously. Sleep however is the final “natural” state of humanity untouched by continuous capitalism. It has certainly felt the 24/7’s pressure though. Billions of dollars are spent annually in search of medicine that can eradicate the need for sleep in humans. Stimulants at times can keep a human awake for extended periods of time. However these are followed by an emanate crash. The sleepless soldiers is struck down by the all-powerful sleep once again. Sleep creates downtime, daydreaming, and self-reflection which are necessary for the creation of ideals unmediated by the 24/7. Modern sleep is the period of time just before falling asleep lasting until one awakes. This includes time spent lying in bed on the phone, listing to a white noise machine or simply lying in bed feeling unusual bodily twitches. The 24/7 attacks modern sleep through its use of technology. Although technology such as the television was once used to create a sense of the public (after its invention following WW2), cell phones are now used to infiltrate the shared space of a family or group and connect them to the rest of the world in an instance. In classrooms, offices, households, cars, and another gathering places today there are people using technology to escape their surroundings and enter the 24/7. When used properly, modern sleep is the 24/7’s kryptonite. Thoughts inspired outside of its grips, capable of challenging its very existence are creatable during this time. Pedagogy must create time within its curriculum for downtime. This can only be achieved with a change in educational philosophy amongst all levels of the school system. Structural changes or additions could potentially help the creation of time unmediated by the 24/7 as well. Andy Merrifield (2017) offered takes on the production of knowledge in the post truth era as well as ideological differences between those that currently produce knowledge and those he sees better fit in his work The Amateur. Knowledge is produced and maintained through exclusivity. Amateurs and professionals are distinguishable through in many facets of life. Amateurs create based on the need of humanity. While speaking the truth to power they are unbound by the constraints of time and big data. They choose to focus on the quality of work produced rather than the quantity. Meaning is located within the work itself rather than narratives. The expert produces based on the demands of the population regardless of sensibility and allegiance. They view people as quantifiable beings with an optimal organizational and structural potential. They focus on the work’s time to monetary value ratio. To achieve this they obey bid data and specialize professions. Knowledge produced by professionals bears the stamp of exclusivity because only those with the access to big data and the means to quantify human existence can analyze the data and add to the discourse. Amateur knowledge is available to all, created for all, and should be distributed to all. This creation is only possible if your work is done with

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passion. Amateurs project themselves into their work refuting the employability demands of professionalism and follow their own desires enabling them to become themselves. Society is in need of an amateur revolution. The creation of space able to be filled with questioning and opposition is a necessary condition of this. Face to face interaction covered by free press, unmarked by political demands, and seen by all is needed in the revolution. Amateurs are able to both create and consume this media. Members of the society can no longer stand by in silence. Too long has our representative democracy hired the exclusive professional to make decisions for the majority of bodies in America. The amateur revolution calls for the citizen to become the ultimate expert. Citizens should choose what best fits their own needs and end the “organizational crawl” of corporate America. Pedagogy begins the end of the professional through the ratification of early specialization. Administrative reform ends the vocational schools’ existence as mandatory. This can be facilitated by restructuring the physical layout of educational facilities in ways that encourage interdisciplinary thought with real world manifestations. Educational ideology within administrators and teachers need to be modified to facilitate the revolution as well. Jodi Dean (2016) offered further insight in her work Crowds and Party. Throughout this work she details how the crowd creates a gap maintainable only when a party fills the places of the crowd when it is forced to dissipate. The crowd is a group of people that occupy a space while gathering attention from the world around them. The crowd breaks up life events causing disruption. This space created by the crowd is a gap. The gap is the space created for political action with the crowd dissipates. Parties have the ability to hold the gap open and continue the ideals of the crowd after daily life forces them to retreat. They are organizations that call attention to and press political ideology. The party holds the capacity to create change in society. All successful parties have good leaders. They recognize they are not the party or the most important part of the movement. Instead they focus on giving the members of the crowd the ability to experience things they are unable to experience as individuals. There is no pride in being an individual savior. This is a failure to recognize your existence is dependent on the recognition of others. There needs to be recognition that the group is greater than the individual. This a change teachers and administration can begin to instill is students through philosophical reform in the “post truth” era. CHANGES TO PEDAGOGY From insight provided by thinkers already noted, I have devised reforms for pedagogy in the “post truth” era. These changes are philosophical, structure, ideological, curriculum, teacher, and administrative based. Each

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change centers around the postmodern era’s challenge on time and shared space. Lyotard’s ideation of paralogy builds a foundation for what education should move toward. When beginning any form of revolution there is necessary change in educational philosophy that must occur. Introducing students to language games is a necessity. An emphasis on continued education for both instructors and administrators can help administer this. As active participants in language games, a better understanding of them allows for a better understanding of the world around us. Paralogy also requires an open dialogue amongst each member of the school system. School administrations need to open their dialogue to allow teachers, students, and the public in on debate and discussions. Allowing citizens to become their own expert, as Merrifield (2017) added, helps create this. Further understanding and contemplation of both the seen and the unseen is added from Grebowicz (2015) and Dean (1998, 2016) adheres with the notion as well. Acceptance of what is and the way knowledge is produced must end. Unquestioned problems and answers must end. Those in power who host exclusive knowledge must feel the demands of the populations. Capitalistic demands to produce must not impede pedagogy. To halt the 24/7 ,our understanding of unproductive time must change. This is a time for creation, contemplation, as well as, feelings and perceptions unavailable in a society based on the performativity criterion. The administration and teachers must place theses philosophical changes concerning time and shared space into the forefront of educational reform through curriculum and physical modifications. Modifications to the curriculum can be achieved by allowing students to become the crowd, enabling them to create a gap, followed by the teacher becoming the party. The curriculum should be flexible enough to allow the students to direct themselves through their passions. The class activities should be centered around what the students’ thoughts and interests are regarding each topic. After there is an assigned reading, enter the class with questions that provoke thought. Lecturing after assigning a reading is a recipe for disengagement. Allow the response to the questions guide where the rest of the class goes. When students respond to the teacher’s question, teachers must follow up. Encourage other members of the class to respond either to that students or to the original question. The teacher must try to gage what the class needs to get in the directions they are pursuing. They must have face to face communication that encourages opposition and questioning. There must be an emphasis on allowing time for students to contemplate and thoughtfully respond to questions presented to them. After the students have created a gap, the teacher then needs to facilitate and create experiences the students would be unable to participate in as an individual. The teacher becomes the leader of their party. Using new ideologies of the importance of time

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and shared space teachers create lesson plans that facilitate class as a collective group rather than direct the individuals. Administrators and teacher alike can make adjustments that can emphasis or create shared space. To allow for paralogy to blossom, schools need to structurally change. I propose more open concepts the allow the free flow of information from one classroom to the next. Allowing the student to change classroom scenery throughout the day is good. This should not change. Instead windowless walls should be removed. They should be replaced with glass walls and doors. This visibly invites knowledge to flow both from the classroom to the outside world as well as information from the world to the classroom. Teachers can make more subtle classroom changes. An option for teachers of younger students is to allow the student to build their own desk. Allow the students to build a desk that suits their passions and desires. Provide them with material for both abnormal and unique choices as well as the classic school provided desk. Some materials for chairs include balls, buckets, tables or any stackable object. After giving students time to create a physical desk allow them to decorate around their chairs and desks. Let’s their passions surround them through decorations. Begin to guide the student by using their passions. Teachers of older students who are unable to do this can fill their rooms with the passions of their students. This can be done by getting to know the students outside of the classroom setting. Simply taking the time to ask about what students enjoy doing can dramatically increase the teachers ability to engage students in the future. Topics and material in the class can then be related back to things that interest the students. They can also use music as a tool to allow students’ passions to shine. With an increase in the amount of time for contemplation and creation teachers can allow students to play music. This music should be an expression of themselves. Allow all students to pick music on rotations to play for the class during activities while downtime is being used to escape the 24/7. As pedagogy enters the “post truth” era, time and shared space must be emphasized to give students the ability to experience things collectively. Administrators and teachers alike need to shift their own educational philosophy. No longer can pedagogy accept what is without questioning what is not. Connections of what is shown to what is unshown should be used to create logical links that induce thought, contemplation, and questioning. Regardless of the demands of continuous capitalism, databanks need to be used to by all, with time in shared space to trouble “the truth” in ways only achievable as a crowd. Crowds use their passions to create gaps. These crowds are dependent on both time and shared space. Pedagogy needs a revolution. The revolution must stem from education itself. When these philosophical, structural, and administrative changes take place, the pedagogical revolution can begin and parology can prevail.

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REFERENCES Crary, J. (2014). 24/7: Late capitalism and the ends of sleep. New York, NY: Verso. Dean, J. (1998). Aliens in America: Conspiracy cultures from outerspace to cyberspace. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Dean, J. (2016). Crowds and party. New York, NY: Verso. Grebowicz, G. (2015). The national park to come. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Merrifield, A. (2017). The amateur: The pleasures of doing what you love. New York, NY: Verso.

CHAPTER 11

DEMOCRACY, HIGHER EDUCATION, AND THE IVORY TOWER CRITIQUE OF NEOLIBERALISM Jacob Ertel

Few dedicated to any semblance of left politics are celebrating the state of higher education in the United States today. From unprecedented student indebtedness to budget cuts to attacks on tenure, the future of academia looks bleak. Yet for the general concurrence on the symptoms resulting from the neoliberalization of the university, it is less established how this process of neoliberalization is best conceptualized. Analyses of neoliberalism tend to fall largely into two camps: one that describes a series of economic policy moves with varying degrees of deliberation or foresight, and one that describes a markedly new form of governmentality. These critiques are not mutually exclusive, but they often do diverge in their understanding of capitalism’s historical progression, its underlying logic, and its most pronounced effects. In particular, the latter camp (largely comprised of cultural theorists) that evaluates neoliberalism as a paradigm

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shift in governmentality risks romanticizing the Fordist-Keynesian regime of publicly financed mass production and consumption, and the nominal freedoms typically associated with post-war governance. By adhering to the paradigm shift schema, this line of thinking loses sight of the historically contingent movement of capitalism, and in doing so erroneously leaves open the possibility of a return to a prior era. This is not only inaccurate analytically, but entails a range of counterproductive assumptions regarding the political nature of capitalism and liberal democracy. Looking at the higher education system in this light can be instructive for thinking through the political-economic changes of the last several decades, as well as how we can reconceptualize resistance to ongoing processes of neoliberalization without resorting to a nostalgic imaginary. Of central importance to any discussion of neoliberalism is that we know what we want. To be sure, since the 1970s inequality has increased, along with the privatization of public goods and services, the incorporation of poor and working class people into the financial sector, and the disembowelment of the already precarious welfare system. While these trends are serious and palpable, and emerge from a range of contradictions endemic to the Fordist-Keynesian arrangement—including low growth, high inflation, worker militancy, and destabilizing foreign inflows of capital—we need to be careful in discussing neoliberalism as a veritable paradigm shift. This is not to understate the realness of neoliberalism, but to argue to that it represents a historically contingent escalation of capitalism’s underlying tendencies towards capital concentration, uneven development, and crisis. This distinction holds implications for formulating any sort of left political imaginary. If we accept neoliberalism as a paradigm shift, how much inequality under capitalism are we comfortable tolerating? A common response might entail what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten would term a “restorationist” argument, which laments neoliberalism’s abandonment of ostensible democracy or democratic institutions. Restorationist arguments can have radical theoretical origins, but fall more fully in line with humanist and social democratic affiliations that critique neoliberalism on the grounds of its moral baseness rather than its concrete functionality. Such critiques can be useful in helping us articulate our relationship to political and economic centers of power, but they often idealize pre-neoliberal iterations of such power. Instead, we should look to reconfigure our relationship to neoliberal institutions, especially if we decide that our objections to them come not from their neoliberalization but from their social function throughout capitalism’s development. Wendy Brown’s critique of the neoliberalization of the university exemplifies a kind of restorationist nostalgia. In her recent Undoing the Demos, Brown portrays neoliberalism as a distinctly new governing rationality that constitutes a clean break from post-war governance. In so doing, Brown

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idealizes the university’s historical role within the United States while equating democracy with liberal arts education. Brown conceives of neoliberalism as “an order of normative reason that, when it becomes ascendant, takes shape as a governing rationality extending a specific formulation of economic values, practices, and metrics to every dimension of human life.”1 For Brown, the notion of the free market as a governing rationality fundamentally reconfigures our self-understanding—we become homo oeconomicus (a term borrowed from Foucault), or human capital, that constantly must work to leverage our ability to compete and enhance our self-worth.2 Brown contrasts neoliberal from liberal rationality in three ways. First, whereas liberalism allowed for a degree cultivation of personal interests, under neoliberalism our identity as human capital becomes a singular and ever pervasive subject position. Second, as opposed to the impetus under liberalism for human capital to compete in order to participate in the purchase of use-values, neoliberalism mandates the infinite appreciation of self-as-exchangevalue. Finally, neoliberal human capital operates in the sphere of financial or investment capital, rather than entrepreneurial capital.3 Brown explains that this neoliberal rationality is dangerous less so because of the material consequences of intensified economic polarization, but because it undermines our potential to effectively participate in democracy (broadly articulated as the ability for people to control their own political decision making process). This limitation is not due to a repressive state power or the impact of financialization on people’s livelihoods, but to what Brown calls a reconfiguration of the higher education system in accordance with neoliberal rationality. For Brown, “Citizens cannot rule themselves . . . without understanding the powers and problems they are engaging,” and that understanding must come first and foremost through education, and liberal arts education more specifically.4 If “the dramatic thinning of key democratic values coupled with this intensification of nondemocratic forces and conditions threatens to replace self-rule with a polity in which the people are pawns of every kind of modern power,” then the only way to combat “people’s wholesale ignorance of the forces shaping their lives and limning their future” is through an educational model that challenges neoliberalism’s professionalizing imperative.5 This model looks to the post-war period in which, Brown claims, the university “promised not merely literacy, but liberal arts to the masses . . . it was a time in which a broad, if not deep college education—one of the arts, letters, and sciences—became an essential element of middle-class membership.”6 Here Brown misrepresents the university’s social function as fundamental to the production of the intelligent citizenry needed for democratic self-rule. Though she often provides stipulations when discussing the pre-neoliberal university in the United States, such disclaimers are effectively rendered mute by her insistence on the university’s (and in particular, the public

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university’s) construction as a means for egalitarianism, social mobility, and democracy.7 According to Brown, this conception of the university destined citizens “for intelligent engagement with the world, rather than economic servitude or mere survival.”8 Brown admits that this model is a classically liberal ideal, but one that is founded on a commitment to egalitarianism, humanism, and the public good.9 Yet why should economic mobility rest on a liberal arts education? Why should entering into the “middle-class” be contingent on any particular kind of education? And how is classical liberalism commensurable with any kind of redistributive ethos? The goal here is not to take up Brown’s understanding of the pre-neoliberal university as an institution of egalitarianism by arguing that the university is a purveyor of false consciousness or brainwashing. Rather, it is to assert that her views regarding what constitutes intelligence are rooted in unfair assumptions about education and democracy, and thus fail to provide an alternative to the tendency towards professionalization that she argues is unique to the neoliberal university. Even if we set aside the race-blind character of her analysis here, Brown’s equation of liberal arts education to democracy is fundamentally elitist: Its corollary is that those without such an education are unfit for participation in self-rule, as if exposure to Plato and Aristotle rather than accounting or marketing better qualifies one to truly understand one’s own interests. This line of thinking is of course disengaged from the lived experiences of those who voluntarily seek vocational training (there is no voluntary activity for Brown), or those whose livelihoods depend on such preparation. One’s contribution to society is determined through one’s access to a particular kind of education. In making such claims Brown paradoxically accepts the neoliberal logic she writes against, and she does so without questioning the undemocratic nature of pre-neoliberal institutions themselves. Brown’s democracy implies a flattened understanding of power, one that takes the notions of citizenry and nation-state for granted. In particular, the claim that a university-educated citizenry precedes democracy performs a theoretical sleight of hand, as it inadvertently refers back to a logic of social intelligibility that codifies competency via institutional validation. Brown calls for a return to the vague democratic pluralism that has been eroded by the requirement for “skilled human capital, not educated participants in public life and common rule.”10 This understanding of democracy actually occludes an engagement with power, as such pluralism is distinct from the power-ridden selection process that determines which desires are legitimized and enacted. If we follow Brown’s claims about the democratic nature of the post-war educational system, then it is puzzling as to why such a system would have eroded in the first place, unless neoliberalism is the natural outcome of a democratically engaged polity. In this sense, construing neoliberalism as a paradigm shift in governing

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rationality from the Fordist-Keynesian period—while avoiding a serious discussion of that regime’s engrained racialized inequities, its economic contradictions, and its deepening militarization—fails to examine how the intensification of these tendencies under neoliberalism is endogenous to capitalism itself. This shortcoming is particularly acute when it comes to the academia: The professionalization Brown laments is part and parcel of the university under capitalism. Here we may find Harney and Moten’s work on the university instructive. In contrast to Brown’s view of the pre-neoliberal, liberal arts university, Harney and Moten aver that self-identified critical academics must by nature of their position recognize and be recognized by the university. In other words, some buy-in is required. So-called critical education, apropos of Brown’s appeal to the liberal arts, is thus constituted “in an opposition to the unregulated and the ignorant without acknowledging the unregulated, ignorant, unprofessional labor that goes on not opposite them but within them.”11 Academia’s purpose is not to encourage a free flow of ideas—it is a striated and hierarchized field that envelops and regulates, but is also fallible in its own capacities. In contrast to Brown, Harney and Moten understand the university as a space of conflict that can serve as refuge but never enlightenment.12 True subversion lies not in the call for a more critical education, but in stealing from the university what one can, in rendering oneself unintelligible within its mode of professionalism. Critical education’s paradoxical relationship to professionalization entails a negligence of those who operate both within and outside of the university through a politics of deception, of theft, and of a true unprofessionalism. Such negligence then constitutes the crux of professionalization, while this professionalization is the means through which negligence is carried out.13 To recognize or accept this logic is to simultaneously render oneself intelligible to it, and thus to adhere to Brown’s call for pluralism. Such reasoning does not include this unprofessional group (for Harney and Moten, “the undercommons”) in its understanding of democracy, and in so doing it accepts the claim that participation in the polity requires institutional codification. Meanwhile, the unintelligible sneak in to these institutions and work to bring them down. If this is what democracy actually means—institutionalization—then perhaps we need to reconsider our axes of opposition to neoliberalism. We need to go beyond the critique of the neoliberal university, to consider the intimate linkages between critical academia and the professionalizing tendencies endemic to the university under capitalism, neoliberal or not. The problem with Brown’s ivory tower critique of the neoliberalization of the university is not about an error in identifying this process’s outcomes; the effects of neoliberalization are quite clear. The argument here is simply that rather than understanding neoliberalism as a new governing rationality, we should look to it as an exacerbation of capitalism’s internal logics.

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Analyzing the conundrum of the neoliberal university in this way allows us to begin to analyze capitalism in a way that Brown is unwilling to do: We are better prepared to analyze the relationship between democracy and the state, more attuned to the experiences of the poor and the working classes, and able to move away from restorationist nostalgia. NOTES 1. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (New York, NY: Zone Books, 2015), 30. 2. Brown, Undoing the Demos, 10. 3. Ibid, 33. 4. Ibid, 175. 5. Ibid, 179. 6. Ibid, 180. 7. Ibid, 184. 8. Ibid, 185. 9. Ibid, 187. 10. Ibid, 177. 11. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (New York, NY: Autonomedia, 2013), 32. 12. Harney and Moten, The Undercommons, 26. 13. Ibid, 31.

PART III GENDER STUDIES

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CHAPTER 12

GENTRIFICATION IS A FEMINIST ISSUE A Discussion on the Intersection of Class, Race, Gender, and Housing Cherise Charleswell

AN OVERVIEW: WHAT IS GENTRIFICATION? From a socioeconomic standpoint, gentrification may be defined as a gradual process of renewal and rebuilding that involves the influx of upper income or affluent—usually White people—into existing urban districts that are often viewed as being deteriorating areas. This process causes the displacement of the low-middle income working class and often longtime residents due to the increase in rents and property values and changes in the district’s overall character and culture. The rent gap is often noted as the underlying mechanism of gentrification. The following is an overview of the cyclic nature of this rent gap put into historical perspective: • By the close of the Second World War there was a movement of capital to the suburbs. This movement was fueled by greater amount

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• •

• •

• •

of open land, lower cost of land, little existing development, and opportunities for profit. Capital and resources left the city and followed urban migration (White flight) to the suburbs. Racist housing practices, including legislation that forbid selling homes and renting to non-White residents helped to uphold de facto segregation. By the 1960s many of these urban areas, with the loss of capital, jobs, and so on, began to deteriorate, and property values fell. Currently with the higher costs of property in the suburbs and other communities, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to invest small and gain a big profit; thus making the once “undesirable” urban properties with their low property values and costs, more “desirable.” By the 1980s gentrification was in full swing. Reinvestment in the urban communities causes the cost of property to rise quickly and long-standing residents who were once able to afford to live in these once “undesirable” areas, find themselves unable to afford the higher cost of rent and home mortgages. Further, they are unable to afford to patronize the new and costly stores that have replaced the shops that they used to frequent.

This rent gap is facilitated by a number of agents and practices, and retenanting is a professional euphemism given to the commercial real estate agents whose job is to study a community and help to make change—gentrification—happen quickly. Their work involves helping to kick out commercial tenants who are paying extremely low rent, and then finding tenants who will pay higher rates for the same spaces. The following expose was released discussing the work of one of these agents working in Highland Park, a hilly area northeast of downtown Los Angeles that has been a target for gentrification for residents fleeing even higher home prices and rents in neighboring Hollywood, Silver Lake, and Echo Park. Then there was the 2012 release of the documentary film My Brooklyn, directed by Kelly Anderson and produced by Allison Lirish Dean, which offers detailed examples of this rent gap and an even broader analysis of the many factors behind gentrification. Brooklyn itself is home to some of the most rapidly gentrifying areas in the United States, and is among the most expensive cities to reside in. Viewing the complex matter of gentrification through a feminist lens helps to uncover how multifaceted it is; in that gentrification involves the oppression, marginalization, displacement of vulnerable populations, particularly women and children who are often already negatively impacted by the effects of classism, sexism, and racism. Gentrification threatens to erode the

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communities and livelihood maintained by these women because their displacement becomes a precondition for the total transformation of the area. When considering the complex definition and various factors involved in this process, one thing must remain clear—it is driven by the private sector and is the result of capitalism’s relentless pursuit of profit. The very sector of society that has control and influence over all levels of government in the United States, and is thus able to create policies that help to facilitate and increase gentrification in communities around the country—as well as those outside the United States. This far-flung reach is due to the nature of multinational corporations which wield their power and influence globally. I was reminded of this while on vacation in Portugal this past spring. As I was walking along a typically narrow, winding street in Vila Nova de Gaia, which is just South of Porto, a resident of the city pointed out how many of the original homeowners and families that lived along the street for many, many years, were becoming displaced. Their homes and shops were being bought up and replaced with hotels. Already, I could begin to see how the character of the community was changing. These new hotels used color schemes and architectural design styles that seemed completely out of place with the homes in the area, which were decorated with world-renowned, intricate and vibrant Portuguese ceramic tiles. I asked where these families went, and the response was that they were relocated to areas much further away from the city center. And this seems to be a common theme on both sides of the Atlantic— the lack of consideration that goes to displaced residents. Truly considering these residents would mean that factors which led them to these areas, which were previously viewed as being undesirable, should be taken into account. Thus, the argument can be put forth that gentrification may be viewed as new-wave colonialism, having economic, social, and public health repercussions for women, communities of color, and the poor. In this sense, it is a feminist issue and should be interrogated, at least partly, as such. FEMINIZATION OF POVERTY AND THE COST OF HOUSING In the most simplistic terms, the feminization of poverty refers to the fact that women represent a disproportionate share of the world’s poor. Further, the feminization of poverty is not only a consequence of lack of income, but is also the result of the deprivation of opportunities and gender biases present in both society and government. For women of color, the loss of opportunities are also a result of institutional-level racism and discriminatory practices. It is these biases that have helped to create the gender-wage gap and all of the socioeconomic consequences of inequity.

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So, “How does the feminization of poverty relate to the discussion of gentrification?” For more than 30 years, women in the United States have had to deal with not only stagnant wages, where average wages have barely kept pace with inflation since 1979, but also with the persisting gender-wage gap. Even more troublesome is that these wages have remained stagnant despite an exponential growth in worker productivity. For myself, and those born the generation after me, the 80s and 90s babies, this means that our overall standard of living is probably reduced by 50% in comparison to previous generations; and this includes college educated women who may also find it difficult to afford the loftier rental prices in gentrified neighborhoods. Salaries are simply not keeping up with the cost of living, especially the cost of housing. Further, the gender-pay gap helps to ensure that those who are more likely to be impoverished and coping with issues of food insecurity, homelessness, and so on, are women and children. Working-class and low-income women are the group who are most vulnerable to gentrification in that they live in the areas that are being targeted by this process. In essence, the sexist, racist, discriminatory and biased practices, beliefs, and policies that have helped to create the gender-pay gap also help to facilitate their removal from areas that they were once able to afford. Having lower wages means that these working-class women will be unable to resist or withstand the process of gentrification and remain in their homes and neighborhoods. This is due to the fact that lower wages means that an increase in the amount on rent or mortgage costs is extremely difficult for women who are already dealing with wage deficits. To put this into perspective, a Latina woman who on average makes only $0.56 to a White man’s $1.00 hourly, would be least likely to be able cope with a marked increase in rent, as well as the higher cost of groceries and other goods which occur when an area undergoes gentrification. In comparison, a White man who makes higher wages on average, would be more capable of remaining in a neighborhood that is undergoing gentrification. INTERSECTIONS: COMMUNITIES OF COLOR When taking a look at the definition of gentrify (n.d.), the root word of gentrification, one can readily discern what is implied, especially when considering the change in demographics of these neighborhoods: “To change (a place, such as an old neighborhood) by improving it and making it more appealing to people who have money." The term appealing harkens back to the language used by banks, realtors, and others who wanted to ensure that certain neighborhoods would remain

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devoid of people of color. The American suburbs were actually built out due to this phenomenon of White flight from urban centers which, without resources and investment, were left to decay. In fact, post-New Deal communities actually received federal subsidies for home ownership, while others that had Black residents or other people of color, did not. This process was called red-lining, and it often barred any neighborhood with more than 5% of Black people/people of color from receiving subsidies for home ownership and wealth building. This process helped to keep Compton, California, the birthplace of gangster rap, completely White up until the early 1950s. This process led half a million Whites to move out of Brooklyn in the 1970s. The following statements shared by Zach Behrens (2011) in his essay, Before the 1950s, the Whiteness of Compton was Defended Vehemently, explains why these covenants manifested. Covenants across the country began in the late 1910s and early 1920s in response to the increasing black population in American cities, namely Northern and Western ones that saw the rise during World War I during the socalled great migration from the South. In Los Angeles, however, the move of African Americans was slow until World War II. Still, that slow growth in the 1920s was enough for White homeowners to become concerned about declining property values because of the black influx. (para. 4)

These discriminatory housing practices were—or continue to be—used against other people of color around the United States, and one can argue that at its roots, and according to the terminology used in its definition, gentrification is a racist practice that seeks to make a neighborhood more appealing to those who are deemed desirable—in other words, White people, or more specifically, wealthy White people. Women of color, particularly those who are working class and thus subjected to oppressive systems of racism, classism, ableism, and sexism, are deemed the most undesirable and are consequently marginalized. The rising cost of living, escalating rents and mortgages, stagnant wages, and gender wage-gap literally force them out of their neighborhoods, despite many having community ties for multiple generations. Ultimately, the process of gentrification sits on a historical legacy of oppression and discrimination, and has only worsened with the shrinking of the middle class and transfer of wealth to the smallest percentage of the U.S. population over the past 40 years. Furthermore, it has left women, especially women of color, as the most vulnerable in this process of systematic displacement. It is a matter where race, class, and gender intersect. And for this reason, gentrification must be recognized as a feminist issue.

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REFERENCES Anderson, K., Dean A. L., & Rothberg, F. (Producers), & Anderson, K. (Director). (2012). My Brooklyn [Motion picture]. United States: New York City. Behrens, Z. (2011, January 11). Before the 1950s the Whiteness of Compton was defended vehemently. Retrieved from https://www.kcet.org/socal-focus/ before-the-1950s-the-whiteness-of-compton-was-defended-vehemently Gentrify. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster learner's dictionary. Retrieved from http://learnersdictionary.com/definition/gentrify

CHAPTER 13

”HOW MUCH DO YOU COST?” A Story of Sexual Neocolonialism Sonasha Braxton

I’ll start at the beginning. Here is who I am. I am an African-American woman. I am 32 years old. I was born in the United States. My parents are from the United States. My parents’ parents are from the United States and so on. Many of my ancestors were already here. Some of my ancestors were brought here in chains and sold on auction blocks. I consider myself African by nature, American by nurture. Once upon a time, when I was 21 years old, I was a student at United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya. It was my first time in Africa. I had been there for about two months, when I was out at a bar with my friends, very close to the campus. My friends and I were all college students, and dressed accordingly so. I walked myself to the bar and took 200 shillings out of my pocket to buy my myself a beer. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. It was a Caucasian male in his late 40s with scraggly hair. This man was slightly out of place in a college bar, but not an unfamiliar sight in the Nairobi nightlife. The music was blaring. I couldn’t hear him well, but he seemed to be pointing to another corner of the bar

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and making motions towards the beer I had already ordered. I side-eyed him and shook my head. Whatever it was I wasn’t interested. I had what I came for. He tapped me on the shoulder again and motioned for me to bring my ear closer to his lips so he could tell me something without yelling. I sighed and conceded, bending down slightly. “My friend would like to buy you a drink,” he said. I (beer already in hand) raised my beer and pointed to it. “I’m okay! I just bought myself a drink, but thanks!” I sashayed away back to my friends and started dancing. Scene 2. I was thirsty again. I walked back to the bar. The same 40-something White man with the scraggly hair was there. This time he stood up directly in front of the space I thought I would be able to squeeze into the bar. “My friend wants to buy you a drink! He wants to meet you!” he yelled, again pointing over to some dark corner. At this point somewhat curious, and one Tusker in, I replied, “Why can’t your friend talk to me himself?” “He’s shy,” he responded. Amused that we had reverted to middle school interactions, and half-expecting him to deliver a paper which said, “Will you go out with me?” with “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” as boxes to check, I became curious. I thought, maybe his friend is a cute 20-something Kenyan banker, a gorgeous 30-year old Ugandan lawyer . . . I thought, who knows. “He’s right over here,” he insisted. I said, “Okay” and followed him just a few steps away from the bar, to a high top in the corner. The friend was an unattractive 50-something Caucasian American. He greeted me, shook my hand, asked my name, and where I was from. I answered, recoiled my hand, and said “Nice to meet you, but I’m going to go back to my friends.” He motioned for me to join them. I shook my head and hustled back to the table where my friends were. Scene 3. Last drink. Same man. Same spot. Same question. Same refusal. Followed by the question, the first of many of the same design, with different accents, languages and configurations that I would hear often while living in Kenya, “My friend wants to know how much.” I said, “How much what?” totally confused. “My friend wants to know how much it would cost for him to sleep with you?” What happened next is somewhat of a blur. I know that a fury engulfed me. I remember walking outside. I felt like I was suffocating. I remember coming back. I remember using a lot of expletives. But what I will never forget is how the situation was resolved. I was asked to leave the club. I was told I was making too much noise. I was disturbing business. This was not the last time something like this would transpire. It would go on to happen in Djibouti, and in Ethiopia, and in Ivory Coast. I, a Black woman, minding my own business, sexually propositioned by he, a White man with a few

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dollars in his pocket, was at fault for disrupting a totally unacceptable and disrespectful attempted “transaction.” Since this first occurrence back in my 20s, I have learned to contain myself somewhat better, to learn to listen for the response to the question I now pose genuinely curious, “What makes you think you can buy me?” I have heard everything from, “Oh I’m sorry. I thought you were from [insert country here]” to “everything can be bought”; everything equally as insulting. All that these answers have amounted to is this, “As a Black woman, your body is a commodity, that I as a White man, have the right to purchase it/you.” While this is a personal narrative, I do not share this burden alone. It becomes important as it makes the case of what I will call sexual neocolonialism, a legacy of the exploitation of the bodies of women of color. If we understand neocolonialism, as the last stage of imperialism, as did Kwame Nkrumah (1965), as its most dangerous stage; as a stage in which sovereignty is only a façade and that power is used for “exploitation rather than development,” than we must too understand neocolonialism as the most dangerous stage not just for the “developing state” but for its people, particularly its women. The African female whether in diaspora or continental stands to lose her sovereignty, and to be exploited, rather than space intentionally made for her to develop herself the way she sees fit. Colonialism left in its wake the destruction of pre-colonial political, social and economic systems in which women ranked highly, and replaced them first with “native authorities” exclusive of women followed by clientele-patronage systems, which too excluded women. Women often lost tremendous power during the colonial period as well as economic autonomy. This resulted from women’s exclusion from the global marketplace and new reliance of women’s unpaid labor. Customary laws developed under colonialism and inherited from Europe, disadvantaged women favoring men. They accorded particular rights to men, such as the right to testify in trials, that were closed to women. Women were removed from power as heads of associations often with the final say over market or agricultural disputes, and replaced with men. Simply colonial rule restructured family, sex, gender, and sexuality by creating legal mechanisms to control women’s positions in society, positions in their families, and expressions of their sexuality, for the sake of White Western capital. The trickle-down effect of the disempowerment of the African woman has also emboldened the White hetero male to assume his place in the hierarchy of African affairs is one of superiority, and one in which any Black woman continues to be for sale. This is further reinforced often by the colonial mentality, the internalized colonialism of many members of African society, which favors and in fact protects unfettered White male hetero sexuality and promotes its unbridled exploits. It is this internalized colonialism, in actuality, the reaction of those around her, that asks the Black woman either

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to suppress her reaction to verbal sexual violence totally, or to react within the confines of what White hetero males have sanctioned as polite gender normativity; to smile and say “no thank you,” to gently brush away prodding hands, to repeat “no” quietly, avert our eyes, and meekly insist that we decline such advances. This internalized colonialism of its witnesses says she is “overreacting,” when she yells, pushes away, tells, or even says no firmly. It says that “well, most other women would have said yes.” Someone will say that this will stop when African women stop having relationships with such men. Someone will say that when these women, who may find poverty less miserable than sex with the occasional dream peddling foreigner, simply say no, then all African women will stop being objectified. To which I would respond that until the system that has systematically underdeveloped not only Africa but the entire Global South, a system which has destroyed indigenous spirituality and replaced it with a White savior both hanging in the homes of its believers and walking the streets as sex tourists, is dismantled, then Black women, Brown Women, all women of color, will continue to be harmed by it. This returns me to my story. The man in question was an American. There was no question of impoverished conditions. I clearly stated that I too was American, but this did not prevent the proposition, nor has it on multiple occasions. I, due to the intersectionality of my race and gender, was considered a commodity, buyable, and expendable. I am not the only woman of color who has had such an experience. I often exchange stories with my expat women of color friends, who have often witnessed and experienced the same. The globally internalized White hetero male superiority complex and systemic inherited exploitative North–South relations that support the continued effort to colonize, conquer and commodify the woman of color’s body, as an economic enterprise, must necessarily change, and sexual neocolonialism, must be destroyed and at last put to rest. So I will finish at the beginning. I am an African-American woman. I am 32 years old. I was born in the United States. My parents are from the United States. My parents’ parents are from the United States and so on. Many of my ancestors were already here. Some of my ancestors were brought here in chains, and sold on auction blocks. But, “How much do I cost?” I am priceless. We are priceless. Not even on the auction block were my ancestors’ souls for sale. REFERENCES Nkrumah, K. (1965). Neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism (introduction). Retrieved from www.marxists.org/subject/africa/nkrumah/neo-colonialism/introduction.htm

CHAPTER 14

INTERDISCIPLINARY FEMINISM Why Building Alliances Is Critical Cherise Charleswell

In a previous article entitled “Feminism is Not Just for Academics: Overcoming Disconnect and Division,” I explained that the roots of feminism are not grounded in academia and theory, but through the collective action of working-class women; concluding with: To be fair, it needs to be reiterated that academic feminism serves it purpose and is simply one avenue of feminism which one may choose to travel down. Overall, feminism is an empowering framework from which a person may understand, critique, and change the world, while defining their place in it. Central to the tenets of feminism is the matter of choice. Feminists should be free to self-identify as feminists, and should also be allowed to carve out their own path within feminism, whether it is in an academic career in women’s studies or working within the realm of social justice activism and women’s rights organizing. Feminism must remain inclusive and should not be dominated by any sub-group.

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102    C. CHARLESWELL An oversimplification of the words of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian writer, politician, political theorist, philosopher, sociologist, linguist, and founding member of the Communist Party of Italy, in which he called for “traditional intellectuals,” who are representative of today’s academics, to join with the “organic intellectuals” from the working class to effect social change, best describes the path forward that feminism should choose. (Charleswell, 2014, Conclusion, para. 2–3)

In the 2014 article, “If We Want Feminism to Have a Real Impact, Then Let’s Stop Teaching So Much Theory,” Elizabeth Sergan echoed my critiques: For three years, I taught feminist theory to undergraduates while working on my Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. There was a time when Berkeley was the epicenter of radical feminism: In the 1970s, women’s rights activists regularly stormed campus buildings , demanding birth control, abortion, self-defense classes, and childcare. But when I started teaching in 2007, nothing particularly radical was happening anymore. Far from being sites of activism and empowerment, Berkeley’s Women’s Studies classes were weighed down by theory and jargon. Using departmental guidelines, I crafted a syllabus that was meant to help my students think critically about gender, but what that really meant is that we spent our days wrestling with dense and difficult texts, parsing the works of Gayatri Spivak, Monique Wittig, and Judith Butler. We devoted inordinate amounts of time to asking whether gender and sexuality were social constructs, rather than biological facts. We casually threw around words like “subalterneity,” “essentialism,” and “phallogocentrism” as if they really meant something. (para. 1–2)

In keeping with these sentiments, I would like to further explain why interdisciplinary feminism, organizing, and coalition-building outside of the halls of academia are imperative to identifying, calling out, and combating gender-racial-sexuality-based discrimination; and working towards more inclusive and equal societies. IN ORDER TO BE INTERSECTIONAL, FEMINISM MUST BE INTERDISCIPLINARY The case for intersectionality, what it is, how it can be applied in practice, and so on, has been discussed in women’s studies and in feminist circles for almost three decades. Therefore, it should be well understood, but unfortunately that is not always the case. There are constant examples where it is not even considered, particularly when it comes to Western/White feminists. The backlash to Viola Davis’s statements about women of color and opportunities in film and television, made during her win at the 2015 Emmy Award, is a recent example of this.

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However, having intersectional approaches to feminism and women’s rights activism is not enough. These approaches should also be interdisciplinary—and actually do more than just theorize and debate what issues are of importance to women; and actually include women working outside of academia in these conversations. Women do not live their lives in a bubble, and many continue to primarily work outside of the home (because being a stay-at-home mother is actually a class-based privilege for many who depend on two household incomes), and it is outside of the home that they are bombarded with various types of discrimination and prejudice. Discrimination and prejudice that feminist should be aware of and finding ways to mitigate. Thus, engaging women across multiple disciplines and realizing that the vast majority of disciplines remain male-dominated, is critical. For example, in the fashion industry, which has been problematic for many reasons—including racial and cultural insensitivity, appropriation, and representation—the majority of the prestigious or well-known fashion houses were begun and continue to be led by men, and truth be told White men. Just consider: Versace, Gucci, Isaac Mizhari, Ralph Lauren, Zac Posen, Roberto Cavalli, Alexander McQueen, and so on. The same can be seen in education, where women often hit a glass ceiling. For instance, university presidents in the United States continue to be overwhelmingly White men over age 60. The American Council on Education released a 2012 report on this, and it continues to be an issue discussed by others. However, it is not just at the university level. Globally, while women are the overwhelming majority of those who work in education at the primary and secondary level, men continue to dominate positions as school principals. Although, women are continuing to make strides in government with a number of women having served as heads of state. Unfortunately, women continue to be underrepresented in governments around the world; only 21.9% of national parliamentarians were female as of December 1, 2014. In the article “Disproportionate Representation: A Look at Women Leadership in Congress” (Charleswell, 2015), I discussed this disproportionate representation in great detail. The issue is extremely dire in the United States, where there has never been a woman head of state, and when looking at the 2015 Congress women held only 19.4% of the 535 seats. Still, the issue of underrepresentation, glass ceilings, and other discriminatory issues have become well known and thoroughly discussed in fields such as: STEM, film and television—both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, radio and broadcast media—where male (and conservative) voices such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage continue to dominate, and also the construction and automotive industries, as well as in corporate America. Consider the sad sick reality that major news outlets—whether print or television—continue to turn mainly to male sources for their

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take on the economy, politics, the criminal justice system, the military, as well as topics that are deemed to be women’s issues (abortion, birth control, Planned Parenthood, etc). When you look at the majority of those who work in these industries, particularly in positions of leadership, it truly seems like “it’s a man’s world.” And a closer look will reveal that there is a representation of women of color in the news media, and the highly public departure of Melissa Harris-Perry from her show on MSNBC, exemplifies that problem. Women who experience marginalization and discrimination in these different sectors do not have the time, or perhaps the desire to think about theory, nor are they readily able to reach across disciplines to uncover and discuss these common themes of oppression; but this shouldn’t discredit them as feminists or experts on gender relations. They have an intimate understanding of workplace sexism, disproportionate representation in leadership, and other ways in which women are discriminated against in their fields. Who else would be better qualified to discuss these issues, and offer solutions and strategies to address them, than those who have a clear understanding of and experience dealing with the various problems? Further, why is it often only academic “feminists” who are brought in as political pundits and commentators, regardless of the issue or field that is being discussed? Why are there not more women who are clinicians and biomedical researchers asked to discuss underrepresentation in the STEM field? I have actually attended conferences where speakers have presented their research on the topic, but (a) they have never worked in the STEM field or (b) none of their co-panelist/presenters had work in the STEM field either. Also, why are women working in fields where men greatly dominate, like the automotive industry, called upon to discuss not only workplace discrimination but other labor issues? Then there are those instances where women who did not major in gender studies (or attended any university for that matter) are marginalized or silenced, by other feminists, as if their observations and experiences, are lacking legitimacy. These are the women who may not know about the various waves of (Western) feminism, but understand the need for women’s health research funding, have been subjected to police profiling and/or brutality, are screenwriters who may be coping with having their scripts rejected, because they refuse to develop stereotypical characters (damsel in distress, loud and crude Black woman, sassy Latina, submissive and un-opinionated Asian), and are actively joining protest movements to counteract it, or are mothers living in food-insecure communities. These women are no less feminist than those who can readily quote bell hooks or Gloria Steinam, and they should be provided spaces and platforms to speak as “experts.”

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Practicing an intersectional and multidisciplinary feminism requires being inclusive, and recognizing that the experts are often those who have lived experiences and insights to share. CONCLUSION Grassroots feminism across disciplines is critical, not only in post-colonial nations working to remove the yoke colonialism and deeply embedded patriarchy, but even in the West; particularly in the United States where extremist religious, sexist, and bigoted attitudes are prevailing. There are the constant attacks on rights to abortion and other reproductive rights, attacks on voting rights, environmental justice issues—such as lead poisoning of the water supply in Flint Michigan and the gas leak in Porter Ranch California, located in Los Angeles country—that directly impact women and families, as well as the threat of environmental degradation brought along by the XL keystone pipeline or fracking; which is actually supported by Hillary Clinton, the DNC’s front runner, who we—women, feminists— are told that we should vote for, simply because she is a woman. To truly understand the problem with that line of thinking, I would suggest reading my article “Disproportionate Representation,” and “Hillary’s Woman Problem” (2016) as well as “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote: From the Crime Bill to Welfare Reform, Policies Bill Clinton Enacted—and Hillary Clinton Supported—Decimated Black America” (Alexander, 2016). There are even questions about what constitutes legitimate rape, as well as as seething epidemic of campus rape. Additionally, there continues to be an issue of the exploitation and devaluing of the lives of women of color, which is seen with the case of Daniel Holtzclaw and his predatory rape and molestation of only Black women, the unlawful arrest and untimely death of Sandra Bland, the need for campaigns such as #WhatAboutOurDaughters and #SayHerName to highlight state sanctioned violence against Black women and other women of color, and the continued media silence on an epidemic in indigenous communities—of rape and disappearance of Native American women. Ensuring that these issues and others that impact the lives, health, and well-being of women and girls are raised and addressed will require not only an intersectional approach to feminism, but one that is interdisciplinary. One that calls on the testimonies and expertise of women from across various disciplines, who can coalesce around their shared and varied experiences with sexism, misogyny, misogynoir, colorism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and ageism.

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REFERENCES Alexander, M. (2016, February 10). Why Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve the Black vote. Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/ hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/ Charleswell, C. (2014, January 14). Feminism is not just for academics: Overcoming disconnect and division. Retrieved from http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/ fourth-wave-feminism.html#.XMhg1i-ZNTY Charleswell, C. (2015, March 5). Disproportionate representation: A look at women leadership in congress. Retrieved from www.hamptoninstitution.org/womenin-congress.html Hillary’s Woman Problem. (2016, February 12). Retrieved from https://www.politico. com/magazine/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-2016-woman-problem-213621 Segran, E. (2014, August 7). If we want feminism to have a real impact, then let’s stop teaching so much theory. The New Republic. Retrieved from www.newrepublic.com/article/118996/womens-studies-departments

PART IV LABOR ISSUES

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CHAPTER 15

CAPITALISM, EXPLOITATION, AND DEGRADATION Nicholas Partyka

In what follows we will focus on the moral idea of exploitation, and whether it can be found within capitalist employment relationships. We will also examine what, if any, problem it poses to political democracy. I will argue that capitalist employment relationships do constitute morally bad exploitation, and that they do pose a problem for democracy. This problem is that exploitation, as we will come to see later, is bad because it fails to show due respect for one of the parties to a transaction, and democracy is deeply committed to mutual respect between citizens. Thus we’ll see, on one prominent account of moral exploitation, that democracy is inconsistent with exploitation because of the value it attaches to persons. Exploitation by one party to a transaction denies this value to the other party, where the second party has an equal moral value, as well as political status, as the first. A democratic society cannot countenance such transactions and relationships if it is to retain its democratic character. Our main question here will be: Is there morally bad exploitation in capitalist employment relationships? To begin, I will examine Ruth Sample’s excellent account of moral exploitation, and contrasting it at points with

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the earlier view of Alan Wertheimer.1 The subtitle of Sample’s book offers us an interesting way to approach the explication of her view, and so I will in turn address the questions: “What is exploitation?” and “Why is it wrong?” Briefly, Sample’s view is that exploitation involves taking advantage for private gain of vulnerability in another, or ignoring their needs in the transaction. This kind of behavior is morally wrong, as Sample suggests, because it fails to show respect for the exploited party. Following this, I will examine whether the situation of workers in the capitalist labor market meets the conditions for exploitation provided by Sample. It will be necessary for me to show that workers are vulnerable to employers, and that employers gain disproportionately by transacting with workers under these preconditions. If workers are vulnerable to employers and employers gains distinctly more by the deal by taking advantage of workers’ vulnerability, then this transaction is a case of moral exploitation. After seeing what structural similarities there are between capitalist employment relationships and morally bad exploitation, we will review some common defenses of the employment relationship. These will serve to bolster the case for understanding employment relationships as exploitative of the worker. Lastly, I will discuss how on a very plausible interpretation of Marx we can see this problem of exploitation and degradation as also his. The account of the role of human development in Marx’s critique of capitalism, and specifically in the capitalist labor process, as reflected in the work of Michael Lebowitz.2 Both the problem for democracy presented here and Marx’s problem of exploitation are united by the centrality of the idea of human development. By taking advantage of vulnerability or need, exploitation stifles opportunities for development, and this fails to show respect. Marx’s argument is not tied to the negative effects of exploitation on workers as citizens as mine is here, but both turn on the idea that exploitation is bad because of its consequences for individual flourishing. The most important takeaway from this discussion is that whether or not we see the capitalist employment relationship as involving coercion there is certainly morally bad exploitation. It very well may be that capitalist employment relationships may be both coercive and exploitative, but these are independent moral wrongs. It is certainly my view that wage–labor relationships under capitalism do constitute a morally bad form of coercion. However, this will need to be the topic of a separate essay. EXPLOITATION: NON-STANDARD PRICE VERSUS PLAYING FOR ADVANTAGE Beginning with Ruth Sample’s account of exploitation, which she calls exploitation as degradation, it will be useful to contrast her view with those of

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Alan Wertheimer and Robert Goodin.3 The view of exploitation she gives is designed to correct for the failures of these two views. The first point to make, with which all three agree, is that exploitation is, at bottom, about personal gain. It is about acquiring something one values, that is, increasing one’s overall utility. Exploitation is then, as Sample neatly summarizes it, “fundamentally a means to an end.”4 Colloquially, exploitation is understood as a kind of unfair taking advantage of a person. Wertheimer cashes out this “taking unfair advantage” as the paying of a nonstandard price for something. The standard price for something is, for Wertheimer, determined by the “fair market value” of the good or service.5 The standard price for some good or service is established by what its price would be in a hypothetical, ideally competitive market. This is the baseline from which exploitative transactions are judged for Wertheimer. When paying more than this hypothetical price one is exploited, and when paying less one exploits. The important upshot of Wertheimer’s view, for Sample, is that his view shows how exploitation can be both mutually advantageous and un-coerced. The main problem with this view, as Sample points out, is that it does not account for what is bad about exploitation. Wertheimer’s view only answers the first of Sample’s questions, namely what exploitation is, but “fails to say what is morally bad about paying nonstandard prices.”6 Because his view is conventionalist, in that it relies on hypothetical market prices to establish the baseline against which putative cases of exploitative transactions can be measured, it cannot make evaluative judgments about the mechanism from which the conventions arise. Since he lacks any resources beyond the ideally competitive hypothetical market, he cannot say why it is good for one to follow and bad not to follow the prescriptions of this hypothetical market mechanism. Part of the justification of this mechanism for Wertheimer is that in this hypothetical market, because it is ideally competitive, neither party is able to take advantage of special vulnerabilities in the other party for their own gain.7 This latter is what makes the hypothetical market price a fair price, but we are still left without compelling reasons to think that it is good to pay this price and bad not to. For Sample, this makes Wertheimer’s view too conservative to be adequate to our needs. On Wertheimer’s view, exploitative transactions are merely abnormal or atypical, that is they do not conform to standard practices. However, our colloquial understanding of exploitation indicates that exploitation as moral criticism implies more than that a transaction fails to conform with normal practices.8 Robert Goodin takes a view of exploitation that sees it as taking advantage of vulnerable others who we have a duty to protect.9 On this account the duty not to exploit falls under the larger duty to protect the vulnerable.10 When we exploit on Goodin’s view we fail to play by the appropriate rules for the circumstance of transacting with someone vulnerable to us. We fail to play by the appropriate rules by “playing for advantage when it

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is inappropriate to do so.”11 When a person is vulnerable to another, that other is typically in a position to causally affect the welfare of the first. Vulnerability for Goodin is a matter of one’s needs and another’s ability to produce consequences that determine the fulfillment, partial fulfillment, or denial of that need. This position of dependence or vulnerability on Goodin’s view generates special obligations for those to whom such people are vulnerable.12 Being in a position to help produce consequences for another that bear on that person’s welfare generates moral obligations to that person. Vulnerability itself is the basis of the obligation on the part of the person in a position to causally influence the vulnerable parties’ welfare. It is important to note that for Goodin these special obligations differ from imperfect duties in that they are concretely tied to specific persons. With regard to these obligations one does not have the discretion one has with regard to imperfect duties like charity. The main upshots of Goodin’s account of exploitation for Sample are the connections between vulnerability and dependence, and between dependence and need. The problem with Goodin’s view, like with Wertheimer’s, is that it does not account for what is morally bad about exploitation. Because his view relies on the bad consequences of exploitation for the vulnerable, and because he does not offer an argument that all exploitation is on the whole harmful, he is unable to connect the dots of unfair taking advantage and bad consequences. For this reason, Goodin’s account cannot explain what is morally bad about mutually advantageous exploitation. Since his view is consequentialist it becomes counterintuitive to say that B was exploited by a transaction through which B obtains some benefit. According to Sample, Goodin’s account of exploitation and of obligation leads him into the follow dilemma. Either he can explain what is bad about exploitation and forsake the claim that exploitation can be mutually beneficial, or he can continue to claim that exploitation is a violation of norms for transacting with the vulnerable but no longer be able to explain what is bad about exploitation.13 The problem with Goodin’s view is that, like Wertheimer’s, it is too conventionalist. By relying on conventions about what obligations one owes to vulnerable others, Goodin is also cut off from criticizing the conventions themselves as exploitative, or as encouraging of exploitation.14 Both Goodin’s and Wertheimer’s accounts of exploitation give us the same counterintuitive result that the charge of exploitation means only that some action violates normal practices or fails to conform to prevailing standards. Our colloquial understanding of exploitation indicates that, as is plainly obvious, it is possible for the prevailing norms of interaction in a society to promote exploitation, even if such norms are not themselves exploitative.

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EXPLOITATION AS DEGRADATION Ruth Sample’s account, by contrast, is designed to be able to both say what exploitation is, and to do so in a way that illuminates what is morally bad about exploitation. Sample broadly follows Goodin in linking the badness of exploitation to vulnerability and to need, though she ties her account of vulnerability and need to Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. She also succeeds where Wertheimer does in being able to show that mutually beneficial and uncoerced transactions can be exploitative. Wertheimer lacked the resources to identify the badness of exploitation, and Goodin’s consequentialist account of the badness of exploitation, and his vulnerability-based account of the structure of exploitation are inconsistent. Sample’s view aims to develop the resources to say what is bad about exploitation and to give an account of its structure that is consistent with what is bad about it. The account Sample gives makes clear in its title what she thinks is morally bad about exploitation. The exploitation as degradation model holds that what makes exploitation morally bad is that it fails to show respect for the exploited party. As Sample asserts, “Other human beings possess a value that makes a claim on us. In exploitation we fail to honor this value in our effort to improve our own situation.”15 Critical here is the notion of respect for persons. This is critical because only in virtue of others’ possessing value or dignity is one’s freedom of action constrained in transactions with this individual. This is of course a Kantian notion, but Sample refrains from taking on the metaphysical baggage of the full Kantian moral theory.16 Thus, because for Sample just as for Kant, all persons possess equal dignity, the duty not to exploit becomes a practical requirement in all transactions with other human beings. Degradation is bad because it denies to something a value that this thing in fact possesses. Respecting, (i.e., acting with respect toward) the value possessed by a thing means either treating the thing in certain ways or refraining from treating it in other ways, depending on the nature of the valuable thing.17 As Sample states, “Voluntary interaction with another cannot be conducted under whatever terms we choose.”18 What is it then about the structure of exploitative transactions that makes them degrading? First, as mentioned earlier, exploitative transactions are primarily about the gain of the exploiting party. The goal of the exploiting party in the transaction is the increase in their own level of overall welfare. Exploitative actions are undertaken for one’s own gain. Second, as we saw with Goodin, exploitation features prominently the vulnerability or need of one of the transacting parties. This is what Goodin meant by “unusual situations,” the case where one transacts with a person vulnerable to them, that is a person one is in a position to causally improve the welfare of. Aside from gain, what defines the structure of exploitation is that one of the parties is dependent on the other due to need. Exploitation occurs when the parties

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transact on terms that benefit the superior party and fail to show respect for the vulnerable party.19 On Sample’s view, we should understand vulnerability and need as connected to human capabilities and flourishing. Sample agrees with critiques of the resource approach that argue that a similar amount of resources will afford different individuals different levels of opportunity to flourish.20 For this reason she thinks the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen, and further developed by Martha Nussbaum, provides a better way to assess the degradation involved in failing to respect vulnerable parties.21 By taking advantage of someone’s vulnerability, neglecting our ability to provide for their needs for the achievement of a flourishing life, we fail to show them the respect due to someone possessing the value all human beings possess. Because there is no good reason for one to disregard another’s value when transacting with them it is always wrong to exploit them.22 In exploiting a vulnerable person we help further undermine their ability to develop their capabilities.23 Material need restricts one’s development of capabilities, and this vulnerability being taken advantage of for another’s gain prevents one from using the transaction to increase one’s ability to develop one’s capabilities, and hopefully lead a flourishing human life.24 In exploiting, one fails to show respect for others by ignoring their needs for flourishing in a transaction in which that person is vulnerable to one, that is, dependent on one. We degrade persons by denying them a chance to develop capabilities by participation in transactions with us. Sample puts it nicely in stating, “ignoring the needs of others can be just as disrespectful as harming them.”25 Acting in a way that ignores another’s needs in a situation where they are vulnerable to oneself is degrading to that other, because we deny this person the value they possess as a human being. Because taking advantage of another’s need for one’s own gain when one is in a position to causally improve the other’s welfare, fails to respect the other’s value. One acts badly toward another that one exploits because these kinds of interactions inhibits that other’s flourishing when one lacks a good reason to neglect this interest of the other party. Given the Kantian style arguments about the value of personhood, Sample is not unreasonable to think that we would each have a duty to actively consider others’ interests in transacting with them. More than just have no good reason not to consider others’ interests, we have a positive duty to consider them built into the equality of respect due to other human being. As all humans are possessed of equal intrinsic value as persons, each individual owes each other individual due consideration in order to show respect for that other’s value as a person.

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EXPLOITATION IN THE LABOR MARKET Taking up this account of exploitation understood as degradation of others for gain, we can now move on to examine the capitalist employment relationship to determine whether it is or is not a case of exploitation. The first step here will be to establish that workers are vulnerable—in terms of their capabilities and flourishing—to employers. From another angle this is to show that employers are in a position to causally and positively affect workers’ welfare. The second step will be to say how employers take advantage of worker’s vulnerability for gain. Bargaining for control over the workplace with vulnerable workers, the employer is able to gain what is needed in order to create private profit from the united labors of those employed by the capitalist. Lastly, I will cover an example of exploitation that Sample discusses so as to explore some interesting potential objections and give replies that put the case of the employment relationship as exploitative into starker relief. The very nature of a market society forces those who don’t own the means of production to seek wages in return for their labor power. The kinds of communal subsistence production that dominated among European peasants before capitalism, as well as the poor in many places of the world today, are not viable options for denizens of more advanced industrial economies. Cutting the masses of poor people off from these bases of production is exactly what characterizes the processes of urbanization and proletarianization that occurred in western industrialized nations during their industrial revolutions.26 This means that employers are very much in a direct position to causally influence workers’ welfare. This is because, as a class, the bourgeoisie expropriated the peasant class and created a situation in which these former peasants no longer had any choice but to work for wages, that is, to become proletarians. In addition, capitalist society constrains workers by forcing them in a position of mutual antagonism among themselves, because they confront an enormous surfeit of labor power over and above the remunerative positions currently available in the economy. A large part of creating this situation was the increasingly large scale adoption of labor-”saving”—more correctly labor-replacing—machinery (and now, software). This puts strong downward pressure on workers’ wage and benefit demands. It is clear that being able to access the means of subsistence is a basic precondition for developing capabilities and flourishing. This means, again, that employers are very much in a position to positively improve the welfare and the prospects for flourishing of workers. Also contributing to the vulnerability of workers are the highly unequal prior distributions of wealth which characterize capitalist society. In a labor market transaction one of the parties to the potential employment contract

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is able to hold out longer in a capitalist society; and both know this going into the transaction. This is the idea of “threat advantage” that Wertheimer discusses.27 In real life there comes a point at which material necessity presses up against the weaker party and forces that party to either die or capitulate.28 In the capitalist labor market, both employer and worker know which party will be the one that eventually bends. There will come a point at which making a contract will become more imperative for one party. This is the vulnerability of laborers as a class, as well as of individual laborers. Individual workers face starvation, but the threat of starvation also forces the class of laborers to seek wages from employers. Firms, and hence employers, are able to achieve profitability because they are able to control the workplace and the labor process. Employers obtain this control through the terms of the employment contract. The content of the employment relationship is what is being bargained about in the contracting situation; importantly among these are significant features of the worker’s prospective relations-in-production. Employers take advantage the vulnerability of workers in the labor market to make employment contracts that give them control they need to generate private wealth for themselves.29 When employers take advantage of workers’ vulnerability in the labor market to acquire workplace conditions, which they, in turn, utilize to create private wealth for themselves, they exploit workers’ vulnerability, and thus, in so doing they degrade workers. That is, they treat workers in ways that one treats objects which lack the moral status of human beings. To act in these kinds of ways toward human beings is thus to deny them that moral status, that dignity, that we commonly think belonging to all humans. Mutually Advantageous Exploitation and the Reserve System in Baseball Having seen now that the capitalist employment relationship is one of exploitation, we can quite profitably consider some prominent and interesting example of objections that can be made this view. Exploring how Sample’s view accounts for these objections will put the claim that employers do exploit workers in employment relationships on firmer footing. We will do this by examining a case that Sample proposes as one of exploitation so we can see how exploitative transactions can be mutually advantageous, voluntary, routine, unintended, and unfelt. Let us first take notice of one feature of both Sample’s and Wertheimer’s view of exploitation; namely, it is a macro-level phenomenon as well as a micro-level phenomenon.30 Both agree that exploitation can occur both on the level of individual transactions, as well as on the level of background social conditions; specifically in the distribution of wealth.31 It is this that is

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meant by both when they assert that exploitation can be routine or conventional. Both think that exploitation can characterize social conditions and social norms. Patterns of social interactions can be exploitative if they meet the appropriate conditions. Taking an example from baseball history Sample correctly identified the reserve system as an instance of exploitation.32 Under the reserve system a club was able to retain a player’s services for the following season, forbidding any other league club from employing this player as long as he remained on a league club’s reserve list. This was originally an unspoken agreement among club owners to bring stability to playing rosters as well as salary inflation.33 It was later written into player’s contracts, though the exact phrasing changed over time as the system was challenged by players like John M. Ward. Through this system, though players signed ostensibly season-long contracts with a club, they became in all practical respects bound for life to that club. The club had more or less complete control over the player’s career, as they were able to trade or even sell a player to any club without the player’s consent or even their knowledge. This case is interesting because it is an example of exploitation that is mutually advantageous, voluntary, and routine. According to Sample, the exploitation here is a product of unequal bargaining positions. Club owners used players’ vulnerability to take advantage of them in the content of the terms of their employment contracts for their own gain.34 Sample is both clear and direct in this point, “The exploitation involved in the reserve system is not a function of the player’s compensation, but a function of the terms on which those salaries we negotiated.”35 This example also permits us to see how exploitative relationships can be simultaneously not consciously sought by the employer and unfelt by the worker. Because baseball players by the 1880s were making more than the yearly average wages of industrial workers for six to seven month of work it is hard for players to think themselves too badly off.36 The seemingly voluntary element also adds to the general lack of a feeling of exploitation by baseball players.37 Compounding this sense among players would also be the firm denial of this charge by club owners. Indeed, many players leveled this very charge against club owners for decades until the reserve system was abolished in 1975 thanks in part to the efforts of Kurt Flood. Since exploitation can be the result of injustice at the level of background social conditions and institutions, it is possible for owners to see themselves as merely following prevailing business norms in this culture. This veneer allowed club owners to deny that there was exploitation involved; especially since the players were being paid so well compared to average industrial workers. The kind of exploitation we found in the reserve system is the same as we see when looking at capitalist employment contracts. The exploitation

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occurs on the level of background conditions and explains why discrete individuals acquiesce to contract terms they would otherwise refuse. As we saw earlier, inequality in the distribution of wealth prior to contracting and the structure of a market society makes the value of making the contract much higher to the weaker party at a certain time. This vulnerability is then used against the weaker party so that the superior party can acquire benefits they would otherwise not be able to acquire. The answer to our original question then is, yes. We asked whether or not employment relationships were exploitative, and after looking into it, at least on Ruth Sample’s account of exploitation, we do see exploitation in employment relationships. Sample herself in fact argues that there is indeed exploitation in certain employment relationships, most notably some of those that are constitutive of processes subsumed under the aegis of “globalization.” Her argument is about one specific aspect of globalization, namely the outsourcing of employment to low-wage countries. On her view, “hiring workers on terms that do not allow them to meet their basic needs when better terms are eminently possible is exploitative.”38 The case of hiring local workers in low-wage countries is like the case of the reserve system in baseball. The exploitation in both cases occurs in the background conditions under which workers bargain with employers over the terms of employment contracts. The globalization case is also one that is ostensibly mutually beneficial, voluntary, unintended, compensated, unfelt, and routine. In the case of globalization, injustice in background condition distorts the bargaining situation between employer and worker just as in the case of the reserve system. The injustice in the globalization case is the distribution of wealth and power that precede the bargaining between nations over trade, which transfers in turn to the contract situation between local workers and foreign transnational corporations. Nations are able to engage in strategic bargaining with some nations and extract benefits based on the terms of trade pacts, that is based on terms that very likely could not be had—at least at the same price—from stronger peers. Through the increasing use of trans- and multinational bodies, courts, and agreements the wealthiest nations on the planet cannot unrealistically appear to be arrayed against the poor of the world. This is just as in the case of the reserve system where owners actively colluded to depress salaries and raise profits. The main difference in the cases is that the baseball players are exploited by individuals with a monopoly position, while the workers in low-wage countries are exploited more by competition with the workers in other nations, that is, by capitalists’ use of global labor arbitrage. When businesses take advantage of this vulnerable position for their own gain they exploit workers.39 This is bad because it treats those workers in a way that is incommensurate with the value possessed by these people as persons, and it leaves them in a position of being unable to meet their needs for flourishing. Even

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though workers gain by the transaction, often making substantially more than the average worker in their country, they are still exploited in this relationship. Even making this higher relative wage most of these workers come only very slightly closer to being able to flourish. This is only in the sense that they find subsistence needs more readily satisfiable. Making five dollars a day in an economy where most live on two dollars a day is a great increase that certainly is a boon to the worker. But this money is unlikely to help the worker achieve flourishing due to other deficiencies, particularly poor social infrastructure. Though Sample limits her discussion to the case of foreign companies from the developed world hiring local workers in low-wage countries in the developing world, I think the kind of exploitation that we see in both the reserve system and globalization can be found in employment relationships in all capitalist societies. Looking to work by Michael Lebowitz we can find a very interesting account of exploitation in the Marxist sense that explicitly focuses on human development. In coming to see that the heart of Marx’s argument against exploitation and alienation as turning on how it inhibits workers development we can see the similarity to Sample’s view about the badness of exploitation. Lebowitz’s account of Marx allows us to see that exploitation is not just a feature of employment relationships in foreign countries where impoverished workers bargain with large multinational companies but also a feature of employment relationships between workers in developed countries and their bargaining with large domestic companies, which may also be multinationals. THE MORAL DIMENSION OF MARXIST EXPLOITATION Lebowitz’s account of Marx runs directly contrary to the one given by Sample. She views exploitation in the Marxist sense as descriptive of the pattern of distribution of the surplus from production characteristic of capitalism or as really about coercion. Coercion is of course morally bad, but it is distinct from exploitation. According to Sample, exploitation for Marxists is a technical term for the unequal exchange of labor for wages in the creation of surplus value for employers.40 In this way exploitation for Marxists is either not a moralized, or thick, concept or again it is cashed out as a species of coercion.41 For Lebowitz, the real wrong of capitalist exploitation is not just alienation, but moreover what side effects alienation causes. It is the further effects of alienation in inhibiting the human development and flourishing of the alienated that make capitalist employment relationships exploitative.42 Inhibiting the development of workers capabilities for gain is degrading when better terms are “eminently possible.” This is as true in Indonesia as in Indiana, and in Bombay as in Baltimore.

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For Lebowitz, Marx’s conception of socialism features the idea of human development very prominently, giving it a central place so as to highlight both what capitalism fails to achieve and what the new socialist order aims at.43 He points out that for Marx talents are socially produced, that is they require the time and energy of many people to cultivate. Human begins produce themselves according to Marx via their patterns of interaction. It is for this reason that Marx identifies human beings as the “original sources of wealth” for human communities.44 It is humans’ ability to take raw materials and turn them into objects with various use values that allows the community to develop lasting wealth. Lebowitz argues that it is dead labor embodied in tools and other instruments of production, including knowledge and talents, that enables the productivity gains that allow the communities’ standard of welfare to rise from accumulated wealth.45 It is for this reason that Marx cites “the development of human capacities” as the communities’ real wealth on Lebowitz’s interpretation (emphasis in original).46 Socialist communities, because they emphasize producing talents as well as goods, produce what Marx calls “rich human beings,” which are people possessed of productive talents and abilities and who are using them in attempt to flourish.47 Capitalist societies by contrast produce “poor human beings,” persons who are as a result of employment less able, or at best no more able to live a flourishing life. Capitalists begin by seizing control of both the final product as well as the labor process. The alienation produced in workers by being estranged from both the product as well as process of their labor is bad because it inhibits flourishing by inhibiting development of capabilities. As we have seen capitalists inhibit development of capabilities by constructing job complexes in ways that sequester opportunities for development. By seeking to maximize profits first, employers often treat employees in ways that deny most workers’ opportunities for development of important capabilities because it is the most cost effective decision for the firm. Marx’s view on Lebowitz’s interpretation appears to conform well with the capabilities approach that Sample uses to link the bad consequences and moral badness to the structure of exploitation. In fact, as Sample notes, one of the main differences between Nussbaum and Sen is that the former explicitly acknowledges Marx as an influence.48 Lebowitz, in his turn, invokes Sen’s work in explicating his interpretation of Marx’s view of capabilities and human development, and how these things are stymied by capitalist employment relationships.49 Lebowitz further endorses the idiom that Sample affirms which links vulnerability and need, as well as correlates their dependence and power.50 Having control of the labor process, employers are able to affect worker’s ability to develop capabilities through not only the rate of wages, but also through the content of job complexes. For Marx, employer control of the labor process produces alienation, which in turn

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produces poor humans, that is humans with few developed capabilities. We can see from the later that Marx makes use of a notion of human capabilities toward the same purpose as Sample. Both use the notion of capabilities to understand human flourishing, and the idea of human flourishing to illuminate the badness of exploitation. Thus, contrary to Sample’s assertion “exploitation” in the Marxist sense does indeed have a moralized sense in addition to its technical usage. It is worthwhile taking note that even where capitalists fail to make a profit they still are guilty of moral wrong. Employers take advantage of workers when they use the worker’s need to extract benefits from them in the terms of their employment contract. Wertheimer marks this distinction as one between “acting exploitatively” toward others and actually succeeding at doing so. One may intend to exploit workers but fail to succeed in doing so for a host of reasons.51 Employers act exploitatively toward workers even when they fail to realize a surplus from the production process they set in motion. The exploitation in this case occurs when employers and workers negotiate over the content of employment contracts. In this situation employers use their threat advantage to obtain control of the labor-process. It is this control that employers use to organize production in ways that enable the creation and realization of surplus value. Making use of workers’ vulnerability to obtain control of the labor process, through the transaction of making an employment contract, employer’s act exploitatively towards workers regardless of whether they succeed at organizing the process of production in a way that permits the creation and realization of surplus value. EXPLOITATION AND DEMOCRACY To see the problem the existence of moral exploitation poses for democracy, it will be necessary to look to the foundations of a democratic regime. As mentioned at the outset, the problem that exploitation poses for democracy lies in the failure to show respect that is evident in acting exploitatively. The kind of pervasive and institutionalized disrespect manifest in capitalist employment relationships undermines the kinds of relationships between citizens that facilitate well-functioning political democratic society. Without a sense of mutual respect, citizens will not engage with each other in ways that contribute to the political requirements of fairness, which contribute to the long-run stability of a democracy; especially one with a diverse citizenry. A political regime consistent with the vision of justice John Rawls describes in A Theory of Justice52 allows citizens to hold competing comprehensive conceptions of the good (CCG). This is the fact of reasonable pluralism, of reasonable diversity of CCGs. This diversity finds its source in each individual’s two basic moral powers, (a) a sense of justice and (b) a

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conception of the good. The exercise by free persons of these moral powers results inevitably, according to Rawls, in a wide variety of different, yet reasonable answers to the question: What makes for a good life? Rawls claims that commensurate with this vision of a pluralist democracy citizens must advocate for social policy within the bounds of the ideal of public reason. Citizens, in order to preserve their mutual freedom, must agree to carry on their official, and parts of their civil, political discourses without invoking the truth of their particular CCG as a reason for adopting social policy X or policy R. Peter DeMarneffe for one thinks this is the best way to understand the liberal state’s neutrality requirement.53 This ideal of public reason and neutrality ensure that in a liberal regime the process of making policies that will be coercively enforced against all citizens is carried out in a way that evinces the equality of participants and shows respect for each as individuals. Structured this way political discourse helps to create an “overlapping consensus” on the public conception of justice. By bringing each individual to reflectively endorse the public political conception of justice from within their own CCG the grounds of commitment to the public procedures of justice will be deepened. Because each individual has independent access to the grounds of the legitimacy of the liberal state it will be able to generate a base of support that can be wide-spread, deeply committed, long-lasting, and likely transmittable between generations. This transmittability of the grounds of legitimation from one generation to the next, the continual ability of the overlapping consensus to generate its own support, is what makes Rawls’ pluralist regime both stable and just over the long term.54 Because policies are arrived at by using impartial reasoning and in ways that show equal respect for citizens each individual citizen has reason to affirm the liberal regime on their own terms. Each individual’s commitment to public principles of justice regulating public discourse and interaction only serves to deepen the perceived public support that induces a like commitment from others who perceive that their fellows are so committed. Given this understanding of a democratic regime the problem that pervasive exploitation poses becomes more readily apparent. Thinkers like Amy Gutmann for example argue, “Without mutual respect, members of different groups are likely to discriminate against each other in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways that are inconsistent with liberal principles.”55 A politically democratic regime requires non-discrimination, but in order to achieve this it must instill mutual respect in both citizens and institutions. Social institutions must make manifest to citizens the relations of mutual respect upon which their long-run success is predicated. Unless citizens are widely aware that relations of mutual respect obtain they will continue to withhold respect, thus preventing the virtuous circle of legitimacy from getting started. Lacking in mutual respect and trust in others’ intentions, the

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diverse groups in democratic society will fail to come together in ways that will make acceptance of the terms of the public conception of justice the basis of an overlapping consensus. In order to publicly evince fair equality of opportunity a democratic regime must work to exclude practices like discrimination in hiring practices. A condition of non-discrimination must characterize hiring practices so that mutual respect can be manifested in them. Without mutual respect, there will very likely be discrimination in hiring practices in a way that evinces disrespect. As Gutmann argued, if there is no mutual respect, even if people tolerate each other, a liberal government will be unable to effectively enforce the non-discrimination essential to fair equality of opportunity. So, for political democracy, mutual respect is a key value.56 Without a sense of mutual respect, the virtuous cycle that leads the citizens of a democratic regime to come to see the democratic system as serving their interests and in ways that show them respect, so that they come to have a deepening commitment to the liberal regime. This virtuous process occurring in individual citizens reinforces it in the other citizens with whom they interact. CONCLUSION The notions of exploitation and coercion are helpful in that they provide us guidance on how to structure employment relationships in ways that avoid both. Avoiding both is, of course, a desiderata of a politically democratic regime, as both coercion and exploitation fail to evince respect for the value of others as persons and citizens, which as we saw is a key component of democracy. As Gutmann asserts, “The social stakes for democracy in defending these principles is high. Absent mutual respect, citizens cannot be expected to honor the democratic principle of nondiscrimination. Nor can public officials, who are accountable to citizens and chosen from their ranks, be expected to demonstrate respect toward different ways of life.”57 Honoring nondiscrimination and respect as we saw are integral to the process of creating and preserving the bases of the self-generating support for the public political conception of justice that makes a democratic regime stable and just over the long-term. NOTES 1. Sample, Ruth J. Exploitation: What It Is and Why It’s Wrong. New York, Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 2003. And Wertheimer, Alan. Exploitation. Princeton, Princeton University Press: 1996. 2. Lebowitz, Michael The Socialist Alternative : Real Human Development. New York, Monthly Review Press: 2010.

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Sample 2003, 56. Sample 2003, 15. Wertheimer 1996, 230. Sample 2003, 55. Wertheimer 1996, 232. Sample 2003, 24. See Goodin, Robert “Exploiting a Situation and Exploiting a Person.” Modern Theories of Exploitation. Ed. Andrew Reeve. London, SAGE (1987): 166–200. And Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities. Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1985. 10. Sample 2003, 28. 11. Goodin quoted in Sample 2003, 28. 12. Sample 2003, 36. 13. Sample 2003, 53. 14. Ibid. 15. Sample 2003, 57. 16. Sample 2003, 56. 17. Sample 2003, 65. 18. Sample 2003, 74. 19. Strict equality in division of the fruits of transacting is not a requirement for non-exploitation for Sample. Unequal gains from a transaction do not necessarily imply lack of respect. 20. Sample 2003, 77. 21. See Sample 2003, 76–79 for concise explication of the capabilities approach, outlining both the main features of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s views as well as their main points of contrast. 22. Sample 2003, 75. 23. Sample 2003, 167. 24. Sample is clear that needs can be more broadly construed than as just the material means of subsistence. Our needs for the living of a good life include “conditions of purposeful employment, the prerequisites of psychological well-being, and constraints on interaction necessary for self-respect.” 74. 25. Sample 2003, 67. 26. For discussion of this historically see Arrighi, Giovanni. The Long Twentieth Century. 1994. New York, Verso Press: 2006. For discussion of the political-economic importance of this development for capitalist relations of production see Weeks, John. Capital and Exploitation. Princeton, Princeton University Press: 1981. 27. Wertheimer 1996, 67. 28. Or perhaps revolt. 29. To see the link between employer control and their ability to produce benefits for themselves, i.e., profits, see Stephen Marglin’s article in Review of Radical Political Economics. Vol. 6 (1974): 60–112. 30. Sample 2003, 61. 31. Wertheimer 1996, 220 & 234. 32. Sample 2003, 89. 33. For interesting as well as thorough discussion of the reserve system in baseball see Voigt, David Quentin. American Baseball: From the Gentleman’s Sport to

Capitalism, Exploitation, and Degradation    125 the Commissioner System.(1966). University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press: 1983. Also see Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Early Years.(1960). New York, Oxford University Press: 1989. 34. This ignores the contested issue of the true profitability of early professional baseball. However, despite there being bad times and bad businessmen, baseball was profitable at least for some clubs as early as the 1860s and definitely was so by the 1880s. By the middle of the next century there could no longer be doubt that there was money to be made in the game, as it was already a preeminent entertainment industry in America at the time. In fact it continues to be so to this day. 35. Sample 2003, 90. 36. See Goldstein, Warren. Playing for Keeps. Ithaca, Cornell University Press: 1989. 37. This would of course hold true for any relevantly similarly placed workers in a capitalist labor market. 38. Sample 2003, 160. 39. For a good discussion of how “global labor arbitrage” is used by large multinational corporations to exploit poor workers in other countries, e.g., in China see Foster, John Bellamy, & Robert W. McChesney “The Global Stagnation and China.” Monthly Review. Vol. 63 No. 9 (2012): 1–29 40. Sample 2003, 6. 41. Wertheimer shares this view about the Marxist conception of exploitation and how its badness turns on the wrongness of coercion (1996, 25). 42. Lebowitz 2010, 122. Lebowitz is not alone in taking this kind of view. Jon Elster for instance takes a view of Marx that emphasizes the role of “self-realization” in living a good life. See Elster, Jon. “Self-Realization in Work and Politics.” Social Philosophy and Policy. Vol. 3 No. 2 (1986): 97–126. 43. Lebowitz 2010, 21. 44. Lebowitz 2010, 31. 45. Lebowitz 2010, 34. 46. Lebowitz 2010, 43. 47. Ibid. 48. Sample 2003, 77. 49. Lebowitz 2010, 47. 50. Lebowitz 2010, 67. 51. Wertheimer 1996, 209. 52. Rawls, John. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press: 1971. 53. DeMarneffe, Peter. “Liberalism, Neutrality, and Education.” Moral and Political Education. Nomos 43. Ed. Stephen Macedo & Yael Tamir. NYU Press; 2002 54. Costa, Victoria M. Rawls, Citizenship, Education. New York, Routledge: 2011. 55. Gutmann, Amy. “Civic education and Social Diversity.” Ethics. Vol. 105 No. 3 (1995): 561. 56. Gutmann makes sure to make clear that a politically liberal regime does not endorse mutual respect as a nonpolitical value. It does not, consistent with its commitment to individual liberty, demand mutual respect be a value for citizens in their non-public comprehensive conception of the good. 57. Gutmann 1995, 577.

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CHAPTER 16

DECONSTRUCTING WORKPLACE HIERARCHIES On the Paradox of Contrived Leadership and Arbitrary Positions of Power Colin Jenkins

Bosses don’t grow on trees. They don’t magically appear at your job. They aren’t born into their roles. They are created. They are manufactured to fulfill arbitrary positions of power within organizational hierarchies. They possess no natural or learned talents, and they are not tried and tested through any type of meritocratic system. Rather, they gravitate to these positions of authority by consciously exhibiting attributes that make them both controllable and controlling—being punctual, highly conformist, placing a premium on appearance, knowing how to talk sternly without saying much of anything, blessed with the ability to bullshit. Hierarchies aren’t natural phenomena within the human race. Outside of parenting, human beings aren’t born with the inclination to be ruled, controlled, “managed,” and “supervised” by other human beings. Hierarchies are artificial constructs designed to serve a purpose. They are a

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 127–134 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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necessity within any society that boasts high degrees of wealth and power inequities. They are a necessity for maintaining these inequities and ensuring they are not challenged from below. They exert control, conformity, and stability within a broader society that is characterized by artificial scarcity, widespread insecurity, unfathomable concentrations of wealth and power, and extreme inequality. Without such control, these societies would unravel from within as human beings would naturally seek autonomy and more control over their lives and the lives of their loved ones—control that would amount to nothing more than the ability to fulfill basic needs. Despite the artificial and arbitrary nature of both bosses and hierarchies, they persist. They dominate our days from the time we wake until the time we go to sleep. They control our lives, our livelihoods, and our ability to acquire food, clothing, shelter, and all that is necessary to merely survive. If we do not subject ourselves to them, we run the risk of starving, being homeless, and being unable to clothe or feed our children. Despite this, we seldom examine them, seldom question their existence or purpose, and seldom consider a life without them. CAPITALISM, HIERARCHIES, AND “MANAGEMENT” People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: We’ve all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds. —Jeffrey Eugenides (2011, p. 95)

While hierarchical human relations have existed in many forms throughout history, the dominant modern hierarchy stems largely from capitalist modes of production. Capitalism is a system that relies on private ownership of land and the means of production for the purpose of transforming capital and commodities into profit for the owners of said land. Under the predominant system of industrial capitalism, those with sufficient capital may purchase parcels of land, build means of production (i.e., factories) on that land, and employ masses of workers to create products which can be sold on the market for a profit. Owning this land, and accessing the capital required to transform it into a means to produce, is a privilege reserved for only a very few. When land is privately owned in this manner, it represents a social relationship between those privileged few (owners/capital) and the rest of us (workers/ labor). It is not owned for personal use, but rather for use as a location to extract labor value for production and profit. The owners of private property

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do not use it to satisfy any personal needs, and rarely even step foot on or in it. Understanding the difference between personal property and private property is crucial in this regard, as the term “private property” is often misused to falsely associate capitalism with freedom. In reality, when private property is used as a social relationship, as it is in a capitalist system, it becomes antithetical to any sense of freedom or liberty. A large degree of the profit that is created in this process is done through the exploitation of labor, whereas the owner will pay each worker a set wage in exchange for labor that ultimately creates commodities worth much more than this wage. And with the legislative destruction of the commons that took place during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, performing labor for an owner essentially became a coercive proposition, not a voluntary one. For under capitalism, those of us who must sell our labor to survive essentially have two options: (a) work for someone or (b) starve (this reality is the exact reason why the welfare state became a necessity alongside industrialization). Because the development of capitalism represents the latest form of coercive social relations between human beings, the need for industrial “management” and “supervision” is paramount. After establishing the coercive conditions necessary to compel workers to sell their labor to owners (through the legislative destruction of the commons), owners were left with figuring out how to maximize their exploitation of a workforce that was ultimately forced to spend half its waking hours (if not more) in a place they do not want to be in, doing something they do not want to do. This task has endured ever since. Not surprisingly, scientific management, or Taylorism, developed alongside industrial capitalism with this very purpose: to improve “economic efficiency” through the improvement of “labor productivity.” Fordism also surfaced around this time, taking a more all-encompassing approach to issues of mass productivity and management under capitalism. The common denominator in these fields of “human management” was to figure out how to effectively commodify a human being; in other words, how to turn a human being into a machine in order to perform menial, repetitive tasks for several hours at a time. Capitalist management systems looked to slave plantations for ideas on how to best accomplish this task. “The plantation didn’t just produce the commodities that fueled the broader economy; it also generated innovative business practices that would come to typify modern management,” Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (2014, para. 12) write. “As some of the most heavily capitalized enterprises in antebellum America, plantations offered early examples of time-motion studies and regimentation through clocks and bells. Seeking ever-greater efficiencies in cotton picking, slaveholders reorganized their fields, regimented the workday, and implemented a system of vertical reporting that made overseers into managers answerable to those above for the labor of those below” (Beckert & Rockman, 2014, para. 12).

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The hierarchies of slave plantation management have effectively been transferred to modern office buildings in both the private and public sectors. To this day, entire fields of study have been dedicated to organizational management and workforce optimization. The hierarchies that exist today, whether in private or public organizations, stem from archaic forms of management designed to essentially make humans less human. The fact that the term human resources has been fully integrated into our vernacular highlights the inhumane nature of labor in this regard. Coercion is simply not enough to ensure productivity. Frederick Taylor’s (1911) contributions made this clear, at times valuing workers as less than “intelligent gorillas”; while Henry Ford’s assembly-line, mass-production operations carried out Marx’s warning from decades prior, essentially turning workers into mere “appendages of machines.” Ford even went as far as creating a Sociological Department designed to study and standardize workers’ private lives in order to further streamline them into visages of machinery. Ultimately, these fields of study have developed the corporate culture that has become synonymous with capitalist society: extreme hierarchies, a total absence of autonomy, strict guidelines and rules, threats of disciplinary action, and complete submission to conformity. These organizational hierarchies have been placed everywhere—within most corporations, most companies, most schools, most nonprofits, most NGOs, and most public agencies. Quite simply stated, they are a necessary component in maintaining the unnatural wealth and power inequities that are so rampant within the capitalist system. Without high levels of control to keep people in line, this system would inevitably collapse. THE CONTRADICTIONS AND INEFFICIENCIES WITHIN HIERARCHIES Maybe it is not a coincidence that, even in heaven, under the perspective of the Bible, there is a hierarchy. After all, what better way to impose the “benefits” of accepting the power of a hierarchy in the human mind? —Miguel Reynolds Brandão (“entrepreneur, business developer, and investor,” Brandão & Maroais, 2015, p. 91)

While hierarchies serve a systemic purpose in regards to how they relate to broader society, they also develop internal cultures that mimic the unequal power relations that have come to characterize our society under capitalism. These internal cultures breed competition among workers by creating an exclusive, managerial class that must be filled by a select few. In order to satisfy the inherent power inequities that exist within all hierarchies, organizations create arbitrary positions of authority, advertise these positions as being available to those who “qualify,” and encourage people to pursue

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these positions in exchange for material gain. In this pursuit, however, contradictions and inefficiencies naturally arise. In a professional capacity, whether we’re talking about a public or private organization, people climb the proverbial ladder for two reasons: (a) to make more money and (b) to work less. The narrow-minded pursuit of authority and power, whether conscious or subconscious, essentially lies within these two fundamental objectives that are inherent to human beings who are placed within hierarchical (competitive, not cooperative) systems defined by capitalist/corporate culture. In other words, when forced into a top–down organizational structure, it becomes natural to want to make more (money) and work less (idleness). The often subconsciously attractive idea of acquiring a position of authority is the singular casing around these material wants. While the uncivilized act of exerting power over another human being may boost self-esteem, this form of psychosis ultimately operates secondary to the material benefits that come with this power. Therefore, it is safe to assume that if material benefits did not accompany positions of authority, they likely would not exist. Regardless of this inclination, there are still many people who have no interest in climbing the ladder. Ironically, these people, for one reason or another, are more beholden to the natural human attribute of cooperation. They are either able to see beyond the self-centered pursuit of power (money and idleness) and are simply turned off by it, or they are just not interested in climbing over (and eventually overseeing) others for personal gain. In turn, those who choose to seek power (money and idleness)—those who are willing to spend time and energy climbing the ladder—do so in a purely selfserving way. They simply want to make more and work less, have no qualms about taking positions of artificial superiority over their fellow workers, and thus do whatever it takes to obtain that status within the organization. This flow creates an interesting paradox, as the most self-serving members of an organization inevitably gravitate to the top of the hierarchy. Thus, while organizations theoretically consist of groups of people working toward a common goal, this natural phenomenon based in hierarchical ascendency inevitably destroys any hopes of a collective will, while also breeding a culture of incompetence (as those self-serving individuals take the reins). This culture of incompetence almost always comes to the forefront, as a majority of workers will inevitably experience it through daily occurrences of redundancy, inefficiency, and frustration. When there is work to be done, bosses almost inevitably seek refuge in their offices. When crises arrive, bosses do not take it upon themselves to work, but rather demand more work from those below. In most cases, bosses become so far removed from the actual work and mission of an organization that they essentially alienate themselves. As this disconnect grows, so too does the culture of incompetency. And with the tendency for animosity to develop from the majority of the workforce that is perceived to be “at the bottom,” the only option for

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those who seek to control, supervise, and “manage” other human beings is to instill fear in their subjects. At this stage, trust is nonexistent, organizational problems are always reduced to workers not doing enough, and solutions are always rooted in disciplinary action. Furthermore, this phenomenon creates a natural inefficiency as those who are paid more money are essentially contributing less to the mission. In the case of so-called “supervisory” and “management” positions, this inefficiency becomes two-fold by not only creating a scenario where the organization is getting less for more, but also seeking more for less from the majority of its workforce (since this void must be filled somewhere). With this realization, we can see that hierarchies are not only unnatural forms of organization, but also inefficient and incompetent ones. Their purpose for existing lies in controlling this unnatural environment predicated upon massive inequities of power and wealth. However, beyond this need to reinforce the coercive nature of society, they are useless from within. This paradoxical existence is thus forced to construct mythological purposes for the arbitrary power positions that serve no real purpose internally, yet must maintain and mimic the power relations that exist externally. Ironically, wielding fear through micromanagement and the constant threat of disciplinary action ultimately becomes this artificial purpose. And it convinces those who occupy these power positions that workers are inherently lazy and, therefore, must be prodded like cattle. The irony comes in the fact that any development of so-called laziness, or a lack of effort, that comes to fruition from below almost always is the result of widespread animosity toward those who exist “higher up” on the ladder for the sole purpose of making more and doing less. Human beings simply do not respond to arbitrary positions of authority (often candy-coated as “leadership positions”) because such positions serve no purpose in any real sense of organizational operations. Frankly put, the mere existence of these positions is an insult to all of those who perform the brunt of the work from “below.” CORPORATE DOUBLESPEAK, CONTRIVED LEADERSHIP, AND INSECURITY Corporations are totalitarian institutions. Board of directors at the top of managers give orders, everyone follows orders. At the very bottom of command, if you are lucky you can rent yourself to it and get a job, and if you are sufficiently propagandized you may even buy some of the junk they produce and so on. —Noam Chomsky

The totalitarianism inherent in corporate structures is defined and preserved by the hierarchy, and these structures stretch far beyond for-profit,

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private enterprises. In an attempt to justify arbitrary positions of power, organizations often portray them as “leadership” positions, deploying corporate doublespeak like “team leaders” or “officers” in their hierarchical arrangement. The problem with this is that leadership, in any true sense, is an absolute contradiction from power; and especially from arbitrary power. The acquisition of money and idleness that becomes synonymous with climbing the ladder makes leadership roles impossible for those who fill these positions to obtain. Never mind that the term “leadership” itself often includes connotations of superiority, or at the very least attempts to differentiate oneself from “the pack.” Leadership can never be arbitrarily assigned through “promotions” or self-proclamation. If leaders truly exist among people, they only do so through a form of facilitating. And it may only develop organically, as the result of unplanned developments springing from natural occurrences of facilitation from within a group. Leaders are facilitators who may provide organic direction in a group, and they are always those who exhibit a selfless willingness to take on a brunt of the effort, or at the very least their share of the collective effort, while expecting nothing of individual value in return. Dictating from behind a desk is not leadership. Screaming down from a supervisory booth is not leadership. Analyzing and calibrating labor productivity is not leadership. Those who climb the proverbial ladder to (a) make more and (b) work less can never be leaders. Thus, filling arbitrary positions in hierarchies can never produce any semblance of leadership. Coercion, yes. Fear, yes. But never leadership. The fact that hierarchies remain the predominant organizational structure throughout capitalist society tells us two things: (a) they are the most effective structure for exerting control; and (b) control is most desirable characteristic of any organization existing under capitalism. The inherent cultures of incompetence and contradictions which develop within these structures remain a secondary concern to that of maintaining control. And by masking this controlled environment through corporate doublespeak, organizations are often able to stoke a cognitive dissonance among its workforce that simultaneously puts forth a healthy dose of faith in the “team approach” by day while complaining about the incompetent and overbearing bosses by night. This is accomplished through a rebranding of arbitrary power to justify it with the appearance of a (nonexistent) meritocracy, and tame it by transforming self-serving overseers into “leaders.” The insidious nature of this rebranding even goes as far as trying to convince those in arbitrary positions of power that they not only belong there, but invariably serve an important purpose there. The natural insecurities that develop within managers and supervisors, who are plagued with a never-ending paranoia about being exposed as the frauds they are, are put at ease with cycles upon cycles of “leadership courses” and mounds of self-help books that call on their inner-CEOs to seize the moment!

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Despite these contrived efforts to establish competence and confidence, those in arbitrary positions of power within a hierarchy are undoubtedly reminded of their uselessness during daily operations. The material benefits that come with these positions are typically all that’s needed to cope with this realization; however, the organizational contradictions and inefficiencies always remain, and with them enduring fissures seeping with animosity and fearfulness from below, and insecurity and paranoia from above. There is simply no getting past the fact that the mere act of “supervising” another person is inhumane, because its purpose is premised on the belief that people are inherently lazy, dishonest, irresponsible, and incompetent. Or, at the very least, the existence of supervision confirms the coercive and inhumane nature of both traditional labor and hierarchies. Supervision is only necessary in a world where workers are viewed as cattle to be prodded, pushed, “motivated,” and directed. The fact that those placed with this task of supervision possess no special skills or talents only makes this relationship even more precarious, as those being supervised will almost always recognize the illegitimacy of their supposed superior. Whether through interviews or exams, there simply is no way to find people suitable for supervising others . . . because, quite frankly, they don’t exist. The supervision or management of a human being is never a suitable proposition, no matter how many executives, boards, curriculum developers, trainers, and corporate planners try to make it so. REFERENCES Beckert, S. & Rockman, S. (2014, February 24). How slavery led to modern capitalism. Retrieved from huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/24/slarery_n_4847105.html Brandão, M. R., & Morais, N. (2015). The sustainable organisation: A paradigm for a fairer society. CreateSpace Independent. Eugenides, J. (2011). Middlesex. London, England: Bloomsbury. Taylor, F. (1911). The principles of scientific management. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.

PART V POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

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CHAPTER 17

“OUR REVOLUTION” IS NOT A REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT Dan Arel

On August 24, Bernie Sanders officially launched his post-presidential bid project, Our Revolution. Hoping to build on his primary success, Our Revolution looks to endorse and financially support down-ticket Democratic candidates around the country. This is part of the vision Sanders laid out about reforming, or in his words “revolutionizing” the Democratic Party. It offers an ambitious, and a somewhat respectable goal, to fight to push a center-right party further to the left. However, as many have noted Sanders himself while being much further left than his Democratic counterparts, is not the bastion of leftist politics the media, and many of his supporters think he is. Sanders campaign, which he called revolutionary, only offered revolutionary politics inside the Democratic Party. To his credit, he gave the party a big scare, he offered a viable alternative to the neoliberal politics of Hillary Clinton, making such waves that party officials even conspired to possibly use Sanders lack of religion against him. Leaked emails showed that a

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few DNC officials wanted to out Sanders as an atheist in two southern states they feared Clinton could lose. Sanders also inspired millions of young voters to become interested in politics. His campaign was reminiscent of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign in that regard. Tens of thousands packed auditoriums to hear Sanders speak up for the 99%, to stand up for Native American rights, and to demand workers be paid a higher minimum wage. Yet, his politics still came from a liberal, procapitalist mindset, and so does Our Revolution. What Sanders is selling as a revolution is, in reality, nothing more than an attempt to reform a capitalist, centrist party. Our Revolution cannot be revolutionary in this sense, as it is simply not possible to revolutionize a counterrevolutionary party. At the end of the day, Our Revolution is still supporting capitalist candidates who by and large support the Affordable Care Act (2010) over universal health care, or at least support slowly progressing the struggling health care plan towards some version of socialized care, meanwhile courts around the country pick apart the plan, leaving it in shambles and as further rises in health insurance costs skyrocket, leaving what might be left of the affordable part of the plan on the cutting-room floor. Candidates being endorsed by the new organization include the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, a U.S. congresswoman from Hawaii who has criticized President Obama’s foreign policy as not being tough enough against the likes of ISIS. Her criticisms of his lack of military action have earned her critiques for being a right-wing hawk when it comes to fighting ISIS in the Middle East. The organization also threw its support behind a now failed bid to oust Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz by supporting the anti-Iran, vocally pro-Israel supporter, Tim Canova. These are not revolutionary candidates, and they are hardly reform candidates. In reality, they are simply candidates who either vocally supported Sanders in the primary, or in the case of Canova, offered a challenge to Wasserman Schultz, someone Sanders knew was fighting to ensure he did not receive the Democratic presidential nomination. Throughout the Our Revolution endorsements you will find candidates who are outside of the Democratic norm, but all are still liberal, capitalist, mainstream candidates who are not rocking the Democratic boat too far and who don’t step out of the liberal mindset to join the left. While even those on the left can appreciate the election of further left Democrats, as they do, to a degree, make the life of many Americans better, a greater understanding of the party tells us that even the most domestically left Democrats still generally fall into foreign policy imperialism and American exceptionalism. Those being endorsed by Our Revolution do not break that mold. Our Revolution is not revolutionary, and it should not be discussed as revolutionary. Revolutionary politics will only come from outside the

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two-party establishment and will likely not come by playing by the establishment rules. Even parties such as the Green Party are not bringing about revolutionary change as they seek to gain power through the already established system and offer no path to changing or overthrowing that system. They wish to reform our politics, not revolutionize them. As socialists, the goal should be to educate the influx of young voters who are seemingly attracted to the socialist label, but only understand it in the context of Bernie Sanders. When speaking to a crowd at the University of Georgetown, Sanders proclaimed that his brand of socialism didn’t involve workers owning the means of production. If the mainstream understanding of socialism in the United States becomes offering partly socialized programs through the means of capitalism, the goals of socialists around the country become a greater uphill battle than ever before. Socialists still find themselves explaining that socialism isn’t aligned with Stalinism and the USSR, and now have to further explain that it doesn’t support “fixing” capitalism. Even the term democratic socialism has been muddied by Sanders campaign. What Sanders thinks of as socialism is merely an old-school, post-New Deal Democrat. A liberal who understands the importance of a welfare state, but who cannot see past the blinders of capitalism to understand why this economic system makes welfare necessary. Instead of fighting to change the system, they instead fight to put Band-Aids™ on it. The world socialism should be nowhere near that. With that said, we can admit that Sanders can be praised to some degree for removing a lot of the stigma around the “S” word, while at the same time realizing that by using the label for his liberal version of socialism, he has also done damage to what the word means. REFERENCES Affordable Care Act. (2010). Compilation of patient protection and affordable care act. Retrieved from http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

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CHAPTER 18

AMERICAN CARTEL How America’s Two Major Parties Helped Destroy Democracy Frank Castro

Cartel: An association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition. A little over two decades ago, on December 2, 1993, the principle engineer of Colombia’s infamous cocaine empire, Pablo Escobar, was killed while fleeing police on the barrio rooftops of his hometown, Medellin. Before he died he had amassed an organization of state-like power, challenging, in fact, the government of Columbia itself over the question of its extradition policies—and winning. Dubbed the Medellin drug cartel, his international cocaine operation grew to prominence functioning similarly to the corporations which dominate today’s global economy. Escobar knew, by controlling every possible link in the drug chain from production to retail, he could corral suppliers under a single umbrella, dictate the price of his product, and severely limit any would-be competitors from challenging his power.

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Escobar was not alone in learning from the strategies of corporate giants. If anything he was late. Few organizations have pervasively and durably monopolized a market as well as America’s Republican and Democratic parties. The two dominant machines steering the U.S. electorate have consistently diminished the potential for a freer America. That’s because the reality is, rather than arch rivals, liberals and conservatives are two factions of the same team. Both are capitalist. Both are imperialist. Both are White supremacist surrogates. And both are controlled by a plutocratic elite who have discovered what Escobar learned in his early twenties, that competition is best neutralized by eliminating all possible outliers. We merely perceive the two parties as markedly different because of the degree to which the spectrum of possibilities has been narrowed. AMERICAN CARTEL Politics, at its barest, is a market characterized by power—and the struggle for how power will be distributed. As CrimethInc illustrated some time ago, in this market ideas function similar to currency. Delineated by ideas which can build capital enough for the acquisition of more power, and those which might unbind power, political parties are tethered to the same basic operating principles of any capitalist enterprise. They must solidify market share in the realm of ideas and grow, wherever and whenever possible, or go bankrupt. Incubated within this constant power play, self-preservation becomes the party’s central priority; and it does not matter if the ideas which accomplish this outcome are beneficial to the electorate or detrimental, so long as it achieves the imperative to survive. Political organizations which maintain growth long enough to survive often do so by normalizing their ideological framework. When they have obtained a disproportionate amount of influence over their immediate surroundings, they can metastasize into monopolies and control large swaths of the idea-economy. New ideas about how society ought to function can enter the market to contest old ideas, but usually encapsulated within reforms incapable of unseating the dominant paradigm. Characteristic of any capitalist system, once market monopolies are established “power tends to flow upward to the top of a hierarchy, from which the masters, the ones qualified to employ it, decide matters for everyone else” (“Why We’re Right,” 2001, The Capitalism of Ideas, para. 2). Remember the age-old question: What do all those with power want? More power. As such, two monopolies have dominated American politics for over 150 years—the Democratic Party, founded in 1828, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Together, they form a political cartel, or an association of political parties with the purpose of maintaining concentrated power and restricting or repressing competition. Throughout the

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past century its loosely managed agreements, often wholly unofficial, but embedded deep within its standard operation, have been the quasi-coordinated production, distribution, and enforcement of a set of normalized choices which reflect only the range of needs of private corporate power. Essentially, to solidify and gain greater control, the two parties staked out a set of positions within a predetermined and standardized framework which express the basic ideas of the status quo. This way any “new” solutions about what might be possible tend toward ideas which pose no serious danger to the framework itself, which produce reforms only capable of gutting radical resistance while leaving the underlying problems intact. Any outliers are assimilated or positioned to enhance the strength of current institutions. In other words, all ideas must first be filtered through the umbrella of the Democrat–Republican cartel, which dictates the pedigree of ideas both old and new, and therefore severely limiting any competition from threatening its hegemony. AMERICAN SICARIOS Central to the project of any cartel is control. And within most drug cartels there is an armed group responsible for carrying out violence in an effort to maintain it. In Colombia they were called sicarios. Though the violence is systematically different, American sicarios are most accurately found in state institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Such an observation should not be seen as hyperbole. Even the most marginally informed American should know their government frequently has been involved in shameful acts of violence, whether it was the assassination, framing, and political neutralization of black, brown, indigenous, and left-radical movements and their leaders, or organized coups in the Middle East, Africa, and Central or South America. Without enforcers, America’s political cartel simply could not exist. As I wrote in Gangs of the State: Police and the Hierarchy of Violence (Castro, 2015), our society operates on a clearly defined, yet often unarticulated, hierarchy of violence; and the function of politicians and police agencies is to normalize and enforce that violence. As an institution, these agencies act as state-sanctioned gangs, or, in this instance, the sicarios of America’s political ideology, charged with the task of upholding the violent, racist hierarchy of White supremacist capitalism. Wherever and whenever possible, they are tasked with solidifying a monopoly of power where all violence from/ by those higher on the hierarchy upon those lower can be normalized into business as usual. Any deviation from the status quo, any resistance whatsoever, is met with brutal repression.

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For those familiar with United States history, the record of repression against anti-capitalist groups has been a source of considerable alliance between Democrats and Republicans. In A People’s History of the United States, recounting America’s anti-leftist atmosphere after Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution, Howard Zinn (1980) wrote: In early September 1917, Department of Justice agents made simultaneous raids on forty-eight IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] meetings across the country, seizing correspondence and literature that would become courtroom evidence. Later that month, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiracy to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes. One hundred and one went on trial [en masse] in April 1918; it lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time . . . [T]he jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced [IWW president William “Big Bill”] Haywood and fourteen others to twenty years in prison; thirty-three were given ten years, the rest shorter sentences. They were fined a total of $2,500,000. The IWW was shattered. (p. 363–364)

Commonality between the United States’ two major political parties has been most visible when viewed through its historically imperialist and anticommunist foreign policy. Beginning with the expansion of Soviet influence, the relationship is best described by a popularized euphemism of the Cold War Era: Partisanship ends at the water’s edge, meaning, if the two factions of the cartel could ever totally agree, it must be on the dismembering of communism everywhere. As the growth of nationalist and anti-colonialist movements abroad strengthened in concert with labor movements in America, a fierce need for bipartisan crackdown to preserve the dominant regime emerged. Zinn (1980) once again lends clarity: The United States was trying, in the postwar decade [of World War II], to create a national consensus-excluding the radicals, who could not support a foreign policy aimed at suppressing revolution-of conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, around the policies of the Cold War and antiCommunism. Such a coalition could best be created by a liberal Democratic President, whose aggressive policy abroad would be supported by conservatives . . .  [I]f the anti-Communist mood became strong enough, liberals could support repressive moves at home which in ordinary times would be seen as violating the tradition of liberal tolerance. (p. 418–419)

Repressive moves were exactly what happened. Imperialist consensus not only generated cohesion on issues of foreign policy, it refined a coordinated relationship of narrowed domestic power between Democrats and Republicans, providing the groundwork to enact an increasingly clandestine policestate. Repression of previous magnitude would continue against not only anti-capitalists, but against movements for self-determination throughout

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the 1960s and 1970s among Black people, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and Indigenous populations, most notably through the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations. The tactics for gutting competing political currents pioneered by police agencies then became standard operating procedure, evolved into pervasive surveillance apparatuses, and have been deployed in both recent uprisings against Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protesters. AMERICAN CRIME LORDS If there is a position within the cartel’s classic hierarchy embodied by most liberal and conservative politicians, it would not be the rank of crime lord, but rather that of lieutenant, the second highest position. Lieutenants are responsible for supervising the sicarios within their own territories—in our case, their respective states. They are allowed discretion to carry-out the day-to-day operations of the cartel, to ensure its smooth operation. Crucial duties include voting on legislation filtered through existing idea-monopolies, which remain firmly rooted within the sanctioned political spectrum, and policing the spectrum’s established borders by criminalizing outliers, especially ones that cannot be assimilated and must be repositioned to reinforce the existing framework. If they perform well enough, they become the focus of investigative inquiry and obscure the higher authority they serve. The rank of real crime boss goes to richest of the rich. The multibillionaires of America who—in recent years—have given up to 42% of all election contributions, and captured the state in the process. Brothers Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States, are known for funding the Republican political machine, giving over $100 million to far-right causes. But the Kochs are no more alone in their policy purchasing than Republicans are in begging the super wealthy for campaign funds. Democrats have increasingly relied on it too. Money awarded to Democrats from corporate PACs now far outstrips what used to come from labor unions and trial lawyers. For instance, corporate PACs donated $164.3 million to Republicans during the 2010 election season and $164.3 million to Democrats also. Unions gave $59–$79 million. Owning a cartel may not seem cheap, but it pays dividends. It accomplishes this not only through generating enormously disproportionate wealth, or even through buying elections, but by imposing upon the impoverished a set of values which ensure their continued exploitation. Karl Marx (1846) himself pointed this out, explaining that “the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (para. 21). For the poor American voter this means individuals are made to develop in such a fashion that their development fosters the

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strength of the capitalist state. At their core, working class people are constantly being sold and resold their own disempowerment, until finally we sell it to ourselves—over and over again. It is a sinister, but brilliant stroke of genius—what better way to destroy the possibility of expropriation than to make disparity gold. Michel Foucault (1980) described this process of perpetually reinscribing within ourselves, and each other, the relation we have to power as the effect of unspoken warfare, a war where we build within our social institutions, and our very bodies, an ultimate disequilibrium. We self-police so thoroughly that when power’s effects upon us begin self-reproducing “there is no need for arms, physical violence, [or] material constraints” (p. 155) just an inspecting gaze, “which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself” (p. 155). In short, we become our own worst enemies. The rules and values of the rich become the self-inflicted rules and values of the poor. But they never benefit us. And we quit asking why. AMERICAN PLUTOCRACY Democracy describes today’s America by only the most facile standards. It has never really described America anyway. Plutocracy is the accurate word. And our plutocratic overlords keep us in a hamster wheel choosing which lieutenant we will take orders from next for practical reasons. It gives them, and the political parties they own, a sort of object permanence. We understand the prescriptions of those in power even when we cannot observe them directly; because we have been inundated by their surrogates and transformed into a passive body meant only to ratify our subjugation. Imagine waking up in a prison cell with the choice to continue sleeping on an unpadded iron bench or a concrete floor. No matter what “decision” you make, neither can destroy the cage. This is the reality of our political climate, a series of nondecisions masquerading as choice. Ultimately, the emergence of plutocracy has not been the fault of the working class. Even though we have internalized many of the mechanisms used to exploit us, we constantly have been outpaced, outgunned, and outright demoralized. And in our attempts at democracy we have fundamentally failed to understand that political freedom cannot exist in the absence of economic freedom. They are inextricably linked, like a tree to its roots. Now that many Americans are beginning to see how capitalism has been the physical incarnation of inequality, we must move forward in this moment and reconcile with another unassailable truth: That capitalism’s relation to democracy will always be characterized by adversary, not coexistence. In

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such an environment, America’s major political parties remain henchmen to a perverse and morally bankrupt distribution of power. REFERENCES Castro, F. (2015, March 5). Gangs of the state: Police & the hierarchy of violence. Retrieved from http://hamptoninstitution.org/gangs-of-the-state.html#.XMh-NZNKgWp Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Marx, K. (1846). The German ideology: Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook. B. The Illusion of the Epoch. Retrieved from https://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm Why We’re Right & You’re Wrong: Infighting the Good Fight. (2001, November 1). Retrieved from crimethinc.com/2001/11/01/why-were-right-youre-wrong Zinn, H. (1980). A people’s history of the United States: 1492–present. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

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CHAPTER 19

NOTES ON THE PEACEFUL TRANSITION OF POWER The Continuity of Violence in America’s Imperial Democracy Bryant William Sculos

In the weeks leading up to and the hours after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration as President of the United States, we’ve seen the media (and by media I mean the major network television and print media like CNN and Washington Post, just to name a couple) repeat and glorify the so-called “peaceful transition of power” that Inauguration Day represents. President Barack Obama has been applauded for working with and speaking so respectfully about Donald Trump’s transition team. Former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic Party 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has also been complimented for her near complete silence during this period since the election. The supposed peaceful transition of power is often treated as the pinnacle achievement and representation of the greatness of the American political process, and the 2016–2017 instantiation has been no different.

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While there were certainly no troops marching into Washington, DC to remove Barack Obama from office to install Donald Trump as president, nor did Trump need to resort to assassination to ascend to the American throne, there is a difference between a nonviolent transition of power and a near complete acquiescence to the revived and remodeled cast of American neofascism represented by the newly empowered Trump administration. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and their progressive left Democratic ilk have been bright spots, as have been the thousands more organizing around the country and world to protest and resist the far-Right agenda of Trump and his alt-Right allies (though this agenda is certainly not outside the GOP platform in most respects). There is an awakening resistance—a resistance that we certainly needed more of over the past 8 years when it came to demanding that Obama maintain his support for the public option, against the unending and illegal global drone war, against the increase in support for Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen, and against Israel’s apartheid regime and expanding occupation of Palestine. The good news is that the resistance is emerging again now. What we see now is a transformation of the fugitive democratic power of the people in cities across the country and around the world, and given the near ubiquitous presence of the police and practices of state violence at these marches, rallies, and protests, these resistances to the transition of power can hardly be considered peaceful. When the people have the power and it is exercised by and for the people, in the absence of state or structural violence, only then could it ever rightly be considered peaceful. There were mass, structural, and direct violences (re)produced by the Obama regime, and there will be some of the same violences along with new, different ones under Trump (and the same would have been true under a Hillary Clinton presidency as well). The idea of the peaceful transfer of power is a troubling mythology, despite its very superficial truth. Here are several aspects of this supposed transition of power that reflect the continuity, and potential exacerbating, of structural and direct violence: 1. In one of his final acts as commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces, President Obama ordered B-2 bombers to launch one final (at least of his presidency) assault against supposed ISIS-affiliated fighters in Libya. This event was seemingly ignored by the American public (because it was mostly ignored by the mainstream media and wasn’t tweeted about by Trump or Kim Kardashian). What does a new president mean for the people of the countries we have been bombing over President George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies? A peaceful transition of power would seem to preclude “one last bombing for good measure,” which seems to be the only way to explain this last military act—apparently not.

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Additionally, there is a continuity of military operations in these various countries from Obama to Trump. New standing orders will be needed for specific bombings and new campaigns, but much of the existing fighting around the world, where U.S. troops or operational and/or financial support are involved, will continue in support of American capitalist imperialism. The peaceful transition of power means the U.S. will continue to kill innocent civilians around the world; they might be different people in different countries, perhaps even quantitatively less of them than under Obama (who could trust anything Trump has said, but he has promised to decrease U.S. involvement in military operations around the world), but there is no doubt people who have literally no say in the U.S. electoral system will continue to be subject to the systematic vengeance of our empire. This is the peaceful transition of power. 2. Another act that President Obama undertook prior to his departure from the west wing was the commutation of much of the remainder of Army whistleblower turned political prisoner and trans-rights icon Chelsea Manning’s sentence (she will be released on May 17, 2017 instead of May 17, 2035). Edward Snowden, Leonard Peltier, and the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison had no such “luck.” The peaceful transition of power represents the endurance of structural and direct violence against all of those who were not pardoned nor had their sentences commuted. Obama, without violating any aspect of the constitution or law or costing himself politically (at least in regards to any potential reelection), could have pardoned or commuted the sentences of all political prisoners and those convicted of nonviolent crimes. Trump certainly won’t. Hillary Clinton certainly would not have. In this context, the peaceful transition of power means the maintenance of the mass incarceration system and mass violation of human rights. 3. According to a recent Oxfam report, eight men control 50% of the world’s wealth. The peaceful transition of power means the endurance of this most egregious truth and the system that allows and encourages this truth to remain truth. The peaceful transfer of power represents the continuation of mass poverty and inequality in the U.S. and around the world. People will continue to struggle to feed their families, while the world’s richest men, some of whom (though none of the eight richest) have found new employment in Donald Trump’s cabinet. The peaceful transition of power means failing to comprehensively reject the structural possibility for any people to be so wealthy while others on any scale, never mind the

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scale to which we are witnessing around the country and around the world, struggle and suffer so manifestly. The peaceful transfer of power means the transition from one group of plutocrats to even more wealthy plutocrats. 4. Relatedly, the peaceful transition of power means those who continue to lack health insurance or access to health care in any consistent or substantial way will continue to lack health insurance and access—and if the GOP has their way, even more people will lose the limited access the Affordable Care Act (2010) granted them as well as those crucial women’s health services provided by Planned Parenthood in the United States. Maintaining a health care system that is nearly entirely privatized is the epitome of structural violence. It may seem obvious, but it bears emphasizing: In the United States, if you cannot afford preventative care or even life-saving treatments, including necessary prescription drugs, you are truly shit out of luck—even if the number of those who are shit out of luck has decreased under the presidency of Barack Obama. Without a universally accessible public option, the peaceful transition of power means the reproduction of the barbarism of the U.S. healthcare system. 5. Lastly (though there are certainly more we could come up with), the peaceful transition of power means some people could very likely lose the right to their family, whether because they of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or their immigration status. People could lose their parents, and others could lose the right to become parents. Children could lose the right to be with their parents, and others could lose the right to be adopted by gay or trans parents. Whatever Trump and the GOP do with regard to immigration, it will likely follow in the footsteps of “deporter-in-chief” Barack Obama’s policy of mass deportation. Whatever Trump and the GOP do with regard to LGBTQA+ rights, it will likely only be enabled by the inability of the Democratic Party to structurally secure these rights more fully when they had the opportunity to in the first 2 years of Obama’s presidency. As opposed to the self-deceiving mythology of a most grotesquely violent “peaceful transition of power,” we need to give new meaning to this perverse phraseology. The peaceful transition of power should only mean the end to imperial warfare and the corporate, consumer capitalist system that undergirds it. The peaceful transfer of power can only mean the democratic seizure of the means of political, economic, and social power by the people and for the people. Until then, the peaceful transfer of power will remain a cruel untruth. Until we succeed—a process that will surely take a generation or

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more—the peaceful transfer of power must be our goal, not the mythological paean that has never been reflective of any reality of the American system. Until that time, we will only have the violent maintenance of violent power— whether the U.S. president is Black, White, female, or orange. REFERENCES Affordable Care Act. (2010). Compilation of patient protection and affordable care act. Retrieved from http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

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CHAPTER 20

POWER POLITICS AND THE EMPIRE OF ECONOMICS An Introduction Andrew Gavin Marshall

The President sat and listened to his closest adviser as they plotted a strategy to maintain Western domination of the world economy. The challenge was immense: Divisions between industrial countries were growing as the poor nations of the world were becoming increasingly united in opposition to the Western world order. From Africa, across the Middle East, to Asia and Latin America, the poor (or “developing”) countries were calling for the establishment of a “New International Economic Order,” one which would not simply serve the interests of the United States, Western Europe, and the other rich, industrial nations, but the world as a whole. It was on the 24th of May 1975 when President Gerald Ford was meeting with his Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, easily the two most powerful political officials in the world at the time. Kissinger told the President: “The trick in the world now is to use economics to build a world political structure.”1

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Ford and Kissinger agreed that the United States could not accept a new “economic order” that would undermine American and Western power throughout the world. Uprisings, revolutions, and liberation movements across Africa, Asia, and beyond had largely thrown off the shackles of European colonial domination, establishing themselves as independent political nation-states with their own interests and objectives. Chief among those goals was for economic independence to follow political independence, to take control of their own resources and economies from the Europeans and Americans, to determine their own economic policies, and help to redistribute global wealth along equal and just lines. The problem for the Western and industrial nations with the United States at the center was that formal colonial domination was no longer considered acceptable. In previous decades and centuries, the rich and powerful nations would directly colonize and control foreign societies, establishing puppet governments and protectorates, extracting resources, exploiting labor, and expanding their own national power and international prestige. Following the end of World War II, such practices were no longer politically or publicly acceptable. The era of decolonization had taken hold, and the people of the world were failing to remain passive and obedient in the face of great injustices and inequality. War had become a bad word, colonialism was no longer en vogue, and belligerent political bullying by the rich countries increasingly risked a major backlash, threatening to unite the entire world against the West. A new strategy for global domination had to be constructed. The West could not afford a direct political or ideological confrontation with the developing world, with many top American officials, including Henry Kissinger, acknowledging that if they were to pursue such a strategy they would be isolated and lost, with even the Europeans and Japanese abandoning them. Foreign ministers and heads of state could not appear to be attacking or seeking to dominate the developing world. It was decided that the war would have to be waged largely in the world of economics and finance, where the conversation would change from that of colonialism and imperialism to the technical details of economic policy. The imperial interests and objectives of the powerful nations that had existed for centuries could no longer be articulated in a direct way. But those same interests and objectives would not vanish. Instead, they would be hidden behind bland, vague, and technical rhetoric. The language of economics provides the appearance of impartiality, backed up by pseudo-scientificsounding studies and ideologies, accessible only to those with the proper training, education, and experience otherwise inaccessible and incomprehensible to the general public. Empire was a thing of the past. In its place rose a new global economy, built by banks not bombs, expanding the reach of corporations not colonies, managing debt not dominions.

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The “world political structure” which Kissinger described would not, however, make militaries and foreign ministers and diplomats irrelevant. They would still have a role to play in maintaining and expanding empire, though never calling it by its proper name, instead using words like democracy, freedom, and markets. But the role of such officials would often become secondary to that of the financial and economic diplomats who would increasingly become the first line of offense in constructing the “world political structure:” the Empire of Economics. Two days after Kissinger articulated this strategy to President Ford, another meeting was held at the White House with several more high-level cabinet officials. The discussion was a follow-up on the U.S. strategy to construct such a system. Stressing that political diplomats and foreign ministers could not take on the developing world directly, Kissinger told the assembled officials, “it is better to have the Finance Ministers be bastards, that’s where I want it.”2 This book is the story of how financial diplomats, politicians, bankers, billionaires, family dynasties, and powerful nations have used economics to build a “world political structure,” engaging in a constant game of power politics with and against each other and the rest of the world to construct and maintain their Empire of Economics for the benefit of a small ruling class, the global Mafiocracy: a superrich, often criminal cartel of global oligarchs and family dynasties. It is a brutal, vicious world of secret meetings, behind-the-scenes intrigue, financial warfare and coup d’états, economic colonization, and debt domination. It is the unforgiving world of empire, an immense concentration of global wealth and power, a parasitic system of world domination built on the impoverishment and exploitation of billions. And it is a world obscured and hidden behind the dry, dull, and seemingly empty rhetoric of economics. It is a language in need of translation, a reality in need of elucidation, and an empire in need of opposition. POWER POLITICS AND EMPIRE It was the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever known. It spanned the globe, across oceans and seas, countries and continents, enveloping much of the known world—and the people throughout it—within the domineering shadows of its political, economic, social, cultural, and financial institutions and ideologies. Those who ruled were the wealthy and war-like family dynasties, individual oligarchs, kings of coin, titans of industry, and a religious priesthood of proselytizing propagandists. These rulers would engage in a constant game of “power politics” with and against each other in the quest to gain title, money, and influence.

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They lie, cheat, steal, kill and conquer; they plant their flags and preach their gospels, serve their interests and those of their unknown (or sometimes) masters. It requires a constant cunning, managing an endless lack of trust for all those around you, fearful that on your way up, others might seek to cut you down. To play the game of power politics in the age of empires is to be pragmatic, strategic, and ruthless; it requires no less, but frequently more. It is a practice passed down through families, institutions and ideologies. No, this is not “Game of Thrones,” but rather, the Game of Globalization in the Empire of Economics: power politics of the 21st century. But the game itself has been with humanity as long as empire and was always seen at the center of the system of power within every empire. Human systems—that is, what we call “civilization” and “society” are, ultimately, human creations with humans in control. Thus, power—at its center—is always dependent upon the interactions, relationships, and emotions of the few individuals and families who rule. When such people get angry or throw a tantrum—because the neighbor boy stole his toy (or Russia annexed Crimea, for example)—wars are waged, and the poor are sent to go murder or be murdered, cities burn to the ground, nations crumble into dust. The game is not known to many, save for those who play it. The masses are left with simple images, rumors, and speculation, if anything at all. A public persona of the more visible rulers must be carefully constructed so as to legitimize their authority. The people must be satisfied to the bare minimum, so that they do not rise up in resentment and fury against the few who live in the most obscene opulence and imperial impunity. If the consent of the population is not maintained, a ruler must seek to control them in other ways, which generally means seeking to crush them, to punish them into submission and subservience. Kill and conquer at home, and you can kill and conquer abroad. Control is based upon a mixture of consent and coercion. The people must be either willing to let the rulers rule, to accept their position in society without question, or they must be made to fear the reach and wrath of the rulers, to be punished and persecuted, segregated and isolated, beaten, raped, and murdered. The rulers must be vicious, but appear virtuous. If, however, a choice must be made between acting ruthless and appearing righteous, it is better for the rulers to be wretched and murderous, for the game of power politics is never won by virtue alone, but being vicious can get you far enough without assistance. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his book The Prince more than 500 years ago as an examination of power politics and methods through which one can achieve and maintain power within the old warring Italian city-states. Having long served as an adviser and strategist to various rulers, including princes, popes, and dynasties, Machiavelli asserted that “it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to be both and, if one of them has

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to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved.” He explained that this was so because “love is sustained by a bond of gratitude which, because men are excessively self-interested, is broken whenever they see a chance to benefit themselves.” On the other hand, “fear is sustained by a dread of punishment that is always effective.”3 Machiavelli has long been accused of being a cynic or pessimist in his interpretations of human nature, but this misses the point. Machiavelli’s work was examining the attitudes, nature, and actions of those who wielded significant power, which was always a small minority of the population. Indeed, far from a cynical interpretation, The Prince is rather a pragmatic and accurate interpretation of a deeply cynical world where every institution and individual wielding significant influence engages in a constant game of power politics designed to benefit themselves, maintaining or expanding their own power, often at the expense of others. It is a world where every relationship, title, position, and even marriage holds strategic significance. For those individuals and families who rule, every decision must be made as a calculated attempt to preserve and expand their power. If this is not done, they will not remain rulers long, for this is how the game is played and won, and if one does not play by the rules, others will. Thus, the more cunning and ruthless a strategist, the more likely they are to elevate through the hierarchy because they will do what others will not, acting without hesitation to manipulate or crush others in order to rise higher. It is a game—like that of all empires past—in which the few compete and cooperate with one another in the advancement of their own individual, familial, national, or global interests, expanding their empires. It is a game in which the vast majority of humanity are—as they have long been—left to suffer the consequences, fight the wars, drown in debt, poverty, hunger, and misery. On occasion, and increasingly often, groups of people—segments of the population—rise up in resistance, riot, revolt, or even revolution. This is when the people are able to engage more directly in the game of power politics, because they change the game. Suddenly, all the key players at the top notice the building fury of the masses and so the game itself is put at risk. The key players will almost always—even in spite of their frequent competition and opposition to each other—work together if it means protecting the game itself. A useful comparison is that of a Mafia crime network, in which the various heads of families may sit at the same table though they often feud with one another, working together to mutual benefit when possible, though occasionally whacking one another off when the competition grows fierce. It is a delicate balancing act of competition and cooperation, but when the criminal network is itself threatened, perhaps through the efforts of an ambitious district attorney or crackdown on organized crime, the various families will seek to unite in their efforts to protect the racket which benefits

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them all. If they remain divided in the face of growing opposition and potential external threats, they increase the risk that they will be conquered. When the game is threatened, the players must stand together or fall apart. For successful rulers, the balance of competition and cooperation—vicious and virtuous—is present both in their relationships with other rulers and with the larger populations. And so the rulers themselves—the oligarchs and dynasties—span both private and public realms: They are presidents and prime ministers; kings, queens, and sultans; corporate chiefs; billionaires and bankers; consultants and advisers; academics and intellectuals; and technocratic tyrants and plutocratic princelings. Their world is not our world. But it rules, wrecks and ravages our world and the people and life within it. It is a game that steers humanity toward certain extinction resulting from excessive environmental devastation, guided by that ever-present drive within those who have the most for more, more, more. The game is little more, at its core, than basic gangsterism, its players little more than petty tyrants. Such personalities, egos, and interests populate all sectors of society, all institutions, frequently appearing in interpersonal relationships. The more power they have, the greater the repercussions of the game. At the top of the global power structure are the personalities and families of immense wealth, political influence, and prestige. With the same basic principles of a Mafia structure, the individuals and institutions that play the game of power politics in the age of globalization—in the Empire of Economics—are perhaps best understood as a global Mafiocracy. It makes no difference whether a nation is ruled by a monarchy, a dictatorship, or democracy: The Mafiocracy is ever-present and ever-expanding in its wretched reach. THE STATE OF EMPIRE The world is defined and dominated largely by institutions, individuals and ideologies. The institution of the nation-state is perhaps the most obvious example, best represented by the world’s most powerful country, the United States of America. The government of the United States is composed of three separate branches (or institutions): the executive (President and Cabinet), legislative (Congress/Senate) and judiciary (the Supreme Court). The executive leads the government, while the role of the legislative and judiciary is (theoretically) designed to keep a check on executive power, preventing it from accumulating too much authority in one branch, threatening the potential for tyranny. Since World War II, the executive branch has accumulated increased powers within the U.S. government, with a wide mandate to manage foreign and economic policies specifically, with little oversight and few checks

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from the legislative and judiciary branches. The executive is composed of a wide array of institutions itself, each with their own specific mandates, interests, and varying degrees of influence. These include the many cabinet departments, such as the Treasury Department, Defense Department (Pentagon), State Department, CIA, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Homeland Security, and many more. In addition, since 1913, the Federal Reserve has functioned as the central bank of the United States, operating with a large degree of independence from the other branches of government, including political independence from the executive branch (apart from the President’s ability to appoint the Chairman and Board of Governors), and no oversight from Congress (though the Fed chairman will occasionally testify to Congress). Individually and collectively, these government departments and institutions manage hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars in assets and funds, making them individually larger than most multinational corporations and banks in the world. These departments within the U.S. government are largely responsible for the maintenance and expansion of the American imperial system. Since the time of ancient Nubia and Egypt thousands of years ago, much of the world has been dominated by empires, rising, expanding and collapsing over centuries and millennia, running through ancient Greece, Rome, China, Aztec and Inca, Persian, Ottoman, and in the past 500 years with the rise and demise of the European empires whose reach expanded the globe. For the most part, imperial systems have been dominated by families, often called royalty, sultanates, emperors or emirs. The essential interest and priority of all empires has been to protect and expand their empire, largely for the benefit of its ruling class or groups, with the imperial family at the center of power. It is only a phenomenon of the post-World War II period that denial of the existence of empire is commonplace. Through the two World Wars of the 20th century, empires collapsed and faded into history. World War I led to the collapse of the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. World War II led to the collapse of the Japanese and Nazi empires, and its aftermath resulted in the erosion of European colonial domination, as the British, French, and other European colonial powers had to adjust to a new global order under American hegemony. It was in the postWorld War II period that the United States had achieved unprecedented economic and political power. With just over 5% of the world’s population, the United States controlled roughly half the world’s wealth. Citing this very statistic, the U.S. State Department (responsible for managing diplomacy and foreign policy) published a policy paper in which top officials acknowledged that the global inequality that existed between the United States and the rest of the world would lead to “envy and resentment.” The “real task” of the United States was “to devise a pattern of relationships

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which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security,” doing away with “the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”4 Europe was devastated by the war, and the United States occupied the West with the Soviet Union occupying the East of the continent. The European empires were crumbling, and the process of decolonization had begun to take the world by storm, with the United States attempting to manage the process on behalf of its Western European allies. In its strategy for world domination, the United States sought to rebuild its former wartime enemies—Germany and Japan—into economic powerhouses, with West Germany acting as the locomotive for European integration (into what is now the European Union) and Japan acting as a counterweight to the spread of Communism in East Asia. Western Europe, Japan and other allies depended upon the United States military to protect their ‘security’ interests around the world, arming favorable dictators, supporting coups, fuelling civil wars, undertaking large occupations and counter-insurgency operations targeting independence, anti-colonial and revolutionary movements around the world. Despite the imperial realities of this system, there was an overwhelming tendency within the United States and its industrial allies to deny the existence of imperialism altogether. Instead, these nations were merely economically and technologically advanced democracies who sought to protect “freedom” and “democracy” around the world in a largely ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union, which presented itself as the image of socialism and communism in a struggle against the capitalist imperial powers of the West. The Soviet Union’s influence was dominant in Eastern Europe, with a few close allies scattered across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The United States and its Western allies, however, were the dominant powers across much of the rest of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The only real sense in which the Soviet Union presented a challenge for the United States was in its military and nuclear capabilities. This was the period known as the “Cold War,” though despite its confrontational rhetoric dividing East and West, communist states from capitalist democracies, it was largely a struggle waged against the rest of the world, the “Third World,” otherwise known as the developing world or “Global South.” It was in the poor, colonized nations and regions of the world where the majority of the world’s resources were located, and thus, where the Western imperial powers needed to maintain control. While the United States rebuilt Germany and Japan into economic locomotives, becoming the second and third richest countries in the world, American economic power experienced a relative decline. This created strong allies for the United States, and while they remained militarily dependent upon their imperial patron, their growing economic power gave

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them increased leverage. With their increased economic power came increased potential to act independently of the United States and other rich nations. Competition between the great powers increased during the same period that newly independent nations of the developing world were increasingly uniting in opposition to a Western-dominated world order. On May 1, 1974, the vast majority of the world’s nations voted in favor of the U.N. Declaration on the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO), proclaiming that “the greatest and most significant achievement during the last decades has been the independence from colonial and alien domination of a large number of peoples and nations which has enabled them to become members of the community of free people.” Among the “principles” adopted in forming the NIEO were “equality of States, self-determination of all peoples,” and the outlawing of war, seeking “the broadest cooperation” of all nations of the world in banishing the “prevailing disparities” and securing “prosperity for all.”5 Each nation of the world would have the right “to adopt the economic and social system that it deems the most appropriate for its own development,” and establish control over their own natural resources. The people who continued to live under colonial domination, racial oppression and foreign occupation had a right “to achieve their liberation and the regain effective control over their natural resources and economic activities.” In 1974, this would include Israeli-occupied Palestine, South African apartheid, and U.S.-occupied Vietnam. The last line in the document stated that the Declaration should “be one of the most important bases of economic relations between all peoples and all nations.”6 But Henry Kissinger had other plans. As Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Kissinger was the chief imperial strategist in the United States, and remains one of the most influential foreign policy strategists in the nearly four decades since he left office. Kissinger’s “trick” to use economics in building a “world political structure” would largely be pursued through the finance ministries, central banks and international organizations (such as the IMF and World Bank) which are controlled by the rich and powerful nations. In the face of a growing threat, the rich nations banded together in various forums, conferences and diplomatic gatherings, the most notable of which came to be known as the Group of Seven, bringing together the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Canada. Through these various institutions and initiatives, a “world political structure” would be incrementally constructed as the Empire of Economics.

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A FAMILY AFFAIR Empires don’t just happen; they are constructed, protected, expanded, and destroyed. Empires need imperialists, even if they don’t refer to themselves as such. In the Empire of Economics, the imperialists are a diverse group, including the obvious presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and other heads of state; foreign, military and intelligence officials and ministries; finance ministers, central bankers and the heads of international organizations; the large banks, corporations, and institutions that control the world’s wealth and resources, and the powerful individual oligarchs and family dynasties that lie behind these institutions. As with most empires through history, the central unit of power is often that of a “family,” be it royal, financial, corporate, or crime. After all, the first institution into which people are born and raised is very often that of the “family unit.” Power becomes hereditary, passed down through generations of children raised to take the place of their fathers and mothers in expanding the influence and protecting the legacy of the family. As with any imperial—or dynastic—family structures, they are plagued with rivalries, power struggles, tragedies, divisions, and declines. The modern imperial family in the Empire of Economics—emanating from the vast industrial, corporate, and banking fortunes established over past centuries—is no exception to the drama and decadence of earlier imperial dynasties. Every nation has their dynasties, some better known than others. In the United States, over the past century, several names have become synonymous with wealth, power, and prestige: Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Morgan, Harriman, Astor, and Rockefeller. In 2006, roughly a third of the Fortune 500 companies (that is, the largest corporations in America) were family-run businesses, often performing better than “professionally” managed companies. Among them is one of the largest corporations in the world, Wal-Mart, run and largely owned by the Walton family.7 In 2010, six of the top ten richest individuals in the United States had inherited wealth, meaning that the richest of the rich in America were not self-made billionaires, but members of wealthy dynasties.8 Rich families are often able to preserve their dynastic wealth through a family “trust,” which allow the superrich to provide for future generations of the family largely free of taxes and outside claims. The proliferation of family trusts has led to what one commentator in the New York Times referred to as “an American aristocracy.”9 Perhaps the most recognizable family trust—and most “royal” of the American dynasties—is that of the Rockefeller family. In the 19th century, John D. Rockefeller amassed a vast fortune monopolizing the oil industry into Standard Oil. In the early 20th century, the company was broken up by the government into multiple smaller companies, some of which are known today as Exxon Mobil

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and Chevron, among others. The Rockefeller fortune expanded into other industries and banking, and with that came an increased role in founding universities, foundations, and think tanks, which were central to the process of generating the institutional and ideological foundations for American imperialism in the 20th century. The patriarch of the family today, David Rockefeller, is currently in his 100th year. On the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2005, then president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he said, “it’s fair to say that there has been no other single family influence greater than the Rockefeller’s in the whole issue of globalization.”10 As of 2014, Rockefeller Financial Services, the family investment company, held over $100 million in investments in several large American and foreign corporations, including JPMorgan Chase, Chevron, Microsoft, Oracle, Merck & Co., TD Bank, and Wells Fargo. Rockefeller Financial also maintains significant holdings in Honeywell International, Capital One Financial Corporation, Google, Exxon Mobil, Comcast, eBay, Wal-Mart, VISA, and Royal Dutch Shell, BP, IBM, McGraw Hill Financial, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, UPS, General Electric, Ford Motor Company, Apple, Intel, Boeing, Pfizer, The Walt Disney Company, Coca-Cola, Halliburton, U.S. Bancorp, Verizon, and Goldman Sachs, among many others.11 Not only does the Rockefeller family office invest in major banks and corporations (on behalf of the family and its clients), but some major banks have also invested in the family office itself. In 2008, one of France’s largest banks, Société Générale, purchased a 37% stake in Rockefeller & Co. In 2012, that stake was sold to another major financial dynasty, the Rothschilds, who purchased it through RIT Capital Partners, the investment arm of the London branch of the Rothschild family, overseen by Lord Jacob Rothschild. As Barron’s magazine noted at the time, the union of these financial dynasties “should provide some valuable marketing opportunities” in which “new wealth” around the world would want “to tap the joint expertise of these experienced families that have managed to keep their heads down and their assets intact over several generations and right through the upheavals of history.”12 The Rothschild banking dynasty, which has its roots in late 18th century Europe, had established several branches of the family spread throughout major European nations and capitals, with two of the most prominent being the London and Paris arms. In 2012, the French and British Rothschild banks were planning to merge their assets into a single entity, under the name of Paris Orléans, headed by David de Rothschild. Upon the announcement of the merger, David de Rothschild explained that its purpose was to “allow the bank to better meet the requirements of globalization . . . while ensuring my family’s control over the long term.”13 David, one of the richest

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Rothschilds today, noted in a 2010 interview with Ha’aretz that as a member of the Rothschild family, “We have an obligation to continue the dynasty.”14 The Rothschilds have a long history, marred with tragedies and rivalries so common to historical dynastic clans. In the 1990s, as the French and British branches of the family were increasing their cooperation under the leadership of Baron David de Rothschild and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, respectively, Sir Evelyn commented that, “The first important strength of the family is unity.” Evelyn viewed Jacob Rothschild—another member of the British family branch—as a potential rival in control over the British bank, N. M. Rothschild, but Jacob went off to found RIT Capital Partners. Jacob’s halfbrother, Amschel Rothschild, was pressured by his father to join the family business, despite his lack of interest and talent for it. Shortly after the death of his mother in 1996, Amschel attended a business meeting in Paris, after which he went to his hotel room and hung himself at the age of 41. With his death, a crisis was seen in the future of the family dynasty, which prompted the closer connections between the British and French branches.15 Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his wife, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild (an American), count two prominent dynasties among their close friends: the Clintons and the British Royal Family. Lynn has long-standing ties to the Clintons, and considers Hillary to be “the woman she most admires,” while Sir Evelyn served as an usher at Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding. The couple spends occasional weekends with the Queen at Windsor Castle, and would also be frequent guests at the White House during the Clinton administration.16 In Italy, the Agnelli family—presided over today by the young patriarch, John Elkann—has been considered Italian royalty for the past century. The previous patriarch, Giovanni (“Gianni”) Agnelli, ruled the family empire from the 1960s until his death in the early 2000s. The Agnelli empire controlled the large auto-company Fiat, as well as managing a wide array of companies and investments “in shipping, oil refining, armaments, banking, insurance, retailing and manufacturing.”17 When the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, visited Italy, he singled out Gianni in a room filled with several Italian cabinet ministers and took the patriarch aside. “I want to talk to you,” said Khrushchev, “because you will always be in power.” The Soviet leader signaled to the cabinet ministers, adding, “That lot will never do more than just come and go.”18 By the late 1990s, the Fiat group was the largest employer in Italy, accounting for roughly 5% of the country’s gross national product (GNP), and, when combined with the other family’s holdings, the Agnelli family controlled roughly a quarter of the entire capitalization of the Milan stock market.19 The Wallenberg family has dominated banking and industry in Sweden for over 200 years.20 In the mid-1990s, the New York Times referred to the Wallenbergs as “one of the most powerful business families in the world”

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and “Sweden’s answer to the Rockefellers.”21 For the postwar period, the business was under the leadership of Marcus Wallenberg Jr., who died in 1982 and had established “an industrial and financial empire of unprecedented scope,” with the family having controlling or influential shares in half of Sweden’s largest corporations, including Electrolux, L. M. Ericsson, Saab, and the Skandinaviska Enskilda Bank (SEB), one of Sweden’s largest multinational banks. By the mid-1980s, the family’s business empire accounted for roughly 30% of Sweden’s gross national product.22 By the mid-1990s, the Wallenberg empire controlled companies accounting for 40% of the Swedish stock market, just as the fifth generation of the family was taking over the reins. Jacob and his cousin, Marcus Wallenberg, were to take over the business from Jacob’s father, Peter, determined on “making the empire a global one.” The family’s holding company, Investor AB, was valued at $6.4 billion, which was in turn owned by a foundation trust controlled by the Wallenberg family.23 As The Economist noted in 2006, “There is little that happens in Swedish business that does not involve the Wallenbergs,” with one prominent Swedish hedge fund manager commenting, “They are a bit like royalty.”24 Jacob Wallenberg told the Financial Times in 2014 that, “I think our family is very strong on tradition, it is very strong on responsibility, it is very strong on nation, and I should say family.”25 In Canada, a quiet dynasty rules behind the scenes, with “undeniable” influence on provincial and federal politics, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson, who discussed the Desmarais family in a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks.26 The family’s economic empire goes by the name Power Corporation, based in the French-speaking province of Quebec and the city of Montreal. Through its various subsidiaries and shareholdings, the corporate and financial influence of the family reaches to all significant sectors of corporate Canada, as well as Europe, Asia, and the United States. The family was presided over by Paul Desmarais, Sr. from the time he began the business in the 1950s and 60s until his death in 2013, at which time the family empire was passed on to his two sons, Paul, Jr. and André Desmarais. As the Globe & Mail reported upon the patriarch’s death in 2013, “He knew and influenced, in small ways or large, every Canadian prime minister and Quebec premier over the past five decades.” Desmarais helped Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau open relations with China in the 1970s, and established the Canada China Business Council in 1978. Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, and Paul Martin also maintained very close connections with Desmarais and the Power Corporation of Canada empire. Jean Chrétien’s daughter, France Chrétien, even married Paul’s son, André. Paul Martin worked for Desmarais at Power Corporation for 13 years before entering politics, eventually becoming finance minister and prime minister. Brian Mulroney, a close friend for nearly five decades, said of Desmarais, “I

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loved him like a brother . . . He was one of the most significant players in Canadian economic history.”27 The Wall Street Journal referred to Desmarais as “one of Canada’s wealthiest and most powerful businessmen” who “was closely involved in the nation’s politics.” Canada’s current prime minister, Stephen Harper, praised Desmarais for his “leadership, integrity, global vision, and profound attachment to his country.” Among the patriarch’s friends were former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.28 Asian nations are not to be outdone, with long traditions and new manifestations for family rule with powerful dynasties in the political and economic sphere, as well as a host of monarchs. As The Australian reported in 2014, “the big family business in Asia today is not running companies, but controlling countries,” noting that apart from the obvious in North Korea, many of Asia’s nations were “permeated with political leaderships that keep governance in the family.” The newly installed Chinese president, Xi Jinping, was a “princeling”—a child of the Communist Party founders and bosses—whose father was a former vice premier. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, comes from a prominent political family. His grandfather was a member of Parliament, his father was a foreign minister, and his mother’s father was a former prime minister. The President of Korea, Park Geun-hye, was the daughter of a previous president.29 This pattern was repeated in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka, their own versions of names like Kennedy, Bush, and Clinton in the United States. An associate professor at the University of Queensland, David Martin Jones, commented, “The rise of dynasticism within democracy is little understood, and fits with a loss of popular support for mainstream parties, while these dynastic figures fit with the media/celebrity culture and spin that has undermined politics as a mode of persuasion.”30 Japan was, for many years, the world’s second largest economy after the United States. Today, it stands in third place, with China picking up the mantle at second. China began its economic “opening” in 1978 under the leadership of Party leader Deng Xiaoping. As the world’s most populous nation increasingly embraced Western forms of “capitalism,” the Communist Party leadership which dominated the country acted as patrons and subsequently profiteers of China’s economic development. The highly efficient mixture of a single-party technocratic dictatorship and state-capitalism led to rapid economic growth and immense riches being accumulated by the nation’s new oligarchy. The princelings have become a rich and powerful class, using their political contacts to study at prestigious schools in Europe and America, taking control of large businesses inside China and rising up the party apparatus.31 As Bloomberg reported, in China, “wealth and

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influence is concentrated in the hands of as few as 14 and as many as several hundred families.”32 In Turkey, two families largely dominate the economy, Koc and Sabanci, having reached their third generations with interests in banking, energy, automobiles, retail, and other markets. Together, Koc Holding and Sabanci Holding—and their various subsidiaries—”make up more than a quarter of the market capitalization of the Istanbul stock market.” The U.S.-based credit ratings agency, Standard and Poor’s, gave Koc Holding a higher credit rating than Turkey.33 In another “emerging market” economy, South Africa, one family reigns supreme: Oppenheimer. Harry F. Oppenheimer, who died in 2000, was known as the “king of diamonds,” with an empire controlling most of South Africa’s diamonds, gold, uranium, and copper, “wielding extraordinary power over some of the world’s strategic metals and minerals.” Through a complex web of corporate subsidiaries and shareholdings, the Oppenheimer family controlled the supply of the world’s diamonds through their monopoly of De Beers, which also held “vast holdings in banking, real estate, pulp and paper, bricks and pipe, coal and potash, locomotives and beer.” As head of Anglo American Corporation, Harry Oppenheimer spent 25 years as “the most powerful figure in his country’s economy as well as one of the richest men in the world,” noted the New York Times.34 India, the world’s largest “democracy,” second most populous country and one of the fastest growing economies, is yet another example of a family business. Politically, India has long been dominated by the Gandhi and Nehru families, but behind the scenes, the families of old and new industrialists dominate the economy. Among India’s largest and most respected conglomerates is the Tata family, which has run the Tata Group for nearly 150 years. Ratan Tata took over the Tata Group in 1991, with its more than 100 companies operating in everything from steel to software. The Tata family had run the company for over a century, but was based almost entirely in India, which began opening its economy up to the West the same year Ratan took over the company. He turned the Tata Group into a global conglomerate, acquiring major British companies, including Tetley Tea, Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, a steelmaker. Ratan became, in the words of the Financial Times, “a pioneer in the country’s move toward globalization,” and both he and the Group “came to embody India’s own emergence as a world economic player over the course of the past decade.”35 Germany, the second largest exporter in the world (after China) and the fourth largest economy in the world (after the United States, China, and Japan) is also no stranger to family dynasties and business empires. According to a 2012 study cited by Forbes, roughly 43% of all German exports in 2011 were accounted for by the country’s 4,400 largest family-owned firms. Many of the large companies that are not directly owned by families are often

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owned by foundations, which are in turn owned by prominent families.36 The archetypal head of a German business empire, the Financial Times explained in 2007, is “very wealthy but low-profile and frugal.” In other words, they’re rich, cheap and stay behind the scenes.37 Some of Germany’s wealthiest families and individuals stay so far out of the spotlight that there are few known photographs of them in existence. Susanne Klatten, daughter of the German industrialist Herbert Quandt, who built the BMW empire, is the 44th richest person in the world, with a very low public profile, even spending parts of her life operating under false names.38 One reason for the publicity-shy nature of Germany’s corporate, industrial, and financial elite could be due to the fact that many of them date back to Germany’s industrialization and prospered immensely through the Nazi era, where they frequently collaborated with Hitler’s murderous regime. Just as the Japanese industries and families of the imperial age were re-established to manage Japan’s postwar industrialization, so too was German industry rebranded after the Nazi era to lead Germany’s reindustrialization and rapid economic growth. The Quandt family behind BMW had collaborated heavily with Nazi Germany, with one German historian, Joachim Scholtyseck, noting, “The Quandts were linked inseparably with the crimes of the Nazis,” using some 50,000 concentration camp slave laborers at the company’s factories, building weapons for the Nazi war machine. “The family patriarch was part of the regime,” Scholtyseck added. The Quandt family also took over dozens of businesses which were seized from Jewish families.39 Since the early 1970s, the Arab dictatorships—virtually all run by political dynasties—have accumulated massive wealth and influence, and have invested that wealth into Western banks and corporations. Saudi Arabia is the best example, but the Gulf monarchs include the families that run the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait. One such individual who has made a name for himself in the world of finance is the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who has been referred to as the “Arabian Warren Buffett,” having become one of the largest shareholders in Citicorp by the early 1990s. In 1999, the Economist noted that while the Saudi royals were “secretive, venal and backward,” Prince Alwaleed was “open, intelligent and successful.”40 As of 2013, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was worth an estimated $27 billion, and was the second largest shareholder in the global media conglomerate, News Corp. (after the principal shareholders and owners, the Murdoch family), and is also a stockholder in Apple, TimeWarner, Citigroup, Motorola, Saks, AOL, eBay, and EuroDisney—and even owns part of Twitter. Further, the Prince owns several luxury hotels in London, New York, and elsewhere, partnering up with major banks and other billionaires like Bill Gates. The prince has a fleet of some 300 cars, a 280-foot yacht which was

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originally built for a world famous Saudi arms dealer (Adnan Khashoggi), and a fleet of jets, one of which includes a golden throne. He became the subject of minor scandal when it was reported that at his desert encampment in Saudi Arabia, one of the prince’s past-times is, literally, “dwarftossing.” But the prince’s defenders were quick to reassure an American audience of “his great beneficence,” noting that dwarves were “outcasts” in the Saudi Kingdom, and so the prince simply hired them as jesters, providing them with “a work ethic,” which included having them “dive for $100 bills in bonfires.”41 Russia and several countries in Eastern Europe (notably Ukraine) are dominated by a handful of oligarchs, who concentrated control of resources and the economy in their hands following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are also individual oligarchs all across the world, and if they pass their fortunes on to their children they could establish new financial and corporate dynasties. One example in the United States is Warren Buffett, a billionaire investor who founded Berkshire Hathaway, which is a major shareholder in American Express, Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Moody’s Corporation, Munich Re, Procter & Gamble, U.S. Bancorp, Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, among others.42 Buffet’s friend, fellow billionaire oligarch Bill Gates, is also a major shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway, through his own holding company, Cascade Investment.43 These are just a few of the world’s major dynasties and oligarchs in the Empire of Economics, cooperating and competing with one another in what could be interpreted as globalization’s Game of Thrones. Individually, these family dynasties and oligarchs are able to exert significant and varying degrees of control over their respective national economies. Collectively, they wield immense global, financial, and economic power, largely unknown to outsiders. As banks and corporations became increasingly global in scope and size, so too did the interests of the individuals and families behind many of the world’s major companies. The world’s top banks and corporations, in turn, collectively own each other through shareholdings, as well as much of the rest of the network of global corporations. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich published a study in 2011 of the ownership structure of the world’s largest 43,000 multinational corporations. The researchers traced the shareholdings of the companies to a small network “core” of the largest 1,318 corporations, which collectively accounted for roughly 80% of the global revenues of the entire sample of 43,000 corporations. Within the “core” is what the researchers called the “super-entity,” a grouping of roughly 147 closely knit companies—mostly banks and insurance companies—who own each other and collectively control 40% of the entire network of 43,000 companies.44 Thus, a global economic order in which less than 150 of the world’s top banks and financial institutions control not only each other but a large percentage of

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the world’s remaining corporations can hardly be said to be a “free market” of competition. In truth, the super-entity more closely resembles a cartel, the global financial mafia. Among the top 50 companies of the super-entity (as of 2008) were: Barclays, Capital Group Companies, FMR Corporation, AXA, State Street Corporation, JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Bank of New York Mellon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, Bank of America, Lloyds TSB, ING Group and BNP Paribas, among others.45 As of late 2014, the list of top institutions within the super-entity has changed slightly, with some previous banks merging or collapsing as a result of the financial crisis, and with the rise of asset management firms such as BlackRock. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management company, with roughly $4 trillion of assets under management, standing as the single largest shareholder in one out of every five corporations in the United States, owning at least 5% of almost half of all corporations in the country. As the New York Times noted in 2013, BlackRock has “tremendous influence.”46 As the Financial Times noted in 2012, when one includes the assets which BlackRock advises on (on top of managing), the total sum that the company monitors amounts to roughly $12 trillion, almost the same size as the entire U.S. economy, putting the company “in an extraordinarily influential position.”47 Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock who started his career as “a prince of Wall Street,” rose to what the Financial Times called “the pinnacle of US finance,” where he “slips in and out of the offices of the world’s financial and political elite with ease.” Fink and BlackRock have extensive influence with the major American and European banks and corporations, as well as sovereign wealth funds in the Arab world and Asia.48 Fink turned BlackRock from a virtually unknown entity in 2008 to “a global colossus” with its $13.5 billion purchase of Barclays Global Investors in 2009. Vanity Fair referred to Fink in 2010 as “the leading member of the country’s financial oligarchy.” Throughout the financial crisis, Fink and BlackRock played a role as key adviser to all of Wall Street’s top CEOs, as well as the heads of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Treasury Department, playing a central role in the major bailouts and mergers that marked the crisis. One senior bank official referred to BlackRock as “almost a shadow government.” Another bank executive commented, “Larry has always wanted to be important . . .  And now that he’s more important than he ever dreamed of, he’s loving it.” Fink also maintained very close ties to the two U.S. Treasury Secretaries who served tenures during the financial crisis, Hank Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) and Timothy Geithner (former president of the New York Fed), whom Fink referred to as “two of our best Treasury secretaries.”49

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This interconnected and interdependent network of the global financial mafia is in turn controlled by the shareholdings of individual oligarchs and family dynasties. After all, most mafias are ultimately family businesses, and the world of finance is no exception. But there are other key players as well, including sovereign wealth funds (state-run investment companies), central banks, and other investment vehicles. The use of the term “mafia” or Mafiocracy is not simply rhetorical, as the banks and corporations which sit at the heart of this network—the “super-entity”—are repeatedly caught, fined, and slapped on the wrist for excessive criminal behavior, including massive fraud and the formation of illegal cartels designed to manipulate prices and increase profits. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the financial sector, plagued by multiple scandals since the financial crisis, including the role of banks in creating the crisis in the first place. In addition to that, however, a small network of banks has been found to function as a criminal cartel in manipulating interest rates (specifically, the LIBOR rate) and the foreign exchange (forex) market. In addition, the world’s major banks also reap immense profits (and commit grave crimes) through the laundering of billions of dollars in drug money, terrorist financing and providing other services to organized crime.50 And this is to say nothing of the economic and financial support that corporations and banks provide for dictators, tyrants, mass murderers, war mongering and state violence, environmental degradation, and the physical plundering of the planet for short-term profit. But the global financial mafia—and the oligarchs and dynasties who sit at its core—cannot wield significant influence without the political legitimacy that comes with state power. Successful financial dynasties (with the Rockefellers as perhaps the best example) establish complex networks of influence, building institutions and supporting ideologies that in turn influence the state and shape the minds and careers of those who rise through it. The Rockefeller family established the University of Chicago and have long been patrons of Harvard. They created philanthropic foundations which provided strategic funding to universities, research centers, think tanks, and international forums, having a lasting impact on the shaping of the social sciences (notably political science and economics). The Rockefeller name has made its imprint on some of the most influential American and international think tanks and forums, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg meetings and the Trilateral Commission, which was founded by David Rockefeller in 1973 in an effort to encourage cooperation between the “trilateral” regions of North America, Western Europe and Japan. The effect of these networks—which are replicated to varying degrees by members of the global financial mafia in their respective nations—was to create a new elite class of technocrats and professionals, strategists, and

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policymakers whose ideologies and interests aligned with that of the Mafiocracy. For dynasties and oligarchs to exert influence over economic and political policies and society at large, they need much more than a large economic share of corporate, banking and stock market capitalization. More than anything, they need access to policymakers: presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers, finance ministers, central bankers, technocrats, and the leaders of international organizations. In short, they need to engage and integrate actively with the world of economic and financial diplomacy, interacting and building relationships with the policymakers of the rich and powerful nations, those who have the political authority necessary to implement policies that affect the Mafiocracy. Together, policy-makers, technocrats, financial diplomats and the Mafiocracy of oligarchs and dynasties are the central players in the game of global power politics, and are the key architects in the system of global economic and financial governance, the Empire of Economics. MACHIAVELLI TO THE MAFIOCRACY Dynastic control of corporations and banks, while supporting long-term influence and interests, has obvious downsides, since talent and skills are not hereditary, and thus, there is no guarantee that family members and descendants will be as savvy or effective in their management of the family business. For this reason, many oligarchs and dynasties turn to individuals outside of the family to manage their companies, advise on their wealth management strategies, and run the day-to-day business of the family empire. Such advisers, confidantes, and interlocutors exist in the world of financial dynasties well beyond the scope of the family business, but help to manage the family’s social and political interests and relationships as well. Some 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli advised Popes, princes, and other rulers, writing The Prince as a dedication to the first modern financial dynasty, the Medici family of Florence. If Machiavelli were writing The Prince today, he would likely still dedicate it to the major family dynasties, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Wallenberg, or perhaps the Agnelli family of Italy and other modern Medicis. With few exceptions, however, the modern imperial families of finance do not directly control the state or political apparatus as they did in past centuries. So for the Machiavellis of the modern era, they must establish close relationships not simply with the top families, but the top political authorities as well. They act as “friends” and networking agents to the major dynasties while sitting as advisers and cabinet ministers to the world’s major presidents and prime ministers. They run consulting firms, outsourcing their strategic insight and networks of contacts to the highest bidder. They sit on the boards

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of corporations, think tanks, and foundations, fostering the development of future generations of advisers and strategists, regularly appearing in the media to voice their own “independent” analysis of world events and strategic advice. They are the Machiavellis to the global Mafiocracy, moving in and out of government but always remaining in the upper echelons of the ruling institutions. They attend international conferences, forums, professional and social events. They are essential to the global Mafiocracy, with extensive experience in the highest positions of power, understanding how state power is wielded and shaped, they know the key policy-makers at home and abroad, and are able to open doors with their recognizable names, yielding endless benefits to their dynastic patrons and friends. Perhaps the most recognizable and “respected” consigliere to the Mafiocracy is none other than Henry Kissinger. A German émigré to the United States in the late 1930s, Kissinger became a noted academic at Harvard University, where he became acquainted with the politics of academic life, preparing him “for world politics.” With the help of his academic mentors, he established a seminar and an academic journal which effectively expanded his network of contacts with other young leaders in government, business, media, and finance.51 In the mid-1950s, Kissinger was invited to join the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the premier U.S.-based think tank focusing on foreign policy, long considered a type of training ground (or rite of passage) for any top future foreign policy officials in the United States government. The council, founded in 1921, also happened to be an institution which was dominated by Rockefeller men and money. Kissinger was appointed as a staff director of a study group on nuclear weapons and foreign policy on behalf of the Council, out of which he wrote a book that advocated for “limited nuclear war” with the Soviet Union. From there, Kissinger was appointed as the director of a Special Studies Project run by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. At this time, Kissinger developed a close relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, who would become the young Henry’s patron.52 Kissinger later recalled first meeting Nelson Rockefeller, noting that he and the other young “experts” who formed a study group under Rockefeller’s patronage were “intoxicated by the proximity of power” and sought to impress Nelson in offering “tactical advice on how to manipulate events.”53 Kissinger received tenure at Harvard in 1959, and served as a part-time consultant to Nelson Rockefeller, who became the Governor of New York State in 1959 (a position he would hold until 1973). He did part-time consulting with the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, and with the Lyndon Johnson administration that followed Kennedy’s assassination. When Richard Nixon became president in 1969, Henry Kissinger joined the administration as National Security Adviser, and took on the additional role as Secretary of State in 1973. When Kissinger joined the Nixon

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administration, Nelson Rockefeller gave Henry a “gift” of $50,000.54 When Nixon resigned in disgrace in August of 1974, replaced by Gerald Ford, Kissinger remained as National Security Adviser until 1975 and as Secretary of State until the end of the Ford administration in early 1977. Nelson Rockefeller, who had long sought the presidency, was appointed Vice President in the Ford administration. During these years, Henry Kissinger was the most influential figure shaping U.S. foreign policy, and he did so with a ruthlessly pragmatic understanding of power and its uses. He oversaw the war in Vietnam, the illegal bombing of Cambodia, killing several million civilians during the Nixon administration alone. In addition to his many war crimes in Indochina (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973), Kissinger supported Pakistan’s genocide in Bangladesh, killing several million, after which he congratulated the dictator of Pakistan for his “delicacy and tact.” He was also central in the CIA coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile in 1973, of which he said, “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” The result was the establishment of a U.S.-supported dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who murdered many thousands and tortured many tens of thousands more.55 Kissinger also supported the murderous Argentine military regime which killed tens of thousands, along with the Indonesian dictator, Suharto, in his genocide in East Timor, killing several hundred thousand civilians. He supported the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, and the war against the government of Angola, which ultimately killed millions in southern Africa. These are but a few examples of Kissinger’s influence on foreign policy, resulting in the deaths of many millions of people around the world, in addition to the displacement, torture, and suffering of many millions of others. With the blood of so many innocent people on his hands, Kissinger had acquired the status of a highly respected “statesman.”56 When Kissinger left the government, he did not lose much influence. He remained a central figure within the foreign policy establishment. The “Establishment,” as it was known to many, had consisted of prominent Wall Street bankers and lawyers who effectively monopolized the key foreignpolicy positions within the government in the decades leading up to and following World War II. By the 1970s, the Establishment had given way to what Leslie Gelb (currently a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations) called the foreign policy community,” which functions as “an aristocracy of professionals.” This community consisted of roughly 300 professors, lawyers, businessmen, think tank “experts,” foundation officials, and journalists (though today it is likely a far greater number). Whereas previous leaders in the foreign policy establishment were primarily bankers who took time off to manage foreign policy, members of the community tend to focus on foreign policy as “a full-time job.” The community had

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“first infiltrated, then subsumed the older and familiar establishment,” and by the 1970s it was “monopolizing the top foreign and national security posts in any administration.”57 Gelb, writing in the New York Times, noted that members of the earlier Establishment “were insiders, who knew the right persons to telephone, meeting quietly, avoiding publicity.” The Community, on the other hand, “operate far more openly,” noting that, “unlike the Rockefellers, they cannot pick up the phone and speak to the President. They talk to the President indirectly, through the articles they write in journals such as Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy or in the op-ed pages of [the New York Times] and other newspapers, or in testimony to Congressional committees, through attending conferences with high Government officials at the Brookings Institution in Washington or the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.” Citing Kissinger as one of several examples, Gelb wrote that “the professors had moved to the center of power.” The members of the foreign policy community, explained Gelb, “sometimes actually make the decisions, usually define what is to be debated and invariably manage the resulting policies.”58 This foreign policy community links together major universities (particularly the Ivy League schools), philanthropic foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie), think tanks, international conferences, and forums. Among the most important think tanks in the foreign policy community are the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), among many others. These think tanks are typically dominated by boards and trustees who are former high level government officials, top corporate executives, bankers, university professors and chancellors, foundation officials, media barons, and of course, individual oligarchs and members of financial dynasties. In addition to major national think tanks, there are a host of international think tanks and forums that bring together the members of the global Mafiocracy with policy-makers and other influential individuals. The three most important and influential of these international forums are the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the World Economic Forum. The Bilderberg meetings began in 1954 as a conference of high-ranking government officials, bankers, corporate executives, European royalty, media barons, military and intelligence chiefs, academics, and think tank officials drawn almost exclusively from North American and Western European nations. The meetings take place once a year, drawing roughly 130 participants who meet for a long weekend in a four-star hotel to engage in off-the-record, secret discussions behind closed doors. The meetings are governed by a Steering Committee of roughly forty individuals who are responsible for inviting other participants from their respective nations.

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Families such as the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Agnellis, and Wallenbergs have long been represented at Bilderberg meetings. The Trilateral Commission, which was founded by David Rockefeller, functions as an international think tank and series of conferences uniting the policy-oriented, political, academic, corporate, and financial elites of Western Europe, North America, and Japan (having expanded since its founding in 1973 to include more Asian nations, notably China and India). David Rockefeller still sits as honorary chairman of the commission, which consists of roughly 350 members who hold a full membership meeting once yearly, while holding regional meetings separately, of the North America, European, and Japanese/Asian groups, respectively. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, bring together thousands of the world’s top corporate executives, bankers, and financiers with leading heads of state, finance, and trade ministers; central bankers and policymakers from dozens of the world’s largest economies; the heads of all major international organizations including the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Bank for International Settlements, UN, OECD and others, as well as hundreds of academics, economists, political scientists, journalists, cultural elites and occasional celebrities. Henry Kissinger is a regular fixture at these various think tanks, forums and conferences. He currently sits as a trustee and counselor of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a member (and former board member) of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Trilateral Commission, a participant in World Economic Forum meetings, and as a participant (and former Steering Committee member) of the Bilderberg Group. After he left government in 1977, Kissinger remained an important figure in foreign policy and establishment circles, making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as an author, lecturer, academic, and consultant, notably for NBC and Goldman Sachs.59 In 1982, Kissinger founded his own consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, which for a fee of roughly $250,000 per year, advises its clients on “strategic planning.” To help with the consultancy, Kissinger brought in his former deputy national security adviser in the Nixon administration, Brent Scowcroft, as well as a former British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington.60 Kissinger Associates was headquartered on the corner of Park Avenue and 52nd Street in New York City, located in the same office building as the First American Bank of New York and Chase Private Banking International. Among the client list for Kissinger’s firm are several big names, including H. J. Heinz, Arco, American Express, Shearson Lehman, as well as FIAT (Agnelli), Volvo, Fluor Corporation, International Energy Corporation, Midland Bank, and L. M. Ericsson of Sweden (controlled by the

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Wallenbergs). As the New York Times noted in 1986, “Kissinger and his associates are by all accounts the most successful of this new breed of former senior Government officials who have decided to advise big businesses rather than join them,” noting that Defense Secretaries, State Secretaries and Treasury Secretaries had overseen millions of people and enormous budgets with which most multinational conglomerates cannot compete, and thus, “big business is too small for many of the new generation of Government superstars.”61 As Kissinger himself explained, “I think that in the modern world, if you don’t understand the relationship between economics and politics, you cannot be a great statesman. You cannot do it with foreign policy and security knowledge alone.”62 In 2002, Leslie Gelb, a top official at the Council on Foreign Relations, commented that, “Within the foreign policy world, and among many corporate CEOs, Henry Kissinger carries more weight than any senior individual in the world today.”63 Kissinger has long functioned as a glorified errand boy for the ruling global Mafiocracy. Among his close friends and associates are many of the world’s most powerful dynasties, including his original patrons, the Rockefellers, as well as the Agnelli family of Italy, the Rothschilds of Europe, the Oppenheimer family in South Africa, and a whole coterie of ruling elites in China. Sir Evelyn de Rothschild was introduced to his present wife, Lynn Forester, by their “mutual friend” Henry Kissinger at a 1998 meeting of the Bilderberg Group.64 Of the late patriarch of Italy’s ruling family, Kissinger said that in “the last two decades of his life, no one was closer to me than Gianni Agnelli,” noting that they spoke on the phone roughly twice a week and would visit each other “every month or so.” Kissinger described Agnelli as “the uncrowned king of Italy” and a “powerful personality who was the most influential Italian of his era.”65 Kissinger even helped to rebuild ties between the diamond and gold empire headed by Harry Oppenheimer and the South African president.66 Kissinger has known the many powerful leaders of China over the past 4 decades, since he led the diplomatic “opening” of U.S. relations with China in the early 1970s. As he officially established relations with Mao Zedong’s China in 1973, David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank became the first U.S. bank to get into the country since the communists came to power in 1949. Chase Manhattan became the “correspondent” for the Bank of China in the United States, for the purposes of financing commerce. The deal was reached following a 10-day visit by Rockefeller to China in the summer of 1973.67 Some four decades later, China would be the second largest economy in the world, governed by an elite new class of “Princelings” and technocratic tyrants. China’s economic growth has increasingly translated in growing political power in the international arena. But behind the dry, technocratic

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exterior of Chinese politics lies a brutal world of factional power politics, in-fighting, scandal, corruption, and a struggle for control. CHINA: GLOBALIZATION’S GANGSTER STATE Following Mao and Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping would become China’s most powerful leader from 1979 until 1989. Henry Kissinger described Mao as “a prophet who was consumed by the objectives he had set,” and Zhou Enlai as a “most skillful diplomat.” But Deng Xiaoping, for Kissinger, was “a greater reformer,” adding, “I certainly met no other Chinese who had the vision and the courage to move China into the international system and . . . in instituting a market system.”68 Deng Xiaoping was first among the “Eight Immortals” of modern China, and principal architect of modern China.69 The Immortals were those who supported Deng Xiaoping’s leadership of the Communist Party, believing that only by “opening China to the outside world” would they be able to “raise living standards” and avoid “social upheaval that would threaten the Communist Party’s grip on power.” A Bloomberg special report on the influence of the descendants of the Eight Immortals noted that they ultimately “sowed the seeds of one of the biggest challenges to the Party’s authority,” by entrusting major state assets to their children, “many of whom became wealthy.” This marked “the beginning of a new elite class, now known as princelings.” Over the decades, the emergence and growth of the princeling class would increasingly fuel “public anger over unequal accumulation of wealth, unfair access to opportunity and exploitation of privilege—all at odds with the original aims of the communist revolution.”70 The Deng Xiaoping era lasted roughly from 1978 until 2012, when the first princeling came to take the highest seat of power in China, with the rise of Xi Jinping. Prior to that, Deng and the Eight Immortals “towered over China,” first through Deng’s rule, and then “through Deng’s hand-chosen successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao,” noted a special report in The Diplomat.71 Deng Xiaoping’s China also saw the rapid rise of the factional backroom power politics that dominate the Chinese Communist Party, and by extension, the government and society. Deng articulated the strategy for China to take in its global rise: “hide your brightness; bide your time.”72 The Chinese state has always presented an image of itself to its domestic population and a foreign audience as one of being united with a well-oiled political system. But since the era of Deng, the party system—which determines who rises to the top positions of power in the country—has been governed not by a visible and public structure, but by “back-room patronage and shadowy negotiations among party elders.” The “problem” with this system, suggested the New York Times in 2012, was that “the power of those

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elders have diminished with each generation,” noting that then president and party chief, Hu Jintao, who ruled from 2003 until 2013, was “weaker than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin,” who had ruled China from 1989 until 2002, “who was much weaker than Mr. Deng,” who was paramount from 1978 until his death in the 1990s.73 In Chinese factional power politics, the top leaders and former top leaders establish their own networks of patronage, passing benefits and favors to others in exchange for various support, making deals, trades, negotiation,s and much deeper intrigues. These powerful factions occasionally go to battle with each other, orchestrating all sorts of technocratic coups (the removal of top officials loyal to one boss over the other).74 The large party factions, headed by their respective party bosses (sitting and former top Chinese leaders) would hold conclaves and secret meetings in which they would negotiate and horse-trade over the appointments to be made to the top ruling body in China, the Politburo Standing Committee.75 In 2010, the two main party factions led by then president, Hu Jintao, and former president, Jiang Zemin, decided upon a successor to be President of China, Xi Jinping, with Li Keqiang chosen to be the future prime minister, Hu’s first choice for president.76 Xi Jinping, who was allied with the Jiang Zemin faction, was ultimately considered to be a compromise candidate between the major faction leaders.77 Another fast rising official in the Chinese state apparatus was Bo Xilai, allied with Jiang’s faction, and touted as a possible member of the next Politburo Standing Committee. Bo was viewed by many as “dangerous” and “capable of anything,” creating powerful enemies among top-level Chinese officials.78 Bo Xilai was well known both within China and internationally among ruling circles, having risen to the position of party boss in Chongqing City in central China. Under his leadership, Chongqing built strong ties to corporate America and he even won the endorsement of none other than Henry Kissinger, who met with Bo in 2011, after which Kissinger said, “I saw the vision for the future by the Chinese leaders.”79 Within a year, Bo Xilai would become the subject of a major scandal which provided a glimpse into the backroom power politics waged by China’s ruling elite and its influential factions and personalities. In a spectacular tale worthy of the palace intrigue of ancient imperial China, Bo went from rising star to serving a life sentence in prison. After making himself a powerful enemy in the form of then Chinese president, Hu Jintao, Bo and his police chief—and long-time confidante—Wang Lijun, became the targets of a quiet corruption investigation designed to prevent his rise to the Politburo Standing Committee.80 In January of 2012, Wang Lijun went to his patron, increasingly worried about his own future as the investigation clamped down, hoping to secure the protection of Bo. Instead, Bo decided to toss Wang to the wolves and

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save himself. Bo fired him from his official post and put a police tail on him. When Wang managed to elude his unwanted entourage, he fled to the American consulate in a nearby city where he asked for asylum, claiming his life was under threat and providing evidence that Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai, had murdered a British banker (and possible spy) with cyanide in a hotel room a few months before, which he subsequently helped cover up. Suddenly, the quiet backroom attempt to remove Bo as a threat to the party leadership became a very public scandal revealing the gangster-state nature of China’s power politics.81 In a seemingly bizarre twist, the scandal even had repercussions in Canada, as Bo Xilai was “Canada’s closest ally in China’s power structure.” Specifically, Bo had close connections to Canada’s imperial family of finance, the Desmarais family of Montreal, who own Power Corporation. The Desmarais clan had close relations with Bo since the 1970s, when Bo’s father, the Chinese vice premier, Bo Yibo, established a connection with Paul Desmarais, Sr. As Bo’s power within China grew, so too did the market access of the Desmarais economic empire. Through the Desmarais network, Canada’s political elite also established close connections with Bo Xilai. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was one of the last foreign officials to have visited Bo before he was arrested on corruption charges. In fact, André Desmarais, son of Paul, Sr., was accompanied by his father-in-law, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, on a trip to China on behalf of the Canada China Business Council. A mere 8 days after Bo’s wife murdered a British banker in a hotel room in Bo’s fiefdom of Chongqing, Bo Xilai smiled and shook the hands of Desmarais and Chrétien, greeting them “like old friends.”82 A Financial Times article from 2014 explained that many top Chinese leaders, including former vice-premier of finance and current Standing Committee member, Wang Qishan, are fans of the Netflix original show, House of Cards. The show depicts a politician (Frank Underwood) and his wife, who, through their back-room deals, secret machinations, lies, deception, and even murder, are able to rapidly ascend through the ranks of political power in Washington, DC, first as a top Congressional official making his way to become Vice President and ultimately, President.83 Kurt Campbell, writing in the Financial Times, noted that one possible reason for the popularity of shows like House of Cards among the Chinese leadership was that they may view the portrayal of politics in the show “as quintessentially American—perhaps even an accurate depiction of workings of U.S. government.” It was “widely believed” in China, he wrote, that “beneath the surface, America’s vaunted democracy is rife with injustice and corruption.” Not to be discounted, of course, was that the show also provided a parallel in the scandal surrounding Bo Xilai and his wife, Gu Kailai, with their rapid rise and dramatic downfall from the near-heights of Chinese political power.

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The scandal was “eerily reminiscent of the dirty political deeds perpetrated by Underwood in his quest for power.” Even U.S. President Barack Obama had commented that he was fascinated with the show, though he “confessed a pang of envy for the ‘efficiency’ with which things get done in the fictional Washington of its creation.”84 Indeed, House of Cards more closely resembles the realities of power politics exercised at the highest levels than is reflected in most other television and cinematic productions. While often criticized as being highly “cynical” (much like Machiavelli’s The Prince), the truth is that it is a more accurate interpretation of a deeply cynical power structure. The Netflix show was an American adaptation of an earlier British television miniseries of the same name, which was itself based upon a series of books written by Michael Dobbs, a former adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and chief of staff to the British Conservative Party. Dobbs was once dubbed “Westminster’s baby-faced hit man,” with the British press noting that many of his political enemies said that he was “as calculating and conceited as some of his fictional characters.”85 Dobbs, in fact, wrote the original book, House of Cards, following “a blazing row” with Margaret Thatcher, in which she delivered upon him “a verbal hand-bagging” and subsequently fired him. After that, Dobbs sat down to write his book, which was “inspired by the shenanigans he’d seen and been involved in.” In a recent interview, Dobbs told a journalist, “All of the wickedness you see on House of Cards, I’d seen or even been responsible for.”86 In a 2015 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dobbs, who is now a member of Britain’s House of Lords, said, “I don’t think it matters whether it’s in Westminster or Washington—it could be in Beijing or Moscow—because it’s the story about passions, ambitions, weaknesses and wickedness, which I think is universal and almost timeless.”87 It is a rarity for power to be accurately portrayed in art and cultural media. Its complexities can hardly be summarized in simple and short journalistic prose, and television news stands as an obscene testament to intellectual infantilism in modern society. Some 500 years ago, when Machiavelli was writing about the realities of power in his era, he could get away with a deliberate and direct approach since he was writing during a time where the vast majority of the population was illiterate, where those who would potentially read his text were the wealthy and powerful, those to whom it would be useful. Over the past several centuries, with the spread of technology, education, mass communication and democracy, the global political world has become far more complex, with more players, interests, rivals, and potential problems than ever before. As a corollary, the “passions, ambitions, weaknesses and wickedness”—as Dobbs described it—have become more global, impactful, and entrenched. Whereas Machiavelli wrote about warring

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city-states, today we have competing continents and large economies, the global system of nation-states, banks, and corporations. In addition, the public—the populations of nations and regions—have become literate, better educated, with more access to more information than ever before. They have become more active participants in their respective political systems than they were in past centuries and millennia. At once, the tools of control and conquest are more advanced and efficient than ever, while the ability to exercise and justify the use of power politics and empire-building is at an historic low. The realities of mass culture and communication, largely a product of the 20th century, have changed the rhetoric and presentation of power in the modern world, though not necessarily the realities and priorities of power. The exercise of power has thus increasingly become coupled with and dependent upon the public use of vague, euphemistic, obscure, and often incomprehensible language. It is a language spoken and understood by those who are invested and involved with the world of high-powered politics, in which the key leaders and players must be able to speak publicly and purposefully in an effort to expand their interests, build their empires and play their games, but which also requires enough obscurity and evasion in order to ensure that the mass publics and populations of the world remain in the dark about the realities playing out behind the scenes. “Political language,” wrote George Orwell in a 1946 essay, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” In his essay, written 2 years prior to the publication of his famous book, 1984, Orwell explained some of the many uses of political language, writing: It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.88

Orwell suggested that political language was most often used to defend the indefensible, citing examples of maintaining British rule in India, Russian purges, and the use of nuclear bombs in Japan. Such things, he wrote, “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.” Thus, he noted, “political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” When poor villages are bombed by foreign militaries, its residents machine-gunned and murdered, homes destroyed and survivors scattered, this, wrote Orwell, “is called pacification.” Political leaders cannot publicly state that they intend to murder and destroy entire communities and nations all for the benefit of

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imperial ambitions, so they claim instead that they must pacify the population, to secure “order” and “stability.” The term “pacification” is never actually defined, but the policies and effects which occur under the cloaking of that rhetoric provides as clear a definition as one will get. Orwell continued: The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms . . . All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia . . . But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can be spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.89

Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” is perhaps more relevant today than it was when it was written in 1946. One journalist, Matt Schiavenza, discussed the uses of political language in an article he wrote for The Atlantic discussing modern politics in China. With names of powerful institutions and conferences such as the Politburo Standing Committee, the Plenum and Plenary sessions of the Party Congress which promise a host of undefined “reforms,” Shiavenza wrote, “for lovers of clear, concise language, Chinese politics are a nightmare.” But he acknowledged its purpose: “If this language seems vague and boring, well, that’s the point: Chinese politics are designed to attract as little attention as possible.”90 The same can and should be said for American, European, Japanese, and other modern, advanced political societies. China is an extreme case, but by no means the exception. Chinese politics has a heavily technocratic element, in which “experts” (engineers, economists, academics) frequently rule the political apparatus and manage the public debate, designing and implementing large-scale social engineering projects; reshaping, en masse, the nature and structure of society, defining purpose for the population, steering the direction, and managing the many crises that result from the totalitarian domination of 1.3 billion people. In 2010 alone, China experienced 180,000 protests, riots and mass demonstrations, an average of 500 per day, and this was in the midst of an economic “boom” for the country.91 In such circumstances it is necessary for the Chinese elite to present an image of themselves not as in-fighting, factional, power-mad, superrich oligarchs competing for domination, but as highly qualified “experts’ who are able to make decisions and implement policies through “consensus” in the interests of China and its population as a whole. Obviously, this is a fantasy world, behind which is a totalitarian system that controls the media, education, communication, transportation, and with all the necessary tools of violent repression. Technocracy—that is, rule by experts—establishes the institutional ideology, and communicates through the technical language of Chinese politics.

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Only other “experts” have the technical skills to understand what is being said and to participate in the process of decision-making. The public is left with obscure generalizations, flashy distractions, empty sound-bites and prepackaged conclusions. But perhaps even worse than the “nightmare” of Chinese politics and its “vague and boring” language, is that of the global financial structure and economic diplomacy. It is within this world where the ideologies, individuals and institutions of global governance have constructed and advanced the architecture and interests of the global Empire of Economics. THE LANGUAGE OF EMPIRE The language of economics and finance is designed to be incomprehensible to those who are not “experts” or experienced in the fields of economics and finance. The language reflects an ideology that is heavily institutionalized in modern “industria” society, obscuring realities behind its vague and undefined terms and concepts. We are presented with a world of trained economists, experts in the economic “science” of society; politicians, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors and other heads of state who speak and decide on important matters; the finance ministers and central bank governors who meet, speak, plan, and implement the world’s major economic and financial policies; the heads of acronym-named international organizations and their technocratic administrations; the banks, corporations, institutions, and individuals who control most of the wealth, resources, trade and “financial markets”; the universities, think tanks and foundations who shape the education and training of future financial diplomats, who define the debate and discussion, who determine the policy-options and objectives; and the journalists and news publications who disseminate the economic and financial “news” of the day, whose primary audience is composed of the diplomats and key players in the world of finance and economics. It is a world little understood to outsiders, obscure and unknown even to most trained economists. Like their counterparts in political science, economists are “educated” (aka: trained, indoctrinated) so that they know just enough to be active participants and administrators of the political (or economic) system, but not enough to understand its actual structure and purpose, nor question its legitimacy. Mired and focused on the technical details, “specialized” in their education to focus and only understand specific sectors of the economic and financial system, the experts are segregated, knowledge is divided and divisive. With a tunnel vision focus on the technical details, most economists and experts are incapable of seeing the larger, institutional, ideological, and indeed, the deeply political nature and realities of the financial and economic system.

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The economic and financial system is designed this way, precisely because—much like Chinese politics—behind its technical terms, opaque objectives, and insurmountable institutions lies a world of brutal power politics, national and transnational factional battles between rivals and regions, engineering empire, enforcing state tyranny and violence, undertaking dramatic coup d’états and maintaining dynastic dominance. The world of financial power politics stands at the core of the Empire of Economics. Economic and financial diplomacy is concerned with the design and construction of the Empire of Economics. Diplomats, by definition, hold political authority. Their job is to represent the interests of their nation, their ministry or government department, their embassies, outposts, and “missions.” In the realm of economic and financial diplomacy, the key participants and players, those with the most political authority, are the central bankers, finance ministers, treasury secretaries, the leadership of international organizations, trade negotiators, economic advisers and of course, the presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors—the heads of state. Foreign diplomacy and international relations present itself with the public image of a convoluted and never-ending attempt at failing to help others around the world, to advance democracy, freedom, human rights, civilization, and the “common interest.” But behind the media, the rhetoric of diplomacy, the coded language and confused causes, is an unforgiving world of empire. This world erupts in wars, coups, civil conflicts, dictators taking power or falling from it, bombs, bullets, and occupation. The famed linguist and prolific social critic, Noam Chomsky (one of the most cited intellectuals in history), has accurately described the world of “international relations” between nations as functioning according to “Mafia principles.” For decades, Chomsky has been one of the best known, most articulate and well-researched critics of U.S. and Western foreign policy and empire. He has spoken and written consistently that since World War II, regardless of political party or affiliation, successive presidents and their administrations were guided in their foreign policy by the “godfather principle, straight out of the mafia: that defiance cannot be tolerated.” Countries that defy the United States or its allies must be “punished” before “the contagion spreads.”92 Chomsky elaborated on the Mafia principle of international relations, writing, “The Godfather does not tolerate ‘successful defiance,’ even from a small storekeeper who fails to pay protection money. It is too dangerous. It must therefore be stamped out, and brutally, so that others understand that disobedience is not an option.” This principle has been “a leading doctrine of foreign policy for the US during the period of its global dominance.”93 Economic diplomacy has its parallels as the most powerful nations compete and cooperate for influence within the global Empire of Economics, also adhering to Mafia principles in the exercise of financial power.

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DIPLOMACY AND DESIGN OF THE “WORLD POLITICAL STRUCTURE” The Empire of Economics had been long in the making, but its modern manifestation—the various institutions, ideologies, and interests that comprise the global economic and financial system—is largely a product of the 1970s. It was an era of profound monetary (currency) and economic crises and transformations. The global currency system that had existed in managing the monetary and economic relations between nations from the end of World War II was abandoned by the United States in 1971. Thereafter, the world of economic diplomacy was thrown to the center of the storm. Decisions of immense political importance had to be made and a new global monetary and financial system needed to be constructed. This task was handed to the central bankers and finance ministers of the rich and powerful nations of the world, first and foremost, the United States, followed by West Germany, France, Britain, Japan, Italy, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Nordic nations. Suddenly, finance ministers and central bankers were pushed to the forefront of advancing the global imperial interests of the rich, powerful nations, at times even eclipsing foreign and state ministers responsible for managing the nation’s foreign policy. It is through the frequent private meetings, international forums, conferences, social events, and state visits where the finance ministers, central bankers and other technocrats engage in the very long and incremental process of negotiating the construction and evolution of the global economic and financial system. This was what Kissinger defined as the “trick” to use in creating “a world political structure.”94 Banks, financial institutions, corporations, and global markets were reaching far beyond the nation-state, becoming transnational in character, objectives, and ideology. Political power had to follow financial and corporate power, to provide the political legitimacy necessary to advance the interests of the Mafiocracy. A bank can make a loan, but only powerful nations can force compliance to pay, to demand policies be changed, and to enforce the repercussions of failure. It was in the finance ministries and central banks of the powerful nations where state power and authority was to be exercised in closer coordination with other influential nations, and where they would consult and cooperate with concentrated transnational financial power. Since the early 1930s, central bankers from the rich and powerful Western nations would meet in secret (usually in Basel, Switzerland) at the headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank to the world’s major central banks. These meetings of central bankers take place behind closed doors every 2 months, in off-the-record conversations,

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after which no communiqué or press release is issued, no reporters informed. The cooperation of central bankers was in turn supported and enhanced through the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1944, which brought in not only central bankers, but also finance ministers from the member nations of the Fund. Liaquat Ahamed is a widely read and respected author within the economic world, and particularly among financial diplomats. He has worked at the World Bank, with banks, hedge funds, asset managers and is currently on the board of trustees of the Brookings Institution, an influential American think tank. In 2009, he published Lords of Finance95 about the major Western central bankers during the early 20th century, winning multiple awards, including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History. In 2014, he published another work, Money and Tough Love: On Tour with the IMF,96 looking at the history and workings of the International Monetary Fund, interviewing many IMF officials and even attending several meetings and travelling with IMF missions to various nations. Ahamed noted that from its origins at the end of World War II, the annual meetings of the IMF (usually taking place in September or October), consisted primarily of top financial diplomats from the founding 29 members of the Fund, which “functioned as a sort of conclave of the cardinals of capitalism, intent on rebuilding the Western financial system after 30 years of war and depression.” The annual meetings of the IMF were “grand affairs,” as most of the “financial statesmen of the era had either been bankers at the tail-end of the Gilded Age or, in the case of the British, colonial administrators.” In the late 1950s, the IMF membership had grown to sixtyeight, with several hundred officials showing up to the annual meetings.97 The IMF, BIS, and other international institutions such as the World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) would play central roles in the management and expansion of the global Empire of Economics. But a great deal of power was organized often outside of these institutions, by relatively smaller groups of nations who would meet in private as ad hoc groups of finance ministers, central bankers, their deputies, and other technocrats and international organization officials. Together, as representatives of the rich and powerful nations and institutions, they would seek to forge a consensus between themselves, which they could then extend through the various other (larger) forums and institutions. The first of these ad hoc groups was known as the Group of Ten (G-10), established in 1962. The G-10 would periodically bring together the central bankers and finance ministers of ten rich nations: Belgium, Canada, France, [West] Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Very soon after its establishment, Switzerland was invited, yet it continued to call itself the Group of Ten. Through

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this forum, these nations would “consult and co-operate on economic, monetary and financial matters.”98 Over the first half of the 1970s, a series of committees would be formed to further coordinate policies and strategies among the powerful nations. The Group of Ten agreed to form a special group at the IMF in 1972 known as the Committee of 20 (C-20), bringing together the finance ministers and central bankers from the key constituencies represented on the IMF’s executive board, coming together at the annual and spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in order to function as a type of steering committee for the fund, providing strategic direction the Board of Governors.99 In 1973, a separate group was formed, known as the Group of Five (G-5), bringing together the finance ministers (and occasionally the central bankers) from the United States, West Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and France.100 The following year, the IMF’s C-20 was institutionalized as the Interim Committee of the IMF, and would later become known as the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), which still exists and meets today. It has a parallel group that provides strategic advice to the World Bank, known as the Joint Development Committee.101 A hierarchy of these groups began to emerge, with the richest five countries holding their secretive meetings of the Group of Five, where they would seek to establish a consensus among themselves and subsequently push their agreements through the wider G-10, from where they would then advance their collective interests through the Interim Committee of the IMF. The era of ad-hoc committees to run the world had begun. The IMF’s own publication, Finance & Development, would later describe these groups as “a steering committee for the world economy,” driving the process of global governance.102 In 1975, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, William E. Simon, wrote to President Ford, “I believe that bringing together finance ministers from time to time in these forums is a useful way of getting decisions on difficult and technically complex financial issues.”103 A few months later, Henry Kissinger would explain to President Ford the strategy “to use economics to build a world political structure.” Two days after Kissinger made that statement to the President, a larger meeting was held at the White House which included all of the top financial diplomats and economic advisers in the Ford administration, where the strategy was further discussed. As Kissinger told the other ministers during the meeting, “It is better to have the Finance Ministers be bastards, that’s where I want it.”104 Before the end of the year, the Group of Five would meet for the first time at the level of heads of state, holding their inaugural meeting in Rambouillet, France, where Italy was also invited as an additional member. The following year, Canada would be invited to join, thus crowning the annual meeting as the Group of Seven (G7), which continues to meet to this very

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day, functioning as “an informal Western directorate,” as the New York Times described it in 1975.105 The ministers and central bankers of the G-5 would continue to function as the primary forum for economic coordination until the mid-1980s, when the G-7 ministers and central bank governors would officially replace it. The financial and corporate power that was concentrated in the G-7 nations began to expand across the world, and so too did major economic, financial and debt crises. The powerful nations would then have to come to the rescue of their own banks by providing bailouts for foreign nations who owed the banks money and were too poor to pay. In return for financial “aid,” largely channeled through the IMF, the Group of Seven nations would demand strict conditions to be met, including sweeping changes to the economic, political, and social structure of the nation getting the bailout. Their economies would be forced to reform to the “market system,” benefiting domestic oligarchs and elites, as well as large banks and corporations in the G-7 nations. A financial or debt crisis would manifest as a form of financial warfare, while the bailout programs would function as economic occupations designed to advance the interests of the Empire. From the early 1980s to the early 2000s, these debt crises spread from Latin America to Africa, Eastern Europe, East Asia, Russia and back to Latin America. The International Monetary Fund functioned like an imperial management facility, controlling entire nations and regions like an occupying power. As early as 1977, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Michael Blumenthal, wrote to President Jimmy Carter discussing the importance of the IMF, while acknowledging that many nations of the world were complaining about the harsh conditions attached to IMF loans. Blumenthal wrote, “The IMF for years served as a kind of whipping boy,” noting that countries that were in crisis and needed to take drastic measures to solve their financial situations (usually in the form of painful austerity measures) would “often need an external source to blame. The IMF is an ideal candidate and is accustomed to being in that position.” Further, he wrote, “If we didn’t have the IMF, we would have to invent another institution to perform this function.”106 In the early 1990s, the IMF was managing “programs” in over 50 countries around the world, which “helps explain why it has long been demonized as an all-powerful, behind-the-scenes puppeteer for the third world,” in the words of the New York Times.107 In 1992, the Financial Times noted that the fall of the Soviet Union “left the IMF and G-7 to rule the world and create a new imperial age,” which “works through a system of indirect rule that has involved the integration of leaders of developing countries into the network of the new ruling class.”108 When Russia was invited to these special meetings, they would be known as the Group of Eight (G-8), but the G-7 still served as the core of global governance.

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In the late 1990s, a new committee was formed, known as the Group of Twenty (G-20), which consisted of the finance ministers and central bankers of the G-7 nations, the European Union and twelve major “emerging market” economies: Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Argentina, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Australia, and South Korea.109 It would not be until the global financial crisis of 2008 that the G-20 would meet at the level of heads of state, when it held its first meeting in Washington, DC on November 15.110 By September of 2009, the G-20 had effectively become “the new global economic coordinator” and “steering committee” for the world economy.111 From 2011 onwards, the G-7 would only meet “informally,” with the G-20 finance ministers and central bankers gathering prior to the IMF and World Bank spring and annual meetings in order to coordinate strategy and policies.112 Despite the dry and uninspiring names of the groupings, the reality is that they function as conclaves of empire, where ministers and governors align in their respective cliques—such as advanced versus emerging market economies—and pursue their individual national and collective interests. The emerging market economies push for greater representation and authority in international organizations such as the IMF, attempting to increase their own power within the apparatus of global governance and empire. Power struggles and financial warfare between nations are left to behind-the-scenes negotiations and discussions, kept largely out of the public eye. In 2010, the then chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (formerly the Interim Committee of the IMF) was Youssef Boutros-Ghali, the finance minister of the Egyptian dictatorship, widely respected in financial circles, though much hated among Egyptians as a representation of the dictatorship’s extreme corruption. That year, a currency war had erupted between the rich nations and the emerging market economies, in which countries like China and Brazil were seeking to make their currencies more competitive than Western currencies, thus making their exports cheaper and more attractive. Financial diplomats began to fret about the potential implications of the currency warfare. The issue was to be taken up at the IMFC meeting, though Boutros-Ghali stressed that the subject “will not be on the public agenda” during the IMF meetings. “These are issues that you solve in closed rooms,” he said, and needed “to be handled quietly and in a spirit of cooperation.” Such important issues were not for public discussion, as it could frighten markets and accidentally reveal to the public the true nature of the global economic system. Instead, Boutros-Ghali explained, “It is something that needs quiet discussions, quiet diplomacy to get things moving.”113 The “quiet diplomacy” of “closed room” meetings of finance ministers and central bankers is one of the defining characteristics of the modern

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imperial system. There is no better example of this system today than that of the European Union and its debt crisis, which began in 2010. EUROPE UNDER EMPIRE One of the most important institutions in Europe is called the Eurogroup, consisting of the finance ministers of the 19 nations that use the euro as their common currency within the 28-nation European Union. From the time that Europe’s debt crisis began in early 2010, the Eurogroup would hold meetings at least once a month, with top officials from the IMF, the European Commission (the executive body of the EU), and the European Central Bank (ECB) also participating. The Eurogroup was presided over by a president, Jean-Claude Juncker, who also served as the prime minister and finance minister of Luxembourg. The Eurogroup functions as a type of board of directors for the eurozone economies, meeting behind closed doors at various locations across Europe where they negotiate and attempt to establish a consensus in managing the debt crisis, forcing countries in crisis (such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain) to impose austerity measures, cutting social spending and increasing unemployment and poverty for the benefit of banks and financial markets. The future of the European Union and its 500 million citizens is decided in these “secret meetings” of finance ministers, central bankers and transnational technocrats.114 In April of 2011, Jean-Claude Juncker was speaking at a conference of European elites when he said, “Monetary policy is a serious issue. We should discuss this in secret, in the Eurogroup.” Juncker explained that throughout his more than two decades as prime minister of Luxembourg, making him the longest sitting head of state in the EU at the time, he often “had to lie” in order to prevent financial markets from panicking. Just as monetary policy had long been discussed and decided in secret meetings of central bankers, Juncker felt that all major economic decisions should be discussed and agreed upon in the same way. “I’m ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious,” he explained, “I am for secret, dark debates.”115 The following month, he lived up to his reputation and became the target of criticism after he lied to the press about a secret meeting of the Eurogroup that was taking place in a Luxembourg castle to discuss a second possible bailout for Greece.116 Presented to the public as an essentially economic issue, Europe’s debt crisis is discussed and debated through the use of financial rhetoric and terminology in all its bland and vague varieties: fiscal discipline, structural reform, austerity, labor flexibility, budget and trade deficits, external imbalances, internal adjustments, strict conditionality, and deficit reduction

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strategies. Many of these terms are interchangeable, and while they all provide the appearance of technical expertise and understanding, they have profoundly important meanings and implications. For example, the main policy pushed on countries in crisis is to demand that they cut all forms of social spending, including health care, education, welfare, social services, firing large amounts of public-sector workers, dismantling government programs and policies which benefit the majority of the population, creating mass unemployment and poverty. This systematic impoverishment of the population is a brutal process that results in mass misery, increased suffering, hunger, disease, skyrocketing suicide rates, and social devastation. To describe this process in these terms, however, would be to prevent the policies from ever being implemented. Instead, these policies and programs are described with the following terms: austerity, fiscal discipline, fiscal adjustment, belt-tightening, deficit reduction, balancing the books, and budget consolidation. The brutality of the European and global economic empires remains hidden behind these bland terms. But the truth is revealed in the countries and on the streets of those nations most affected by the debt crisis, in Greece and Spain, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal. Unemployment has soared, particularly among youth, of whom more than 50% remained unemployed in Greece and Spain by 2015. Poverty and suffering under the EU’s economic colonization programs have prompted social unrest, resistance, riots and rebellions, new social movements, anti-austerity political parties, and even the rapid rise of fascism. Germany dominates Europe and its major institutions, as the largest economy on the continent, second-largest exporter in the world after China, and fourth largest economy in the world as a whole (following the United States, China, and Japan). Its economic weight makes it the most powerful nation influencing and directing the apparatus of the European Union, including the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the Eurogroup, with significant influence (especially alongside other rich EU nations) in the IMF and Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Germany leads a bloc of rich nations within the European Union who are the strongest advocates of “fiscal discipline” and “austerity,” among them the Netherlands, Finland, Luxembourg, and Austria, generally referred to as the northern bloc or creditor countries. France, the second-largest economy in the European Union, generally leads a bloc consisting of the southern nations, the debtor nations. The rich countries provide the majority of funding to the EU’s institutions, and thus wield the greatest influence. Germany and France were the two most influential countries in constructing the European Union over the course of the previous 6 decades, with consistent cooperation and support among the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), and occasionally the United Kingdom,

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though its influence has dramatically decreased in recent years. As a result of this process, the rules that were written were done so in such a way as to benefit this “core” group of nations more than any others. Despite the fact that there are 28 nations in the European Union, the collective weight of a core group consisting of a handful of rich nations is able to direct the process of integration and force the other member nations to change their policies and transform their societies. As financial markets began to punish countries for having high debt levels, plunging them into crisis, the European Union, its key institutions and leaders began to mobilize to provide large “bailouts” to these countries. Big banks, most notably those based in Germany and France, had lent large amounts of money to several nations, including Greece, and wanted their interest payments to be made on time. The banking systems in the rich countries were thus under threat of potentially facing the consequences of their own bad loans. To prevent the banks from having to suffer, the rich nations agreed to establish bailout programs which would be managed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These three institutions, collectively known as the Troika, would provide the money for the bailouts and in turn would set the conditions demanded by the core nations for the bailout countries to implement, namely, austerity and impoverishment. The Troika institutions are entirely unaccountable to voters and publics, representing unelected and anti-democratic technocratic tyrannies, yet they wield unprecedented power over entire populations and societies. The European Commission functions as the executive branch of the EU, writing legislation and managing roughly two dozen governmental cabinet departments, headed by individual commissioners, the most influential and important of which is the Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. For much of the debt crisis, this individual was Olli Rehn, a Finnish politician who served in that position from 2009 to 2014. Coming from Finland, Rehn was closely aligned with the core group of rich nations and was among the strongest individual proponents of austerity throughout the crisis. The commission itself was presided over by a president, personified in the former Portuguese Prime Minister, José Manuel Barroso, who served in the role from 2004 to 2014. The European Central Bank (ECB) manages the monetary policy for the 19 member nations of the eurozone who share a common currency. The ECB is run by a president, a role held from 2003 to 2011 by a Frenchman, Jean-Claude Trichet, a former governor of France’s central bank, the Banque du France. From late 2011 on, the role of president was held by an Italian, Mario Draghi, previously the governor of the Bank of Italy. The ECB is further managed by an executive board, consisting of the president, vice president, and four other members appointed from different EU countries.

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In addition, the ECB has a governing council made up of the governors of the national central banks of the eurozone economies, collectively comprising what is called the Eurosystem. The German Bundesbank and its president is the most powerful individual central bank in the ECB, often allied with its Dutch, Finnish, and Austrian counterparts.117 Both the executive board and governing board are responsible for making the major decisions in the central bank’s policies and play a highly influential role in managing the European debt crisis, especially in crisis-hit countries. Technically speaking, the ECB is an independent institution, meaning that it is given political independence from the nation states of the European Union, serving its mandate as a technocratic institution interested only in a stable monetary policy, free of interference from political leaders. The core countries of the EU, however, wield significant influence on the ECB, and not only through their appointments to the executive board and their respective national central banks, but in behind-the-scenes negotiations and secret meetings. As the heads of state of the core eurozone nations frequently formed an allied bloc in their negotiations and management of the European debt crisis, these blocs were reflected inside the ECB and other EU institutions,118 and Germany remained the most influential of all.119 The behind-the-scenes power politics between nations was also reflected in the Eurogroup of finance ministers, where Germany and France would have to negotiate an agreement, with Germany leading the group of countries demanding harsh measures, alongside the Netherlands and Finland.120 This has allowed Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland to have some of the most influential finance ministers in managing the entire process and policies of reform and deeper integration in the European Union.121 Many of these policies and programs are agreed through the “secret, dark debates” of the Eurogroup meetings, to borrow Jean-Claude Juncker’s phrase. The German Finance Ministry is located in Berlin, housed in a Nazi-era building which previously served as the headquarters for the Nazi air force, the Luftwaffe, from which Hitler’s second-in-command, Herman Goering, plotted the bombing campaigns across Europe. Today, the same building serves as the main center for managing Germany’s economic empire in the EU and the Troika occupations of crisis countries. The building “is a monument to both the Nazis’ ambition and their taste,” noted Vanity Fair, though the statues of eagles sitting atop large swastikas have been removed.122 In late 2011, Europe’s debt crisis was reaching new heights, with financial markets waging a vicious assault against Greece and Italy for their failure to impose brutal austerity measures on their populations. It was at the Old Opera House in Frankfurt, Germany, where a farewell party was being held for Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the ECB, resigning from his post at the end of the month (to be replaced by Mario Draghi). Nearly all of Europe’s key policymakers were present at the party, but as the crisis escalated,

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a small group of top officials held an “explosive” behind-the-scenes meeting to try to come to an agreement on forming a response. Nicolas Sarkozy squared off against Trichet, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel coming to the central banker’s side. But the real significance of the meeting was that it established the formation of a small ad hoc group of eight individuals at the top of the EU’s power structure who would be able to collectively steer the course of Europe.123 They called themselves the Frankfurt Group, though the media dubbed them Europe’s new “Politburo,” reflecting the similar functions of China’s top ruling body. The group consisted of the German Chancellor, French president, the head of the ECB, the resident of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, the commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Olli Rehn, the President of the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and the managing director of the IMF, former French finance minister Christine Lagarde.124 Within the following three weeks, the Frankfurt Group would orchestrate coup d’états in both Greece and Italy, removing democratically elected prime ministers and political parties from power, replacing them with economists and central bankers, technocratic tyrants whose sole purpose was to impose the brutal austerity measures demanded by banks and financial markets. One of the key battlegrounds in the war waged by the Frankfurt Group was in the lead-up to and during the G-20 summit of leaders and ministers at Cannes, France in early November of 2011.125 Less than a week before the G-20 summit, Greece’s prime minister, George Papandreou, surprised members of his own cabinet and infuriated Europe’s rulers when he decided to hold a referendum asking Greek citizens if they were willing to follow the conditions set by the bailout agreement with the Troika. Sarkozy went “ballistic” and summoned Papandreou to Cannes for a meeting with several officials of the Frankfurt Group in order “to put Papandreou against the wall, in the corner,” in the words of one person present at the meeting. Over the following weeks, the group would orchestrate the removal of Papandreou from power, replacing him with Lucas Papademos, the former Vice President of the European Central Bank from 2002 to 2010, prior to which he was the governor of the central bank of Greece from 1994, simultaneously sitting as a member of the ECB’s governing council from its creation in 1998 until 2002. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso had played a central role in removing Papandreou from power, operating secretly from hotel rooms with his close aides and without the knowledge of Merkel or Sarkozy.126 When the world’s major leaders headed to Cannes in early November for the G-20 summit, President Obama was given an inside look into the inner workings of European power politics, even attending a meeting of the

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Frankfurt Group. The European debt crisis took international headlines and was the main topic of discussion at the summit. The Obama administration, with Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, had for months been working quietly through financial diplomacy to encourage a more comprehensive solution to Europe’s crisis, attempting to balance the interests of global financial markets with those of Germany. Obama told Chancellor Merkel and other leaders, “Our preference is that the ECB should act a bit like the Federal Reserve did,” referring to its role in acting as a “lender of last resort,” providing funds for states or banks that needed quick cash to avoid a crisis.127 The ECB’s legal mandate reflected that of its major national backer, the German Bundesbank, the chief architect and prototype of the ECB structure. Holding a far more conservative and “hawkish” approach to monetary policy than most of the world’s other central banks, the mandate stressed that the central bank was not allowed to finance governments, and so instead of acting quickly to bailout governments in need, financial markets wage war against nations in need of funds while EU leaders squabble and negotiate the details of programs that require the countries to restructure their entire societies. The longer the negotiations drag out, the more vicious the assault of financial markets will be. This exacerbates the crisis and weakens the negotiating position of the crisis country, allowing the powerful countries to extract more concessions and impose more demands. Central bankers frequently refer to the term and concept of “creative destruction,” referring to the role that financial crises play in providing the needed pressure on countries to change their policies and restructure their societies, following the orders of central bankers, finance ministers and other technocrats. Andrew Crockett was the former head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank to the world’s central banks, who was one of the most respected international monetary diplomats of his era. Crockett described “creative destruction” as a process of financial instability that “is not only inevitable but also positive.” It forces various governing and social systems “to change and adapt,” destroying old and creating new institutions and structures. This process “has to be allowed to work.”128 Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan referred to creative destruction as the “partner” of “free-market competition,” noting that where markets go, crises follow.129 As financial markets creatively destroyed European countries, the Frankfurt Group held four meetings on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Cannes, with its eight Politburo members wearing badges marked “Groupe de Francfort.” Obama was invited to one of the meetings where he received a “crash course” in Europe’s ruling structures and processes. One participant in the meeting referred to the American president as “a quick learner.” Obama continued to meet with other European leaders assembled at

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Cannes, attempting to help forge a response to the crisis. At one point, he pulled Angela Merkel aside just prior to a G-20 working session and said, “I guess you guys have to be creative here.”130 And they got creative with Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media oligarch who was long a thorn in the side of EU leaders, consistently failing to impose the austerity measures demanded by Brussels, Frankfurt, and Berlin. Chancellor Merkel had been quietly working behind the scenes for weeks to remove Berlusconi from power.131 On November 12, Berlusconi was forced to resign and his replacement was Mario Monti, an economist and former European commissioner.132 Monti was also a founder and honorary chairman of Bruegel, a Brussels-based international economic think tank. He served on advisory boards to Coca-Cola and Goldman Sachs, was a former steering committee member of the Bilderberg Group, and at the time of his appointment as prime minister, he was serving as the European chairman of the Trilateral Commission, the transnational think tank founded by David Rockefeller in 1973. Lucas Papademos, the technocratic Prime Minister of Greece, was also drawn from among the membership of the Trilateral Commission. It no doubt helped matters that Mario Monti was “an old family friend” of the Agnelli family, whose young patriarch, John Elkann, was also a Trilateral Commission member. Monti even served on the board of Fiat for some time. After Monti assumed his position as Prime Minister of Italy, he would meet regularly with John Elkann, who lobbied on behalf of Italian industry to promote reforms that benefit large companies.133 Six months into his technocratic government, John Elkann said that there was “no doubt that Monti becoming prime minister has been positive for Italy.”134 Following the Frankfurt Group’s two coups, the Wall Street Journal praised the moves as “exactly the kind of game-changing display of political power euro-zone leaders have promised but failed to deliver since the start of the crisis,” adding that it was “sure to be greeted with similar jubilation in the market.” The “self-appointed Frankfurt Group,” however, lacked legitimacy and was representative of a “democratic deficit” in the European Union.135 The Financial Times referred to technocrats as “efficient, calculating machines” who might “lack a democratic mandate but they’re fantastically wellregarded in Frankfurt.” The job of the “brilliant but bloodless functionaries” was to push through “unpopular measures” without concern for citizens.136 The New York Times referred to the technocratic coups as “the cold reality of 21st-century politics,” in which Greek and Italian citizens “have just watched democratically elected governments toppled by pressure from financiers, European Union bureaucrats and foreign heads of state.” Democracy and national sovereignty might be pleasant concepts, but when it comes to a crisis, “it’s the technocrats who really get to call the shots,” with stability for the euro and the European Union pursued “at the expense of

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democracy.” Real power in the European Union “would pass permanently to the forces represented by the so-called Frankfurt Group.”137 Roger Altman is the chairman of Evercore Partners, a major U.S. investment bank, and a former top U.S. Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration, having served a long career between Wall Street and Washington. Altman also happens to be a member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg meetings, as well as writing regular columns in the financial press. In December of 2011, Altman reflected on the events of previous months in an article for the Financial Times, concluding that financial markets were “acting like a global supra-government” which is able to “oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so,” and “force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes.”138 Their influence “dwarfs” that of institutions like the IMF, and apart from “unusable nuclear weapons,” financial markets “have become the most powerful force on earth.” When their power is “flexed,” he wrote, “the immediate impact on society can be painful,” with growing unemployment and the collapse of governments. Whether the power of financial markets was “healthy” for the world was not important, he suggested, but their power “is permanent.” Altman concluded, “above all, there is no stopping the new policing role of the financial markets. There may be more frequent market crises. We should not rush to conclude that they will end in tears.” At least, not in tears for those who run large banks.139 Financial markets, technocrats, central bankers, finance ministers and the top political leaders of the dominant nations have wreaked havoc on Europe. The process of economic colonization of the “periphery” nations of the EU has advanced year after year. Nations were repeatedly put under Troika occupation, with policies dictated by technocrats and politicians in Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, and Washington. The policies create mass suffering as austerity destroys the countries, impoverishes their populations, while the various “structural reforms” open up the economy to be plundered cheaply by foreign banks and corporations. Commentators in the press, however, began to increasingly warn about Europe’s “democratic deficit” and its crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of its 500 million citizens.140 One of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase, published a report on Europe’s debt crisis in May of 2013, stating that the process of “adjustment” in the eurozone was “about halfway done on average,” and warning that austerity would need to continue “for a very extended period” and that leaders would need to deal with “deep seated” political problems. The bank identified what it viewed as the main problems, embedded in the constitutions and political systems of many of the countries in crisis, including the “constitutional protection of labor rights” and “the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo.”141

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There was, of course, a reason why the EU’s technocratic, political, and financial elite were growing increasingly worried about “democratic legitimacy” and people exercising “the right to protest.” The citizens of Europe, especially the periphery nations under various forms of Troika and financial market pressure, had been increasingly involved in social unrest, protests, urban rebellions and the emergence of new, populist, anti-austerity and increasingly revolutionary movements. These processes were not confined to Europe, however, as resistance movements were taking place with increased frequency and ferocity around the world in the wake of the global financial crisis. THE AGE OF RAGE It was in late 2010 and early 2011 that the world witnessed the start of a new phase of global uprisings, with the Arab Spring erupting and spreading across much of the Middle East and North Africa, leading to the removal of longtime U.S. and European-supported dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, with protests spreading across many more nations, upsetting the established order. The Saudis, along with the other Gulf Arab dynastic dictatorships, led the counter-revolution against the move to democracy, spreading violence, chaos and civil war from Libya to Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and beyond. In the European Union, the year 2011 also turned out to be a very dramatic one in terms of protests, social unrest, and anti-austerity movements. Protests of tens of thousands in Greece would erupt in violent confrontations with the police,142 as a new anti-austerity movement began spreading across the country, going by the name, “I Won’t Pay” (for someone else’s crisis).143 As Portugal was strong-armed into a bailout program, the “desperate generation” of youth, inspired by the Arab Spring protests, sparked a new social movement organized via social media, struggling against the “wasted aspirations of a whole generation,” with more than 30% of youth unemployed across the country.144 Even Brussels experienced instances of riot police turning water cannons and tear gas on protesters who were opposing the EU’s policies and increased powers.145 The protests in Portugal in turn inspired a new protest movement in Spain, where thousands of youth occupied the Puerto del Sol square in Madrid in opposition to the main political parties and austerity. Known as the Indignados (the indignant ones), the movement spread across much of the country as unemployment among youth soared to 45%.146 The Guardian noted that, “a youth-led rebellion is spreading across southern Europe.”147 Thousands of protesters turned up to voice their opposition to the Group of 8 (G-7 plus Russia) summit in May of 2011.148 At the end of that month,

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tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Europe, from Spain to Germany, France, Greece, Portugal, and beyond, answering the call for a “European Revolution” in over one hundred cities across the continent.149 Spain’s Indignados paved the way for similar movements to be replicated in several other countries, notably including Greece.150 In the pages of the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman wrote that “2011 is turning into the year of global indignation,” from the Arab world, to Europe, India, China, Chile, and even Israel. “Many of the countries hit by unrest,” he noted, “have explicitly accepted rising inequality as a price worth paying for rapid economic growth.”151 Protests and social unrest spread across Europe throughout the summer, particularly in Greece and Italy. In September, a protest following the examples set in the Arab world and Europe began in New York City, starting what would later be known as the Occupy Wall Street Movement.152 The occupation continued through the month, facing increased police repression countered with growing numbers of supporters.153 At the same time, Greece was facing growing domestic unrest as the Troika auditors were in Athens pressuring the government to meet “reform” targets.154 By October of 2011, thousands were on the streets in Portugal,155 over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge,156 and the Occupy Movement began spreading across the United States to dozens of other cities.157 Tens of thousands of protesters continued to take to the streets of Athens, where they were met with the oppressive state apparatus in the form of riot police tear gassing Greek citizens.158 In midOctober, Occupy Wall Street had become international, igniting Occupy protests and encampments across Europe and Canada.159 On a global day of protest on October 15, there were demonstrations in roughly 951 different cities across 87 different countries.160 Roughly 150,000 people marched in Rome, thousands marched toward Angela Merkel’s Chancellery office in Berlin, with several thousand more marching on the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt,161 as Germany experienced protests bringing out roughly 40,000 people in 50 different cities.162 The German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, told the media that he was taking the protests “very seriously.”163 The Financial Times noted that protesters were “united in their loathing of bankers on both sides of the Atlantic,” and despite their different circumstances, they “find common ground in their outrage at the lack of economic opportunities and their alienation from mainstream politics.” The editorial warned politicians not to ignore the protests, as “failure to address these concerns would risk reinforcing the protesters’ sense of disengagement, transforming their alienation into a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy.” The demands of most protesters were not “yet a rejection of capitalism,” many were simply expressing that they wanted “a more equitable

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share” in the benefits of the system. “It is therefore in everyone’s interest,” noted the editorial, “that their energy be directed into making capitalism work better rather than overturning it.”164 Martin Wolf in the Financial Times suggested that protesters were “raising some big questions,” but “for this to be the beginning of a new left wing politics” there must be the emergence of “a credible new ideology.” In discussing the issue of inequality which was raised by the protests, Wolf wrote that while it would be “impossible to define an acceptable level of inequality,” it is ultimately “corrosive if those with wealth are believed to have rigged the game rather than won in honest competition.” Thus, with growing inequality, “the sense that we are equal as citizens weakens” while “democracy is sold to the highest bidder.” Wolf concluded: “The left does not know how to replace the market. But pro-marketeers still need to take the protests seriously. All is not well.”165 AN EMPIRE UNDER THREAT In 2012, Dominic Barton, the CEO of McKinsey & Company, the world’s largest consulting firm, wrote and published a small essay entitled, “Capitalism for the Long-Term.” Barton described the world since the global financial crisis began 3 years earlier, in which dramatic changes in power were taking place between the West and East (with the growth of Asia and the emerging market economies), as “a rise in populist politics and social stresses” combined with “significant strains on global governance systems.” These combinations would likely result in “increased geopolitical rivalries,” “security challenges,” and other “rising tensions.” The most important consequence of the crisis for the corporate oligarchy, however, was “the challenge to capitalism itself.” Barton noted that the crisis had “exacerbated the friction between business and society,” forcing leaders to confront “rising income inequality” and “understandable anger over high unemployment” as well as “a host of other issues.”166 A March 2013 report by the large Swiss bank, UBS, referred to social unrest as “a systemic phenomenon” which “is highly uncertain, complex and ambiguous,” warning that “it is highly likely to generate ripple effects into other sectors of the economy and society, possibly leading to the toppling of governments, or even political systems.”167 A July 2013 report from the French insurance giant, AXA, reflected on protests and urban rebellions erupting in what were previously considered “stable” emerging market nations, such as Turkey and Brazil. AXA’s Investment Managers report noted that many emerging market nations were “currently experiencing a surge in political risk due to social unrest,” the main cause of which “is the rise of the middle class in these countries.”168

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The World Economic Forum published its report on Global Risks in 2014 just in time for its annual meeting, having prepared the report in collaboration large insurance giants and prestigious universities. The report noted that “the generation coming of age in the 2010s faces high unemployment and precarious job situations, hampering their efforts to build a future and raising the risk of social unrest.”169 In general, it wrote, “the mentality of this generation is realistic, adaptive and versatile,” and while they are “full of ambition to make the world a better place,” they feel “disconnected from traditional politics and government.”170 The report cited a recent global opinion survey of youth which noted that young people “think independently” of past generations, and that this “points to a wider distrust of authorities and institutions.” Having witnessed the response of governments in the wake of the financial crisis, as well as the NSA Internet spying scandals, youth populations are increasingly alienated from authorities. “Anti-austerity movements and other protests give voice to an increasing distrust in current socio-economic and political systems,” said the report, as youth populations accounted for an “important” segment of the population which expressed their “general disappointment” with both “regional and global governance bodies such as the EU and the [IMF].” The report noted that the “digital revolution” had provided youth around the world with “unprecedented access to knowledge and information worldwide,” allowing them “to build abstract networks addressing single issues and place less importance on traditionally organized political parties and leadership.”171 This youth population represented a “lost generation” who could fuel social unrest, “vulnerable to being sucked into criminal or extremist movements.”172 The global Mafiocracy was so concerned with growing unrest, protests and the potential for revolution, that the Rothschild banking dynasty itself organized a special conference on the subject. Hosted by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism was held in the very exclusive Mansion House in London’s financial district, closed to the public and press. The May 2014 conference was exclusively for the world’s super-rich oligarchs, institutions and dynasties. Some 250 individuals were invited, collectively responsible for managing more than $30 trillion in assets, accounting for roughly onethird of the world’s investable wealth located in one room. As NPR noted, “If money is power, then this is the most powerful group of people ever to focus on income inequality.”173 Among the speakers at the conference were Prince Charles; former President Bill Clinton (a close friend of Jacob and Lynn de Rothschild); Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF; Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England and a top international central banking official; Lionel Barber, an editor at the Financial Times; Dominic Barton of McKinsey

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& Co., as well as top executives from Honeywell, UBS, BlackRock, The Dow Chemical Company, Unilever, Google, GlaxoSmithKline, and Prudential.174 “Now is the time to be famous or fortunate,” said the central banker Mark Carney. He told the assembled members of the Mafiocracy, “just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.” In other words, the capitalist system was eating itself. “Capitalism loses its sense of moderation,” said Carney, “when the belief in the power of markets enters the realm of faith.” This kind of religious “radicalism came to dominate economic ideas and became a pattern of social behaviour,” and in the decades leading up to the global financial crisis, “we moved from a market economy to a market society.”175 Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, began her speech by discussing Karl Marx, “who predicted that capitalism, in its excesses, carried the seeds of its own destruction,” as “the accumulation of capital in the hands of a few” would lead “to major conflicts, and cyclical crises.” Lagarde warned that capitalism has increasingly “been associated with high unemployment, rising social tensions, and growing political disillusion.” Among the “main casualties,” she said, “has been trust—in leaders, in institutions, in the free-market system itself,” citing a recent poll which revealed that only one in five people “believed that government or business leaders would tell the truth on an important issue.” This, she explained, “is a wakeup call,” adding, “in a world that is more networked than ever, trust is harder to earn and easier to lose.”176 As the global Mafiocracy grows increasingly worried about the potential revolutionary implications of the “lost generation” of youth around the world, struggling to make their parasitic planetary system of Empire legitimate in the eyes of the citizens of the world, the youth are left behind, already written off as “lost.” Youth and young adults are better educated and have more access to information and communication than ever before in human history, yet their prospects for jobs, social elevation and opportunities appear increasingly grim and uneasy. Frustrated and furious youth have been the leading force behind the resistance movements, riots, rebellions, and revolutions that have spread across much of the world in the wake of the global financial crisis, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, the European Union, to the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore in the United States. Western “democratic” society is becoming increasingly closed. It is evolving into a high-tech police and surveillance state. The United States government continues to wage a race war against the minority black population who are treated as an internally colonized population, with high rates of police repression and imprisonment. The political system is visibly ruled by parasites, with all the pomposity of the Roman Senate. The plutocrats have

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lavish and distant lives, segregated in their obscene wealth and unseen influence. The middle class is a debt-slave class, fueling consumption through credit, now in the slow and painful process of being exsanguinated of their economic vitality and opportunities. Some will rise to the higher ranks, but the rest will be pushed down to where the poor have always been. Increasingly, much larger segments of the American population will find themselves in similar circumstances as their fellow Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and immigrant neighbors. In this environment, the United States still sits at the center of global monetary, financial, economic, and corporate power. The U.S. dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, and the country is still the largest economy. Through the process of integrating the increasingly rich and powerful nations of Latin America, the Middle East and Asia into the Empire of Economics, the stakes have become higher and the challenges greater, as the United States seeks to maintain its dominant position, and thus its ability to shape the changing global order. With many new players in the game of global power politics, there are more negotiations, consultations, forums for cooperation and frequent confrontations. As the United States and Europe increasingly aggravate Russia by expanding their empire to its border, the threat for economic competition to break out into actual warfare grows. The human species is in a deeply precarious situation. As the Empire of Economics increasingly benefits the comparatively small global Mafiocracy at the expense of most of the world’s remaining 7 billion people, the economic and military structures of global empire are rapidly accelerating their devastation of the natural environment and ecosystem upon which all life on the planet depends. Human beings are confronted with a profound question: As we soar forward on our current path toward increased poverty, exploitation and environmental destruction, at what point do we begin to more directly question the legitimacy of the existing global system which determines the fate and direction of the species? As we face the increasing possibility of a mass extinction of our species over the coming century, as the democratic facades of modern society crumble and high-tech totalitarian police states rise in their place, there has perhaps never been a time in history where it was more essential for the people of the world to begin to create alternatives to the existing global system. The concept of a truly global, transformative revolution in the organization of human society, power relations, and purpose must be contemplated in a more serious, deliberate effort. This book hopes to encourage this discussion through an expanded understanding of the realities of global power politics, the ruling Mafiocracy and the Empire of Economics. A genuine global revolution is an absolute necessity. But far from promoting a mere ideological or philosophical alternative, this text hopes to encourage a

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more pragmatic approach to organizing resistance both outside and within the existing global order and its various institutions. A dual strategy is required in operating outside the global hierarchy, experimenting with creative alternatives constructed from the bottom-up, while simultaneously playing the game of power politics to directly challenge the Empire of Economics in its own arena. Instead of dividing these efforts between those who advocate for revolutionary alternatives and those who encourage reformist initiatives, a more coherent and organized strategy should be invoked, establishing alternative forums, organizations and avenues of cooperation between revolutionaries and reformers. This serves multiple purposes, as it would allow for revolutionary movements to maintain contact and provide direction to reformers and new political parties, instead of leaving them to engage only with the existing power structures, thus increasing the chances that they may be co-opted by the Empire and undermine the efforts of revolutionary groups. Instead, revolutionary movements would be encouraged to co-opt and even control the direction and efforts of reformist groups and political parties. Strategic thinking and planning should become commonplace among revolutionary movements and efforts. Debate, discussion, coordination, and creative construction among opposition groups must increasingly come to replace division, derision, co-optation, and “creative destruction.” For this to emerge, the initiative must be taken by revolutionary groups to create the organizations and opportunities to engage with each other and reformist groups, to create a space for cooperation and provide the impetus for strategic direction. Just as the Mafiocracy has created forums and institutions through which they engage and influence policy-makers, educational and media structures, so too must revolutionary groups form parallel systems with similar functions, but opposing objectives. This task can effectively be pursued by the “lost generation” of global youth who can become capable of finding their own way, charting their own path, imagining and creating their own world. It could be a world in which the human species has a higher purpose beyond that of contributing to “economic growth,” with greater prospects beyond that of probable extinction. Nothing less than everything we have and everyone we know is at stake. What is frightfully clear is that the Empire of Economics does not serve the collective interests of humanity and the planetary system upon which life depends. We must do this ourselves, individually and collectively. The worst that could happen is to try and fail, remaining where we currently stand. The best that could happen is nothing if not unknown and unforeseeable, but altogether possible, if we wish and work to make it so. The future may yet belong to the people of the world, but only if we empower ourselves in the present. So perhaps it is time to become properly acquainted with the unforgiving, brutal realities of power politics, empire and resistance.

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NOTES 1. Memorandum of Conversation, 24 May 24, 1975: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1973–1976, Vol. XXXI, Foreign Economic Policy, Document 292. http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v31/d292 2. Memorandum of Conversation, 26 May 26, 1975: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1973–1976, Vol. XXXI, Foreign Economic Policy, Document 294. http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v31/d294 3. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 59. 4. Memo by George Kennan, Head of the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff. Written February 28, 1948, Declassified June 17, 1974. George Kennan, “Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy, Policy Planning Staff, PPS No. 23. Top Secret. Included in the U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Vol. 1, Part 2 (Washington DC Government Printing Office, 1976), 509–529. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memo_PPS23_ by_George_Kennan 5. General Assembly, “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order,” Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, United Nations, Resolution 3201 (S-VI), May 1, 1974. http://www.un-documents.net/ s6r3201.htm 6. General Assembly, “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order,” Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, United Nations, Resolution 3201 (S-VI), May 1, 1974. http://www.un-documents.net/ s6r3201.htm 7. Charles R. Morris, “Old Money,” New York Times, October 26, 2006. http:// www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/books/review/Morris.t.html?pagewanted 8. Stephen Foley, “Richest dynasties back in the money after crunch,” The Independent, September 24, 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ business/news/richest-dynasties-back-in-the-money-after-crunch-2088087 .html 9. Ray D. Madoff, “America Builds an Aristocracy,” New York Times, July 11, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/opinion/12madoff.html 10. James D. Wolfensohn, Council on Foreign Relations Special Symposium in honor of David Rockefeller’s 90th Birthday, The Council on Foreign Relations, May 23, 2005. http://www.cfr.org/world/council-foreign-relations -special-symposium-honor-david-rockefellers-90th-birthday/p8133 11. Nasdaq Institutional Portfolios, Rockefeller Financial Services, December 31, 2014. http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/institutional-portfolio/rockefeller -financial-services-inc-66951; Holdings Channel, Rockefeller Financial Services, December 31, 2014. https://www.holdingschannel.com/all/stocks-held -by-rockefeller-financial-services-inc/ 12. Richard C. Morais, “Rock of Ages,” Barron’s Penta, September 15, 2012. http://online.barrons.com/article/SB5000142405311190488140457760931 2447134388.html 13. James Boxell, “Rothschilds eye cross-Channel unity,” Financial Times, April 4, 2012. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/70388674-7e87-11e1-b009-00144feab49a .html#axzz2kzREcUuP

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216    A. G. MARSHALL 117. Brian Blackstone, “Italian Gains Support in Central Bank Race,” Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2011. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704 740204576273011324066764 118. Ralph Atkins, “Messy ECB selection process might just work,” Financial Times, February 10, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f7e255ae-3546-11e0 -aa6c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3R90ABvgZ 119. Quentin Peel, “Merkel backs Draghi to head ECB,” Financial Times, May 11, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5c56435e-7bbc-11e0-9298-00144feab dc0.html#axzz3R90ABvgZ 120. Giles Tremlett, “Portugal denies reports that it is under pressure to seek EU aid,” The Guardian, January 9, 2011. http://www.theguardian.com/business/ 2011/jan/09/portugal-eu-imf-aid 121. Tony Barber, “Europe: Four steps to fiscal union,” Financial Times, August 11, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9be75804-c3f7-11e0-b302-00144feab dc0.html#axzz3R90ABvgZ 122. Michael Lewis, “It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!” Vanity Fair, September 2011. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/09/europe-201109 123. Paul Taylor, “Insight: Euro has new politburo but no solution yet,” Reuters, November 6, 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/06/us-eurozone -leadership-idUSTRE7A513B20111106 124. Paul Taylor, “Insight: Euro has new politburo but no solution yet,” Reuters, November 6, 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/06/us-eurozone -leadership-idUSTRE7A513B20111106 125. Peter Spiegel, “How the euro was saved,” Financial Times, May 11, 2014. http:// www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f6f4d6b4-ca2e-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0.html? siteedition=uk#axzz34I6iWrke 126. Peter Spiegel, “How the euro was saved,” Financial Times, May 11, 2014. http:// www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f6f4d6b4-ca2e-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0.html? siteedition=uk#axzz34I6iWrke 127. Peter Spiegel, “How the euro was saved,” Financial Times, May 11, 2014. http:// www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f6f4d6b4-ca2e-11e3-ac05-00144feabdc0.html? siteedition=uk#axzz34I6iWrke 128. Andrew Crockett, “Commentary: How Should Financial Market Regulators Respond to the New Challenges of Global Economic Integration?” Speech delivered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas Economic Symposium Conference, “Global Economic Integration: Opportunities and Challenges,” Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 24–26, 2000. 129. Alan Greenspan, “Opening Remarks—Global Economic Integration: Opportunities and Challenges,” Speech delivered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas Economic Symposium Conference, “Global Economic Integration: Opportunities and Challenges,” Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 24–26, 2000. 130. Paul Taylor, “Insight: Euro has new politburo but no solution yet,” Reuters, November 6, 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/06/us-eurozone -leadership-idUSTRE7A513B20111106 131. Marcus Walker, Charles Forelle, and Stacy Meichtry, “Deepening Crisis Over Euro Pits Leader Against Leader,” The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2011.

Power Politics and the Empire of Economics    217 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203391104577124480046 463576.html 132. Rachel Donadino, “With Clock Ticking, an Economist Accepts a Mandate to Rescue Italy,” The New York Times, November 13, 2011. http://www.nytimes .com/2011/11/14/world/europe/mario-monti-asked-to-form-a-new-government -in-italy.html 133. Jennifer Clark, “Special Report: At Italy’s Fiat, young scion steers tough course,” Reuters, November 9, 2012. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/09/us -fiat-elkann-idUSBRE8A80BB20121109 134. Guy Dinmore, “Time slips by for Monti’s reform,” Financial Times, May 29, 2012. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6005a2cc-a9ad-11e1-a6a7-00144feab dc0.html#axzz2zBRouyFL 135. Simon Nixon, “ECB Can’t Fix Euro Zone’s Governance Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2011. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405297020 4190504577036341026971330 136. “Europe: rise of the calculating machine,” Financial Times, November 9, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/000cb4ae-0abc-11e1-b9f6-00144feabdc0. html#axzz358Pqb0Hq 137. Ross Douthat, “Conspiracies, Coups and Currencies,” New York Times, November 19, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/ douthat-conspiracies-coups-and-currencies.html 138. R. Altman, “We need not fret over omnipotent markets,” Financial Times online. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/890161ac-1b69-11e1-85f800144feabdc0 139. Roger Altman, “We need not fret over omnipotent markets,” Financial Times, December 1, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/890161ac-1b69-11e1 -85f8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fnNHC8YP 140. Philip Stephens, “A race between growth and populism,” The Financial Times, May 30, 2013. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2bb5c128-c79d-11e2-be27 -00144feab7de.html#axzz2ZL49BXwm 141. Europe Economic Research, “The Euro Area Adjustment: About Halfway There,” JPMorgan Chase, May 28, 2013, pp. 1–2, 5, 12–13. 142. Niki Kitsantonis, “Greek Protest of Austerity Drive Erupts in Violence,” New York Times, February 23, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/world/ europe/24greece.html 143. Kerin Hope, “Greeks adopt ‘won’t pay’ attitude,” Financial Times, March 9, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/84839398-4a6d-11e0-82ab-00144feab49 a.html?siteedition=intl#axzz23vuU01cM 144. Peter Wise, “Portugal’s ‘desperate generation’ cries out,” Financial Times, March 11, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/95990eb8-4c09-11e0-82df -00144feab49a.html#axzz3SbxWzFYR 145. Leigh Phillips, “Protests against ‘austerity summit’ turn violent,” EUObserver, March 24, 2011. https://euobserver.com/economic/32058 146. “Tahrir Square in Madrid: Spain’s Lost Generation Finds Its Voice,” Spiegel Online, May 19, 2011. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/tahrir -square-in-madrid-spain-s-lost-generation-finds-its-voice-a-763581.html

218    A. G. MARSHALL 147. Giles Tremlett and John Hooper, “Protest in the Med: rallies against cuts and corruption spread,” The Guardian, May 19, 2011. http://www.theguardian .com/world/2011/may/19/protest-med-cuts-corruption-spain 148. Ivan Watson, “Thousands protest G-8 summit this week,” CNN, May 21, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/05/21/france.g8.protests/ 149. Jerome Roos, “Protesters take to the streets of 100+ European cities,” RoarMag, May 29, 2011. http://roarmag.org/2011/05/protesters-take-to-the -streets-of-100-european-cities/ 150. Tracy Rucinski and Angeliki Koutantou, “Spanish “indignants” spark wave of European protests,” Reuters, May 30, 2011. http://uk.reuters.com/article/ 2011/05/30/uk-spain-protests-idUKTRE74T2O320110530 151. Gideon Rachman, “2011, the year of global indignation,” Financial Times, August 29, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/36339ee2-cf40-11e0-b6d4 -00144feabdc0.html#axzz3TIhO6lPw 152. Colin Moynihan, “Wall Street Protest Begins, With Demonstrators Blocked,” New York Times—City Room, September 17, 2011. http://cityroom.blogs. nytimes.com/2011/09/17/wall-street-protest-begins-with-demonstrators -blocked/ 153. Colin Moynihan, “80 Arrested as Financial District Protest Moves North,” New York Times—City Room, September 24, 2011. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes .com/2011/09/24/80-arrested-as-financial-district-protest-moves-north/ 154. Harry Papachristou, “Greece faces auditor verdict, fresh aid at stake,” Reuters, September 28, 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/28/us-eurozone -idUSTRE78Q1BQ20110928 155. AFP, “Thousands rally in Portugal to protest austerity plans,” France 24, October 1, 2011. http://www.france24.com/en/20111001-thousands-rally-protest -austerity-plans-porto-lisbon-portugal-coelho/ 156. Ray Sanchez, “More than 700 arrested in Wall Street protest,” Reuters, October 2, 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/02/us-wallstreet -protests-idUSTRE7900BL20111002 157. Erik Eckholm and Timothy Williams, “Anti-Wall Street Protests Spreading to Cities Large and Small,” New York Times, October 3, 2011. http://www .nytimes.com/2011/10/04/us/anti-wall-street-protests-spread-to-other-cities .html 158. Alkman Granitsas and Stelios Bouras, “Nationwide Strike Follows Latest Round of Greek Cuts,” Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2011. http://www.wsj .com/articles/SB10001424052970203388804576612261343333114 159. NPR staff and wires, “Occupy Wall Street Inspires Worldwide Protests,” NPR, October 15, 2011. http://www.npr.org/2011/10/15/141382468/occupy-wall -street-inspires-worldwide-protests 160. RT, “OWS wrapping the planet,” Russia Today, October 15, 2011. http://rt .com/news/world-ows-movement-rally-935/ 161. “Occupy Wall Street protest goes global,” Seattle Times, October 15, 2011. http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/occupy-wall-street-protest-goes -global/ 162. Daryl Lindsey, “The World from Berlin: ‘The Protests Are an Expression of Bitter Disappointment’,” Spiegel Online, October 17, 2011. http://www.spie-

Power Politics and the Empire of Economics    219 gel.de/international/germany/the-world-from-berlin-the-protests-are-an -expression-of-bitter-disappointment-a-792257.html 163. “Bank Bashing: Europe’s Politicians Side with the Protesters,” Spiegel Online, October 17, 2011. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/bank-bashing -europe-s-politicians-side-with-the-protesters-a-792199.html 164. Editorial, “Capitalism and its global malcontents,” Financial Times, October 23, 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/660a5192-fbf5-11e0-b1d8 -00144feab49a.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3TSpPiScy 165. Martin Wolf, “The big questions raised by anti-capitalist protests,” Financial Times, 27 October 2011. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86d8634a-ff34 -11e0-9769-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3TSpPiScy 166. Dominic Barton, “Capitalism for the Long Term,” McKinsey & Company, Autumn 2012, p. 69. 167. George Magnus, “Social Unrest and Economic Stress: Europe’s Angst, and China’s Fear,” UBS Investment Research, Economic Insights, March 20, 2013, pp. 2–3. 168. Manolis Davradakis, “Emerging Unrest: Looking for a Pattern,” AXA Investment Managers—Research & Investment Strategy, July 31, 2013, p. 5. 169. Insight Report, “Global Risks 2014, Ninth Edition,” World Economic Forum, 2014, pp. 9–10. 170. Insight Report, “Global Risks 2014, Ninth Edition,” World Economic Forum, 2014, p. 33. 171. Insight Report, “Global Risks 2014, Ninth Edition,” World Economic Forum, 2014, p. 36. 172. Insight Report, “Global Risks 2014, Ninth Edition,” World Economic Forum, 2014, p. 37. 173. Ari Shapiro, “World’s Richest People Meet, Muse On How To Spread The Wealth,” NPR, May 27, 2014. http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/ 05/27/316317191/worlds-richest-people-meet-muse-on-how-to-spread-the -wealth 174. ICI, Speakers 2014. http://www.inc-cap.com/speakers_2014.html 175. Mark Carney, “Inclusive Capitalism: Creating a Sense of the Systemic,” Speech at the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, May 27, 2014. 176. Christine Lagarde, “Economic Inclusion and Financial Integrity,” Address to the Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, May 27, 2014. http://www.imf.org/external/ np/speeches/2014/052714.htm

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CHAPTER 21

RUSSOPHOBIA AND THE LOGIC OF IMPERIALISM Ava Lipatti

As it stands today, the U.S./NATO imperialist bloc has its eyes set primarily on two countries: Russia and China. While NATO imperial terror, including economic sanctions and military action, in countries such as Ukraine, Syria, Iran, and North Korea constitute exploitative projects in their own right, they also function to encircle Russia and China. Given the importance of Russia as an object of imperial desire, clarity on the character of Russia is imperative in order to understand the current economic and political crisis of imperialism. There are several important aspects to the question of Russia as it stands today. The narrative of the Democratic Party is that “Russian hackers” rigged the “democratic elections” and that Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin and of Vladimir Putin in particular. There is virtually no substantial evidence for this claim. But what is the significance of this narrative? What are its historical roots? There is also the common claim by elements of the left that Russia is in fact an imperialist power in its own right, primarily for its actions in

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Crimea, Syria, and Chechnya. However, Russia’s relatively weak economy is characterized primarily by the export of raw materials, rather than the export of finance capital as in imperialist countries. The claim that Russia is an imperialist country has been convincingly argued against both by Sam Williams and by Renfrey Clarke and Roger Annis. But does this claim come from nowhere? What is its intellectual heritage? The purpose of this article is not to prove that Russia is not imperialist or that Trump is not a Kremlin puppet. Others have already grappled with these questions in a much more thorough way than I am equipped to do. The purpose of this article, rather, is to place these phenomena in the context of a long history of Orientalism directed at Slavic people in general, and Russia in particular. Before proceeding, a brief definition from Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978): Orientalism is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.” Thus a very large mass of writers, among who are poet, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, “mind,” destiny, and so on . . . the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . . despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a “real” Orient. (p. 5)

WHITENESS, NAZISM, AND BOLSHEVISM On the border between Europe and Asia, Russians have historically maintained at best a vacillating, conditional relationship with Whiteness and European civilization. The most historically openly terroristic, revanchist manifestation of European supremacist ideology was undoubtedly Nazism. What was the relationship between Nazism, Bolshevism, and the Slavic peoples? In War and Revolution: Rethinking the Twentieth Century, Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo (2015) seeks to reclaim the revolutionary tradition and reevaluate the character of Nazism, which he argues has been whitewashed by revisionist historians. Losurdo emphasizes several key points in relation to Nazism and Bolshevism. Perhaps most importantly, Losurdo argues that in rejecting the revolutionary tradition (from the Jacobins through the Bolsheviks), the revisionist historians have also concealed the colonial character of the Nazi project. Even a cursory reading of Nazi ideology and its goals and practices indicates

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an essentially colonial dynamic with respect to Jews, Romani, Slavs, and other oppressed peoples. However, U.S. and European historians prefer to whitewash this history, ripping the Holocaust from its historical context and presenting it as an anomaly in human history, rather than an integral manifestation of colonial conquest and imperial terror. A central aspect of the Nazi project, outlined in Hitler’s (1925) Mein Kampf, was the plan to colonize Eastern Europe, specifically through exterminating Eastern Europeans and settling throughout the Soviet Union. What historians have traditionally suppressed is that this plan did not come from nowhere: It was inspired in large part by the U.S. settler colonization of North America and the genocide carried out against both the Indigenous people and the people of Africa. Nazi concentration camps were influenced by U.S. concentration camps (i.e., “Indian reservations”); Nazi eugenics was largely inspired by reactionary U.S.”scientists.” Anti-Semitism, anti-Ziganism, and anti-Slavic racism fused to produce the fascist Nazi ideology of turning Eastern Europe into an Aryan settler colony. In this process of counterrevolution, Nazi ideology racialized its most ferocious enemy: Bolshevism. Bolshevism, a revolutionary working class movement, was the primary existential threat to Nazism, the counterrevolution of big capital. The Bolsheviks, who supported the rebellion of the toiling colonized masses, were the antithesis of imperialism in general and especially its Nazi iteration. Losurdo (2015) writes: [Revisionist historiography] forgets that, in addition to calling for the transformation of the imperialist war into revolutionary civil war, the Bolsheviks also appealed to the slaves of the colonies to break their chains and wage wars of national liberation against the imperial domination of the great powers. Such repression makes it impossible adequately to understand Nazism and Fascism, which also presented themselves as a movement in reaction—extreme reaction—against this second appeal. (p. 103)

Nazi demagogues painted the Russian Revolution as a “Judeo-Bolshevik” conspiracy, bankrolled by the supposedly economy-controlling Jewish capitalists. As Bolshevism, a movement born out of Russia, took on an anti-colonial character, Russian workers were increasingly racialized for “betraying” Europe and placing their lot with the oppressed rather than with imperialism and colonialism. In a way this process was the opposite that took place among ethnic minorities in the United States, particularly Italians, Poles, and Irish. While the latter groups assimilated into Whiteness fully from their conditional status through embracing cross-class White supremacy (and especially anti-Black racism), the Bolsheviks embraced the toiling masses and national liberation; thus, their “Whiteness” was “revoked.” Hitler (1925) himself stated directly in Mein Kampf that the Tsarist Empire was a product

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of “the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race,” whereas the “inferior” Slavic elements took power in October 1917. The racialization of Bolshevism was a direct manifestation of historical Orientalism. Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler told a group of Waffen SS fascists 3 weeks after the invasion of the Soviet Union: When you, my men, fight over there in the East, you are carrying on the same struggle, against the same subhumanity, the same inferior races, that at one time appeared under the name of Huns, another time—1,000 years ago at the time of King Henry and Otto I—under the name of Magyars, another time under the name of Tartars, and still another time under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they appear as Russians under the political banner of Bolshevism. (Stein, 1984, p. 127)

However, this was not the first time that the Soviet Union faced an invasion of reactionary terror. After October 1917, the Bolsheviks fought a civil war against the pro-Tsar White Army, the latter enjoying military support from 14 countries. As Losurdo (2015) notes, the anti-Semitic pogroms and lynchings carried out by the anti-Bolshevik White Army against Russian Jews and other ethnicities was “a chapter of history that seems to be a direct prelude to Nazi genocide.” Anti-Bolshevism, anti-Slavic racism, and colonialism thus became intermeshed in the anti-Semitic Nazi program of extermination. Losurdo (2015) explains: Denunciation of October [1917] as a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy now reached its most tragic conclusion. General Blum communicated the orders received: “Eastern Jewry constitutes the intellectual reserve of Bolshevism and hence, in the Führer’s opinion, must be destroyed.” As well as building the new colonial empire, the crusade in the East now aimed to detect and destroy the bacillus of dissolution wherever it was to be found. The “poison of dissolution” that acted via Bolshevik cadres was to be neutralized once and for all, but without forgetting that “the chief ‘carriers of the Bolshevik infection’” were the Jews. In Goebbels’ words, “Jewish terror” was the core of “eastern Bolshevism,” that mortal enemy of civilization. The Jews were doubly Oriental and doubly barbarous. They were an “Asiatic people” alien to Europe and the West, as had been stressed by Houston Chamberlain and the anti-Semitic tradition that fed into Nazism; they therefore formed part of the “native” populations. Furthermore, they were the inspirers of “eastern Bolshevism”— were, in fact, the ethnic basis of the virus eroding civilization that was to be eliminated for good. (p. 190)

This racist ideology of anti-Semitism provided the ideological narrative for the Nazi colonial project, which killed millions of Jews, Slavs, Romani, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, and other oppressed groups. According to

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Nazism, Russia, far from being a bastion of “Aryan civilization,” was a “host body” of the “Judeo-Bolshevik virus” that “infected” Europe. The relationship that Russians and other Slavic peoples have with Whiteness today cannot be evaluated in isolation from the history of Nazism and the racialization of Slavs and Bolshevism that went hand-in-hand with antiSemitism and the entire Nazi project, a project deeply rooted in settler colonialism, directly inspired by the United States and Canada. HANNAH ARENDT AND “TOTALITARIANISM” Most bourgeois historians have suppressed the colonial character of Nazi Germany and its conquest of Eastern Europe. Instead, they have gone as far as to conflate the USSR under Stalin and the Third Reich under Hitler as equally oppressive dictatorships. They conceptualize World War II and surrounding geopolitics as the struggle between “democracy” (imperialist United States, Britain, etc.) and “dictatorship” (“Stalinism,” Nazism). One of the most popular ideologues of this argument was the Heideggerian philosopher Hannah Arendt for the theory of “totalitarianism,” which equates Nazism with Communism (or “Stalinism”). Other proponents of this theory included George Kennan, Arthur Koestler, and George Orwell. In effect, this framework asserts that despotism “infected” the “civilized world” (Europe) through the “uncivilized” and “barbaric” peoples of Africa and Asia. In The Post-Colonialism of “Cold War” Discourses, William Pietz (1988) asserts that Cold War discourse displaced colonial discourse in the aftermath of World War II. Note that George Kennan located “totalitarianism” in the “Oriental mind” of Russians: [Russian] fanaticism, unmodified by any of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to envisage any permanent sharing of power. From the Russian-Asiatic world out of which they had emerged they had carried with them a skepticism as to the possibilities of permanent or peaceful coexistence of rival forces. Here caution, circumspection, flexibility, and deception are the valuable qualities; and their value finds natural appreciation in the Russian or the oriental mind.

Hannah Arendt (1973) followed suit, asserting that “totalitarianism” was something “learned” from African tribes: When the Boers, in their fright and misery, decided to use these savages as though they were just another form of animal life they embarked upon a process which could only end with their own degeneration into a White race living beside and together with black races from whom in the end they would

226    A. LIPATTI differ only in the color of their skin. They had transformed themselves into a tribe and had lost the European’s feeling for a territory, a patria of his own. They behaved exactly like the black tribes who had roamed the Dark Continent for centuries. My point is not the awful, Conradian diction or even the stark conceptual separation between the European and the African. It is the effect upon the Boers and thence—so the retrograde diffusionist argument goes—upon Europe. We “degenerate” into a race-based, primitive and nomadic, rootless “tribe” (or “race organization”) no better than them. Thanks to this contact with the primitive, not only do we come to think in terms of race (i.e., in a racist way), but this mode of thinking later morphs into a tribal nationalism that, in turn, becomes modern anti-Semitism and totalitarianism (“a whole outlook on life and the world”). This last phenomenon “lies in the nature of tribalism rather than in political facts and circumstances.” (p. 194)

Instead of locating the origins of fascism in the colonial violence of capitalism, it is located in the mind of the Oriental despot who, like a virus, has spread from the East into Aryan civilization. Pietz (1988) elaborates: It was Arendt’s signal achievement to frame a set of historically grounded political concepts capable of locating the origin of “totalitarianism” in general and modern European anti-Semitism in particular—and by implication, the responsibility for the Nazi holocaust—outside Europe, in the savage “tribalism” of “the Dark Continent.”

The colonized are blamed for an outgrowth of colonialism itself; the socialist tradition is condemned as the catalyst for the very system most antagonistic towards it, fascism. Pietz (1988) states: American cold war discourse about totalitarianism served a double function: in regard to the Soviets, it justified a policy of global anti-communism by reinterpreting all struggles for national self-determination in terms of the geopolitical contest for zones of power against totalitarian Russia; in regard to Nazi Germany, it saved the traditional pre-war faith concerning “the values of Western civilization” held by post-war foreign-policy “wise men” by displacing the human essence of fascism into the non-Western world . . . The necessary conscience-soothing exorcism was achieved by affirming the equation of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, combined with an historical interpretation of the essential Orientalness of the Russian mentality. The basic argument is that “totalitarianism” is nothing other than traditional Oriental despotism plus modern police technology. The appearance of the first truly totalitarian state in the heart of Europe was thus an accident, explainable by the fact that the technology permitting totalitarianism was invented by Western science and was thus first accessible in the West. Moreover, Germany’s totalitarian moment is characterized by Kennan as a “relapse” into barbarism; far from

Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism    227 showing a flaw in Western culture, it proved the need for constant alertness in preserving our distinctly Western values.

A supposedly anti-racist theory reveals its racism in its implied upholding of “Western values,” a distinctly fascistic, colonial ideal. As “European civilization” faces an existential threat of “barbarism,” it tightens its ranks and purges itself of all but the purest elements. According to the Orientalist worldview, Russians have only been able to masquerade as White due to their frequent contact with Europe. However, once the veil is lifted, an essentially Oriental mind is revealed. Pietz (1988) again writes: History—specifically the pre-modern geopolitics of the Eurasian “ecumene” which produced the “Russian-Asiatic world”—explains the Oriental essence of the Russian mind. This mentality is distinguished by its ability, after centuries of direct contact with Europe, to appear civilized and to use this facade of civility for its own barbaric ends.

Not only was Cold War discourse anti-communist; it, in effect was also deeply racist, Orientalist, and provided cover for Nazi terror and its colonial origins. While Russians may have enjoyed conditional Whiteness under Tsarism via participation in European imperialism, this privilege was quickly revoked upon the world-historic Bolshevik revolution for its anti-colonial character. The facade of Whiteness evaporated, and all that was left was Oriental despotism, or so the racists argue. On the one side there is Bolshevism, national liberation, and revolution; on the other, Nazism, colonialism, and imperial conquest. To reject the former is to provide tacit support for the later. RUSSIAN “EXCEPTIONALISM” AND EUROCENTRISM A Eurocentric view of history asserts that, while Europe exists as a dynamic, linearly progressing bastion of “civilization,” the “uncivilized” world (Africa, Latin America, Asia, and other places) is static and dormant. The “uncivilized” people have no history, existing as a feature of nature itself rather than as an active agent within it. This teleological worldview attempts to measure all social formations by the standard of the development of industrial capitalism that took place in Europe. Of course, it sidelines the fact that Western Europe developed the way it did precisely because of colonialism and genocide enacted on the rest of the world. Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in their earlier works, fell into this trap with the concept of an Asiatic mode of production separate from the slave, feudal, and capitalist modes of production as they developed in

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Europe. This idea is based on an understanding of Georg Hegel’s concept of The Oriental Realm. Marx (1857) outlines several basic features of this supposed mode of production in Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (1857–1858): . . . as is the case in most Asiatic fundamental forms, it is quite compatible with the fact that the all-embracing unity which stands above all these small common bodies may appear as the higher or sole proprietor, the real communities only as hereditary possessors . . .  Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property, in most cases created through a combination of manufacture and agriculture within the small community which thus becomes entirely self-sustaining and contains within itself all conditions of production and surplus production. (para. 6)

This unfortunately aligns with the common racist myth that the “Orient” has a tendency towards despotism and dictatorship, which has intellectual roots dating all the way back to Aristotle. Not only was this concept for the most part dropped by Marx and Engels, but Samir Amin (a Marxist) has theorized a “tributary mode of production” that encapsulates both European feudalism and economic systems based on land ownership in east Asia. However, the “left” has latched onto this “exceptionalism” for the East, continuing to characterize Russia as a timeless, supernatural social formation of Oriental despotism. The Soviet Union, formed on the basis of the Russian Revolution of 1917, was quickly denounced by left communists as nonsocialist, especially under Stalin. However, these theorists were unable to argue that the USSR was a capitalist formation in the traditional sense, because it clearly functioned like no capitalist society to ever have existed. Thus, “left” detractors of the Soviet Union resorted to creating ad hoc economic categories much like the way Asiatic mode of production was used to characterized the “exceptional” nature of the “Orient.” Raya Dunayevskaya (1946) characterized Soviet Russia’s economy as “state capitalism”: Since under the specific Russian state capitalism legal title to the means of production as well as the competitive market for such means have been abolished, how is appropriation achieved? Inasmuch as private property in the means of production has been abolished in Russia, it is a deviation from the juridical concept to permit accumulation within any enterprise since the state aims to increase only “national capital.” Nevertheless, with the establishment of ‘ruble control’, enterprises were permitted to accumulate internally . . . 

Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism    229 The Stalinist Constitution of 1936 recognized the intelligentsia as a special “group,” distinct from workers and peasants. With this juridical acknowledgement of the existence of a new ruling class went the guarantee of the protection of state property from “thieves and misappropriatiors.” (p. 313)

Compare this with Marx’s statement above that “Oriental despotism therefore appears to lead to a legal absence of property”; compare “national capital” and “new ruling class” with “the higher or sole proprietor.” The Asiatic mode of production makes a reappearance, in so many words. Again, the despots of the Orient have achieved the impossible: capitalism without capital, and a ruling class with no legal property rights. Stalinist totalitarianism thus became the latest iteration of Oriental despotism. Hillel Ticktin (“What Was the USSR?” 1998) called the Soviet Union’s economy a “non-mode of production”; yet again, Asiatic production exists outside of history, time, and space. It is a static, non-society without a mode of production and subsequently a political and cultural life. Italian “socialist” Bruno Rizzi (1939) and later a faction of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) characterized the Soviet Union’s economy not as socialist but rather as “bureaucratic collectivist”: In the USSR the ‘nationalisation’ of property came in one swoop following the October revolution, but, since the concept of nationalisation has no scientific validity in Russia, in effect this was the generalisation in one swoop of state capitalism and its foster brother statism. What has happened to the economy? Has it become socialist? No, says Trotsky. Is it still capitalist? No, we say, precisely because of the law of the transformation of quantity into quality; it is Bureaucratic Collectivism. (Chapter 6, para. 4)

Dunayevskaya, Ticktin, and Rizzi thus all latched onto the idea of an Asiatic mode of production. An Oriental despot (Stalin) has appropriated the (collective) means of production through totalitarian rule, absent legal property ownership. This application of the so-called Asiatic mode of production to the Soviet Union was put forth even more explicitly by Karl August Wittfogel in Oriental Despotism, in which he “observed a transition from the old despotic governments to a new form of despotism represented by communist Russia, which could be considered as a new version of industrial-bureaucratic despotism” (Minuti, 2012, para. 34). The ghost of Oriental despotism and the Asiatic mode of production made an appearance yet again with the theory of Soviet “social-imperialism,” which Albert Szymanski argued against. This charge that the Soviet Union was “socialist in words, imperialist in deeds” was first asserted by the Communist Party of China, and subsequently taken up by the Party of Labour of Albania and numerous U.S. Maoist groups in the New Communist Movement. Yet again, the Slavic despots have achieved the impossible: an

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imperialist version of socialism, and yet another (imperialist) ruling class with no legal property rights. As left communists and U.S. Maoists alike have noted, legal property relations are secondary to productive relations, which underlie the economic life of a given society. Of course this is true; but to assert that the two can be wholly incongruent is an exercise in metaphysics. In this model, the superstructure has a life wholly independent from the base; form has transcended content. In The ‘State Capitalist’ and ‘Bureaucratic Exploitative’ Interpretations of the Soviet Social Formation: A Critique, David Laibman (1978) produces an incisive critique of all of these trends: The power of capital, then is exercised through a heterogeneity of institutional structures no one of which, taken in isolation, manifests that function . . . Adequate comprehension of capitalism requires this complex structuring of concepts in which the capitalist function is determinant at the level of production relations but is simultaneously constituted by the proximate forms in which it is manifested. This approach must be contrasted with rationalist methodology of ideal types which focuses on “essences” or “deep structures” as uniquely “real” and the proximate forms as mere illustrations “at a lower level of abstraction” No more than the Hegelian Absolute Idea can the capital concept exist in disembodied form. Capital is not reducible to its form of existence; but neither is it separable from these forms . . .  Capitalist production relations, and in particular the existence of a capitalist class or bourgeoisie, are not like a disembodied spirit that can inhabit one or another juridical form—i.e., state vs. private property—at will. As an important application of the dialectic of the production relations as a complex structure, one can neither merge the property form and the “social process of appropriation” and mistake the form for the real relation itself; nor separate them, and speak of the underlying class relation as one of real “appropriation” etc., without explaining the source and reproduction of the power appropriate.” (p. 13–14)

In other words, Marxist dialectics allow us to understand the underlying relations of production in a given society through the really existing institutions and mechanisms that facilitate and reproduce them. Capitalism cannot persist without means by which to maintain and reproduce the accumulation of capital. Capitalism is not some “inner essence” that invisibly persists in the DNA of a given society; it is a real process involving real actors and real mechanisms and institutions. Legal institutions are not identical with capitalist exploitation as such but they cannot be an isolated phenomenon wholly separate from the economic system of a given society. Laibman aptly locates these critiques not in Marxism, but in Hegelianism, a philosophy of teleology, rationalism, and Eurocentrism. The Asiatic mode

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of production and the ruling class without legal property rights are wholly alien to Marxism. While those who call themselves Marxists have continuously put forth the arguments of Dunayevskaya and Rizzi as it applies to Russia, their arguments are both anti-Marxist and Orientalist in essence. ”RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM”? It is within this intellectual tradition that the new thesis emerges: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has developed into a modern imperialist power, some claim even in the Leninist sense. While the form (Stalinist totalitarianism) is long gone, the content (Russian despotism) has lingered on. Tsarism, Stalinism, and Putinism are each manifestations of Oriental despotism, an inherent feature of the ahistorical Slav. It would be quite difficult to argue that Russian Federation can be characterized as an imperialist power in the Leninist sense. Economic arguments aside, the “Russian imperialism” thesis cannot be separated from the theses above: state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, and the Asiatic mode of production. If the Russian Federation, boasting an economy based on the export of raw materials, constitutes an imperialist power, it would be the strangest one to ever exist. Yet again, the Slavs have transcended reality: a ruling class without legal property ownership, capitalism without capital, socialism with imperialism; and now, imperialism without finance capital. Clearly, at least among the liberal left, arguments about “Russian imperialism” are based much more on racist fears and imperial chauvinism than a sober appraisal of Russia’s economic situation. The liberal media projects constant fear about Russian encroachment onto NATO territories, and has blasted Russia’s air assistance to the Syrian government. They have also condemned Russian “interference” in Crimea and the Donbass, despite the high concentration of ethnic Russians in these territories and Crimea’s landslide vote to join Russia. The spectre of “Oriental Despotism” has returned to Europe, the United States, and the rest of the “free world,” hellbent on undermining Aryan civilization. All of this is very ironic, given that NATO has been quietly deploying thousands of troops to the Russian border in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Estonia for months now; and given that a far-right, NATO-backed military junta rules over Ukraine, persecuting ethnic minorities such as Jews, Romani, and Russians. This continuous uptick in anti-Russian hysteria has most recently manifested in the charges by the Democratic Party and its supporters that in fact Donald Trump is a puppet of the Kremlin in its plot to expand its Empire’s influences across the globe.

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THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND IMPERIAL DECAY In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx (1852) famously noted: Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. (para. 1)

If Cold War conspiracies were a tragedy, the contemporary anti-Russian conspiracies of the Democratic Party are a farce. It is obvious, and thus has been widely noted, that the smear campaign against Russia reeks of McCarthyism and Cold War hysteria. This hysteria is in no way limited to the Democratic Party elite. Rachel Maddow spent over half of March talking about Russia. Newt Gingrich has even called for the establishment of a new House Un-American Activities Committee (Krieg, 2016). The bourgeois TV news has gone as far as to “accidentally” refer to the Russian Federation as the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union has been gone for over 25 years, the spectre of “Asiatic despotism” continues to haunt the paranoid Western powers. Yet again, Arendt-esque Cold War discourse comes into play, this time perhaps through an even more openly Orientalist form. U.S. society cannot come to terms with the fact that President Donald Trump is a direct product of centuries of settler-colonialism and White supremacy. So, it blames Russia for “infecting” “American culture” with Asiatic despotism, this time in the form of Putinism. The racist logic of this argument is no different than Arendt’s and the original Cold War fear-mongering. Therein lies the basis for re-asserting “American values,” which in itself constitutes an ideology of White supremacist terror. The red scare is being replayed through a broken projector; while the original McCarthyist witch hunts were an ascendant imperialist power’s expression of fear of socialism, today’s Russophobia is the desperate sigh of U.S. imperialism in utter decay. Russia is threatening to U.S. imperial interests because the United States is failing. Recent U.S. imperial conquests, especially in Syria, have been largely unsuccessful, and all the oppressed of the world continue to fight as the economic and political crisis of imperialism only deepens. REFERENCES Arendt, H. (1973). The origins of totalitarianism. Orlando, FL: Harvest Book. Dunayevskaya, R. (1946). The nature of the Russian economy. The New International, 12(10). Hitler, A. (1925). Mein Kampf. Munich, Germany: Franz Eher Nachfolger.

Russophobia and the Logic of Imperialism    233 Krieg, G. (2016, June 14). Newt Gingrich wants new house un-American activities committee. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/14/politics/newt-gingrich-house-un-american-activities-committee/index.html Laibman, D. (1978). The “state capitalist” and “bureaucratic-exploitative” interpretations of the soviet social formation: A critique. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.1177/048661347801000402. Losurdo, D. (2015). War and revolution: Rethinking the twentieth century. London, England: Verso Books. Marx, K. (1852). The eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Retrieved from https:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ Marx, K. (1857). Pre-capitalist economic formations (J. Cohen, Trans., 1964). Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ index.htm Minuti, R. (2012). Oriental despotism. Retrieved from http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/ backgrounds/european-encounters/rolando-minuti-oriental-despotism Pietz Pietz, W. (1988). The post-colonialism of cold war discourses. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/pdfy-llWfc0Y5NKFMfEtO Rizzi, B. (1939). The bureaucratisation of the world. Retrieved from https://www. marxists.org/archive/rizzi/bureaucratisation/index.htm Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Stein, G. H. (1984). The Waffen SS: Hitler’s elite guard at war, 1939–1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. What Was the USSR? Part II: Russia as a Non-Mode of Production. (1998). Retrieved from http://libcom.org/library/what-was-ussr-part-2-hillel-ticktin-aufheben

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CHAPTER 22

THE QUESTION OF HIERARCHY An Interview With Colin Jenkins Brenan Daniels

This is a recent email interview I did with Hampton Institute founder and social economics department chair, Colin Jenkins, on the nature and problems with hierarchical structures, which he discusses in his article entitled “Deconstructing Hierarchies: On Contrived Leadership and Arbitrary Positions of Power” (Jenkins, 2017). Some people would argue that hierarchies are needed as people aren’t really capable of leading themselves or that if they did, we wouldn’t have a stable modern society. What is your response to that? First, I would ask where this “stable modern society” is? For a majority of the world’s population, life is incredibly unstable. For many, life is dire. Even in a so-called “advanced” society like the U.S., tens of millions of people suffer from homelessness, food insecurity, joblessness, a lack of reliable and affordable health care, and with no means to feed and clothe their children. Tens of millions must rely on government assistance. Tens of millions do not The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 235–244 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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receive adequate education. Tens of millions live paycheck-to-paycheck and can’t pay their bills. And millions are terrorized by police forces and government agents in their own neighborhoods. Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, if any, and studies have estimated that more than half of all working Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless. And even those who appear to be getting by just fine are actually buried in debt, with credit card debt averaging $16,000 per household, mortgage and car payments that are barely doable, and student loan debt averaging at $49,000 per borrower, many of whom are in no position to ever pay that back. Our collective existence, despite a general appearance of comfort, is extremely fragile. And this economic reality doesn’t even begin to touch on the compounded social realities lived by historically marginalized sections of the working class—people of color, women, immigrants, etcetera. The U.S. is a ticking time bomb on the verge of exploding at any moment. Stability is a mirage. Second, the idea that “people aren’t capable of leading themselves” stems from a need to maintain fundamentally unequal societies where a very small percentage of the population controls most of the wealth and power. This has become part of the dominant ideology of most of the modern world. Because, quite simply, when a very small percentage of a particular population controls everything, there must be various ways to justify and enforce this control. One way is through brute force or the threat of such force, which the modern nation-state holds a monopoly on. This is accomplished through the mere construction of a criminal justice system that has laws and ways of enforcing those laws. Over time, these laws become equated with some vague form of morality that is not questioned by most. You see the effects of this everywhere. For instance, when people try to condemn political struggles for doing things that are “illegal,” they have subconsciously bought into the idea that written laws which have been drawn up by millionaire politicians, who are directly influenced by billionaires, should be revered as some sort of moral code. In reality, many of these laws are constructed to keep our extremely unequal society intact, and are directly tied to protecting those who own this illegitimate wealth and power. They are designed to keep most of us powerless and stuck in our increasingly precarious lives. Under such a society, a person who does not have access to food for themselves or their family is punished for taking food. A person who is homeless is punished for squatting in an abandoned building. A person who does not have medical care is punished (financially, if not criminally) for seeking medical attention. So on and so on . . . and all of this takes place in a very strict hierarchical arrangement where the appearance of “stability” remains at the forefront. It’s an inherently unjust arrangement for so many, and the threat of force is constantly held over our heads to maintain this façade of stability.

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Another way to justify and enforce this control is through what Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci referred to as “cultural hegemony,” or dominant culture. Ruling classes throughout history have relied on both formal and informal channels to mold a dominant culture (ideology) that supports their rule. This can be established through a formal education system, through media sources, through organized religion and churches, etcetera. Under capitalism, this doesn’t have to be done in a conspiratorial kind of way because the basic inequities stemming from the economic system create a sociopolitical structure that mimics and protects these inequities through social, cultural, political, and “legal” avenues. One of the results of this is a widespread, conditioned belief that we are not capable of caring for ourselves, our families, and our communities; and thus need so-called “extraordinary” people (politicians) to do this for us. It is a lie. In a social sense, why do you think that social hierarchies and larger societal norms still reign when we don’t seem to need them anymore? (Social norms were important in the early days of humanity as if one wasn’t part of the group, they often wouldn’t survive, but now it is rather easy to flourish alone or find people who you link with.) Social hierarchies still exist because they are a natural extension from the more tangible/structural economic hierarchy. The dominant culture in this type of society needs such social norms. The Marxist theory of base and superstructure is useful in this regard. A materialist conception of history tells us that society is constructed on an economic base, or is based on the modes of production, because it is this fundamental arrangement that ultimately determines how people fulfill their basic needs. Everything else builds off of that arrangement. In a capitalist system, a large majority of the population is forced to rely on wage labor. This is an incredibly fragile and unstable existence because we are completely dependant on a privileged minority to provide us with jobs and living wages, things that capitalism inherently cannot provide to all. So, most of us are set up for failure from birth. This is why Frederick Douglass [1886] recognized that a “slavery of wages [is] only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery” [p. 13–14]. Hence, Marx’s focus on exploitation and alienation. This structural oppression created by capitalism explains the need for a welfare state, because societal unrest would be inevitable without the state supplementing these inherent and widespread inequities. So, according to this analysis, there is a superstructure that builds from this unequal base, and this includes social, cultural, and political realities. Naturally, the superstructure mimics the base, while it also helps to maintain it. In doing so, these corollary developments tend to take on the same characteristics as the base, which, as already noted, consists of a high degree of alienation and exploitation. This basically means that social systems stemming from an inherently exploitative base tend to become exploitative

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themselves. One of the best examples of this is White supremacy, which is an artificial system of valuing human worth based on skin color. White supremacy is a modern cultural phenomenon that extends throughout the superstructure in both overt and undetected or insidious ways. And it is a valuable tool used by the capitalist/ruling class to create division within the working-class majority. This is why Malcolm X [1965] once proclaimed that “you can’t have capitalism without racism” [p. 217]. Other cultural phenomena like patriarchy and homophobia work the same way. These things easily catch on within the working class because they are a source of empowerment for an otherwise powerless group. We’re all economically disenfranchised, but poor and working-class White men can still grasp on to Whiteness, “manliness,” misogyny, and homophobia as sources of power and social dominance. You see this psyche develop not only in White people, but also throughout the working class. Some Black men, despite their own intense structural oppression, will become misogynistic or homophobic as a source of empowerment. A particular immigrant community will dehumanize another immigrant community as a source of empowerment. American workers across the board will target and dehumanize immigrants. So on and so on. What we’re seeing here is the formation of social hierarchies within the working class, all of which mimic the hierarchy created by the economic base. Tragically, this perceived power over others within the working class is easily accessible, and it’s a cheap and toxic source of empowerment. But it is a good thing for the capitalist class, as it keeps working-class angst directed within its own ranks and away from the real culprits—the rich. It’s the ultimate distraction. On a related note, these social hierarchies are worthy of examination to all of us who oppose the capitalist system. When we look at developments within the superstructure, we can strategize and build liberation movements that will ultimately break them down, which will in turn allow us to build a formidable resistance against the economic base. This is why intersectionality is crucial. But intersectionality only works if it is based in a fundamentally anti-capitalist orientation. Because if we don’t approach this with the ultimate goal of attacking and destroying the economic base, it won’t matter in the end. We’ll find ourselves in the same position, only under a multicultural, multi-sex, non-gender-descript boot, as opposed to a “White, cisgender, male” boot. And this is the pitfall that identity politics fall into. Capitalism has the ability to accommodate these types of political movements by simply allowing individuals from hyper-marginalized sections of the working class to assume positions of power within these hierarchies. This approach is only about assimilation; and because of this, it only demands that that the power structure become more inclusive, not that the power structure be eliminated. Capitalism can and will seek to appease this

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kind of tokenism without changing its inherently authoritative and exploitative structure. People seem to be (at least somewhat) against hierarchy, from having an intense dislike of their bosses to wanting a level playing field. Why do we not see more people moving away or speaking out against hierarchy? So many times, it seems that the very people at the bottom are the ones who argue in favor of it. Yes, definitely. This is a form of cognitive dissonance that we all experience from time to time, and I reflect on it briefly in the piece: “. . . organizations are often able to stoke a cognitive dissonance among its workforce, which simultaneously puts forth a healthy dose of faith in the “team approach’ by day while complaining about the incompetent and overbearing bosses by night.” This particular line refers to the contradictions we feel in the workplace. The daytime mentality is one that is a product of constant conditioning, which tells us that hierarchies are needed, that we are naturally dependent on bosses, and that we would be lost without them. The nighttime mentality is more natural and will creep into our heads at times, causing us to question everything we’re conditioned to believe during the day. Daily interactions with bosses plant the seed for these realizations, as we recognize their incompetence or at the very least their lack of exceptionalism. This will inevitably bring us to consider that maybe we don’t need them, maybe we are just as (if not more) competent, that there really is no meritocracy, and that if they happened to suddenly disappear one day they probably wouldn’t be missed. This is, of course, true. We don’t need them. But the conditioning that we are subjected to in most aspects of our lives tells us otherwise, and this makes it difficult for many to realize that truth. To consider the very notion of “supervision” and “management” as anything but insulting is truly amazing, when you think about it, yet most struggle with this dissonance. And understandably so, since the conditioning is intense and begins at such a young age. This reminds me of the notion of “bullshit jobs” that David Graeber has talked about in length, and is in the process of writing a book about. His angle is more focused on working-class jobs throughout the system, but I think this same line of thinking can be applied to jobs that fill the hierarchy just for the sake of filling the hierarchy. In addition to this conditioning, there is also a mentality that becomes fairly prevalent among those who exist on the lower end of the hierarchy, and it speaks to the old adage, “if you can’t beat em, join em.” It is the mentality that creates the toadies for bullies, that creates house slaves for the master, etcetera, it forms whenever someone has been psychologically beaten into submission. These are the folks who have given themselves completely to the system, to the powers, to their bosses, and overseers because,

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quite frankly, they simply have no fight in them, no self-esteem, and no dignity left. They are the first to dish the dirt to the bosses, the first to scab during a strike, the first to call the police on their neighbor, the first to serve the powerful with whatever is needed, and always at the sake of their class peers on the lower end of the hierarchy. These folks will always argue in favor of hierarchy, despite their lowly position in it, because they’ve decided that it’s easier to accept it, support it, and invest in it, rather than fight it. And, in many respects, they’re right. Fighting power isn’t easy. It often has disastrous personal consequences for those who partake in it. As the Russian anarchist Sergey Nechayev [1869] wrote in the opening of his famous Catechism of a Revolutionary, “The revolutionary is a doomed man” (para. 1). There is a lot of truth to this. How do people reinforce hierarchy in their everyday lives and how can they fight back against it? I think basic daily human interactions reinforce these cultural hierarchies that the base relies on. There is an ongoing debate within the Left about the power and usefulness of language. This debate is intimately connected with things like privilege discourse, political correctness, call-out culture, and identity politics. Many leftists who are loyal to materialist analysis, and who spend a lot of time railing against post-new left discourse, minimize the importance of language. Many younger leftists, who are more inclined to intersectionality or who enter the Left through a lens of identity politics, place a premium on policing language. While I realize the dangers that are associated with this type of “post-new left discourse” (primarily when it is not based in anticapitalism), I also agree that there is something to language and how it reinforces the hierarchies that we are ultimately seeking to bring down. Dominant vernacular is rooted in dominant culture, no? If we are to believe in historical materialism and the reciprocal relationship between the base and superstructure, then it seems consistent to also believe that all of the societal norms that development within this cultural hegemony stem from this same base. Because of this, language tends to be misogynistic, homophobic, White supremacist, and classist. This is reflected in media, Hollywood, advertisement, talk radio, and sports, and as well as in our daily interactions with one another. It can be very subtle. Using the n-word reinforces White supremacy. Using the f-word reinforces homophobia. Claiming that someone has “no class” reinforces bourgeois culture. Using the term “White trash” reinforces White supremacy by implying that “trash” is defaulted as being non-White. Calling women “hoes” and “whores,” while at the same time basing their human value in attractiveness or sexuality, reinforces patriarchy. Praising someone as being “like a boss” reinforces capitalist hierarchy. Worshipping celebrities reinforces a capitalist culture that determines human value based

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in wealth, or the lack thereof. Being absorbed in consumerism reinforces a culture that determines human value on the brand of clothing or shoes one is wearing, or the kind of car they drive, or the house they live in. These types of things quite literally place varying degrees of value on human lives, thus reinforcing various forms of social hierarchy. And something as simple as language, or the ways in which we interact with one another, emboldens the power structure(s) that we as leftists seek to destroy. In what ways do you see hierarchy expanding or intensifying now that the U.S. has moved to a “service economy,” apparently in which there will be an increase in hierarchical authority, compared to when the U.S. was a manufacturing nation? How has the dismantling of unions aided (as of current) or helped to dissuade (in the past) workplace hierarchy? I am not sure the service economy will necessarily expand or intensify hierarchical arrangements in any structural sense. But you’re right in suggesting that a move away from an industrial/manufacturing economy has made workers more vulnerable and powerless within these hierarchies. Service-sector work is much more precarious, is typically low wage with very few benefits, and often does not include any kind of healthcare coverage or retirement plan. And the service-sector environment leaves workers on a virtual island, in that it doesn’t offer the same potential for collectivization as the traditional shop floor once did. Without collectivization, workers are basically powerless. The dismantling of unions went hand in hand with the offshoring of manufacturing jobs. Since the neoliberal revolution that was ushered in by Reagan, the share of workers who belong to unions in the private sector has fallen from 34% to 7%. I believe 1 in 3 public sector workers are still in unions. Overall though, union membership has plummeted in the U.S., which is a very bad thing for the working class. Under capitalism, our only leverage against capital is either (1) the government or (2) labor unions. The government is now owned by capital, and thus acts solely in its interest. So that’s effectively out of the equation. And unions have not only eroded, but many that have endured have taken on a corporate hierarchical structure themselves, where union executives are often completely out of touch with membership. Union leaders tend to be in bed with corporate politicians, an arrangement that is contradictory to the purpose of unions. We see this contradictory nature when unions routinely endorse corporate Democrats who represent capital. We see it when unions agree to nostrike clauses. We see it when so-called leadership gives concession after concession, year after year, until there’s virtually nothing left to bargain for. And we see it in this bureaucratic, corporatized union culture of today, where demands have been replaced by requests. Unions will often take reactionary stands that defy international and universal solidarity. We saw this

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recently with the AFL-CIO endorsing the Dakota Access Pipeline. You see it with police unions or prison employee unions, all of which side with capital and the social hierarchies that extend from capital, ultimately oppressing large sectors of the working class. With the erosion of authentic labor unions, we’ve become much more vulnerable to these extreme hierarchies as a whole. And without these types of unions, workers simply have no chance against the powerful interests of capital. So, yes, the degrees to which we are smothered by these hierarchies will only intensify in this environment, especially if we continue to place our hopes in the government, politicians, and corporatized labor unions. This is exactly why I’m a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, which is “one big union” that is rooted in revolutionary industrial unionism. How does your argument regarding hierarchy creating a lack of trust square with this modern idea that workplaces need to be “open areas” so that people can “bond?” That’s a good question. We read a lot about this new-age sort of workplace organization stemming from Silicon Valley, Google, Apple, etcetera. This idea that workplaces should be more carefree, less constrained. I’ve read about such experiments where workers can take naps, bring their pets to work, have access to fun activities directly in the workplace. And when you look at workplace organization in some European countries, you see that many companies have attempted to do away with traditional hierarchical structures to make workers feel more “at home” in a relaxed environment. The fact that companies are experimenting with these “open areas” confirms, at the very least, that they are aware of the archaic and inhumane nature of traditional hierarchical workplaces. This move also reflects some studies that have been done regarding productivity, which have suggested that workers are more productive in environments that are less constrictive, and that workers typically are only productive for a few hours a day. So, if anything, it’s an attempt by companies to adjust with the times and do away with old forms of organization. Unfortunately, attempts like these only tend to create more internal contradictions to capitalism. Attempting to mask the inherent nature of capitalism only goes so far. And the “open-office model” that Google became known for is not really an effort to make hierarchical structures more horizontal. It is concerned only with literal workspace, not with the ways in which the hierarchy operates on a structural level. And while it may appear to be benevolent on the surface, it often has more insidious motives. A 2014 article by Lindsey Kaufman (2014) touched on some of these issues, pointing out that “these new floor plans are ideal for maximizing a company’s space while minimizing costs,” and that “bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on employees” with less physical barriers obstructing them. Studies cited in the article suggested that these open-office experiments were

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not beneficial to workers, at least from the workers’ point of view. A study found that many workers are “frustrated by distractions” and lack of privacy, both sound and visual. And workers reported that these new floor plans did not ease interactions with colleagues, as intended, because this was never viewed as a problem to begin with. With these results in mind, it seems such attempts have been a failure. And it makes you wonder why they were attempted in the first place. Was it really to create a “friendlier” atmosphere, or was it rooted in something more sinister? Understanding the way capitalism operates, it’s safe to assume the latter. Either way, despite the motivations, the capitalist structure still remains—which means that most workers are creating massive amounts of wealth for executives and shareholders in exchange for wages and salaries that do not equal their contribution. If they make enough to lead comfortable lives, they may be more willing to overlook this structural exploitation. But it still exists. Bosses still remain, and workers are still treated as commodities, no matter how glossed over the physical workplace appears. There are still those who make more, in many cases a whole lot more, for doing much less (the pursuit of “money and idleness” that I referenced in the piece). And some who rake in large amounts of money for doing absolutely nothing, and without even stepping foot in the workplace. That is the fundamental nature of both capitalism and hierarchies. No amount of makeup can change this. What is your take on the literature and ideas surrounding employee relationship management? What do you think is the actual idea around it on a structural level? This type of literature is designed to address the inequities by essentially covering them up as best as possible. Their purpose is twofold: to teach bosses how to get the most from their workers; and to get workers to buy into a “team approach” that convinces them they’re vested in the mission in some way. This is accomplished basically through propaganda, or a conscious effort to downplay the coercive nature of this relationship. On the one end it provides bosses, supervisors, and managers with tools and tactics rooted in persuasion, to get workers to think, behave, and perceive themselves in a way that is detached as far from reality as possible. Since human beings don’t typically react well to being treated and used as tools, to be manipulated, prodded, directed, etcetera, employers find its useful to mask this reality as best as possible. So this type of literature is designed to give bosses ways to obstruct this reality. To interact with their workers in ways that mask the coercive power they wield over them. And they tend to be very successful in doing this . . . so much so that many workers truly believe they are vested in the businesses they work for, or at the very least will rep that business in a positive way to friends and family, if only to mask their shitty realities to themselves. A shitty

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reality that basically amounts to us spending most of our waking hours in a place we do not want to be in, doing something we would rather not be doing, so we can get a paycheck every few weeks, so we can pay our bills, so we can scrape out a living for another few weeks. For most of us, it’s a neverending cycle that we’ll never escape. It’s a miserable, inhumane existence where life is lived a week at a time, or 2 weeks at a time, essentially from one paycheck to the next. And the best we can hope for is to stay afloat until the next paycheck, so we can start over again. And to add insult to injury, we’re told that we “should feel lucky to even have a job.” That’s the world capitalism brings us. So this workplace literature, and the management tactics that come from it, plays into the cognitive dissonance that I mentioned earlier. On a structural level, the idea is merely to keep things churning by creating alternative realities that workers can be proud of. To use the plantation analogy, it really is a way to instill the house-slave mentality in each and every one of us. It won’t work for some, but it works well enough for most. Even those struck with this cognitive dissonance will often lean toward that which makes them feel vested, secure, proud, respected, appreciated, etcetera—even though these feeling are not consistent with reality. It is a form of coping for many, and corporate literature will certainly exploit that and drill it home. And we as workers, stuck in our miserable realities, will often accept it if it helps us cope. Because we need that paycheck. REFERENCES Breitman, G. (Ed.). (1965). Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York, NY: Grove Press. Douglass, F. (1886). Three addresses on the relations subsisting between the White and colored people of the U.S. Washington, DC: Gibson Brothers Printers. Jenkins, C. (2017, January 12). Deconstructing hierarchies: On the paradox of contrived leadership and arbitrary positions of power. Retrieved from http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/deconstructing-hierarchies.html#.XMiZxJNKgWo Kaufman, L. (2014, December 30). Google got it wrong: The open office trend is destroying the workplace. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-theopen-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/?utm_term=.86ec90150287 Nechayev, S. (1869). The revolutionary catechism. Retrieved from https://www. marxists.org/subject/anarchism/nechayev/catechism.htm

CHAPTER 23

THE WORKING CLASS, THE ELECTION, AND TRUMP An Interview With Sean Posey Brenan Daniels

Given the talk of the role of the White working class in the recent election, I decided to do an interview with Hampton’s Urban Issues Chair Sean Posey on the White working class, seeing as how he is from such an area. In it, we discuss the media, the Democratic Party’s relation to the White working class, and end with what the Left can do from here. There is constant talk of how the Democrats lost the White working class. What do you think of this narrative? It seems especially strange when the media rarely if ever brings up the working class and especially the White working class. It’s true. As the New York Times put it, “In the end, the bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength among White working-class voters fell to Mr. Trump” (Cohn, 2016b). Basically, voters in the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania allowed Trump to breech Clinton’s “blue wall” and win the election.

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But yes, it’s interesting that working class voters—White working class voters, anyway—were a significant part of the media’s presidential coverage for the first time in many years. The media’s focus on the White working class is predominantly because of Trump and the kind of campaign he chose to run. Trump honed in on what he called “forgotten Americans,” largely working class people in “flyover country,” as it’s often derisively called. Somehow Trump understood the enormous malaise that exists in wide swaths of America where local economies—and cultures—have disintegrated. He tapped a vein of populist rage and channeled it back into his campaign. It seemingly took everyone by surprise, especially the media and the political elite. It’s important to remember how concentrated the media is now—mostly on the coasts around Washington, New York City, Boston, places like that. So it comes as no surprise that many journalists are deeply puzzled by Trump’s rise. It’s far less surprising to those of us rooted in what you might call “Trump Country.” Although poorly covered by the media, White working class support buoyed Obama in 2008 and 2012. As the New York Times put it, Obama’s “key support often came in the places where you would least expect it. He did better than John Kerry and Al Gore among White voters across the Northern United States, despite exit poll results to the contrary. Over all, 34% of Mr. Obama’s voters were Whites without a college degree—larger in number than Black voters, Hispanic voters or well-educated Whites” (Cohn, 2016a). There are those that argue that those who voted for Trump are all racists/sexists? Now, it would be foolish to say that racism and sexism didn’t play a role, however, how true would you say these accusations are, being from an area that voted for Trump? As you mention, it’s foolish to discount the importance of race—and racial appeals—along with sexism. However, those who attempt to reduce Trump’s win to matters of race and gender alone are kidding themselves. Whites actually lost a net total of 700,000 jobs in the aftermath of the Great Recession— the only racial/ethnic group to experience such losses. White workers aged 25 to 54 lost nearly 6.5 million jobs during those 9 years, while Asian, Latino, and Black workers in the same age bracket gained millions of jobs. And there are now almost nine million more jobs than in November 2007. According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, during the primary, Trump won 89 of the 100 counties most affected by trade with China. And most disturbingly, life expectancy for Whites, predominantly in the working class, is actually declining. There’s nothing similar in the West to compare it to. It’s no wonder that so many found Trump’s appeals, which aside from race, centered on trade, jobs, and national and cultural renewal.

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My home state of Ohio suffered immensely after China’s entry into the WTO; that’s in addition to the deindustrialization that began in the 1970s. The inability or unwillingness of the Democrats to address the pain of the “hollowed out American Heartland,” as I call it, brought them disaster on November 8. Trump won half the union vote in Ohio. That’s unprecedented for a Republican candidate. Some would say that those who voted for Trump are getting exactly what they deserve, as they voted Republican. While understandable, isn’t that line of thinking a bit of a problem seeing as how these very same people didn’t really have any other options besides Republicans or neoliberal Democrats, both of which would have damned them? Those who say that Trump voters get what they deserve are actually feeding into the Trump movement. It’s important to understand where many of these people are coming from. Now, I’m not talking about the Alt-Right or the Klan elements, but I’d clearly place them in the minority. If we write off a huge chunk of the working class, how are we ever going to build a movement of working people? In his book, Listen, Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? Thomas Franks (2016) dissects the decades-long movement of the Democrats into the neoliberal camp. The Democratic Party is America’s left party; it’s why the party exists. Yet Democrats increasingly represent a tiny fraction of Americans, not the top 1%, but the top 10%. Unions, industrial workers, service workers, etcetera, have no place left to turn. Many ran to Trump’s campaign. Condemning those voters as completely stupid or as a “basket of deplorables” will simply give us 8 years of Donald Trump. Liberals would do much better by looking in the mirror. There seems to be something of a stereotype of poor Whites who voted for Trump as these dumb, backwards people who can’t figure out their own interests, which doesn’t seem true, as Washington Post reported in November that people voted for Trump as they saw him as vital to securing their economic interests [Itkowitz, 2016]. Seeing as how you are from an area that voted for Trump, how would you characterize the people there? The Washington Post article you mentioned gets to the heart of it. Obama actually carried Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—twice. The idea that Hillary couldn’t win these states is pretty laughable. Trump is the first Republican candidate in 30 years to be really competitive here in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, and he became competitive by running a populist campaign. By contrast, Clinton couldn’t even elucidate a reason why she wanted to be president, other than the fact that she wanted to be president. The deindustrialized communities of the Rust Belt voted for disruption. Why? They’ve clearly gained little from the status quo. Perhaps the Democrats should listen . . . 

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What are your thoughts on the attempt by Jill Stein and others to engage in a vote recount or try to pressure the electoral college to vote for Clinton? Stein’s recount effort proved to be a waste of time and resources. It represents one of several misguided efforts (such as the attempt to influence electoral voters to defy Trump) to derail the Trump Train. I see it as one more effort to avoid building a real movement for change. Say what you want about the right, but they understand how to organize and influence power. Liberals and progressives? Not so much. There is large amounts of anger and frustration at the election of Trump, however, it seems to be being put into marching and backing other Democratic candidates, some of whom such as Bernie Sanders, have said they would work with Trump. Why do you think that people are still pushing for the same old solutions, when those clearly have not worked? The Left is badly fractured and demoralized. The failure of the Democratic Party and the failure of movements such as Occupy have left many on the left confused and bewildered. For decades, communism served as the one great unifier for many leftist movements, but communism is dead. No coherent competing philosophy has emerged to counter capitalism and neoliberalism. You can see this in Europe where nationalism and right-wing populism are on the rise. The Left across the West is perplexed about how to deal with it. What is to be done? No one seems to know at this point, and we don’t have time much time left to figure it out. REFERENCES Cohn, N. (2016a, June 9). There are more White voters than people think. That’s good news for Trump. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.adn. com/alaska-news/nation-world/2016/06/09/auto-draft-8/ Cohn, N. (2016b, November 9). Why Trump won: Working-class Whites. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/upshot/ why-trump-won-working-class-whites.html Frank, T. (2016). Listen, liberal: Whatever happened to the party of the people. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Itkowitz, C. (2016, November 2). What is this election missing? Empathy for Trump voters. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspiredlife/wp/2016/11/02/what-is-this-election-missing-empathy-for-trumpvoters/?utm_term=.891cf4c55bd8

PART VI RACE AND ETHNICITY

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CHAPTER 24

SALT IN THE WOUNDED KNEE Psychopathy in the Commemoration of Genocide Sonasha Braxton

Hannibal Lecter, Jason Voorhees, Norman Bates. What do these people have in common? They tormented us in our dreams. There was something particularly callous in the way that they engaged in their homicidal acts, which left us shuddering. Cold, calculated, without remorse or feeling, we might casually call them psychopathic. But what actually is psychopathy? Psychopathy assessed with the PCL-R 9 includes a grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for actions.1 Does anything about the history of the United States, more specifically its celebration of holidays, makes sense within the context of this symptomology? While we could most certainly name quite a few, let us take for example just two holidays, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day. To understand how the celebration of each of these holidays resembles psychopathy, then we must have a clear comprehension of the history and reason for celebration.

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COLUMBUS DAY The Myth In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue He had three ships and left from Spain He sailed through sunshine, wind, and rain . . .  Ninety sailors were on board; Some men worked while others snored . . .  Day after day they looked for land; They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand. October 12 their dream came true, You never saw a happier crew! “Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried; His heart was filled with joyful pride. But “India” the land was not; It was the Bahamas, and it was hot. The Arakawa natives were very nice; They gave the sailors food and spice. Columbus sailed on to find some gold To bring back home, as he’d been told. He made the trip again and again, Trading gold to bring to Spain. The first American? No, not quite. But Columbus was brave, and he was bright.2 EXCLUSIONARY DETAILING Many of us may be familiar with this poem. I remember learning it at some point in my actually quite progressive elementary school. Columbus’s first voyage had about 90 men. Some men probably snored. It is possible they dreamed of sand. It is more than likely they were quite happy when they reached land. They were not in India. The Indigenous Arawak population gave them gifts and Columbus did come back. I deny none of the veracity of the poem. But I do have questions, like why it exists. Why is it taught to children in an educative setting? While it is only a children’s rhyme, it is the omissions and the implied “happily ever after” that beyond problematic, are in fact quite insidious. Almost immediately after meeting the “very nice” Arawak natives, the rhyme conveniently ends, thus implying that this is the conclusion, when it most certainly is not. It is selective, exclusionary detailing, where the most important facts simply are not there. One might argue

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that a children’s rhyme should not include a story about mass murder, and therefore the rhyme appropriate as is. To this I would reply that there should be no children’s rhymes about mass murderers. For those of us who best understand the deplorability of such when compared to the Jewish experience, allow me to ask, were you ever taught a delightful ditty about Hitler in primary school, which talked about his mustache, what he dreamed about, and how smart he was, and then conveniently left out the Holocaust? A TRUTH In Columbus and his crew’s multiple interactions with the Indigenous People, the word “discovery,” while now admittedly less widely circulated, is still used erroneously in describing Columbus’s encounters with several Caribbean islands, and countries in Central America. Columbus never saw the present day United States. He embarked on four different voyages while looking for the “East Indies,” in search of King Solomon’s gold mines, riches, and a route to India. By accident, he stumbled upon the Bahamas, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, and parts of North Eastern Central America. Much of what we know about the atrocities Columbus committed against the Indigenous Arawak/Taino populations was documented by Bartolome de Las Casas, a Spanish Historian and Dominican Friar in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Take for example the following quotes: The Christians with their horses and swords and lances, began to slaughter and practice strange cruelty among [the Arawak]. They penetrated into the country and spared neither children nor the aged, nor pregnant women, nor those in child labour, all of whom they ran through the body and lacerated as though they were assaulting so many lambs herded in their sheepfold.3 In this Kingdom or (I’m certain) in some Province of New Spain, A Spaniard Hunting and intent on his game, phancyed that his Beagles wanted food; and to supply their hunger snatcht a young little Babe from the Mothers breast, cutting off his Arms and Legs, cast a part of them to every Dog, which they having devour’d, he threw the remainder of the Body to them.4 [The Spaniards] made bets as to who would slit a man in two or cut off his head at one blow: or they opened up his bowels. They tore the babes from their mother’s breast by their feet and dashed their heads against the rocks . . . They “spitted” the bodies of other babes, together with their mothers on their swords . . . They made a gallows just high enough for the feet to nearly touch the ground . . . they put wood underneath and with fire, they burned the Indians alive.5

254    S. BRAXTON In one incident, a member of Columbus’s crew “drew his sword. Then the whole hundred drew theirs and began to rip open the bellies, to cut and kill a group of Taino . . . roasted them, cut off their hands and burned them alive.6 [the Spanish] rode the backs of the Indians as if they were in a hurry, “and they” thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.

As if this were not enough, rape too was a common occurrence. In 1493, Columbus had already began rewarding members of his crew with Arawak/Taino women to rape. This was not simply confined to women, but extended to pre-pubescent girls. In Columbus’s own words he stated “. . . girls . . . from 9–10 . . . are . . . in demand.”7 In one single day, de Las Casas saw Columbus’s soldiers “dismember, behead or rape 3,000 natives.” It is clear that the Arawak/Taino population were not considered sufficiently human to be treated as such. And distant from the eyes of the crown, no one policed Columbus nor his crew’s despicable moral engagement with the people he miraculously discovered and subsequently made extinct. THE TRIBUTE AND ENCOMIENDA SYSTEMS In 1495 Columbus created the tribute system in Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Hispaniola). Columbus at this time, still seeking the source of gold that he had not yet managed to find, implemented a system in which noncompliance, resistance, or inability to produce the expected results, bore the consequence of torture and capital punishment. According to Ferdinand Columbus, Columbus’s son, “[The Indians] all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic Sovereigns every three months, as follows: In the Cibao, where the gold mines were located, every person of 14 years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk’s bell of gold dust; all others were each to pay 25 pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment. Any Indian found without such a token was to be punished.”8 The punishment was that those who did not provide sufficient gold every three months had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. Columbus had grossly overestimated the amount of gold that existed, and it soon became clear that he had to exploit the Arawak/Taino by other means in order to reap profit. By then over 10,000 Arawak/Taino had been killed this way. Thus the encomienda system was created around the time of Columbus’s third voyage. There are a variety of arguments which examine if the encomienda system was actually slavery. These become important because this distinction contributed directly to the total extinction of the Arawak/Taino population;

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encomienderos did not own the Arawak/Taino, so they could not be bought or sold. The encomiendas were not inheritable by subsequent generations. And the Indigenous populations could not be moved from one geographical location to another.9 Because the Arawak/Taino were not inheritable under the encomienda system, there was no impetus for the conquistadors to keep the Indigenous people alive. If the Arawak/Taino attempted to escape, they were hunted and killed. Thus the system sought to regulate Indigenous labor and behavior, in order to profit the conquistadors. Under the encomienda system, encomienderos received grants of a number of Arawak/Taino, from whom they could exact “tribute” in the form of gold or labor. In turn, the benevolent encomienderos were supposed to “protect” the physical bodies of the Indigenous population on the very land they had stolen from them, as well as “protect” their immortal souls by Christianizing them. This was a lose–lose for the Indigenous people who in an exchange under duress, gained the Bible; and lost their land, many spiritual concepts, language, history, and lives. Another untold story is that of the Indigenous resistance. Even when aspects of the true history of Columbus’s genocide are told, the narrative is one written in the passive voice, in which Indigenous people, are not the agents, rather the objects, and one which excludes their narratives of resistance and survival. The Arawak/Taino fought back frequently in multiple uprisings and even the “Indian wars” on Hispaniola. However, the conquistadors had the advantage of “advanced” weaponry. The conquistadors deterred future uprisings by torturing and killing prisoners of war in the way de Las Casas described. This was by no means unfamiliar to the conquistadors as the exact same system had been used against the Black Moors in Spain. SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM Columbus, who had already been engaged in slave trade on the West African coast years prior, familiar with systemic dehumanization and the encomienda system’s success against the Moors in Spain, became one the most “successful” European slave traders in the Americas. The Spanish, under the leadership of Columbus, selected 500 Arawak/Taino to be sent to Spain as enslaved people (of whom less than half survived the journey). In 1493 there were approximately eight million Arawak/Taino. The disease that the conquistadors brought with them, combined with the destruction of the ecosystem by European livestock and rodents and the intentional systematic genocide of the Arawak/Taino people resulted in a population of 100,000 remaining by 1504.

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Having nearly totally depleted the Arawak/Taino population, and the conquistadors unwilling to do the work themselves, Columbus continued to look for an alternative workforce to exploit in the gold and silver mines and in agriculture. The “protector of the Indians” Bartolome de Las Casas initially supported the idea that African enslaved people be used to replace the massacred Arawak/Taino. Columbus had created the perfect model for other Europeans who were fast on his heels to guarantee their own wealth in the “New World.” The same method of dehumanizing, destroying, murdering, and enslaving Arawak/Taino was used with the enslaved African population. The encomienda system was done away with and the transatlantic slavery system erected in its place. Capitalism built on the backs of Arawak/Taino and African populations became a leading source of Spain’s wealth for centuries. By 1555, not a single Arawak/Taino remained. HOW IT BECAME A HOLIDAY In 1828 Washington Irving, perhaps best known for his fictional, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, with the same imaginative zest, constructed a purely fictitious account of Christopher Columbus, in A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. In the book, Columbus was a brave and benevolent leader who treated the Arawak/Taino with respect, kindness, and dignity. This book was responsible for much of the myth-making around who Columbus was, and the ever-present invented version of the man and his legacy. In 1892, president Benjamin Harrison established the day as one to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the Bahamas to spite the British. And in the 1890s large swells of Italian immigrants, who at the time were facing ethnic discrimination in the United States, held tightly to and propagated the image of the great Italian Columbus who had “discovered America” and used it as a way to ease their integration into the United States. By 1972, President Nixon, well known for his incredibly honest and scrupulous behavior, made it a holiday. THANKSGIVING The Myth One hundred two passengers on the ship, Sixty-five days was a very long trip. ’Twas November 11 when there was a shout. “Land ho! We’ve made it!” a voice yelled out. Their very first winter was cold and was gray.

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The Pilgrims worked hard in the new land each day. People got sick and some even died. Still others continued to work side by side. To the Pilgrims, Squanto was a teacher and friend. He helped them from sunrise until each day’s end. He told them to plant corn in rows long and narrow. He taught them to hunt with a bow and an arrow. When the leaves once again turned gold in the fall, Enough food for the winter was stored up for all. The Pilgrims felt joy they wanted to share. They wanted their Indian friends to be there. There were tables piled high with fish and with meat. Vegetables, fruits, and good things to eat. The Pilgrims gave thanks for all that they had. Pilgrims and Indians together were glad. ANOTHER TRUTH Like Irving’s account of Columbus, this poem goes beyond exclusionary detailing and is almost pure invention. We can acquiesce certain details like the date, the coldness of the winter, and Squanto’s teaching the Pilgrims how to plan corn. But Squanto’s relationship to the Pilgrims, how Thanksgiving came about, and most certainly the idea that the “Indians” were somehow “glad” is pure fallacy. Prior to the Pilgrims’ arrival John Smith and the colony at Jamestown had already set an early precedent for the Indigenous encounter. In summation, the English colonists who arrived in the United States, were always wholly unprepared for the harsh conditions they would find upon arrival, and in their times of desperation, reverted to animalistic means of survival, including cannibalism. Captain John Smith wrote, “So great was our famine that a savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and ate him; and so did divers ones another boiled and stewed with herbs. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her and had eaten part of her.”10 For the Pilgrims in particular, after a series of successions of the throne, feeling that their religious beliefs were resulting in persecution, and seeking potential wealth and a fresh start in the “New World,” they left South Hampton, England in the Mayflower with a total of 102 people. After about two months the ship landed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. On December 16, 1920, according to the dark humor of Will Rogers, the Pilgrims “fell upon their knees . . . then fell upon the aborigines.”11 The Pilgrims, unused to the harsh winter, incapable of finding food on their own, with little idea how to engage in agriculture, lost about half of their population. At that time, the Pilgrims

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were half-crazed from loss, grief, hunger, and their unpredictable and consistent deaths. George Thorpe, wrote a first-hand account of what he witnessed, stating “more do die here of the disease of the mind than of the body.”12 Enter Squanto (Tisquantum), whose existence is highly contested. If and when the “friendly savage” appeared, he was not seen as a teacher and friend but rather a clear sign of God’s deliverance, as Squanto was a baptized, educated, English-speaking Christian. What more lucid sign of God’s favor? Squanto, who had been formerly enslaved by John Smith’s men was able to escape to England and return to the U.S. to find most of his tribe had been wiped out by the Plague. Members of the Pokaoket and other tribes, having lived in the area over 10,000 years were also able to communicate with the Europeans as they had already had interactions with European fishermen. They taught the colonists how to plant and where to hunt fish and beaver. In Fall of 1621, Governor Bradford of Massachusetts issued a proclamation calling for a three-day feast to commemorate the first harvest and survival throughout the winter, to which the Wampanoag were invited in order to negotiate a treaty that would secure the lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims and to be placated to ensure the Pilgrims’ survival.13 Perhaps it was a feast in the name of brotherhood, but with dual and duplicitous intentions. More ships came. The Pilgrim settlement expanded exponentially. European-borne diseases spread rampantly through the Indigenous population, killing them off with precision. There were multiple tribes living in the area, each with particular alliances with one another. As tribes engaged in numerous alliances with the Pilgrims, relations were ruptured amongst the other Indigenous American tribes living in the area, and power differentials substantially altered. In 1637, when the first, officially proclaimed “Thanksgiving” took place another event was actually celebrated. At that feast, the New England colonists celebrated their massacre of the Pequots in the Connecticut Valley. William B. Newell, a Penobscot Indian and former chairman of the Anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, says that the first official Thanksgiving Day celebrated the massacre of 700 Indian men, women, and children during their annual Green Corn Dance.14 William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the chroniclers described it in the following detail: Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire . . . horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory. 15

Once the Pilgrims had become self-sufficient, their reliance on the Indigenous population dwindled. In 1675, continued aggression by the European

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invaders led to King Phillip’s war, resulting in the massacre of over 3,000 Indigenous people and about 1,000 Pilgrims. At the end of the conflict most of the surviving Indigenous population were either hung, burned, killed, or sold into slavery in the Carolinas. The enslavement of Indigenous people was highly successful, but raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa to enslave Africans and sell to the Southern colonies proved even more successful, and thus perpetuated the trade of enslaved Africans and their uncelebrated Holocaust.16 While in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, it had already been celebrated annually for centuries. Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango sums up what Thanksgiving celebration is quite nicely, describing it as “a holiday celebrating the beginning of the almost total extermination of an entire race of people, commonly called “Indians” and the enslavement, continued oppression and genocide of the Afrikan, by European settlers.”17 WHITEWASHING GENOCIDE Article 2 of the The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births; (e) forcibly transferring children from one group to another group.”18 Given the history of the calculated intent of destroying in whole or in part both Indigenous and African people, there is no doubt that both of these holidays are based in historical genocide. The colonists cut off hands, fed babies to dogs, raped and sold children, and burned people alive. The Indigenous Holocaust and even embryonic stages of the African Holocaust, are the epitome of genocide. However, the truth is conveniently erased from the rhymes that are taught in class, and in its place a revisionist victor’s history, which not only scrubs away the horrendous war crimes perpetrated by the English and Spanish invaders, but takes a white paintbrush and layers it finely in a beautiful coat of glorification. In celebration, the U.S. not only honors genocide, but its literal whitewashing as well. COLONIZATION OF NARRATIVE The idea that we live in a post-colonial society, is perhaps as ridiculous as the thought that we live in a post-racial society. We cannot separate the repercussions and systemic infrastructure built as a result of the exploitative nature of the European encounter, from colonialism itself. Colonialism is a

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dynamic process, not simply a static moment in time that has now passed. And just as colonialism exists as the exploitation and subsequent domination of a people, it is just as assuredly a domination of history and narrative. To the victor goes the spoils and the rights for the victor to write history however he likes. The loss of ownership of one’s own narrative, a narrative of genocide and resistance, especially in favor of one that honors the sordid actions of the victor’s in triumph over the defeated, is surely salt in the wound of an already grotesque injury. The narrative represents an interactive relationship between the teller and the listener. The teller (dominant U.S. culture) exercises its power over the controlled narrative and to some extent the audience, by legitimizing (a) its right to tell the story and (b) the truthfulness of the narrative.19 The colonization of the Indigenous and African destruction and resistance narrative, using the fallacious “discovery narrative” thus honors manifest destiny, imperialist occupation, and dehumanization of “the other.” COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND AMERICAN IDENTITY The way in which events are remembered has particular importance, especially within the context of celebratory ritual within American (U.S.) cultural memory. Cultural memory relates to fixed points of the past . . .”whose memory is maintained through cultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutional communication (recitation, practice, observance)” called figures of memory.20 These figures of memory, the observance of celebration, Columbus and Thanksgiving poems, festivals, parades, and so on, create “islands of a completely different temporality suspended from time” which maintain preservation. The memory is not questioned, as the narrative, dominated by the conquerer, is clear. This cultural memory provides “concretion of identity or the relation to the group . . . from which a group derives an awareness of its unity and peculiarity.”21 Thus the reconstructed narrative supports the cultural memory which supports the construction of American identity and our normative self-image as independent, brave, righteous, and benevolent. This is then reinforced by the ritual celebration. Equally important are the existence of various forms of denial and silence. In response to blatant historical violence, the United States has exercised both literal and interpretive denial in collective forgetting. This manifests on a spectrum from wholesale, literal denial “that genocide never happened” to the deliberate construction of historical violence “in ways that make them appear less atrocious.”22 “Silence and forgetting also result from particular forms of presence or mention that transform potentially threatening events into transgression-denying objects.”23 This is calling genocide an “encounter” or using “meeting” to replace “massacre.” Perhaps most

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reprehensible continues to be the anti-silence, which is the commemorative glorification of genocide exercising both literal and interpretive denial. THAT COUNTRY CRAZY In the DSM-V “antisocial personality disorder” has replaced the “psychopathy” diagnosis. It provides multiple areas of dysfunction which meet the criteria for this particular psychopathology. Let’s see how the U.S. fares with respect to just the two discussed holidays: Ego-centrism; self-esteem derived from personal gain, power, or pleasure. Goalsetting based on personal gratification; The colonists (to be Americans) came to the “New World” for gold, the acquisition of a different socio-economic level, or power their religion did not allow them to exercise in England. Empathy: Lack of concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others; lack of remorse after hurting or mistreating another. The colonists exterminated millions of Indigenous people, and initiated the Indigenous and African slave trade as well as the Indigenous and African Holocausts and didn’t seem too concerned about it. Antagonism, characterized by: Manipulativeness, dishonesty, callousness and disinhibition: The colonists used the Indigenous population’s assistance for their own survival . . . then killed them. They created narratives which became holidays that destructed truth and reconstructed a collective cultural memory of benevolence as well as a cultural amnesia around the genocide. The United States continues to celebrate and commemorate these genocides annually with turkey and parades. SO WHAT . . . ? The influence of American (U.S.) culture is not always obvious. Many of us fully embrace it and many of us deliberately remove ourselves from it, denouncing citizenship, changing our last names, consider ourselves part of it solely by hyphenation, or understand ourselves as distinct from it due to lack of legal recognition of citizenship. But we cannot escape from it. We drive to work in it. We must operate in its systems. We use its currency. We breathe its air. We pay its bills. We bury our heads in work that funds it. We get lost in its distractions. We depend on its functionality for our survival. We celebrate its holidays. Yet if we think critically about why we engage

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in celebration we might consider also calling these reasons crazy, insane, pathological, and an affront to both indigeneity and humanity. The narrative of resistance exists but is rarely told. There are numerous active Global Indigenous Advocacy networks.There have been multiple Indigenous-led movements which have successfully changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day, such as in Seattle, Washington. Similarly cities and towns in the United States have adopted resolutions to change the day’s name. On October 12th, Venezuela celebrates the Day of Indigenous Resistance. Thousands march in Chile in what the people celebrate as the Day of Mapuche Resistance. The American Indian Movement (AIM) has been actively engaged in petitioning government to make Thanksgiving a day of mourning. Colonialism has evolved from slavery and smallpox blankets. It now unashamedly offers neo-liberal policies in the name of economic globalization, which continue to result in illegal acquisition of land, deprivation of resources and human casualties. And there continue to be countless examples of both armed and unarmed Indigenous resistance occurring throughout America, from Canada to the Cape Horn. Indigenous people did and are resisting occupation of their lands and transnational exploitation of resources, despite the frequent disproportional militarized response to their demands. So sitting in traffic at the Columbus Day parade, or even while we are having a huge meal with our families, let’s take a few seconds to be a little pensive. If perhaps, we are not willing to give up the perks of our day off, or if we use the celebration as a time to be with family or reflect on gratitude, we can also be curious about how we do so in a way that acknowledges that the struggle for Indigenous liberation is pulsing vigorously. We can challenge the dominant narrative, our distorted cultural memory and resultantly our own (inextricably) American identities, and we can reshape them. If indeed practices of commemoration “provide a unified sense of who we are now and project a sense of collective purpose into the future”24 then we must approach psychopathy with the intention of constructing an identity that is both principled and “sane,” and a future purpose which is directed towards being honest in this world by honoring complete truths however vicious or painful these may be. Oh yeah. Happy Thanksgiving. NOTES 1. Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised. http://www.minddisorders.com/knowledge/Hare_Psychopathy_Checklist.html 2. http://www.teachingheart.net/columbus.htm 3. Curtotti, M. (2011, February 13). Bartolome de las Casas: An early human rights worker, para. 8. Retrieved from https://beyondforeignness.org/1034

Salt in the Wounded Knee    263 4. Casas, B., & Griffin, N. (1992). A short account of the destruction of the Indies. London, England: Penguin Books. p. 22. 5. Curtotti, M. (2011, February 13). Bartolome de las Casas: An early human rights worker, para. 9. Retrieved from https://beyondforeignness.org/1034 6. Coard, M. (2015, October 9). Celebrating Columbus Day is celebrating racist genocide. The Philadelphia Tribune, para. 5. Retrieved from https://www. phillytrib.com/commentary/celebrating-columbus-day-is-celebrating-racistgenocide/article_87cab2f0-4ce7-5737-9547-009f04f791d6.html 7. Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York, NY: New Press. 8. ibid. 9. Yeager, T. J. (1995). Encomienda or Slavery? The Spanish Crown’s Choice of Labor Organization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America. The Journal of Economic History, 55(4), 842–859. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/ stable/2123819 10. The General History of Virginia Fourth Book, (1606–1625), p. 294. 11. Deloria, V. (2002). The Indian Reorganization Act: Congresses and bills. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. 12. Rogers, J. A. (1961). Africa’s gift to America: The Afro-American in the making and saving of the United States: With new supplement, Africa and its potentialities. St. Petersburg, FL: Helga Rogers. 13. http://historyofmassachusetts.org/squanto-the-former-slave/ 14. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10176871/ns/msnbc-the_ed_show/t/thanksgiving -day-time-mourn/#.Vkko7q6rQXo 15. Donald, G. (2009). Lies, damned lies, and history: A catalogue of historical errors and misunderstandings. Stroud, England: History Press. 16. Jennings, F. (1975). The invasion of America: Indians, colonialism, and the cant of conquest. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. 17. Barashango, I. (1979). Afrikan people and European holidays: A mental genocide. Silver Spring, MD: IVth Dynasty. 18. United Nations General Assembly. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html 19. De Fina, A., & Georgakopoulou, A. (2011). Narrative power, authority, and ownership. In Analyzing Narrative (pp. 125–154) [Online]. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139051255.008 20. Assman, J., & Czaplicka, J. (1995). Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. New German Critique, No. 65, Cultural History/Cultural Studies (Spring/Summer), pp. 125–133. 21. ibid. 22. Kurtiş, T., Adams, G., & Bird, M. (2010). Generosity or genocide? Identity implications of silence in American Thanksgiving commemorations. Memory, 18(2), 208–224 23. ibid. 24. ibid.

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CHAPTER 25

THE ANCESTORS, AFRICANISM, AND DEMOCRACY Nyonsuabeleah Kollue

My mother begins every important discussion with the phrase “The old people used to say . . . ,” first, for the purpose of showing respect for the ancestors, and second, to give a sense of legitimacy to the knowledge that she intends to pass on to me. However, as I have become older and more in tune with the reality of an African legacy that is equal parts beautiful and gruesome, I’ve often wondered, why is it that African peoples only seem to incorporate knowledge passed down from our ancestors into the private and domestic aspects of our lives? Why isn’t this knowledge applicable to the political and economic structures in independent African countries today? After all, the old peoples managed to establish complex trade systems, educational facilities and working governmental institutions. Some political pundits would like to credit this phenomenon to the influence of Western powers on fledgling African democracies. While I agree with this idea to some extent, I believe that the explanation put forth is too simplistic for a topic so intricate and multifarious. Therefore, in an effort to present

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 265–272 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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an exhaustive response as to why modern African nations lack the capacity to establish governmental facets that are essentially African, I have set forth an analysis of the aftermath of counter-cultural movements as it affects the power component of communication in intercultural relations between African countries and their former European colonizers. IN THE AFTERMATH OF COUNTER-CULTURAL CONFLICT Dr. Gary Weaver describes counter-cultural identity movements as a challenge of dominant culture and the refutation of traditional cultural norms.1 He references the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the hippie movement of the 1970s as perfect illustrations of counter-cultural conflict in American society. These were periods in history whereby, young, university educated Americans directly and successfully confronted the systems and institutions of racism as well as challenged the practices of modern warfare. Across the Atlantic, African countries were involved in a more intense and violent form of counter-cultural conflict. After enduring European imperialism and colonization for more than a century, African colonies began to demand the right to self-determination, a global recognition and a respect of a progressive identity that was inherently African, and a promotion of a dominant culture that celebrated Africanism. Between the late 1950s and the early 1990s, all European colonies in Africa had achieved independence. One might even venture to say that counter-cultural conflict in colonial Africa was successful because independence was achieved. However, for the purpose of this analysis, emphasis will be placed on the issues that arise after a successful counter-cultural movement. Dr. Weaver presents the theory that in the aftermath of counter-cultural identity movements, society often reverts to the established rules that existed prior to the genesis of the identity movement.2 This occurs as a result of a fear of the unknown. A successful counter-cultural identity movement opens up the window for the establishment of new societal structures and institutions. Upon the realization that they might be responsible for the creation of these new systems, members of identity movements become afraid of having to function in uncharted territories of society and more times than not, they begin to re-embrace traditional values because said values provide a sense of familiarity and safety. This is quite evident when observing how young Americans openly supported and embraced conservative values in the 1980s and early 1990s after the student movements of the 1960s and the 1970s.

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This theory is also applicable to the former colonies in Africa in the aftermath of the fight for independence. Tasked with the responsibility of establishing legitimate democracies in multiethnic, multilingual and multireligious nation-states, new and inexperienced African leaders were quickly overwhelmed by the urgency of their responsibilities as well as by the voices of dissenting factions in their governments. Keeping in line with the characteristics symbolic of post counter-cultural conflict, African leaders began to re-establish relationships with former colonial powers in Europe—unconsciously reverting to the culture of African dependence on colonial leadership prior to the fight for independence. POWER COMPONENT IN AFRICAN–EUROPEAN COMMUNICATIONS In his piece “The Role of Culture and Perception in Communication,” Marshall Singer presents the idea that “every communication relationship has a power component attached to it.”3 The power component in communications determines what party becomes the dominant player and what party assimilates into the dominant culture. In the case of emerging African democracies, the power component of communications dictates that wealthier, more politically and economically stable European powers would become the dominant players in this relationship. This also meant that African countries would have to assimilate into Western culture by incorporating European ideas of democracy and economic practices in African societies. This ensured that African nations never had a chance to cultivate an African form of democracy that would have been unique to the cultural and geographic climate of the region. Unfortunately for Africa’s first democratic leaders, this relationship provided embittered European countries—that had been unceremoniously relieved of their colonies—with the perfect platform needed to re-establish control over the continent via newly established global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. African leaders who sought much needed financial support from European countries were forced to sign crippling austerity measures and agree to structural adjustments that supported European foreign interests on the African continent at the expense of the development of Africa’s economies and infrastructure. These measures called for privatization, limited role of the state in the economy, reduced level of domestic production, and so on.4 Mounting pressures and demands of European financiers coupled with domestic issues such as corruption, nepotism in government, and rising incidents of ethnic clashes allowed former colonizers to insert themselves in the affairs of various nation states under the banner of building democracy

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and encouraging stability. This resulted in the undermining of African leadership at the domestic and international level. POWER DOMINANCE: AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT Former European powers would not have been able to successfully regain control of African nation states without the financial and military support of the United States.5 While countries like Britain and France were still recognized as major world players, the United States’ role during WWII and in its aftermath solidified the country’s position as the world’s newest ruling power. As such, the United States was allowed to unofficially assume the role of the world’s police. During this time period, much of America’s foreign policy was centered on promoting and establishing an American brand of democracy and capitalism on a global scale as well as actively combating all signs of communism.6 This is where the power component in communications takes a dangerous turn down a path of what I like to call the power dominance of communications. As aforementioned, the power component of communications dictates what party assumes the role of dominant culture, however power dominance of communication occurs when the dominant culture is allowed to wield power without the oversight of a working regulatory system. African leaders who objected to the stipulations of the “aid” provided by Western countries were viewed as obstacles of democracy and capitalism and many found themselves disposed of the offices that they had been elected to serve in. A perfect illustration of power dominance at work on the African continent would be the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, by a coalition of CIA operatives, Belgian forces, and Congolese opposition factions on January 17, 1961. As the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lumumba’s socially progressive views on economic equality and indigenous ownership and control of the DRC’s natural resources served as a direct threat to American and Belgian access to the vast supply of natural resources in the region. Lumumba was unlawfully arrested, tortured, and killed and his assassination allowed for western powers to install a leader that would promote their interests in the region.7 It is not until February of 2002 that the Belgian government openly apologized to the people of the DRC and the family of Patrice Lumumba for their role in the murder of one of Africa’s greatest minds.8 Other instances of power domination would be the United States’ early support of Charles Taylor’s rebel forces during the Liberian civil war9 or France’s provision of weapons and combative training to Hutu militias in preparation for the Rwandan genocide.10

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Power dominance on the African continent has fostered the practice of installing ineffectual agents in places of leadership. As long as the leader helps promote Western economic interests and provides a semblance of Western democratic leadership, he or she is automatically accepted by the international community. This has led to more of a rise in corruption in African governments as well as a general discontent among citizens of nation states in Africa. A NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA The new millennium introduced a new player in the form of China. As China continues to solidify its position as an emerging economic powerhouse with the credibility and propensity to compete, the United States and Western European countries have to fight to secure their interests and access to African markets and natural resources. For many African countries, this is the first time in many years whereby they’ve been presented with a realistic option in trading partners. Very much like the relationship that exists between Africa and the West, China is the dominant culture in the relationship between Asia and Africa and therefore, a level of power dominance exists. Lax labor laws, corruption, and a lack of citizen protection has allowed China to exploit Africa’s peoples and its resources.11 However, China differs from its counterparts in the United States and Western Europe in that the Chinese government has taken steps to aid in structural development in various African countries.12 In recent times, more and more African leaders are willing to engage in trade agreements with Asian countries rather than the West, because Asian leaders view African leaders as equal partners in trade agreements rather than subordinates. This has resulted in strained relations between the West and the East as well as the West and the African continent. ACCOUNTABILITY IN MODERN AFRICAN COUNTRIES In order for African countries to have complete ownership of their governmental and economic institutions, and to establish a democracy that is compatible with Africanism, African countries will have to take control of the power component in their relationships with foreign agents. This in turn means that African countries will have to reject foreign aid, and invest in their own industries and educational institutions. Without incoming aid, African governments will be forced to address issues of corrupt spending by officials in order to ensure an availability of funds necessary for structural

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development. No longer should African countries continue the colonial model of selling natural resources to developed regions and buying finished products from outside the continent. Harvesting of natural resources, refinement and production should begin and end on the African continent. This will help combat the issue of unemployment, boost economies, and give Africans control of their own markets. In today’s world, it is only when African countries are able to compete economically on the international level that they can have a realistic chance of creating systems that are based on the examples provided by the ancestors before them. Until then, as the old people used to say “we will continue to dance to the beat that the drummer decides to play.” Nyonsuabeleah Kollue is a Nigerian-born student currently pursuing a master’s degree in international relations with a double concentration in international negotiation and conflict resolution, and global security from American University. Her academic research is geared towards the analysis of conflict cycles, and governance structures and processes in West and Central Africa. She currently serves as a policy analyst for United Nations NGO coalition members: Nonviolence International and the International Action Network on Small Arms, where she is responsible for research on noncoercive methods in the enforcement of the Arms Trade Treaty, tracking the use of small arms and light weapons in conflict areas, and incorporating aspects of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals into workable domestic policies. NOTES 1. Gary R. Weaver, Intercultural Relations: Communication, Identity and Conflict, (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2014), 103 2. Gary R. Weaver, Intercultural Relations: Communication, Identity and Conflict, (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2014), 104–105 3. Gary R. Weaver, Intercultural Relations: Communication, Identity and Conflict, (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2014), 43 4. Shah, Anup “Structural Adjustment—Cause of Poverty.” Global Issues, March 24, 2013 5. Lagon, Mark P. “Promoting Democracy: The Whys and Hows for the United States and the International Community.” Council on Foreign Relations. February 1, 2011. 6. Wall, Wendy, “Anti-Communism in the 1950s.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 7. Bustin, Edouard. “Remembrance of Sins Past: Unraveling the Murder of Patrice Lumumba.” Review of African Political Economy (2002). 8. “Belgium: Apology for Lumumba Killing.” The New York Times, February 5, 2002.

The Ancestors, Africanism, and Democracy    271 9. Arsenault, Chris. “Accused War Criminal Taylor ‘worked with CIA.” Al Jazeera, January 21, 2012 10. Paul Schmitt, “The Future of Genocide Suits at the International Court of Justice: France’s Role in Rwanda and Implications of the Bosnia V. Serbia Decision.” Georgetown Journal of International Law (2009). 11. Bert, Jacobs. “A dragon and a dove? A Comparative overview of Chinese and European Trade Relations with Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (2011) 12. Bert, Jacobs. “A dragon and a dove? A Comparative overview of Chinese and European Trade Relations with Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (2011)

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agence France-Presse. (2002, February 6). World Briefing|Europe: Belgium: Apology for Lumumba Killing. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www .nytimes.com/2002/02/06/world/world-briefing-europe-belgium-apology -for-lumumba-killing.html?_r=0. Akerman, D. (2000, October 21). “Who killed Lumumba?” BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/974745.stm Arsenault, C. (2012, January 21). Accused war criminal Taylor ‘worked with CIA.’ Al Jazeera English. Retrieved from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/ 2012/01/2012120194243233526.html Bustin, E. (2002). Remembrance of sins past: Unraveling the murder of Patrice Lumumba. Review of African Political Economy, 29(93), 537–560. Iwereibor, E. (2015, December 15). The colonization of Africa. Retrieved from http:// exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-colonization-of-africa.html. Jacobs, B. (2011). A dragon and a dove? A comparative overview of Chinese and European trade relations with sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 40(4), 17–60. Lagon, M. P. (2011, February 1). Promoting democracy: The whys and hows for the United States and the international community. Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved from http://www.cfr.org/democratization/promoting-democracy -whys-hows-united-states-international-community/p24090 Nzongola-Ntalaja, G. (2011, January 17). Patrice Lumumba: The most important assassination of the 20th century. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian .com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba -50th-anniversary-assassination Schmitt, P. (2009). The future of genocide suits at the International Court of Justice: France’s role in Rwanda and implications of the Bosnia v. Serbia Decision. Georgetown Journal of International Law 40, 585–1271. Shah, A. (2013, March 24). Structural adjustment—A major cause of poverty. Global Issues. Retrieved from http://www.globalissues.org/article/3/ structural-adjustment-a-major-cause-of-poverty.

272    N. KOLLUE Wall, W. Anti-Communism in the 1950s. New York, NY: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved from http://ap.gilderlehrman.org/ history-by-era/fifties/essays/anti-communism-1950s Weaver, G. R. (2014). Intercultural relations: Communication, identity, and conflict (Rev. 2nd ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

CHAPTER 26

THE BLACK WORKING CLASS AND THE EARLY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Devon Bowers

The civil rights movement isn’t just viewed as a struggle that was overall peaceful, with the emphasis being generally put on nonviolent actions and figures such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., but it was also a movement that was organized mainly by middle-class individuals and focused on the large struggles of the 1960s. In promoting this narrative, it ignores the working-class and how much of their struggles formed the beginning of what would become the civil rights movement. Two examples can be found in labor and in teaching. The civil rights era began in “the early 1940s when the social structure of black America took on an increasingly urban, proletarian character.”1 While major organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League began to work more with labor organizations at that time, their legal and social focus didn’t allow them to have a strategy that worked in the workplaces and neighborhoods of working-class Black Americans. However, this gave space for union organizing to take center stage. This was noted at the time

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as “a Rosenwald Fund study concluded, not without misgivings, that ‘the characteristic movements among Negroes are now for the first time becoming proletarian;’ while a Crisis reporter found the CIO [Congress of Industrial Organizations] a ‘lamp of democracy’ throughout the old Confederate states.”2 Thus, we see that working-class people were taking center stage. In 1943, a major organizing effort was underway as the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America, in conjunction with the CIO, led a new union drive at the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem, NC. The 2 year organizing campaign which began in 1941 came to an apex when Black women working at the plant stopped laboring on June 17th. The women were able to do this due to a severe chronic labor shortage as many men were at war, there were also long-term wage grievances that had yet to be settled and the strike soon went plant wide. This strike brought up a massive debate about exactly who constituted the leadership of the Black community. Members of the small Black middle class of Winston-Salem wrote a letter in the Winston-Salem Journal urging the workers to end their strikes, arguing that the campaign for collective bargaining rights “had to remain secondary to the more important goal of racial betterment, which could only be achieved by ‘goodwill, friendly understanding, and mutual respect and cooperation between the races.’”3 The workers didn’t take too kindly to this, with one worker, W. L. Griffin, stating, I have attended church regularly for the past thirty years [and] unity and co-operation [has] been taught and preached from the pulpits of the various Negro churches. Now that the laboring class of people are about to unite and co-operate on a wholesale scale for the purpose of collective bargaining, these same leaders seem to disagree with that which they have taught their people.4

We can see from this that there were major differences depending on one’s class background and, in a sense, the betrayal of the Black workingclass. Instead of supporting the workers, the town’s Black middle class effectively sided with the White owning class, leaving the workers out to dry. While the management did attempt to derail the action by a number of methods, such as supporting an anti-union movement by the White workers and the White business community organizing an emergency meeting to stop the movement, in December 1943, the Black workers at the plant prevailed as the National Labor Review Board election saw the dream of collective bargaining come to fruition. However, this wasn’t the end of the situation as the worker organizations began to have a major impact on the politics of the Winston-Salem Black working-class community. By mid 1944, the “Local 22 of the reorganized and renamed Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers (FTA) had become the center of an alternative social world that linked black workers

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together regardless of job, neighborhood, or church affiliation.”5 A major player in the politics of the FTA and in Local 22 was the Communist Party, with FTA president Donald Henderson having been a long time associate of the party. By 1947, the party had inducted nearly 150 Winston-Salem Blacks, virtually all tobacco workers. The majority of these workers viewed the party as “both a militant civil rights organization, which in the 1930s had defended such Black victims of White southern racism as the Scottsboro boys and Angelo Hearndon, and as a cosmopolitan group, introducing members to the larger world of politics and ideas.”6 The tobacco trade unionism revived a large amount of Black political activism in the town as the NAACP did attack racial discrimination before the arrival of the CIO. However, many didn’t join due to the fear of associated risks being affiliated with the organization and thus the majority of the new membership came from the traditional Black middle class. Yet, the local NAACP grew after the Local 22 started its own campaign to recruit members for them, resulting in their membership exploding to nearly 2,000 in 1946, making it the largest NAACP chapter in North Carolina. Furthermore, the CIO engaged in a number of other political activities such as voter registration and mobilization, “challenged the power of registrars to judge the qualifications of black applicants and insisted that black veterans vote without further tests,” and generally “activists encouraged the city’s blacks to participate in electoral politics,” with the slogan being “Politics IS food, clothes, and housing.”7 Unions also had a major impact in Detroit, specifically involving Black auto workers and the Union of Auto Workers in the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge complex. The Ford complex attempted to control the Black workers by creating what was essentially a separate hiring process for Blacks in which workers were hired on the recommendation of an influential Black minister, which “strengthened the pro-company, anti-union attitude of most churchmen and reinforced the hostility shown the early CIO by leaders of the Detroit Urban League and the local NAACP branch.”8 This indoctrination of sorts had a serious effect as during the 1940–1941 UAW Ford organizing drive, many Black workers were hesitant to join and then in April 1941, when many workers went on strike, several hundred Black workers scabbed in the plant. Due to this, the UAW made a concerted effort to win over members of the local Black middle class who were independent of the Ford patronage network. When the NAACP voted to support the UAW, Black workers soon began to flood the union’s ranks and due to the plant having a considerable size of Blacks, many Black officers and staffers were in leadership positions within the union. Due to the unionization process, the political consciousness of workers awakened and they engaged in a number of activities, from intimidating foremen to challenging top management to breaking the company

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spy system. This also extended into the field of civil rights, with Black workers organizing and demanding the hiring and promotion of Black workers and defending “black occupancy of the Sojourner Truth Homes, a federally funded project that became a violent center of conflict between white neighborhood groups and the housing starved black community.”9 The use of the workplace as a location of awakening political consciousness and action worked not only in the factories, but also in the schoolhouses, with Milwaukee being a prime example. In the context of the public school, “civil rights were defined as winning jobs for Black teachers, who in turn would support Black youth trapped in the city’s racialized and economically depressed labor market.”10 During the late 1930s, the Black community began a new strategy for racial progress in education: direct lobbying of the school board to hire Black teachers. Executive director of the Milwaukee Urban League, William Kelly, argued “that jobs for Black teachers would motivate Black high school students to value hard work, since their current job prospects were bleak and did not reward academic effort” and “that, at minimum, the school board should replace white teachers who feel they are ‘wasting their efforts on the colored children,’ thus opening up jobs for Black teachers who could reach out to students and families of their own race.”11 One school board member proposed having the Ninth Street School be a training grounds for Black teachers, done in the same fashion of other Northern cities where Black teachers were assigned to Black schools, however this received considerable backlash as other board members worried that Italians, Irish, and other ethnic groups would demand the same treatment. A compromise was brokered that would last until the 1950s; the school system would hire a small amount of Black teachers to teach at predominantly Black schools, but under the guise of an unbiased hiring policy to avoid legal and ethnic disputes. Yet during the 1950s, the situation changed as due to the increased Black population more and more Black teachers were assigned to mainly Black schools, which raised criticism from a number of school board members and effectively imperiling the terms of the agreement. The agreement was saved via the Brown v. Board decision which ended school segregation, but the Black community of Milwaukee used the decision in a rather unusual way; rather than leaving the situation as it was, instead they used it as a weapon in the fight to get Black teachers jobs. Kelly, along with local attorney James Dorsey, harnessed the judicial victory and political momentum to engage in 2 days of hearings in front of Chicago’s newly created Fair Employment Practices Committee which led to a dramatic increase in employment for Black Milwaukeeans in the school system. No matter the location, the workplace and unions were utilized by working and middle class Black people as tools in their battle to gain fair access

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into the labor market and awakened the political consciousness of many individuals. While the early civil rights movement was organized around the workplace and unions, later groups would actively be co-opted by larger organizations with their own agendas for the Black community. NOTES 1. Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, radicals, and the early civil rights movement.” The Journal of American History, 75:3 (December 1988), p. 786. 2. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 787. 3. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 789. 4. Ibid. 5. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 791. 6. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 792. 7. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 793. 8. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 794. 9. Korstad and Lichtenstein, p. 797. 10. Jack Dougherty, “That’s When We Were Marching for Jobs”: Black Teachers and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Milwaukee. History of Education Quarterly, 38:2 (Summer, 1998), p. 123. 11. Dougherty, p. 126.

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CHAPTER 27

THE MONARCHY OF MATERIALISM Understanding White Fragility Sonia Calista

In my frustratingly liberal Ivy League classroom, I raised my hand. My professor, a former editor for the New York Times, had opened class by saying that people are misguided in fearing Trump; most of his antiimmigration orders will be shot down by the courts. I told her, calmly, that the fear is not misguided. Because of Trump, many immigration officers have become even more unabashed about their inhumane and often illegal practices. She said I was challenging her knowledge so I relayed the real-life story of an unpunished criminal officer. She framed it as a debate between her knowledge and mine. I told her, calmly, that she was arguing with facts. It was this statement that she brought up in our one-on-one meeting a few days after she suggested I leave the classroom. She cited it as an example of why it was impossible to have a conversation with me. But facts are

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facts, and the story of the criminal officer was just one in a deluge of narratives reported even by her beloved New York Times. If events like these happened only to me, this would be a boring story. But White people’s hostile emotional response to their knowledge being challenged—often marked by an accelerated heart rate, shortness of breath, and feelings of terror and rage—have become laughably predictable. One study calls it cultural anxiety. It’s characterized as “feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment” (Green, 2017, para., 2). Apart from causing people to call 911 in fear of a hijab? It led 63 million people to vote for Donald Trump. Nationalist religious movements are popping up all across the world, not only in Europe but even in India and the Philippines, expanding wars and militarizing borders, murdering thousands inside their own nations, withdrawing reparations from their former colonies, and even closing borders to millions of climate refugees. If rising sea levels pose the greatest threat to our species, “cultural anxiety” is our greatest enemy. Another name for this phenomenon is White fragility. When I packed my bags and finally left the East Coast to come home to the Midwest, I realized it’s just called White supremacy. Most people don’t like being called racist, and White liberals get especially triggered. Someone who has some insight into this emotional phenomenon is Mark. He’s part of an anti-oppression education program on campus and agreed to speak under a pseudonym; he’s facilitated dozens of anti-racism workshops. How does he help people move through their hostile emotions? “By not making too much space for it in the workshops,” Mark says. “By acknowledging the emotions, and saying there are many reasons they may feel uncomfortable. Biases in their language, interactions, research, classes, conversations, you name it. I’m asking them to acknowledge that all of us have these implicit biases that have been culminating all our lives. In everything we consume.” Yes, everything. Even for me. I’m a mentally disabled, trans Indian, American woman, raised in an upper-class Hindu family in a beautiful American suburb. Since I wanted to find the truth at the root of White fragility, it brought me to an interesting dilemma: How do I escape my own biases? I quickly realized it was both impossible and unnecessary. I’d say I’m pretty vocal in my low tolerance for bullshit even when it comes from myself. Instead of ignoring my life, how do I use it scientifically to understand cultural anxiety? I followed three popular ways to find truth. The scientific method led me to the natural sciences. Studying history led me to social sciences. And, in

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what will probably draw tense laughter from the European minded: Meditation led me to the spiritual sciences. And I’ll give you three guesses as to which of the three yielded the most reasonable answers. You might need all three. I also encourage you to call me on any bullshit you find—I have so much to learn and I’d rather us help each other out. This article is long, so I’d section off about twenty minutes if you’re ready to listen. WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING TO A WHITE PERSON’S MIND WHEN THEY ARE CALLED RACIST? The Oatmeal, a website for incredibly cute comics, explains it surprisingly well. In fact, if you haven’t already, read the comic quickly then come back when you see the last panel. Good? Let’s dive in. “Confusion,” Mark says, describing responses he’s seen from people who were asked to recognize they could be racist. “A lot of times they don’t know what to say. You can hear hints of defensiveness, but my words are granted a little more legitimacy as an educator in those spaces specifically.” Responses I’ve gotten to notifying White people of their racism? Being called libelous, sensitive, abusive, violent, and manipulative. That I’m hurting them. One professor even threatened to sue me, comparing me to Donald Trump and reporting me as a threat to the university. We’re seeing different realities. Even when I’m crying, they still view me with terror. There’s a chasm between intellectual understanding and selfreflection, and I’ve seen few people cross it. In 1970, Polish social psychologist Henri Tajfel ran an experiment where participants would guess the lengths of a few lines. Unsurprisingly, errors in judgement were random. But when longer lines were labeled as “A” and shorter ones, “B,” the errors got . . . less random. They got uniform. People thought the shorter “A” sticks were longer than they actually were in reality, and that the taller “A” sticks were shorter. Similarly, they thought the longer “B” sticks were shorter than reality, and the shorter “B” sticks were taller. The very act of categorization made participants see conformity to the category where there was none. Henri Tajfel (1970) later became famous for his theories on social identity, saying that people tend to view themselves according to how society views them. So: Societies construct my view of others and myself. I believe society’s ideas about me because inclusion provides me with assurance. Core beliefs (such as “A” lines being taller than “B” lines) are

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rarely questioned and always nurture my sense of reality. Members of “outgroups” are discarded. But what if a social identity you are placed into . . . is not you? I’m talking with a White-skinned professor of history at my university, whom I’ve named “Jane.” I’m trying to figure out what “White” even means. When I ask her what history has to say about this, she responds: “The meaning of White for whom?” She points out how, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, American newspapers—and even the Census—did not grant Whiteness to Jews, the Irish, or Eastern Europeans. And she notes how today, there is no Census category for Arab or Persian. Middle Eastern immigrants are legally White. What does White even mean then? “I don’t think there’s a consensus,” Jane says. “So perhaps what has changed is who gets to be White, but what hasn’t is the contested nature of that being.” Even the natural sciences back her up. It is the scientific consensus that racial categories have no basis in biology. But this fact was not always the scientific consensus, and Jane’s words reminded me of something Mark had mentioned during our talk: the skull studies that made a lie scientific. Craniometry, the study of skull measurements, formed the base of European scientific racism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. European scientists, most notably French scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, categorized the races as distinct species based on cranial circumferences (Bhopal, 2007). It is a fascinating case study not only in the psychology of Whiteness, but in the anti-human irrationality that continues to underlie Western sciences to this day. Let’s put his skull studies in context. Historically, the concept of race came after European elites began enslaving Africans. Unable to rely on their own increasingly poor, increasingly angry citizens to run their plantations, their eyes fell upon Northern Africans. The Christian Church had already practiced hating North African Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition. This made the job of lazy European elites even easier. Because North African Muslims rejected Christianity, Europeans convinced themselves that they weren’t human. Gone were the ideas that Africans were industrious, intelligent, and artistic peoples. To the European-minded, they became inhumane, heathens, irrational, backwards, threatening, childlike, animals. This allowed them to enslave the Muslims with little guilt. But in the eighteenth century (think: French Revolution, American Revolution) plantation owners faced slave uprisings, revolutionary ideas of universal human rights, and the exciting possibility of creating a new nation independent from England’s taxes.

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They sought to create a new nation but these lazy people needed trendy, secular, “enlightened” ideas to justify enslaving Africans and murdering Native Americans. Thus, the very same process that Tajfel had noticed in his studies of social identification began in reverse. Imagine the sticks in Tajfel’s study. The tall “A” and short “B” ones. Now imagine if only the “Bs” have labels. The rest have no labels. Place yourself in the shoes of one of those unlabeled lines. If Tajfel, who invented the “B” category, told you that “you are a line because B is not a line,” it would be kind of terrifying on an existential level, right? Especially if you believe all lines matter. The goal of the New England elites was to divide people to make profits for themselves. They feared unity. In one case, Bacon’s Rebellion—an armed rebellion by people of many classes and races against the Doeg tribe in Virginia and Governor William Berkeley—terrified them to their aristocratic core (they responded with the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705). But unable to find any actual cultural unity between the poorer European laborers and themselves, the proslavery rich simply created a “B.” They targeted enslaved Africans. They called them “Black,” and scared the White-skinned poorer colonists about the “Black danger.” The elites then said to these frightened White-skinned immigrants, who were already anxious due to their unfamiliarity with the land, “Your enemy is my enemy, and we are friends. I’ll create a nation where you feel at home.” It was a master stroke. Now, European elites could feign unity with poorer (and now, terrified) European colonizers despite having no unified culture with them. No “A.” “White” came from this fear, a lowest common denominator between themselves and poorer White-skinned laborers, a manufactured friendship based on fear and greed. This “A” would convince White-skinned settlers of their Manifest Destiny to murder thousands of Native Americans and expand White borders. The skull studies come from this eighteenth-century period. Whiteskinned people exaggerated differences in their own bodies to make them seem as opposite as possible from non-Caucasians. Whiteness became a cultureless culture. All it could do was manufacture fear against any “Other.” But maybe “any” is the wrong word. Whiteness means, quite literally, anti-Blackness. Its existence depends upon Black people’s dehumanization. Paired with nationalism, Whiteness means indigenous genocide to this day. (I find it interesting when White-skinned people ask me what my ethnicity is, expect me to say “Indian,” and stumble when I ask them what theirs is. They rarely say “British” or “German” and instead say “American” or “White” as if either of these labels have even a semblance of a unified culture.)

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But Black people and Blackness are humane (surprise, surprise). They were the first race to be identified. Blackness can exist and has existed without Whiteness. But Whiteness without Blackness, without an “Other?” It does not exist, has not existed, and can never exist. Yet, in the post-civil rights era that we find ourselves in today, where we know we are all the same despite our skin color, where the United States of America even grants “freedom” to all its un-criminalized citizens, shouldn’t racism be gone? It should . . . if racism was about skin color. But the issue was never about skin. It was always about making Wall Street money off the “Other.” Whiteness creates an “Other,” and othering hasn’t vanished and it never will. It simply hides. If you can’t find it, simply praise, unconditionally, the humanity of the “Other” and watch as the entire culture comes out of the shadows to revolt against you. Whiteness is holding on for dear life to its last hope—to create a White nation where they, ironically, don’t feel like “Others.” With tanks and fences, to take back “their” country from “others” whom they’ve leeched off since before July 4th, 1776. For the Wall Street elites, this is perfect: Cultural anxiety makes Whiteskinned people ignore Wall Street. But a White nation will never be great or even succeed, if you’re looking for some truth. When White-skinned people tell me to leave their country if I hate it so much, I feel a little bad for them because they don’t know their nation is an illusion. Lies can exist only in the mind and a White culture has always been a rich man’s lie. A plantation-era anxiety. Identities built upon an “Other” eventually cannibalizes itself. Even if they end up murdering me in their anger, I’ll pass happily, knowing they’ll soon destroy themselves. But if Whiteness is a lie, why does critiquing it feel so . . . real? Well, because it is. Whiteness creates horrible living conditions for the “Other.” Sapped the “Other” of their food, water, shelter, and even their children and their bodies. On a spiritual level? Plantation owners knew how to convince us that the “other” exists. Millions of us have spent our lives believing Whiteness has the divine power to actually rip our humanities from us if we don’t show them respect. Exposing Whiteness for its lie traumatizes our sense of reality—How could I have believed in such a demonic white lie? So was this it? Misery and guilt, the answer at the end of the scholarly road? Not quite.

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Of my three initial processes, I still had one path left: meditation guided by my gurus. And suddenly, cultural anxiety became almost laughably (if frustratingly) simple. TOUCH, TASTE, SMELL, SIGHT, HEARING According to the European sciences, I have these senses which have their sense organs: skin, tongue, nose, eyes, and ears. But how can I sense my humanity? How can I sense my Self? During the questionably named Age of Reason, European scientists championed secularity. Things that are touchable, testable, smellable, seeable, and hearable—only those can be evidence for anything. Only those exist. But it is my people’s tradition to recognize our immaterial thoughts as another sense, with its sense organ: the mind. And what does the mind sense when it thinks, “I”? There is a basic truth that I had doubted for so long: that the mind senses something. I’ve been calling it “humanity.” To observe this, all you need to do is meditate on your mind. If you can see, close your eyes. What do you see? If you answered “nothing,” you are wrong. What you see is the undersides of your eyelids. Sit with this reality. Try it for 10 minutes. If you start feeling anxious, ask yourself: “Who is feeling anxious?” If negative thoughts storm in, simply watch them. Ground yourself in love for your Self. Did you feel this bliss? If you did, I feel it too. In coming to terms with my transgender identity, I had to pull myself from myself using this precise method. Other than “humanity,” people have called it Consciousness, the soul, the Self, natural law, the wild, divinity, God, spirit, the universal, Allah, the Brahman, time, the Buddha, Jehovah, Truth, Jesus, Oneness, the Holy Spirit, science, history, Shiva, I, dark energy, dark matter, the fourth dimension, the irrational . . . you get the picture. Truth inspires limitless love. But Whiteness finishes where Christianity left off: It asserts that this divinity is exclusive. In a stunning (and for me, foundational) 1980 spoken essay denouncing both capitalism and communism, Russel Means (1980), an indigenous freedom fighter said, “The European materialist tradition of de-sacredizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person” (para. 12). I sometimes wonder what Darwin would say if I came up to him and said, “I am fully human.” How would he have convinced me of his materialism

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against my reason? The reasonableness of his rationality and the irrationality of my reason? Would he have asked for proof and then laughed if I presented myself? This anxiety will never go away until the idea of an out-group vanishes. That is what we mean by spirituality, by Self awareness. That I am not my body, but the observer of it. It is the anxiety of Self avoidance that protects the out-group in the first place. This fear gave birth to Whiteness. And it is with this existential anxiety that materialists colonize the world, create its governments and economies. And when White people realize they are on this path to Self destruction? There will be anxiety. Yes. I think, by pledging themselves to the White culture, White-skinned people have come to dehumanize and avoid themselves. It didn’t start off that way of course. Prior to the revolutions of the 1700s, the Church answered the “Who am I?” question with divinity and secularity. Divinity is a separate entity: God. You are in God’s image. You are a child of God. You are human. You are human if you are Christian. The Church and Europe used “Othering,” this false separation from the divine, this Hell, to terrorize people across the entire world. White-skinned people’s humanity itself was exploited, taken for granted, trivialized, ignored, and then: Self sabotaged. “After all,” Russel Means (1980) says, “Europeans consider themselves godlike in their rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being; all else must be inferior” (para. 32). Human versus nature. Christian versus heathen. The European Enlightenment’s rationality, in Russell Means’ (1980) words, “picked up where Christianity ended” (para. 8). The Church conflated Peter with Jesus and Jesus with Peter. It asserts that the Self, this divinity, is exclusive only to followers of Jesus of Nazareth. The European sciences assert that Truth does not even exist. Instead, their sense of humanity came from the material world. Human versus animal. White versus Black. In-group versus out-group. Why this madness? For millennia, people in the South Asian peninsula have written thousands of texts and constructed full-blown universities (such as Takshashila) where they studied and continue to study the Self—the mind and the body as one. Their fundamental realization? Consciousness is everywhere. Of everything. You would even categorize my people’s fervor for Truth as religious . . . which would be inaccurate. Religion implies non religion: secularity. But the secular does not exist. The more accurate term for our fervor would be a way of life—a mental outlook.

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The European sciences are catching up to my ancestors’ eons-old realization. The human species evolved from ape species, which came from rats, which came from lizards, which came from fish, which came from worms, which came from sponges, which came from small multicellular organisms, which came from single-cell organisms, which came from molecular reactions, which came from planets, which all came from the atoms of the Big Bang. There is no “out-group” in the entire universe, no line between human and nonhuman, soul and souless, divine and secular. Exclusivity is the imagination of people who ignore their Selves. My true identity, my humanity, does not depend upon any human opinion—even my own. I am. I always am. That is what we mean by Self-awareness. By seeing true divinity when the monarchs of materialism beg us not to. By cutting down their lies. Laughing at their ignorance. Loving our Selves by upending borders wherever people create it. Unity through difference, not despite it. In our present era, this means to include Blackness so unconditionally, to uplift indigenous peoples so thoroughly, to free ourselves from gender norms so completely, that we upend everything that resists our Selves. To realize that seeing undocumented, criminalized, and imprisoned people as human is a radical proposition—one that reveals just how ignorant we as a society have become. That we begin to heal ourselves and each other from the violence of our ignorance through repentance and reparations. Heal our divine Selves instead of our material bodies which will decay regardless. Self-doubt is the deceptively simple root of White fragility. Self-avoidance also gave birth to murderous forces: slavery, colonization, to both the Hindu-regimented caste system and the famines in the Indian peninsula manufactured by the British. To the Trail of Tears, Manifest Destiny, to Whiteness, European rationalism, fascism, to the White, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu nationalists. To borders and fences. Self-doubt gave birth to fears and hatreds eons old. To guilt instead of joyous repentance and reparations. To glorifying military states instead of glorifying welfare states. See, this is why this topic of cultural anxiety is so important even for us people of color. Whiteness is not limited to the White-skinned. Peace and borders are incompatible. And when we realize we’ve been led to doubt ourselves our entire lives by rich elites? When we understand that we are living in a terrorist nation? Sure, we’ll be anxious. We feel lost. This anxiety is within us. It too shall pass. The climate, and the times, are a-changing.

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REFERENCES Bhopal, R. (2007, December 22). The beautiful skull and Blumenbach’s errors: The birth of the scientific concept of race (U.S. National Library of Medicine). Retrieved from www.ncbiu.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2151154 Green, E. (2017, May 9). It was cultural anxiety that drove White, working-class voters to Trump. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/ Means, R. (1980). For America to live, Europe must die. Retrieved from www.blackhawkproductions.com/russelmeans.html Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Retrieved from www. holah.karoo.net/tajfestudy.htm

PART VII SOCIAL ECONOMICS

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CHAPTER 28

“THUGGIN” IN BALTIMORE CITY Capitalism and the Political Economy of “Breaking Slaves” Asha Layne

Thuggin verb; adj. 1. Either living or pretending to live a criminalistic lifestyle, 2. The behavior of a thug (violent criminal). As violence hit the streets of Baltimore City following the funeral services of Freddie Gray it became impossible to ignore the barrage of media coverage. From local Baltimore news outlets like Channel 13 and FOX 45 to eponymous CNN, the world saw protests and riots throughout West Baltimore as citizens responded to the racial and social injustices that are too common for American cities. At the forefront were the voices and actions of young individuals who showed the world through action that they were going to be heard by any means—love it or hate it. In the wake of these riots, many interpretations of these actions circulated and were condensed

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into one word: “thugs.” By definition, a thug is a violent criminal, and when used as a form of action, “thuggin” becomes a behavior that mimics a criminal lifestyle. Beyond the definition, as one examines the landscape of West Baltimore, it becomes evident that the reality of poor neighborhoods was created by a greater and more powerful system that is the most violent—capitalism. The earliest form of capitalism can be traced back to Western Europe as early as the Middle Ages through merchant capitalism or long-distance, profit seeking, but changed rapidly as towns and states became centralized. Mercantile capitalism declined and gave way to industrial capitalism in the 1800s, which was supported by the economic gains appropriated by mercantile capitalism. Industrial capitalism brought about a new division of labor which stratified members of society. First described in Adam Smith’s (1776/2000) Wealth of Nations, division of labor was seen as being cost effective to capitalists as people worked with machines in factories. In essence, division of labor and economic progress went hand in hand, and created a system of social control. Karl Marx would later describe that social control as the function of stratification which is inherently tied to class and hierarchy. As this principle evolved, the effects of it were seen through various forms of mass production by laborers and mass surplus in markets. The stages of capitalism have, and will always have, an economic base. Although Marx (1867/1954) wrote primarily about English capitalism, Das Capital, helped introduce principles of economics in which American capitalism would be eponymously known for its major characteristics: free enterprise, private property, and wage labor (among other things). In looking at the historical discourse, slavery embodied these characteristics of capitalism as it helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England and America alike. Perhaps the most durable and notable fact is the link between modern capitalism and slavery. Historian Eric Williams (1944) explains that the West Indian slave trade gave an impetus to British industries as slave plantations were dominated by the English colonial system. The global commerce of slaves assisted in the production of an integrated system of commerce as slave capital improved the manufacturing industry. The expanding cotton frontier of the global mercantile commerce of slaves helped to offer support for British colonies not only in the Caribbean but also in colonial British America. In North America, the commercialization of enslaved Blacks did not yield the maltreatment of Black men and women as cash crops continued to fill the coffers of slave owners and the industry. Some would describe that racialized chattel slavery as a struggle between the colonial elites and the popular classes of Virginia over the cultivation of tobacco. Colonists would later seize the land from the indigenous people of Virginia and would turn to African slavery for labor after failed attempts of exploiting the Native

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Americans and indentured servants. Many Americans infused with the idea of the pursuit of life, liberty, happiness, and justice were juxtaposed by the reality of chattel slavery as slaves adopted the status of alienable rights despite the words of Virginia leaders Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison. The spirit of the revolution was authored by men who defended freedom but were also slaveholders. As a result, slavery and liberty would be incompatible as chattel slavery superseded the ideals of freedom. Chattel slavery allowed plantation slave owners more aggressive and inhumane ways to protect their livelihoods as slaves were viewed as mere products. Eponymous to chattel slavery is William Lynch, a slave owner in the West Indies during the 1800s whose manifesto and reputation of “how to break a slave” would create psychological and physical control strategies that would impose negative effects on African Americans for generations to come. The Willie Lynch Letters of Making a Slave 1712 explains the following six basic principles of making a Negro slave: 1. Both horse and nigger are no good to the economy in the wild or natural state. 2. Both must be broken and tied together for orderly production. 3. For the orderly futures, special and particular attention must be paid to the female and the young offspring. 4. Both must be crossbred to produce a variety and division of labor. 5. Both must be taught to respond to a particular new language. 6. Psychological and physical instruction are created for both. We hold the above six cardinal principles as truths to be self-evident based on the following discourse concerning the economics of breaking and tying the horse and the nigger together—all inclusive of the six principles above. Note: Neither principle alone will suffice for good economics.

The effects of chattel slavery are seen throughout every modern inner city, in which the pathology of inner-city violence can be traced to its economic base. Slavery, a primitive form of labor exploitation, was a criminal enterprise in which slaveholders and advocates of slavery perpetrated acts of criminal behavior protected by the ethos of capitalism. The aftermath of centuries of chattel slavery and its multigenerational effects has crippled the identity of Blacks in America as racial and self-identity is becoming more and more difficult to locate among the stigmas associated with the Black race. From the cotton fields to the concrete jungles, African Americans are subjected to the chronic acute environmental stressors that make up their social realities, all stemming from this still-recent historical path. Poverty; unemployment; violence; single-parent, female-headed households; poor access to healthcare; and poor school systems have become the normal etchings for inner-city neighborhoods across America. Baltimore City

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is no different. A once bustling and promising economy during Industrialization, Baltimore City is in stark comparison to its once gilded days. With a population of 622,793, of whom 63% are Black, Baltimore City has a 24% poverty rate compared to 10% for the state of Maryland (U.S. Census, n.d.). Substantial contrasts are seen comparatively between the richest and poorest communities. For example, 66% of Upton/Druid Heights households (compared to 9% of Canton households) earned less than $25,000 in 2013 (Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance). Furthermore, during that same year, Baltimore City unemployment rate was 10% while the Upton/Druid Heights community of West Baltimore was 29%. Amidst the social upheaval witnessed in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray murder, we must not forget the key realms of social stratification as identified by Max Weber: power (political power), wealth (economic power), and prestige (social status) under capitalism. These three tenets outline the critical indices by which we as a society subscribe to analyze and hierarchically place members of society. Moreover, our youth in parts of Upton, Druid Heights, Coppin Heights, Penn North, Walbrook, and other West Baltimore neighborhoods are very aware of these indices through the social allegory of hip-hop lyrics. As versed in Wu Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M,” and The Lox’s “Money, Power, Respect,” the world of formal education meets the streets in which Weber, Marx, and Smith can be understood through the melodic beats of authors that resemble the struggles and plights of inner-city, Black males. On April 27, 2015, descendants of chattel slavery, only a few generations removed, took the streets to protest against the racial and social injustices brought upon by the effects of capitalism, the most onerous and criminal enterprise known to the African diaspora. The locus of thugs lies in the heart of a political economy born from a contradiction of rhetorical freedom and the reality of enslavement for Blacks and the indigenous peoples of this country. The psychological and physical deterioration of Blacks in America speaks to that macabre appendage of capitalism called slavery. In 1712, William Lynch stated that a “nigger is no good to the economy” in their wild/natural state; and in 2015, Mayor Rawlings Blake blamed “thugs” for the riots and destruction that ensued after Gray’s funeral. The acts witnessed that day were a response to being reared under an oppressive political economy that has blighted sections of West Baltimore like the Upton/ Druid Heights area, which sits as a stark contrast to the gentrified Canton area on Southeast Baltimore. Market and global capitalism have used violence and criminal behavior to widen the gap between the rich and poor, so why are we calling those who rise against it “thugs?”

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REFERENCES Marx, K. (1954). Das Kapital: A critique of political ecocomy. Chicago, IL: H. Regnergy. (Originally published in 1867) Smith, A. (2000). The wealth of nations. Introduction by Robert Reich. New York, NY: Modern Library. (Originally published in 1776) The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave! (1712). Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/WillieLynchLetter1712/the_willie_lynch_letter_the_making_of_a_slave_1712_djvu.txt U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). Quickfacts: Baltimore city Maryland (County). Retrieved from www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/baltimorecitymarylandcounty/ AGE295217 Williams, E. (1944). Capitalism and slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

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CHAPTER 29

EXPROPRIATION OR BUST On the Illegitimacy of Wealth and Why It Must Be Recuperated Colin Jenkins

This is dedicated to Kwame Somburu, scientific socialist, William F. Buckley-slayer, thorn in the side of “mental midgets,” lifelong advocate of “herstory,” mentor, and friend. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all dvantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. —Karl Marx (Capital: Volume One)1

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Election seasons bring with them a renewed interest in politics. For most that couldn’t care less about such concerns, election season becomes, for at least a moment, a time to reflect on deeper issues. For those of us who spend a large portion of our lives thinking, writing, acting, and engaging in these larger-than-life matters, election seasons bring other questions: Can we affect change through the electoral system, how effective is voting, and how can we overcome the corporate stranglehold over politics, to name a few. However, beneath all of the political discussions lies an uncomfortable and overwhelming truth: Nearly all of our problems are rooted in the massively unequal ownership of land, wealth, and power that exists among the over 7 billion human beings on earth. More specifically, these problems are rooted in the majority of the planet’s population being stripped of its ability to satisfy the most basic of human needs. This predicament did not happen overnight, and it is far from natural. Rather, it is the product of centuries of immoral, illegitimate, and unwarranted human activity carried out by a miniscule section of the world’s people. This realization leads to an even more unsettling and uncomfortable truth: If we are to ever establish a free and just society, mass expropriation of personal wealth and property will be a necessity. In other words, the few dozens of families who have amassed personal riches equal to half the world must be forced to surrender this wealth. And furthermore, those next 5% of the global population who have acquired equally obscene amounts of wealth, relatively speaking, must also be liquidated. And, in heeding Lucy Parson’s warning that “we can never be deceived that the rich will allow us to vote their wealth away,”2 we can presume that this inevitable process of mass expropriation will not be pretty. This is a harsh and discomforting truth, indeed. But it is an undeniable truth. It is a truth that we must recognize. It is a truth that, despite being conditioned to resist, we must embrace if we are to have a shot at constructing a just world for all. We have reached a breaking point in the human experiment. After centuries upon centuries of being subjected to extreme hierarchical systems— from monarchies to feudalism to capitalism—we are on the precipice of making a final choice: economic justice through the mass expropriation of personal wealth or infinite slavery covered by illusionary spectacles of consumer joy and bourgeois political systems. Make no mistake, expropriation is not theft. It is not the confiscation of “hard-earned” money. It is not the stealing of private property. It is, rather, the recuperation of massive amounts of land and wealth that have been built on the back of stolen natural resources, human enslavement, and coerced labor, and amassed over a number of centuries by a small minority. This wealth, that has been falsely justified by “a vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers,” all of whom have been created “to uphold these privileges” and “give rise to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of

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threats and corruption,”3 is illegitimate, both in moral principle and in the exploitative mechanisms in which it has used to create itself. It is in this fundamental illegitimacy where we must take the reins and move forward in a truly liberatory and revolutionary fashion. However, before we can take collective action, we must free our mental bondage (believing wealth and private property have been earned by those who monopolize it; and, thus, should be respected, revered, and even sought after), open our minds, study, and understand history, and recognize this illegitimacy together. This understanding must be reached through a careful study of the various socioeconomic systems that have ruled the human race, how the accumulation of wealth, land, and power has been extended and maintained through these systems, and how such accumulation has been illegitimate in both the ways in which it is (and has been) acquired and the ways in which it has displaced, disenfranchised, and impoverished the large majority of human beings on earth in its process. With this understanding, we can move beyond the futile process of trying to reform systems that are rotted from the core, and move forward on deconstructing these formidable social hierarchies that have been built through illegitimate, immoral, and illegal means. ”OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY”: ON RECYCLED, COLD-WAR PROPAGANDA The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all . . . The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands—the ownership and control of their livelihoods—are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. —Helen Keller4

For those who remain ignorant to history—and, more specifically, to understanding how capitalism has shaped the present—ideals rooted in socialism represent a fairy-tale bogeyman. As historical understanding gives way to corporate media and standardized education schemes, fewer and fewer seem to grasp not only the basic theories of each system (capitalism and socialism) but also the ways in which they relate to us. Reactionary talking points are built on this hollow foundation. Arguments against socialist ideas and principles, whether taught in American classrooms or disseminated on cable news, remain nothing more than conditioned and packaged responses that have been recycled from Cold War propaganda. This is evident in the mythological construction of, and obsession with, equating socialism

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to government authority. There simply is no substance because there has been literally no scholarship on these topics in compulsory U.S. educational settings. Instead, we continue to falsely associate capitalism with freedom, private property with liberty, and socialism with theft. This is done without any learning, any thought, any investigation, or any historical analysis. It is, by nature, the epitome of propaganda, designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to justify and maintain systems of hierarchy, oppression, and mass inequality. For as long as the victims of these systems are made to believe our victimization is not only justifiable but necessary, the longer such systems can operate with little scrutiny and minimal opposition. 1. One of the most common parroting routines regarding the demonization of socialism is taken from neoliberal champion Margaret Thatcher, who famously remarked, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” This one line has been used ad nauseam by proponents of capitalism. It is, after all, a perfect sound bite for those who do not want to take the time to read and learn, critically think, or chip away at their hardened cognitive dissonance. It also perfectly sums up the thoughtlessness of anti-socialist propaganda, which can be characterized by four basic presuppositions: that capitalism equals freedom, or, at the very least, is the only alternative; 2. that capitalism naturally produces “winners” and “losers”; 3. that capitalism is as meritocratic as possible, and thus everyone has an equal opportunity to become a “winner” or “loser,” and your individual outcome is based solely on your “hard work” or lack thereof; and 4. that “winners” have earned their wealth through their own exceptionalism, and thus deserve it; while, in contrast, “losers” have earned their impoverishment through their own shortcomings, and thus deserve it. These four ideas expose a problematic contradiction within anti-socialist propaganda: on one hand, they are ahistorical—in other words, they do not consider historical developments regarding the accumulation of wealth, property, and power, and therefore are unable to understand how these developments have shaped our modern existence. On the other hand, because they are ahistorical, they rely on a peculiar blank-slate theory—that human beings, as we exist today, have just appeared in our current state, and that this state (which is rife with inequality, impoverishment, hunger, homelessness, joblessness, etc.) is justified merely by its being, because it was not shaped by history, as history does not exist. With this blank-slate approach, investigation is not necessary. Inquiry is not necessary. Because

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finding the roots of these ills is a painstaking and overwhelming process that would rather be deemed unnecessary. For the world is as it is, the systems we live in are the best we can do, and emotion and instinct are all we need when reacting to the problems placed before us. In reality, there are historical causes and effects that have created modern conditions. When we realize this, and take the time and effort to learn these layered epochs of wealth accumulation, we ultimately learn that “other people’s money” is really not justifiably theirs to begin with.5 Instead, things like personal wealth, land, and power are accumulated in only one fundamental way: through the murdering, maiming, coercing, stealing, robbing, or exploiting of others. This is not only a historically-backed truism (of which I will illustrate below), but it is also a fundamental truth rooted in human relations. There simply is no other way to amass the obscene amounts of personal wealth as have been amassed on earth. PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION, SLAVERY, AND “OLD WEALTH” In actual history, it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, and force, play the great part. —Karl Marx6

Deconstructing Thatcher’s statement is not especially difficult. Even on face value, most of us can recognize that wealth is hardly earned on one’s perceived exceptionalism. The contrasting (and correct) retort to Thatcher’s is that “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” This has been the case throughout history, and is a constant trend within all socioeconomic systems that have been implemented. In Monarchial Europe, wealth was determined and sustained by bloodlines and nobility. In feudal times, this transformed into divisions between lords and peasants. With capitalism, this transitioned into owners and workers. In each case, the respective governmental systems that have complemented these economic bases have always used their power to keep these divisions intact, literally for the sake of keeping wealth with wealth, and thus, power with the powerful. The founding fathers of the United States, as wealthy landowners and aristocrats, had no intentions of swaying from this model. When constructing a unique federal system in the colonies, John Jay captured the consensus thought at the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, proclaiming that “those who own the country ought to govern it.”7 And, in the influential Federalist Papers, James Madison echoed this sentiment, urging that a priority for any governmental system should be to “protect the minority of the

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opulent (the wealthy, land-owning slave-owners) against the majority (the workers, servants, and slaves).”8 For instance, take the case of Donald J. Trump. Like most wealthy individuals, Trump experienced an uber-privileged upbringing, worry free and filled with private schools and immense economic and physical security. As a young man—during a time when most people are indebting themselves for life through college, juggling multiple, minimum-wage jobs with hopes of affording basic needs, or relegated to military duty—Trump was handed his father’s real-estate empire and eventually inherited between $40 and $200 million in addition.9 Trump wealth can be traced back to a familyowned vineyard in Bavaria.10 Trump’s grandfather (Frederich Trumpf) utilized the family’s wealth to move to the United States, where he opened a bar in Seattle’s Red Light District and relied on prostitution as a source of revenue. This continuous line of wealth allowed Donald’s father, Fred, to start a real estate business with his mother, Elizabeth Christ Trump.11 On the verge of collapse during the Great Depression, the government (Federal Housing Administration [FHA]) stepped in and saved Trump’s business by funding him to build a multitude of homes in Brooklyn. Continuing his relationship with the FHA, Trump was awarded contracts to build homes for U.S. Navy personnel throughout the east coast.12 Through centuries of privilege, and crucial assistance from the federal government in times of near-collapse, Trump family wealth has been allowed to flourish. Donald himself, after being handed this empire, declared bankruptcy four times, was allowed to write off over a billion dollars of debt, and was rescued by the banking industry on at least two occasions. There’s nothing remotely exceptional or innovative in any of this Trump wealth. It was built on the exploitation of land, labor, and (literally) prostitution; and was boosted, and even saved, on numerous occasions by the government. While the case of Trump is admittedly anecdotal, it does represent a very common trend in regards to how personal wealth is accumulated, maintained, and extended throughout history. Contrary to those favorite anti-socialist talking points, it is almost never meritocratic. It almost always relies on external protectors and facilitators. And it always feeds on the exploitation or displacement of the majority. But in order to truly understand how things like wealth and land, and consequently power, have been accumulated by so few, there must be basic systemic understandings of historical processes, how old epochs have transitioned into new epochs, and most importantly, how capitalism operates. In most cases, personal wealth and power is nothing more than an extension from previous generations; inheritance after inheritance stemming from primitive forms of accumulation dating back many centuries. Old wealth is intimately tied to systems that may sound like ancient history—monarchies, feudalism, indentured servitude, chattel slavery—but are, in reality, only

Expropriation or Bust    303

a handful of generations removed. By merely tracing wealth back a few generations, one can see how major companies that exist today used something like the Atlantic Slave Trade to emerge as viable businesses 150 years ago. It is well-documented that companies and financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, Aetna, JP Morgan Chase, New York Life, Wachovia Corporation, Brooks Brothers, Barclays, and AIG, among many others, directly profited from the enslavement of African people in the Americas and built their financial empires from this illegitimate process.13 Regardless of public apologies and recognition of these past transgressions (if these things ever materialize), these powerful institutions remain intact, hoping to gain and maintain a general appearance of legitimacy as their illegal foundations become further removed from time. Whether speaking of caste systems, nobility, aristocracy, feudalism, indentured servitude, chattel slavery, or capitalism, all modern socioeconomic systems have carried one common trait: they all amount to a minority using the majority (through exploitation or displacement) as a source of wealth, and thus have enforced and maintained this causal relationship by the threat and use of physical force and coercion in order to protect their minority interests. In the European empires, the concentration of wealth gained by this privileged minority was done so through vicious colonial expeditions where millions were murdered or enslaved and multitudes of land and natural resources were claimed by force. In North America, a wealthy minority established their own colonial experiment that was “a carbon copy of the old English aristocracies,” eventually leading to the birth of the United States, “a country that was not born free, but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich.”14 The foundation of the United States was constructed in two distinct regions, both shaped significantly by transplanted “old wealth” and towering hierarchies: the North, where a “commercial and religious oligarchy” sought to preserve in America “the social arrangements of the mother country” by exploiting the wage-dependent and landless masses through “control of trade and commerce, establishing political domination of the inhabitants through church and town meetings, and by careful marriage alliances among themselves”;15 and the South, where a landed aristocracy used their inherited wealth to purchase large parcels of land and thousands of slaves from the Atlantic Slave Trade. Through the early colonial years, this exclusive landed-aristocracy “held control of government, including the elected assemblies, by wielding power over tenants and slaves, by disenfranchising most citizens, and by under-representing the back-country areas.”16 The problem of slavery in the American colonies is well documented; but what is not often understood is that chattel slavery was the foundation of the country’s modern economic system. This cannot be overstated enough— the practice of chattel slavery in the South was quite literally the lifeblood

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of the modern United States, in terms of finance, capital, infrastructure, and even global power. Or, as Public Seminar’s Julia Ott succinctly put it, “racialized chattel slaves were the capital that made capitalism.”17According to Sven Beckert, it was the “cotton empire” that transformed the United States into a global power: As this cotton boom violently transformed huge swaths of the North American countryside, it catapulted the US to a pivotal role in the empire of cotton. In 1791, capital invested in cotton production in Brazil, as estimated by the US Treasury, was still more than ten times greater than in the US. In 1801, only ten years later, 60 percent more capital was invested in the cotton industry of the US than that of Brazil. Cotton, even more so than in the Caribbean and Brazil, infused land and slaves alike with unprecedented value, and promised slaveholders spectacular opportunities for profits and power. Already by 1820, cotton constituted 32 percent of all US exports, compared to a miniscule 2.2 percent in 1796. Indeed, more than half of all American exports between 1815 and 1860 consisted of cotton. Cotton so dominated the US economy that cotton production statistics “became an increasingly vital unit in assessing the American economy.” It was on the back of cotton, and thus on the back of slaves, that the US economy ascended in the world.18

A 2013 paper released by economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman illustrated not only the profound wealth generated by American slavery, but how it was significant in setting the United States apart from other industrialized nations. In contrast to its European counterparts, whose elites relied on land-wealth as their primary source of power, American elites were initially faced with a peculiar situation in regards to colonial land. Ironically, since land in the “new world” came so cheap (because it could simply be stolen from Native tribes), the true value of land became the mass agricultural production generated through slave labor. So, for American elites, wealth was not merely created by their violent land grabs, but more so by their access to free labor. Picketty and Zucman conclude, The lower land values prevailing in America during the 1770–1860 period were to some extent compensated by the slavery system. Land was so abundant that it was almost worthless, implying that it was difficult to be really rich by owning land. However, the landed elite could be rich and control a large share of national income by owning the labor force . . . In the case of antebellum U.S., the value of the slave stock was still highly significant. By putting together the best available estimates of slave prices and the number of slaves, we have come to the conclusion that the market value of slaves was between 1 and 2 years of national income for the entire U.S., and up to 3 years of income in Southern states. When we add up the value of slaves and the value of land, we obtain wealth-income ratios in the U.S. South which are relatively

Expropriation or Bust    305 close to those of the Old World. Slaves approximately compensate the lower land values.19

The significance of slavery to the Southern economy is as obvious now as it was then. In an 1883 address to the Louisville Convention, Frederick Douglass observed this fact, The colored people of the South are the laboring people of the South. The labor of a country is the source of its wealth; without the colored laborer today the South would be a howling wilderness, given up to bats, owls, wolves, and bears. He was the source of its wealth before the war, and has been the source of its prosperity since the war. He almost alone is visible in her fields, with implements of toil in his hands, and laboriously using them today.20

But it was not just the South that thrived off the institution of slavery. It was the entire country. And it was the newly found institution of capitalism. This primitive form of accumulation amounted to an immense pool of capital which has since been utilized in layered schemes of exploitation, throughout generations, as the primary source of cyclical wealth development. Those who created it were never given access to even an ounce. Those who essentially stole it (through violent land grabs and human enslavement) have since built financial, retail, industrial, and real estate empires from it. Empires that have one common trait: They are completely illegitimate. And their connections run deep, transcending regions. The tracing of this history has already been done. Take the case of 19th-century New York City banker James Brown and his family’s investment bank, Browns Brothers & Co., which served as a substantial source of finance capital for over two centuries (and still exists today as Brown Brothers Harriman & Co). Upon tallying his wealth in 1842, Brown found that “his investments in the South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.”21 Northern bankers made fortunes from slavery. And Northern industries relied heavily on the cotton production to jump-start their own fortunes. Beckert and Seth Rockman describe these historical connections, Brown was hardly unusual among the capitalists of the North. Nicholas Biddle’s United States Bank of Philadelphia funded banks in Mississippi to promote the expansion of plantation lands. Biddle recognized that slave-grown cotton was the only thing made in the U.S. that had the capacity to bring gold and silver into the vaults of the nation’s banks. Likewise, the architects of New England’s industrial revolution watched the price of cotton with rapt attention, for their textile mills would have been silent without the labor of slaves on distant plantations . . . 

306    C. JENKINS . . . to understand slavery’s centrality to the rise of American capitalism, just consider the history of an antebellum Alabama dry-goods outfit called Lehman Brothers or a Rhode Island textile manufacturer that would become the antecedent firm of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Reparations lawsuits (since dismissed) generated evidence of slave insurance policies by Aetna and put Brown University and other elite educational institutions on notice that the slave-trade enterprises of their early benefactors were potential legal liabilities. Recent state and municipal disclosure ordinances have forced firms such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wachovia Corp. to confront unsettling ancestors on their corporate family trees. Such revelations are hardly surprising in light of slavery’s role in spurring the nation’s economic development. America’s “take-off” in the 19th century wasn’t in spite of slavery; it was largely thanks to it. And recent research in economic history goes further: It highlights the role that commodified human beings played in the emergence of modern capitalism itself.22

The United States, while advertised as the “new world” or the “free world,” was nothing more than a breeding ground for age-old, social hierarchies. “No new social class came to power through the door of the American Revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.”23 There was nothing egalitarian about this experiment. “Roughly 10 percent of the American settlers, consisting of large landholders (the landed aristocracy) and merchants (the commercial aristocracy), owned nearly half the wealth of the entire country, and held as slaves one-seventh of the country’s people.”24 The founding fathers and settlers sought to create a political and governmental system that avoided handing any meaningful sense of power or influence to the people, while also establishing a rule of law capable of protecting the extremely unequal distribution of land and wealth. As Cornel West explains, American democracy emerged as a republic (representative government) rather than an Athenian-like direct democracy primarily owing to the same elite fear of the passions and ignorance of the demos (the masses). For the founding fathers—just as for Plato—too much Socratic questioning from the demos and too much power sharing of elites with the demos were expected to lead to anarchy, instability, or perpetual rebellion.25

A general insecurity and fear of the masses, or “the mob,” was a primary motivation in this birth. And this motivation was rooted solely in the material interests of a transplanted colonial ruling and owning class. Charles Beard’s invaluable contribution, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States,26 hammered this thesis home. In reflecting on this work, Howard Zinn tell us that,

Expropriation or Bust    307 Beard found that most of the makers of the constitution had direct economic interests in establishing a strong federal government: The manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the money lenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slave owners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.27

These motivations have dominated the political, social, and economic landscape of the United States throughout its existence. As we can see, 150 years removed from the nation’s founding, not much had changed. In 1937, investigative journalist Ferdinand Lundberg obtained tax records and other historical documents in order to expose this perpetual chain of concentrated wealth. His findings, duly titled “America’s 60 Families,” concluded that, The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth. These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form. This de facto government is actually the government of the United States—informal, invisible, shadowy. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy.28

And today, two-and-a-half centuries later, still nothing has changed. As of 2010, the top 1% of U.S. households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one’s home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%.29

These unequal beginnings have remained consistent through history, and have been maintained through a governmental system designed to protect them. From slavery and the industrial robber-baron era to the modern forms of monopoly and neoliberal capitalism, each epoch has continued seamlessly by constantly replacing and rebranding forms of human exploitation—peasant, servant, slave, tenant, laborer—as sources of concentrated wealth.

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HUMAN RESOURCES: CAPITALISM, ENCLOSURE, AND THE EXPLOITATION OF LABOR In virtue of this monstrous system, the children of the worker, on entering life, find no fields which they may till, no machine which they may tend, no mine in which they may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what they will produce to a master. They must sell their labour for a scant and uncertain wage. —Peter Kropotkin (The Conquest of Bread)30

One of the basic mechanisms of capitalism is the relationship between capital and labor. No matter what argument one may make in support of capitalism, this fundamental relationship can never be denied. Everything from entrepreneurships to small, family-owned businesses to corporate conglomerates must rely on this foundational interaction inherent to this economic system. Whether branded as “crony-capitalism,” “corporate-capitalism,” “unfettered-capitalism” or any one of the many monikers used to distract from its inherent flaws and contradictions, proponents can’t deny its lifeblood—its need to exploit labor. And they can’t deny the fundamental way in which it exploits labor—by utilizing property as a social relationship. It is in this relationship where masses of human beings are commodified, essentially transformed into machines, and forced to work so they may create wealth for those who employ them. This fundamental aspect of capitalism is not debatable. The epoch of capitalism and its reliance on mass exploitation of labor was described by Marx throughout his work. A most fitting summary is found in its transition from feudalism, which is explained by Marx in Capital, Volume One, As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital.31 In the United States, the exploitation of labor—whether free (chattel slavery) or surplus (wage slavery)—has been the primary source of wealth-building for centuries. When chattel slavery was officially brought to an end after the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation, a transition to establish and protect

Expropriation or Bust    309 new forms of exploitation began. During reconstruction in the South, the newly freed slaves were immediately betrayed by the post-war government. This betrayal came in three basic components: (1) the freedmen did not get “the 40 acres and a mule” they were promised; (2) the old slave owners got back their plantations and thus the power to institute a mode of production to suit cotton culture; and (3) the crop lien system was introduced with “new” form of labor: sharecropping.32

This transition, hence, created a new form of slavery in the South; one where, the cropper (former slave) had neither control of the nature of his crop nor the marketing of it. The cropper owned nothing but his labor power, and was thus forced to part with half of the crop for “furnishings.” The rest of the crop was to go to the merchant upon whom he depends for his every purchase of clothing, food, implements and fertilizer. The cropper was charged exorbitant prices but could not question the word of the boss who keeps the books and makes the “settlement,” at which time the cropper found himself in perpetual debt and thus unable to leave the land.33

As this rebranding of human exploitation was sweeping the South, federal soldiers directed their attention north, where wage laborers were engulfed in a battle to break their own form of slavery. This concerted effort on the part of the owning class (in both north and south) to suppress their exploited laborers showed how blurred the lines between chattel slavery and wage slavery really were. In her crucial essay, American Civilization on Trial, Raya Dunayevskaya explains, In 1877, the year the Federal troops were removed from the South, was the year they were used to crush the railroad strikes stretching from Pennsylvania to Texas. The Pennsylvania Governor not only threatened labor with “a sharp use of bayonet and musket,” but the Federal Government did exactly that at the behest of the captains of industry. The peace pact with the Southern bourbons meant unrestrained violence on the part of the rulers, both North and South, against labor.34

The attack on Northern laborers intensified and was supported by a continuation of White supremacist tactics that divided the White and Black labor force, mostly by keeping newly freedmen indebted and stuck in their new sharecropping roles on southern plantations: The ruthlessness with which capital asserted its rule over labor that worked long hours for little pay, which was further cut at the will of the factory owners every time a financial crisis hit the country, drove labor underground. The first National Labor Union had a very short span of life. The Knights of Labor that

310    C. JENKINS replaced it organized white and black alike, with the result that, at its height (1886) out of a total membership of one million no less than 90,000 were Negroes. Nevertheless, no Northern organization could possibly get to the mass base of Negroes who remained overwhelmingly, preponderantly in the South. For, along with being freed from slavery, the Negroes were freed also from a way to make a living. Landless were the new freedmen, and penniless.35

The transition from feudalism to capitalism, or from peasant to wage laborer, was facilitated through similar means. As European nations—and the American colonies—had built up primitive forms of capital through stolen resources and the enslavement of Africans, industrialization was coming into its own. The feudal systems of old were no longer sufficient for the owning classes, not because they weren’t advantageous, but because the peasantry, despite its subordinate and often times subhuman existence, was relatively self-sustaining. Peasants had access to land and resources—access that allowed them sustenance and the means to produce basic necessities for themselves and their families during their free time. To them, industrial wage labor was nothing more than slavery—being stripped of access to land and resources, becoming completely reliant on labor power and the meager wages it brought (if lucky) as a source of income, and being doubly reliant on those wages to not only purchase goods, but to merely sustain. In other words, to the feudal peasant living under a lordship, the prospect of becoming a wage laborer in a “more free” capitalist society was viewed as a downgrade. This transition was a futile sell for lords-turned-capitalists; the peasantry knew better than to accept these conditions. So, the “industrious men” of the time duplicated history and proceeded in the only way they could—by stripping the peasantry of their “common” land rights and corralling them into the factories and mills. This was accomplished through the construction of bankrupt philosophies, false justifications, new laws, and armed police forces to enforce these laws. In his book, Stop Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance, historian Peter Linebaugh identifies the brain trust behind this transition: Arthur Young was the advocate of land privatization; the earth became a capitalist asset. Thomas Malthus sought to show that famine, war, and pestilence balanced a fecund population. Patrick Colquhoun was the magistrate and government intelligence agent who organized the criminalization of London custom. Jeremy Bentham contrived the architectural enclosure of the urban populations with his “panopticon.”36

Their experiment was human engineering at its finest—a literal example of a capitalist conspiracy, if there ever was one, designed for the purpose of transforming masses of people into commodities without their consent.

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With a contrived philosophical approach in hand, the creation of artificial laws provided the mechanism to accomplish this, They present their policies as “law.” The law of property with Bentham, the law of police with Colquhoun, the laws of political economy with Young, the laws of nature in Malthus. Bentham will have institutions for orphans and “wayward” women. Malthus will recommend the postponement of marriage. Colquhoun inveighed against brothel and ale-house. Arthur Young takes the ground from under the feet of the women whose pig-keeping, chicken minding, and vegetable patch depended on common right. They are concerned with the reproduction of the working class.37

The “legal” destruction of the common land and its subsequent privatization was a fundamental prerequisite for capitalist production. It amounted to land theft on a grand scale, falsely justified by laws passed by the very men who stood to gain from it. However, this legal transformation was not complete without the forced enclosure of the peasantry. It was in this development where masses of people, formerly allowed access to common lands, were stripped of whatever meager degrees of self-determination they once had under feudalism: By enclosure, we include the complete separation of the worker from the means of production—this was most obvious in the case of land (the commons)—it also obtained in the many trades and crafts of London, indeed it was prerequisite to mechanization. The shoemaker kept some of the leather he worked with (“clicking”). The tailor kept cloth remnants he called “cabbage.” The weavers kept their “fents” and “thrums” after the cloth was cut from the loom. Servants expected “vails” and would strike if they were not forthcoming. Sailors treasured their “adventures.” Wet coopers felt entitled to “waxers.” The ship-builders and sawyers took their “chips.” The dockers (or longshoremen) were called “lumpers,” and worked with sailors, watermen, lightermen, coopers, warehousemen, porters, and when the containers of the cargo spilled they took as custom their “spillings,” “sweepings,” or “scrapings.” The cook licked his own fingers.38

The invention of capitalism and wage labor changed all of this. And, in this day and time, wage labor was widely recognized by former slaves and peasants as being not very different from that of chattel slavery. “Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery,” warned former slave, Frederick Douglass, “and this slavery of wages must go down with the other.”39 To ruling and owning elites, the invention of wage labor was intimately tied to that of chattel slavery, systemically. “While most theories of capitalism set slavery apart, as something utterly distinct, because under slavery, workers do not labor for a wage,” Ott tells us, “new historical research reveals that

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for centuries, a single economic system encompassed both the plantation and the factory.”40 Even in the field of “business organization” and “management,” the southern slave plantation was viewed as an influential and beneficial model to be transplanted and deployed in northern factories and mills: The plantation didn’t just produce the commodities that fueled the broader economy; it also generated innovative business practices that would come to typify modern management. As some of the most heavily capitalized enterprises in antebellum America, plantations offered early examples of time-motion studies and regimentation through clocks and bells. Seeking ever-greater efficiencies in cotton picking, slaveholders reorganized their fields, regimented the workday, and implemented a system of vertical reporting that made overseers into managers answerable to those above for the labor of those below.41

And because of this inherently exploitative and dehumanizing labor process found under capitalism, the state has been needed to act on behalf of those who accumulate the illegitimate wealth from this process. Without the state, this unequal social arrangement—where the majority is essentially born into bondage—would not survive. An especially useful anarchist analysis regarding the relationship between wage slavery and state force tells us, In every system of class exploitation, a ruling class controls access to the means of production in order to extract tribute from labor. Capitalism is no exception. In this system the state maintains various kinds of “class monopolies” (to use Benjamin Tucker’s phrase) to ensure that workers do not receive their “natural wage,” the full product of their labor. While some of these monopolies are obvious (such as tariffs, state granted market monopolies and so on), most are “behind the scenes” and work to ensure that capitalist domination does not need extensive force to maintain.42

Hence, the illegitimacy of primitive accumulation provided the foundation for the illegitimacy of the wage-labor system central to capitalism, whose exploitative arrangement is protected by the illegitimacy of the capitalist state. ”PROPERTY IS THEFT”: ON PRIVATE PROPERTY AND LANDLORDISM If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to remove a man’s mind, will, and personality, is the power of life and death, and that

Expropriation or Bust    313 it makes a man a slave. It is murder. Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?” —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (What is Property?)

The prevailing mindset within capitalist society has been to place property above all else. Those of us who have grown up in the United States have had this idea drilled into our heads at every turn. The materialistic nature of consumerism, which equates self-worth with the accumulation of wealth, land, and other material goods, has conditioned us to view our lives and the lives of others as being secondary, or at best equal, to the value of property. Our property becomes our identity, and for this reason, it becomes as sacred and revered as human life itself. When American “pioneers,” accompanied by federal soldiers, stole Native American land, forced Native American people out of those lands, corralled them into open-air prisons, and used that newly-claimed land to enrich themselves, this established a path of illegitimacy. It doesn’t matter that—after multiple generations have partaken in the buying and selling of this same land—those who profit from said land today did not take part in the actual killing, maiming, and robbing of Native American peoples. Time and separation are irrelevant factors. Being distanced from the illegitimate roots of multi-generational theft for the sake of profit-making doesn’t make one innocent in the process. The entire cycle has been built on a foundation of illegitimacy. This stolen land was never intended to be a source of wealth for European colonizers and their future bloodlines, or for anyone else for that matter. In using this modern scenario, this process of wealth accumulation can be applied to all such accumulation since the beginning of time. That being said, condemning and exposing the forcible extraction of land, in itself, does not begin to address the philosophical illegitimacy of private property. In order to correctly point out this illegitimacy, we must dig deeper. We must understand the meaning of private property, how it came about, and what its sole purpose is. To begin this inquiry, let’s consider what Emma Goldman had to say about private property in her 1908 pamphlet, “What I Believe”: “Property” means dominion over things and the denial to others of the use of those things. So long as production was not equal to the normal demand, institutional property may have had some raison d’être. One has only to consult economics, however, to know that the productivity of labor within the last few decades has increased so tremendously as to exceed normal demand a hundred-fold, and to make property not only a hindrance to human well-being, but an obstacle, a deadly barrier, to all progress. It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living

314    C. JENKINS corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives—young lives, old lives, and lives in the making.43

When one person, any person, acts on their individual power to acquire property that is to be used beyond their own means, they are doing so for the purpose of direct exploitation or residual dispossession. If it is not to be used as a means to live and sustain, it can either be (a) abandoned and restricted from those who have none, (b) used to extract natural resources for individual use beyond necessity, or (c) utilized as a social relationship to employ other human beings as a source of wealth-building (through the exploitation of labor). When one exercises this undue power (whether through force or unseen privilege), “It is conceded that the fundamental cause of this terrible state of affairs is: that man must sell his labor; and that his inclination and judgment are subordinated to the will of a master (the one who owns the land).”44 When considering this analysis, one that surely sounds alien to most living in the 21st century, it is important to understand basic notions of property, and most importantly, the difference between “personal property” and “private property.” The use of private property as a way to exploit others is unique to capitalism. For example, in contrast to feudalism, capitalists only allow workers access to their property during times when said workers are laboring to create wealth for said owners. In feudal times, as mentioned before, peasants were allowed to live on this land, and even use it as a means to sustain themselves and their families, as long as this personal activity was done after the lord’s work had been completed. Now, with capitalism, workers “punch in,” proceed to labor for a specified amount of time in exchange for a fraction of the wealth they create, “punch out,” and then are left to find their own means of housing, food, clothing, and basic sustenance with only the wage they receive. This latter task has proven to be difficult for a majority of the world’s population for the past number of centuries, even in so-called industrialized nations, which is why welfare states have become prominent as a means to facilitate the mass exploitation of the working class. Capitalists, and their governments, learned long ago that workers must be able to survive, if only barely, so that they may continue to labor and consume. In 1918, on the heels of Russian Revolution and subsequent birth of the Soviet Union, German socialist Rosa Luxemburg illustrated the glaring contrast between a society that allows for the concentration of property as a means to exploit a displaced and landless majority (capitalism) versus one that utilizes property as a communal, life-sustaining resource (socialism)

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for all of its members. In analyzing capitalist property relations and its consequences on society, she tells us, To-day all wealth, the largest and most fruitful tracts of land, the mines, the mills and the factories belong to a small group of Junkers and private capitalists. From them the great masses of the laboring class receive a scanty wage in return for long hours of arduous toil, hardly enough for a decent livelihood. The enrichment of a small class of idlers is the purpose and end of presentday society . . . . . . To-day production in every manufacturing unit is conducted by the individual capitalist independently of all others. What and where commodities are to be produced, where, when and how the finished product is to be sold, is decided by the individual capitalist owner. Nowhere does labor have the slightest influence upon these questions. It is simply the living machine that has its work to do.45

In contrasting this with a socialist solution, she illustrates the alternative: To give to modern society and to modern production a new impulse and a new purpose—that is the foremost duty of the revolutionary working class. . . . To this end all social wealth the land and all that it produces, the factories and the mills must be taken from their exploiting owners to become the common property of the entire people. It thus becomes the foremost duty of a revolutionary government of the working class to issue a series of decrees making all important instruments of production national property and placing them under social control. . . . Private ownership of the means of production and subsistence must disappear. Production will be carried on not for the enrichment of the individual but solely for the creation of a supply of commodities sufficient to supply the wants and needs of the working class. Accordingly factories, mills and farms must be operated upon an entirely new basis, from a wholly different point of view. . . . production is to be carried on for the sole purpose of securing to all a more humane existence, of providing for all plentiful food, clothing and other cultural means of subsistence.46

While the ways in which such economic justice can and should be obtained, and how new systems should be arranged as an alternative, are debatable topics, Luxemburg’s description of and contrast to capitalist property relations still remain the same. And it serves as an instructive analysis to why such property relations are fundamentally illegitimate. In Marx’s explanation of potential transitions from the capitalist mode of property to the socialist, we see the same contrast. In Capital, he tells us,

316    C. JENKINS The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.47

To complement the materialist analysis presented by an array of Marxist thinkers, anarchists have added equally-useful, philosophically-based arguments against the ownership of private property. Simply stated, to anarchists, private property must be opposed because it is “a source of coercive, hierarchical authority as well as exploitation and, consequently, elite privilege and inequality. It is based on and produces inequality, in terms of both wealth and power.”48 The unnatural and unequal distribution of power among human populations due to private property is a commonsense analysis that can be understood by simply imagining the start of any such society, where all would have equal footing, equal rights, equitable futures, and the basic will to satisfy needs (without taking that will away from others). However, if and when a member of that community decides to take more than they need, they immediately create a scenario where others will inevitably go without, be subjected to an exploitative social relationship, and/or rely on the illegitimate landowner for basic needs (in the form of some sort of exchange). As anarchist philosophy tells us, “those who own property exploit those who do not. This is because those who do not own have to pay or sell their labor to those who do own in order to get access to the resources they need to live and work (such as workplaces, machinery, land, credit, housing, and products under patents).”49 Proudhon’s assertion that “property is theft” was not hyperbolic. He elaborates, The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign—for all these titles are synonymous—imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once . . . [and so] property engenders despotism . . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what

Expropriation or Bust    317 it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings—kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be anything but chaos and confusion?50

Even bourgeois philosophers like Jean-Jacque Rousseau, someone whose ideas would now be relegated to the radical fringe, warned against the notion of private property, albeit from a moral viewpoint. In his 1755 “Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men,” he touched on its consequences for humanity, writing, The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, “This is mine” and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one.”51

Ironically, the notion of private property is lauded by right-wing theories of “libertarianism” as the basis of liberty and freedom. In reality, private property accomplishes the opposite, and makes any semblance of human liberty obsolete and impossible. Legalistically, under capitalism and the state’s enforcement of property law, the illegitimate ownership of land creates a scenario where land is monopolized by an extremely small and privileged group of people for the sole purpose of extracting wealth (essentially through force and coercion) from both natural and human resources. The anarchist analysis tells us, The land monopoly consists of enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal occupancy and use. It also includes making the squatting of abandoned housing and other forms of property illegal. This leads to ground-rent, by which landlords get payment for letting others use the land they own but do not actually cultivate or use. It also allows the ownership and control of natural resources like oil, gas, coal and timber. This monopoly is particularly exploitative as the owner cannot claim to have created the land or its resources. It was available to all until the landlord claimed it by fencing it off and barring others from using it.52

The natural consequence of this process is landlordism, “an economic system under which a few private individuals (landlords) own property, and rent it to tenants.”53 This system, despite being a major affront to liberty, has become the norm. And, like the system of wage labor, it coerces the

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majority into an extremely subservient and dependent role by forcing them to rely on, and submit themselves to, a privileged minority which has gained control of the land. Returning to our anarchist analysis, we can see that, At a minimum, every home and workplace needs land on which to be built. Thus while cultivation of land has become less important, the use of land remains crucial. The land monopoly, therefore, ensures that working people find no land to cultivate, no space to set up shop and no place to sleep without first having to pay a landlord a sum for the privilege of setting foot on the land they own but neither created nor use. At best, the worker has mortgaged their life for decades to get their wee bit of soil or, at worse, paid their rent and remained as property-less as before. Either way, the landlords are richer for the exchange.54

The illegitimacy of this form of land ownership is found not only in its reliance on mass exploitation and dispossession, but also in the means in which it has been allowed to develop. This process of landlordism has complemented the development of the capitalist system, mimicking the social relationship between labor and capital, and consequently doubling down on exploitation through the creation of yet another relationship between tenant and landlord. Along with primitive forms of accumulation, like chattel slavery, which allowed for the influx of the raw capital needed to launch the capitalist system, the forceful acquisition and expansion of privatelyowned land has been facilitated by the state. This facilitation has been delivered through both military force and legislative (legal) support: The land monopoly did play an important role in creating capitalism. This took two main forms. Firstly, the state enforced the ownership of large estates in the hands of a single family. Taking the best land by force, these landlords turned vast tracks of land into parks and hunting grounds so forcing the peasants little option but to huddle together on what remained. Access to superior land was therefore only possible by paying a rent for the privilege, if at all. Thus an elite claimed ownership of vacant lands, and by controlling access to it (without themselves ever directly occupying or working it) they controlled the laboring classes of the time. Secondly, the ruling elite also simply stole land which had traditionally been owned by the community. This was called enclosure, the process by which common land was turned into private property.55

Much like the advent of wage labor, the notion of private property has undergone a complete transformation in the psychological imagination over the past few centuries. Both serve one purpose—to act as social relationships which allow for the accumulation and concentration of wealth via the exploitation of the majority. This understanding was once common sense, even among bourgeois philosophies that dominated the Enlightenment. Now, after generations of conditioning, this basic realization is alien

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to most. Not only are notions of wage labor and private property viewed as the natural order of things, but private property itself has become infused with the much different idea of personal property. This has led to the development of an exploited working-class majority which reveres such property, respects its existence without question, and even fights to protect it at all costs despite its sole purpose to exploit said majority. Thus, in the psychological imagination, the illegitimate has become legitimate. While, in reality, it remains as illegitimate as ever. NATURAL RESOURCES: ON COLONIALISM AND GLOBAL LOOTING The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. —Michael Parenti56

In order for capitalists to utilize private property as a social relationship in their mass exploitation of the working class, they must have access to the natural resources—(timber, gold, minerals, diamonds, shale, oil, etc . . . )— that are necessary to fuel production and create commodities and goods to be bought and sold in a market. Since nations are, in theory, constricted to geographic boundaries, they often do not have access to all of the natural resources they need or desire. Throughout history, the remedy for this was the notion of trading—whereas one nation would trade their surplus resources to another nation in return for needed resources, and vice versa. However, as industrial capitalism began to grow exponentially, so did the need to transform agrarian land to industrial zones, as well as farmers to industrial laborers. As Karl Kautsky explained in his 1914 essay on “ultraimperialism,” the arrival of colonialism and, more specifically, imperialism, was an inevitable stage of global capitalist production. As capitalist governments, in representing their profit sectors, were forced to seek out new industrial zones, “the sweet dream of international harmony (free trade) quickly came to an end.” Because, “as a rule, industrial zones overmaster and dominate agrarian zones.”57 Modern European imperialism can be traced as far back as the 15th century, at the height of its trade with Asian territories. During this time, because of a lack of marketable goods, European nations turned to naval dominance as a means to an end. The Portuguese provided an example of this militaristic transition:

320    C. JENKINS since Roman times, Europe had been exporting gold and silver to the East: the problem was that Europe had never produced much of anything that Asians wanted to buy, so it was forced to pay in specie for silks, spices, steel, and other imports. The early years of European expansion were largely attempts to gain access either to Eastern luxuries or to new sources of gold and silver with which to pay for them. In those early days, Atlantic Europe really had only one substantial advantage over its Muslim rivals: an active and advanced tradition of naval warfare, honed by centuries of conflict in the Mediterranean. The moment when Vasco da Gama entered the Indian Ocean in 1498, the principle that the seas should be a zone of peaceful trade came to an immediate end. Portuguese flotillas began bombarding and sacking every port city they came across, then seizing control of strategic points and extorting protection money from unarmed Indian Ocean merchants for the right to carry on their business unmolested.58

Around the same time, in perhaps the most influential development in the shaping of the modern world, European powers discovered the western hemisphere. The mass looting of the Americas, as they would come to be called, more than satisfied the Asian demand for precious metals via trade: At almost exactly the same time (as the Portuguese assault), Christopher Columbus—a Genoese mapmaker seeking a short-cut to China-touched land in the New World, and the Spanish and Portuguese empires stumbled into the greatest economic windfall in human history: entire continents full of unfathomable wealth, whose inhabitants, armed only with Stone Age weapons, began conveniently dying almost as soon as they arrived. The conquest of Mexico and Peru led to the discovery of enormous new sources of precious metal, and these were exploited ruthlessly and systematically, even to the point of largely exterminating the surrounding populations to extract as much precious metal as quickly as possible.59

For European powers during the 19th century, militarism also became the primary means of resource extraction from the continent of Africa. While Africa had faced problems with colonial settlers as far back as 550 BC (Greeks), the late-19th century pillaging of the continent was especially important to the modern system of global capitalism. As consistent with capital accumulation, Africa’s natural resources proved to be a major source of wealth production for a tiny sector of Europe’s capitalist class, while simultaneously leaving African peoples in dire circumstances. Britain’s role in this process is especially notable. Claude Kabemba, of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, tells us British capital played a key role in extraction of resources during the colonial period, especially in southern and central Africa. The competition to find and control sources of raw materials, including minerals, was one of the main

Expropriation or Bust    321 drivers of European penetration and eventual colonial partition of Africa in the last quarter of the 19th century. Africa’s vast resources were plundered to support the development of Britain—and other European powers—while contributing minimally to the development of the continent. Indeed, Africans have little to show for centuries of exploitation of their mineral resources. Poverty on the continent is as bad as ever. Inequality is also just as severe, if not worse, and there are increasing conflicts between extractive companies and communities.60

Colonialism is inseparable from Capitalism. As the capitalist system became globalized over the course of a few centuries, in its constant search for new markets, the need to dominate unoccupied lands and “uncooperative” peoples became a necessity. Thus, “new markets” were established through occupation directed by capitalist militaries, the forcible removal of millions of human beings from their native lands, and the forcible extraction of natural resources. U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler’s account of his experiences in South and Central America at the turn of the 20th century gives invaluable insight on this process. Said Butler, I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.61

Butler’s honesty, while representing a rare act of integrity for a high-ranking U.S. military officer, did little to help the millions of people who had been ransacked, looted, and displaced by the U.S. military and subsequent corporate takeovers of land. Such occupations would reverberate for decades, if not centuries. For example, in Haiti, although the official military occupation ended in 1934, “the corporations that were given lands failed miserably, with the lone exception of the Haitian-American Sugar Company, which endured for over five decades until it closed its doors in 1989.” With unfathomable amounts of resources and wealth being stolen and regenerated by the U.S. capitalist class, “the people of Haiti were left landless and jobless,” making mass migration through the western hemisphere a

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necessity. And these complicit actors (like Butler) who had long passed, and these dead entities, “live on as one collective in this ghost that continues to mold Haiti’s policy” and modern reality.62 In expanding on, or correcting (in his view), Kautsky’s analysis, Vladimir Lenin illustrated how it was not only the parasitic nature of industrial capitalism that led to imperialism, but more so the constant need of finance capital to regenerate itself through exposure to new markets. In this sense, explains Lenin, the illegitimacy of capitalist accumulation on a national level became at odds with itself, with various “core” nations attempting to outdo one another in their pillaging of “periphery” nations. Lenin tells us, Imperialism is a striving for annexations—this is what the political part of Kautsky’s definition amounts to. It is correct, but very incomplete, for politically, imperialism is, in general, a striving towards violence and reaction. For the moment, however, we are interested in the economic aspect of the question, which Kautsky himself introduced into his definition. The inaccuracies in Kautsky’s definition are glaring. The characteristic feature of imperialism is not industrial but finance capital. It is not an accident that in France it was precisely the extraordinarily rapid development of finance capital, and the weakening of industrial capital, that from the eighties onwards gave rise to the extreme intensification of annexationist (colonial) policy. The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialised regions (German appetite for Belgium; French appetite for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a redivision to reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony. (Belgium is particularly important for Germany as a base for operations against Britain; Britain needs Baghdad as a base for operations against Germany, etc.)63

The profit-making potential of war has become even more obvious in recent decades, exposing the intimate ties between capitalism, imperialism, finance, and the military industrial complex. False and contrived “calls to action,” like the United States’ so-called “War on Terror,” provide the perfect justification for the endless production, use, and reproduction of immensely destructive weapons and munitions. A simple search on stock trends for the top weapons’ manufacturers illustrates this. Lockheed Martin stock, which was worth $38.49 per share on 9/7/01 (4 days prior to the 9/11 attack), is now worth $238.01 (6/17/16). Raytheon went from $24.85 per share to $134.49. Northrup Grumman has increased from $40.95 per share pre-9/11 to $213.87. Halliburton ($16.08 per share in 2001 to $73.41 in 2014), Boeing ($68.35 to $129.60), General Dynamics (from $41.50 $138.94), Honeywell (from $35.75 to $115.93), and BAE Systems ($330.00

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to $477.30) have all experienced similar profit gains during this period of massive bombing campaigns across the world. A 2016 report by the Netherlands-based peace organization, PAX, also found that 150 financial institutions, including JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, have invested roughly $28 billion dollars in companies manufacturing internationallybanned cluster bombs.64 And, when considering that major U.S. politicians, including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, have owned stock in these companies,65 this quite literally represents a form of human sacrifice for monetary gain. Every dead body in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza, Pakistan, and so forth . . . equals more money in their personal bank accounts. Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory (WST) is especially helpful in terms of macro-analyzing global relations based in the expansion of the capitalist system over the past few centuries. This approach “traces the rise of the capitalist world-economy from the ‘long’ 16th century (c. 1450– 1640),” which, according to Wallertsein, “was an accidental outcome of the protracted crisis of feudalism (c. 1290–1450).” In formulating this capitalist world order, “Europe (the West) used its advantages and gained control over most of the world economy and presided over the development and spread of industrialization and capitalist economy, indirectly resulting in unequal development.66 Because of its Eurocentric organization, the global capitalist onslaught that has dominated the modern world has blatant racial underpinnings. The “core nations” that make up WST’s dominant group (U.S., England, France, Germany) tends to be “lighter” on the color scale, while the “periphery nations” that make up its dominated group (nations primarily in the global south) tend to be “darker.” If anything, this oppression based in colorism makes it easier for core-nation ruling classes to justify their actions to their own subjects (the core-nation working classes). Despite a white supremacist agenda (see “Manifest Destiny,” the “White Man’s Burden,” and the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine) that has undoubtedly influenced this global looting on a mass scale, the primary development of modern capitalist imperialism remains economic. As world-systems theorist Samir Amin tells us, for the peoples who live within periphery nations, “colonization was (and is) atrocious. Like slavery, it was (and is) an attack on fundamental rights” However, its perpetuation is motivated by material gain. “If you want to understand why these rights were trampled on and why they still are being trodden on in the world today,” explains Amin, “you have to get rid of the idea that colonialism was the result of some sort of conspiracy. What was at stake was the economic and social logic that must be called by its real name: capitalism.”67 In echoing earlier assessments of colonialism and imperialism (from the likes of Kautsky and Lenin) as inherent capitalist mechanisms, Amin insists that,

324    C. JENKINS They are inseparable. Capitalism has been colonial, more precisely imperialist, during all the most notable periods of its development. The conquest of the Americas by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the 16th century, then by the French and the British, was the first modern form of imperialism and colonization: an extremely brutal form which resulted in the genocide of the Indians of North America, Indian societies in Latin America thrown into slavery and black slavery through the whole continent, north and south. Beyond this example, by following a logic of precise deployment through the different stages of its history, we can see that capitalism has constructed a consistent dichotomy of relations between a centre (the heart of the system of capitalist exploitation) and the periphery (made up of dominated countries and peoples).68

In describing the real-life effects on populations of people, Amin tells us that this global order has been based on unequal exchange, that is, the exchange of manufactured products, sold very expensively in the colonies by commercial monopolies supported by the State, for the purchase of products or primary products at very low prices, since they were based on labour that was almost without cost— provided by the peasants and workers located at the periphery. During all the stages of capitalism, the plunder of the resources of the peripheries, the oppression of colonized peoples, their direct or indirect exploitation by capital, remain the common characteristics of the phenomenon of colonialism.69

In other words, “the plunder and hyper-exploitation of the global South,” a region spanning dozens of countries and billions of people, has directly led to the enrichment of the west (European powers). And this enrichment, which expands well into the tens of trillions of dollars, has been claimed by a very small sector of the western capitalist and ruling classes. Much like how labor and private property are used as the primary means for the few to extract wealth from the many, colonialism and imperialism have represented more blatant and violent forms of robbing global wealth. Through the forced occupation of “unused” land (property not being utilized as a means to exploit), displacement of millions of communities, killing of masses of indigenous peoples, and utter destruction of more than half of the earth’s infrastructure, “62 individuals have been allowed to amass the same amount of wealth as 3.6 billion people combined.”70 Beyond the mass displacement and impoverished of billions of people, this process has also equaled a social cost that simply cannot be explained in numbers. It is the cost associated with the ravaging and utilization of earth’s finite resources. In a modern inquiry into the concept and history of land ownership, Jeriah Bowser sums up the environmental consequences of the European colonization of North America:

Expropriation or Bust    325 The cost of the North American land enclosure has been heavy. In less than 500 years, over four million square miles of land have been colonized, privatized, and commodified. Over 95% of the standing forests in the US are gone, the soils of the once-fertile breadbasket of the Midwest are extremely depleted, over 37% of the rivers in the US are declared “unusable” due to pollution and contamination, over 1,000 species of plants and animals have become extinct, and the largest genocide in history took the lives of over 50 million indigenous people. The rich and promising “land of opportunity” was apparently only an opportunity for a few, at the expense of many.71

These numbers apply to North America alone, which amounts to 9.5 million square miles. Multiply this by 54 to get a sense of the global consequences (over 510 million square miles). THE TRICKERY BEHIND “NEW WEALTH” I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. —Eugene V. Debs72

Most “new wealth” has been accumulated through financialization, a massive scheme of manipulating, speculating, and gambling on money and commodities. The modern form of speculation that has dominated financial markets is a brand of trickery on a scale like none before. While it represents a complete separation from traditional capitalist production schemes, it remains tied to capitalist wealth production in that it owns and controls the bloodline of this system: currency. And it uses this concentration of money to manage all aspects of the economic system that control us. In a damning summary of modern financialization, Chris Hedges explains, Once speculators are able to concentrate wealth into their hands they have, throughout history, emasculated government, turned the press into lap dogs and courtiers, corrupted the courts and hollowed out public institutions, including universities, to justify their looting and greed. Today’s speculators have created grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge the masses into crippling forms of debt peonage . . . . . . They steal staggering sums of public funds, such as the $85 billion of mortgage-backed securities and bonds, many of them toxic, that they unload each month on the Federal Reserve in return for cash. And when the pub-

326    C. JENKINS lic attempts to finance public-works projects they extract billions of dollars through wildly inflated interest rates. Speculators at megabanks or investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law—ostensibly put in place to protect the vulnerable from the powerful—to steal from everyone, including their shareholders. They are parasites. They feed off the carcass of industrial capitalism. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They just manipulate money. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged.73

The 2008 global financial crisis was caused by these very practices which became commonplace on Wall Street—practices that were purposely deceitful, vague, and built for a short-term and surefire way to funnel massive amounts of wealth into the hands of very few. As has become clear in the aftermath, those who were in on this “scam of epic proportions” understood exactly what they were doing. Essentially, the massive amount of private wealth that was created during this first decade of the 21st century was completely reliant on one, gigantic, legalized Ponzi scheme. And this scheme had millions of victims—people who lost pensions, lost homes, were driven out of the workforce, driven off public protections through austerity, starved, and impoverished on mass scale. As David Graeber explains, . . . when the rubble had stopped bouncing, it turned out that many if not most of them had been nothing more than very elaborate scams. They consisted of operations like selling poor families mortgages crafted in such a way as to make eventual default inevitable; taking bets on how long it would take the holders to default; packaging mortgage and bet together and selling them to institutional investors (representing, perhaps, the mortgage-holders’ retirement accounts) claiming that it would make money no matter what happened, and allow said investors to pass such packages around as if they were money; turning over responsibility for paying off the bet to a giant insurance conglomerate that, were it to sink beneath the weight of its resultant debt (which certainly would happen), would then have to be bailed out by taxpayers (as such conglomerates were indeed bailed out). In other words, it looks very much like an unusually elaborate version of what banks were doing when they lent money to dictators in Bolivia and Gabon in the late ‘70s: make utterly irresponsible loans with the full knowledge that, once it became known they had done so, politicians and bureaucrats would scramble to ensure that they’d still be reimbursed anyway, no matter how many human lives had to be devastated and destroyed in order to do it.74

The mortgage-backed securities scheme was not an outlier on Wall Street; it was its backbone for nearly a decade. It was as elaborate as it was enormous. And, as I wrote in a 2013 piece for the Hampton Institute, it was

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made possible through decades of deregulation during the first half of the neoliberal era: . . . [This trend] began during the 1980s and beyond, when widespread deregulation of the financial sector led to a new trend regarding home loans. Notable legislation was the 1982 Alternative Mortgage Transactions Parity Act (AMTPA), the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which essentially opened the door to freegame derivatives and the questionable use of credit default swaps. Ultimately, deregulation led to a virtual disappearance of accountability, and this disappearing act was made possible by a newly developed loan process that was characterized by a seemingly perpetual delegation of responsibility. Rather than hold a loan through its lifespan (common practice until this point), commercial banks began selling mortgages to investment banks, which in turn began pooling together hundreds and thousands of mortgages as mortgage-backed securities. The investment banks then sold these mortgage-backed securities to hedge funds, pension funds, foreign investors, etc . . . , essentially “passing the buck” of what were known by many to be toxic. Therefore, the “originators” of mortgages (commercial banks and mortgage companies) no longer had a financial incentive to make sure the homebuyers were “credit-worthy.” Instead, they issued the mortgages and sold them off through securitization.75

The scheme also involved bond rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, which were complicit in awarding AAA ratings to these toxic securities in order to get in on the action themselves. The exact amount of wealth generated by this decade-long scheme is difficult to determine, but certain figures provide a glimpse of its magnitude. The most telling figure is the cumulative debt that derived from it, which “was larger than the combined Gross Domestic Products of every country in the world.”76 The initial bailout, approved by the W. Bush administration, provided over $204 billion in immediate relief to dozens of banks and financial institutions between October of 2008 and November of 2009.77 Through several rounds of quantitative easing—a process where central banks create money by buying securities from banks using “electronic cash” that did not exist before—the “US Federal Reserve’s balance sheet (the value of the assets it holds) increased from less than $1 trillion in 2007 to more than $4 trillion in 2015.”78 In layman’s terms, this means that over $3 trillion was created and given to the private banking industry by the U.S. government (via the Fed) between 2008 and 2015. Quasi-government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also given nearly $200 billion, and General Motors was awarded $50 billion.79 In an admission of guilt, at least five “big banks”—Goldman Sachs,80 Bank of American, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley— have agreed to settlements with the U.S. Justice Department. The five

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settlements are for a combined $41.7 billion; however, after considering various factors, the actual payouts for all five institutions combined will be reduced to $11.5 billion.81 When considering that trillions of dollars were essentially ciphered from the American public (first through the banking schemes, then through government bailouts), this penalty amounts to virtually nothing. And, additionally, none of the people involved in this massive scheme have been sent to prison. Rather, they rode off into the sunset with unfathomable amounts of personal wealth, all of which remains completely illegitimate. The elaborate and sometimes illegal schemes constructed by Wall Street, while detestable, are really only part of the story of financialization and investment banking. The most glaring illegitimacies regarding finance-generated wealth are speculation and common activities among shareholders and investors who buy and sell stocks. A prime example of exclusive shareholder schemes that allow wealthy investors guaranteed returns on their wealth is Apple’s “Capital Return” program, which operates under the guise of attracting investors to provide “capital” in the form of stocks, and then issuing returns that are commiserated with profit growth. However, as in the case of billionaire investor Carl Icahn, we see that such schemes are hardly investments at all, but rather sure-fire ways for the wealthy few to regenerate their wealth without providing any form of capital or risk. In a June 2016 report for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, we’re told that Icahn “purchased 27,125,441 shares of the publicly traded stock of Apple Inc. in August of 2013.” And, “by the end of January 2014, Icahn had increased his stake in Apple to 52,760,848 shares, equal to 0.9% of the company’s outstanding shares, at a total cost to Icahn of $3.6 billion.”82 When all was said and done, Icahn, “with ostensibly little mental effort,” reaped a gain of some $2 billion in 32 months. He did this without providing any “capital” to Apple’s supposed “capital return” program. Instead, he accomplished this simply because he was extremely wealthy and had the money to do so; or, as the report concludes, because he was “wealthy, visible, hyped, and influential.”83 As these examples illustrate, the mortgage—backed securities scheme, along with other methods of financial trickery, have allowed the wealthy class to create massive gains on their already-illegitimate wealth. Even socalled “legitimate” investment activity, like Apple’s “capital returns program,” isn’t much different in that they’re essentially artificial systems of wealth enhancement that provide nothing of value, include no risk, and utilize phantom capital to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Not to mention, as with the case of Apple, these return on profits are also directly tied to the massive exploitation of modern slave labor abroad.84

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CURRENCY AND DEBT AS MEANS TO MAINTAIN HIERARCHY In Heaven, there are no debts—all have been paid, one way or another—but in Hell there’s nothing but debts, and a great deal of payment is exacted, though you can’t ever get all paid up. You have to pay, and pay, and keep on paying. So, Hell is like an infernal maxed-out credit card that multiplies the charges endlessly. —Margaret Atwood

In addition to the artificial social relationships formed through wage labor and private property, currency and debt have long been utilized as means of control, mostly to maintain systems of hierarchy, keeping wealth with the wealthy, and keeping the masses trapped in the proverbial rat race, on that never-ending chase for coin and paper. The metaphorical “hell” that Margaret Atwood describes above is, in all actuality, our collective reality. The history of currency and control-through-debt is a long and protracted one. David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”85 details this history in a way that questions and exposes fundamental relationships between ruling classes and their nationalized and colonial subjects throughout history. This history exposes our “living hells” as nothing more than artificial creations, designed by the few to fleece and control the many. Like other forms of exploitation, currency and debt have an inherent connection with the state, in that the state facilitates and determines the value of currency and enforces debt collections through laws and the use of force and coercion. The Hegelian dialectic that Marx relied on in his analysis of capitalist relations (i.e., capital vs. labor) is also relevant to this broader struggle between rich and poor, which has historically been represented by a fundamental struggle between creditors and debtors. Graeber explains, For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors–of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest payments, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards, and the selling of debtors’ children into slavery. By the same token, for the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of the debt records—tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place. (After that, rebels usually go after the records of landholding and tax assessments). As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: “Cancel the debts and redistribute the land.”86

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States have been intimately involved in the coining, distribution, and facilitation of currency and debt as far back as the early Roman Empire. As time has transpired, this has become an undeniable fact, even more so during the past century where “metallism”—currency value based on precious metals—has been replaced by “chartalism”—currency whose value is created purely by law (or the state). For the United States, this system based solely in fiat currency became concretized when President Richard Nixon officially abandoned the gold standard in 1971. However, as economist John Maynard Keynes had suggested four decades prior in his “Treatise on Money,” chartalism was already the international norm: The State, therefore, comes in first of all as the authority of law which enforces the payment of the thing which corresponds to the name or description in the contract. But it comes doubly when, in addition, it claims the right to determine and declare what thing corresponds to the name, and to vary its declaration from time to time—when, that is to say it claims the right to re-edit the dictionary. This right is claimed by all modern States and has been so claimed for some four thousand years at least. It is when this stage in the evolution of Money has been reached that Knapp’s Chartalism—the doctrine that money is peculiarly a creation of the State—is fully realized . . . Today, all civilized money is, beyond the possibility of dispute, chartalist.87

While representing crucial subjects in regards to economic theory, these ideas go beyond their intended field of study to illustrate how power relations have been established and maintained in our world. The key concept in this understanding is not currency, but debt. Among many things, currency is nothing more than a convenient way to calculate and enforce debt onto people. And this enforcement, always directed by the owning and ruling classes throughout history, is primarily used to maintain hierarchies and wealth inequities. In fact, debt, as a societal ledger and form of control, has existed long before formal markets and states. Graeber tells us, The core argument [of primordial-debt theory] is that any attempt to separate monetary policy from social policy is ultimately wrong. Primordial-debt theorists insist that these have always been the same thing. Governments use taxes to create money, and they are able to do so because they have become the guardians of the debt that all citizens have to one another. This debt is the essence of society itself. It exists long before money and markets, and money and markets themselves are simply ways of chopping pieces of it up. 88

Furthermore, as anthropologists like Graeber have discovered, primitive forms of currency were primarily used as a means to facilitate social relations, and not merely to buy and sell goods:

Expropriation or Bust    331 Anthropologists do have a great deal of knowledge of how economies within stateless societies actually worked-how they still work in places where states and markets have been unable to completely break up existing ways of doing things. There are innumerable studies of, say, the use of cattle as money in eastern or southern Africa, of shell money in the Americas (wampum being the most famous example) or Papua New Guinea, bead money, feather money, the use of iron rings, cowries, spondylus shells, brass rods, or woodpecker scalps. The reason that this literature tends to be ignored by economists is simple: “primitive currencies” of this sort is only rarely used to buy and sell things, and even when they are, never primarily everyday items such as chickens or eggs or shoes or potatoes. Rather than being employed to acquire things, they are mainly used to rearrange relations between people. Above all, to arrange marriages and to settle disputes, particularly those arising from murders or personal injury.89

As with other forms of illegitimate accumulation and wealth-building, debt is exposed as not just a tangible facilitator of buying, selling, and owing, but rather as an intimately humanized system designed solely to act as a social relationship. It is in this relationship where personal wealth continues its illegitimate path through human history, and where the wealthy gain an even tighter grip on their subject masses, virtually guaranteeing the continuation of massive inequities. Under capitalism, the capitalist state has supplemented its chartalism by creating a “credit monopoly” that serves multiple purposes, both facilitating the inherent contradictions of capitalism and restricting alternative systems from forming in response to these contradictions. A modern anarchist analysis on capitalist credit explains its purpose in preventing alternatives to the capital-labor business model, The credit monopoly, by which the state controls who can and cannot issue or loan money, reduces the ability of working-class people to create their own alternatives to capitalism. By charging high amounts of interest on loans (which is only possible because competition is restricted naturally through accumulation and the inevitable facilitation of the state) few people can afford to create co-operatives or one-person firms. In addition, having to repay loans at high interest to capitalist banks ensures that co-operatives often have to undermine their own principles by having to employ wage labor to make ends meet.90

Anarchists like Proudhon emphasized the importance of addressing the credit problem alongside the labor problem, Just as increasing wages is an important struggle within capitalism, so is the question of credit. Proudhon and his followers supported the idea of a People’s Bank. If the working class could take over and control increasing amounts of money it could undercut capitalist power while building its own

332    C. JENKINS alternative social order (for money is ultimately the means of buying labour power, and so authority over the labourer—which is the key to surplus value production). Proudhon hoped that by credit being reduced to cost (namely administration charges) workers would be able to buy the means of production they needed.91

In modern times, with the arrival of globalized, neoliberal, and monopoly capitalism, the advent of consumer credit has become a crucial component in keeping this system afloat amidst extreme and widespread inequality and dispossession. Using Doug Henwood’s analysis in his 1998 book, “Wall Street: How it Works and for Whom,” we can see how consumer credit is being used (in very real ways) to maintain control of the exploited majority, thus solidifying systems of illegitimate wealth and power while also providing stabilizers to avoid total collapse: The 1980s were marked by a rising debt burden on households as well as the increased concentration of wealth in the US. The two are linked. Due to “the decline in real hourly wages, and the stagnation in household incomes, the middle and lower classes have borrowed more to stay in place” and they have “borrowed from the very rich who have [become] richer.” By 1997, US households spent $1 trillion (or 17% of the after-tax incomes) on debt service. “This represents a massive upward redistribution of income.” And why did they borrow? The bottom 40% of the income distribution “borrowed to compensate for stagnant or falling incomes” while the upper 20% borrowed “mainly to invest.” Thus “consumer credit can be thought of as a way to sustain mass consumption in the face of stagnant or falling wages. But there’s an additional social and political bonus, from the point of view of the creditor class: it reduces pressure for higher wages by allowing people to buy goods they couldn’t otherwise afford. It helps to nourish both the appearance and reality of a middle-class standard of living in a time of polarization. And debt can be a great conservatizing force; with a large monthly mortgage and/or MasterCard bill, strikes and other forms of troublemaking look less appealing than they would otherwise.”92

Long before capitalist notions of private property and wage labor materialized, debt provided a fundamental way to maintain and facilitate power over large numbers of people. Since the advent of the capitalist system, debt, and its intimate relationship with the capitalist state, has proven to be the thread that holds this layered exploitation together. It safeguards illegitimate wealth accumulation by constructing a tangible mechanism to enforce the inherent indebtedness that comes with being born in systems of extreme hierarchy. In this way, it serves capitalism, and its illegitimate foundation, well.

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EXPROPRIATION IS NOT THEFT; IT’S JUSTICE The rich are only defeated when running for their lives. —C. L. R. James

It’s no secret that capitalism has run amok over the past three decades. This is not to say that it has been derailed or mutated in some way. In reality, it is acting as it should; creating massive amounts of wealth for a minority through the systematic dispossession and exploitation of the majority. The era of neoliberalism—where capitalist governments have been formerly acquired by private wealth—was inevitable in the natural progression of things. An economic arrangement that relies on structural unemployment (a “reserve army of labor”), mass labor exploitation, the concentration of private property via the displacement of the majority, the forced extraction of natural resources, and constant production for the sake of conspicuous consumption needs a coercive, powerful, and forceful apparatus to protect and maintain it. The capitalist state serves this need, simply because the blatant theft of over 7 billion human beings by mere hundreds cannot continue without a massive militarization of that global minority. Global wealth inequality has reached unfathomable heights. And wealth inequality in the United States has surpassed that of the Gilded Age. This is not due to mythological or abused forms of capitalism, so-called “cronyism” or “corporatism,” “unbridled” and “unfettered” forms, or any of the adjectives that mainstream analysts insist on using to describe this system. Yes, capitalism has invariably reached certain stages in its development— neoliberalism brought the inevitable fusion of public and private power, while monopoly capitalism has reached its pinnacle—but all of these modern epochs are rooted in the most fundamental mechanisms of the system, most notably its reliance on using private property as a social relationship to exploit labor. These mechanisms have always tended toward capital accumulation and concentrated wealth for a privileged minority; and, consequently, mass displacement, alienation, and disenfranchisement for the unfortunate majority. The world’s problems are the result of capitalism, in its orthodox state. It is working exactly as it is supposed to work, intensifying as time goes on. Despite the extremes we’ve experienced, wealth and greed continue to rule the day; and the wealthy are not only unapologetic, they’re also incredibly bold. There is an entire financial “asset protection” industry built with the sole purpose of instructing wealthy individuals on how to hide their money and avoid paying taxes. And this is done in plain sight, for all to see. A simple online search brings up dozens of companies offering these services, and “experts” offering their advice. From tutorials on how to repatriate your Offshore Funds93 without paying taxes to “everything you need

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to know about bringing your money back to the United States,” the wealthy are not shy about their illegal activities. Business executives have become so bold that they’ve publicly admitted to stashing “hundreds of billions of dollars” in foreign banks to avoid paying taxes in the United States. And rather than prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law for tax evasion, the U.S. government continues to “negotiate” with them to bring their money back to the United States. For example, on December 15, 2010, a group of business executives met with President Obama at the White House to ask for “a tax holiday” that would allow them to “tap into over $1 trillion of offshore earnings, much of which was sitting in island tax havens.”94 Hiding money to avoid taxation has become an elaborate and extremely lucrative business. And everyone, including the President, the IRS, Senators and members of Congress, are fully aware. According to Edward D. Kleinbard, a law professor at USC, “U.S. companies overall use various repatriation strategies to avoid about $25 billion a year in federal income taxes.”95Despite these negotiations with the government, corporations have already figured out “legal” ways to bring the hidden money back. For example, in 2009, Merck & Co Inc., the second largest drug-maker in the United States, “brought more than $9 billion from abroad without paying any U.S. tax to help finance its acquisition of Schering-Plough Corp., securities filings show.”96 That same year, “Pfizer Inc. imported more than $30 billion from offshore in connection with its acquisition of Wyeth, while taking steps to minimize the tax hit on its publicly reported profit.”97 Between 2009–2010, “Cisco reported $31.6 billion of undistributed foreign earnings, on which it had paid no U.S. taxes” and Merck “tapped its offshore cash, tax-free, to pay for just over half the cash portion of its $51 billion merger with Schering-Plough” and then “lent $9.4 billion to a pair of ScheringPlough Dutch units” without paying any U.S. taxes.98 These examples are endless. And they are, essentially, unethical, if not illegal. Negotiating with the government to bring back money (over a trillion dollars by conservative estimates) that was intentionally hidden to avoid paying taxes is the equivalent of someone stealing $200 from you, admitting they did it, and then offering to give you $20 back to let bygones be bygones. Of course, even if these businesses paid their taxes under a stringent tax system, capitalism would still exist, and with it all of its illegitimacies. During the so-called “golden age” of the United States, where effective tax rates for the higher-income brackets were consistently in the 90th percentile (they were cut in half in the ‘80s and are now in the 30th percentile), mass exploitation and dispossession still remained. Globally—through traditional colonialism, military force, and the construction of modern international finance systems—the United States and other industrialized nations supplemented their higher standards of living by ravaging foreign lands, peoples, and resources. Domestically, despite the emergence of an exclusively White

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middle-class, masses of citizens consisting of ethnic minorities, the rural and urban poor, and women remained disenfranchised both socially and economically. In other words, the golden age was nothing more than a mass sacrifice of hundreds of millions of people abroad and at home, carried out in order to supplement a burgeoning (and relatively small) sector of the White working class in the United States. Taxation was the compromise the owning class once agreed upon in an attempt to legitimize their illegitimate wealth. In a capitalist system built on immoral foundations, taxation isn’t theft—it’s a plea bargain. And, even when this deal is adhered to and effectively processed, it is not enough to undo the massive injustice that it seeks to appease. Just as reforms are not enough; and government regulations are not enough. The leak of the Panama Papers in early 2016 showed what many of us have known all along—that wealthy individuals have not only built massive personal fortunes through illegitimate means, but that they have also constructed elaborate “asset management” schemes which allow them to hide their money, avoid paying taxes, and hoard what amounts to be trillions of dollars from the public.99 Thoughtless, ahistoric, and emotional responses to this (like those coming from U.S. American “libertarians”) may include a disdain for taxation—something that, to them, represents a form of theft, whereas the government embezzles money from individuals through the threat of force or coercion (tax laws, the IRS, law enforcement). This would be a plausible argument if the wealth and land being taxed wasn’t already created through widespread embezzlement of the majority. The fact of the matter is that all personal wealth in the world has been built on a foundation of murder, extortion, exploitation, theft, illegal banking and debt schemes, colonialism, racism, slavery, and various artificial systems of hierarchy. Just as taxation, reforms, and regulations are not enough, reparations would also fall short. For example, reparations for the descendants of American slavery, while warranted and certainly needed, would not adequately address the power dynamics created by centuries of accumulation. Giving 40 acres and a mule to one of George Washington’s slaves would do nothing to address the illegitimate and residual wealth and power owned by George Washington100 and his family, especially when society (via the government) is the payer of such monetary justice. Rather, true justice would amount to cutting Washington’s land and wealth into parcels, divvying it up amongst his slaves, and removing Washington from society (as with all criminals). These three steps are the only way to effectively expropriate illegitimate wealth: (a) liquidate the benefactor(s) of such wealth, (b) place it in a societal pool to be used for a common good, (c) and remove those who took part in the stealing of such wealth from society. This same logic and approach applies today. This is the only way to recuperate our stolen collective-wealth, while also addressing the inequities of power rooted in this theft.

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The wealthy few have stolen from the world; and have enslaved, impoverished, and indebted the rest of us (over 7 billion people) in the process. They have no right to their wealth. It belongs to us—it belongs to global society. Not so we can all live extravagant lifestyles, but rather so we can satisfy the most basic of human rights and needs—food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education—and thus carry on our lives as productive and creative human beings. Taxation is a pathetic compromise to thousands of years of mass extortion. Reforms and regulations have tried and failed. Reparations even fall short of justice. And voting for representatives from the ruling class (who are directly employed and controlled by the owning class) with hopes of them voting away their own wealth has been proven to be a perpetual act in futility. The only just solution is to recuperate this stolen wealth, to destroy these extreme systems of hierarchy and control, to allow human beings the dignity and self-determination they deserve, and to expropriate the expropriators once and for all. Righting centuries of wrongs is not “theft,” it’s justice. NOTES 1. Karl Marx, 1818–1883, Capital: Volume One. Chapter 32, para. 2. 2. Jone Johnson-Lewis, Lucy Parsons: Labor Radical and Anarchist, IWW Founder. (2017, September 16). Retrieved from www.thoughtco.com/lucy-parsons-biography-3530417 3. Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (1892), Chapter 1. 4. Jack Adler, Soulmates From the Pages of History (New York, NY: Algora Publishing, 2013), 235. 5. “Justifiable” defined as “being able to be shown to be right or reasonable; defensible.” 6. Karl Marx, 1818–1883, Capital: Volume One. Chapter 26, para. 2. 7. Frank Monaghan, John Jay (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill Co., 1935), Chapter 15, p. 323. 8. “Term of the Senate [26 June] 1787,” para. 3. Retrieved from https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0044 9. Gwenda Blair, The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2000). 10. Brian Miller and Mike Lapham, The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012). 11. Blair (2000). 12. Miller and Lapham (2012). 13. See “15 Major Corporations You Never Knew Profited From Slavery.” Atlanta Black Star Online (August 26, 2013). Retrieved from https://atlantablackstar. com/2013/08/26/17-major-companies-never-knew-benefited-slavery/ 14. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (Harper, NY, 1995), 50.

Expropriation or Bust    337 15. Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971). 16. Daniel Vickers, A Companion to Colonial America (Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 289. 17. Julia Ott, Slaves: The Capital That Made Capitalism, (4/9/14), http://www.publicseminar.org/2014/04/slavery-the-capital-that-made-capitalism/ 18. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, 119. 19. Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, “Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700–2010,” Paris School of Economics (July 26, 2013), http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.com/zucman-gabriel/capitalisback/ PikettyZucman2013WP.pdf 20. Fredrick Douglass address to the Louisville Convention, 1883, http://people. ucls.uchicago.edu/~cjuriss/US/Documents/US-Jurisson-Unit-2-DouglassAddress-to-Louisville-Convention-1883.pdf 21. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism, (1/24/12), para. ?. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-24/ how-slavery-led-to-modern-capitalism-echoes 22. Ibid. 23. Zinn, 65. 24. Jackson Main, The Social Structure of Revolutionary America. 25. Cornel West, Democracy Matters, 210–211. 26. Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, Macmillan, 1921). 27. Zinn, 90. 28. Ferdinand Lundberg, America’s 60 Families, http://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/Lu 29. G. William Domhoff, Power in America: On Wealth, Income, and Power (University of California at Santa Cruz, 2005/2017), http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html 30. Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (1906). Retrieved from http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread 31. Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One: Chapter 32, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm 32. Raya Dunayevskaya, American Civilization on Trial: Black Masses as Vanguard. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Peter Linebaugh, Stop, Thief! 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Along the Color Lines: Explorations in the Black Experience, 18. 40. Julia Ott. 41. Beckert and Rockman. 42. An Anarchist FAQ: Why are anarchists against private property? Infoshop.org. Accessed at http://www.infoshop.org/AnarchistFAQSectionB3 43. Emma Goldman, What I Believe (1908). Accessed at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-what-i-believe

338    C. JENKINS 44. Ibid. 45. Rosa Luxemburg, What is Bolshevism? (1918). Accessed at https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/20-alt.htm 46. Ibid. 47. Karl Marx. 78. An Anarchist FAQ. 49. Ibid. 50. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “What is Property?” (1840). Accessed at https:// theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-what-is-property-aninquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-governmen 51. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Inequality,” The Social Contract and Discourses. Everyman Paperback (1993), 84. 52. An Anarchist FAQ. Infoshop.org. 53. Definition from Wiktionary: The Free Dictionary. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/landlordism 54. An Anarchist FAQ. Infoshop.org. 55. Ibid. 56. Michael Parenti, Against Empire (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1995), 208 57. Karl Kautsky, Ultra-Imperialism (1914). Accessed at https://www.marxists.org/ archive/kautsky/1914/09/ultra-imp.htm 58. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, (New York, NY: Melville House, 2011), 311. 59. Ibid, 311. 60. Claude Kabemba, Undermining Africa’s Wealth, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (3/2/14), http://www.osisa.org/economic-justice/blog/undermining-africas-wealth 61. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket (1935). Accessed at http://www.ratical.org/ ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html 62. Alain Martin, Haiti and the Ghost of a Hundred Years (7/30/15), http://www. hamptoninstitution.org/haiti-and-the-ghost.html 63. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism: Chapter 7 (1917). Accessed at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/ imp-hsc/ch07.htm#fwV22P268F01 64. A. Whiting, “Financial Firms Invest $28 Billion in Cluster Bomb Makers: Campainers” (Reuters, June 16, 2016). Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/ article/us-global-arms-cluster-bombs/financial-firms-invest-28-billion-in-cluster-bomb-makers-campaigners-idUSKCN0Z226H 65. L. Renick-Mayer, “Strategic Assets” (OpenSecrets, April 3, 2008). Retrieved from https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/04/strategic-assets/ 66. Frank Lechner, Globalization Theories: World-System Theory (2001). 67. Lucien Degoy, Samir Amin: Colonialism Is Inseparable From Capitalism, IHumanite (1/28/06), http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article70 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid.

Expropriation or Bust    339 70. Andrew Soergel, “5 Takeaways From the World’s Widening Wealth Gap,” US News (1/19/16), http://www.usnews.com/news/slideshows/top-1-percentget-richer-as-world-wealth-gap-widens-says-oxfam 71. Jeriah Bowser, Restoring the Sacred Land: An Inquiry into the Origins and Implications of Land Ownership (12/27/13). Accessed at http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/implications-of-land-ownership.html 72. E. V. Debs, “Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Deition Act” (September 18, 1918). Retrieved from https://www.marxists. org/archive/debs/works/1918/court.htm 73. Chris Hedges, Overthrow the Speculators. Common Dreams (December 30, 2013). Accessed at http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/ 12/30/overthrow-speculators 74. Graeber, 15–16. 75. Colin Jenkins, A Predictable Disaster: Exposing the Roots of the 2008 Financial Crisis (6/7/13). Accessed at http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/preddisaster. html 76. Graeber, 16 77. “Bailed Out Banks.” Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/news/specials/ storysupplement/bankbailout/ 78. What is Quantitative Easing, The Economist (3/9/15), http://www.economist. com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/03/economist-explains-5 79. Bailout List, Propublica.org, (10/17/18), https://projects.propublica.org/ bailout/list 80. “Goldman Sachs Agrees to Pay More Than $5 Billion in Connection With Its Sale of Residential Mortgage Backed Securities.” Retrieved from https:// www.justice.gov/opa/pr/goldman-sachs-agrees-pay-more-5-billion-connection-its-sale-residential-mortgage-backed 81. David Dayen, “Why the Goldman Sachs Settlement is a $5 Billion Sham,” New Republic (4/13/16), https://newrepublic.com/article/132628/goldmansachs-settlement-5-billion-sham 82. William Lazonick, Matt Hopkins, and Ken Jacobson, What We Learn About Inequality From Carl Ichan’s $2 Billion Apple “No Brainer.” Institute for New Economic Thinking (6/6/16). http://ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/blog/ what-we-learn-about-inequality-from-carl-icahns-2-billion-apple-no-brainer 83. Ibid. 84. Robert C. Gibson, “How the iPhone Helps Perpetuate Modern-Day Slavery.” (Huffington Post, November 10, 2014). Retrieved from https://www.huffpost. com/entry/how-the-iphone_b_5800262 85. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011). 86. Graeber, 8 87. John Maynard Keynes, A Treatise on Money. (Republished by AMS PR, Inc., 1930/1976). 88. Graeber, 56 89. Graeber, 60 90. An Anarchist FAQ. 91. Ibid.

340    C. JENKINS 92. Ibid, referencing Doug Henwood, Wall Street: How it Works and for Whom (1998), Verso, 64–66 93. “How to Repatriate Your Offshore Funds Securely and Privately.” Retrieved from https://www.freebooter.com/articles/how-to-repatriate-your-offshorefunds.html 94. Jesse Drucker, “Dodging Repatriation Tax Lets U.S. Companies Bring Home Cash,” Bloomberg Technology (12/29/10), http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-12-29/dodging-repatriation-tax-lets-u-s-companies-bring-home-cash 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Eric Lipton and Julie Creswell, “Panama Papers Show How Wealthy Americans Made Millions.” NY Times (6/5/16). http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/ us/panama-papers.html?_r=0 100. G. Levy, Who Were the 10 Wealthiest US Presidents. Retrieved from https:// www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/18/Who-were-the-10-wealthiest-US-presidents/8051361203821/

CHAPTER 30

THE BOSSES’ UTOPIA Dystopia and the American Company Town Nicholas Partyka

For many centuries persons, peoples, and civilizations have dreamed about what an ideal society (utopia) would look like, and worried about ways in which society could be much worse (dystopia). Utopian dreams and dystopian worries are powerful tools for thinking about what sorts of changes a society should pursue or avoid, and what underlying dynamics these proposed changes expose. This series examines the tradition of utopian and dystopian thought in western culture, beginning with the ancient Greeks, but continuing on into the modern period. Our focus in this series will be on the important social, political, and economic ideas and issues raised in different utopian stories. When we look into utopian stories, and their historical times, what we’ll see reflected in the stories of utopia are the social, political, and economic concerns of the authors, their societies, and or their particular social class. The meaning of the word “utopia” comes to us from ancient Greece. In our modern world the word takes its current form because of Thomas

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 341–354 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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More’s 1516 book of the same name. Indeed, it is this book from which most of the modern western European utopian tradition takes its origin; or at least, this work inaugurates its most common trope. Where we have in our lexicon one “utopia,” the Greeks had two. The difference, even confusion, between them marks an essential cleavage. For the Greeks, there was both Eu-topia and Ou-topia. Both are derived in part from the Greek word topos, which means “place,” and the suffix “ia” meaning land. Translated into English, “Ou-topia” means something like, “no-place land,” whereas “Eu-topia” translates as “good-place land.” More succinctly, the difference is between the idea of the best place and an impossible place. It is the difference between a place which does not exist, because it has not yet been realized, and a place which cannot, and could not, ever exist. Our modern word is pronounced as the Greeks pronounced “Eutopia.” However, the meanings of these Greek words were confused by modern writers, who ended up with the spelling “utopia,” from the old English “utopie” as opposed to “Eutopia,” as meaning “good place.” This basic confusion about utopias, between “good place” and “no place,” inserts an important ambiguity directly in the center of thinking about utopias. This ambiguity forces one to wonder of utopian writers. Are their visions supposed to be dreams of possible futures meant to incite us to action, or are they impossible dreams meant as reminders that the world is not easily reshaped by human effort? Is a utopia supposed to be a good place or a no place? Is the author supporting or condemning the practices of the fictional societies they describe? One qualification must be made right away. A utopia is not a paradise. There is a colloquial usage of utopia and utopian that seem to suggest that it is a paradise. And compared to the societies in which actual humans live, many of the fictional utopias would have indeed been seen as paradises, relatively speaking. However, we must draw a technical distinction between a paradise or a golden age, and a utopia. In a paradise or golden age no work and no effort are required by humans to obtain the things they want and need. Perhaps the most famous golden age many are familiar with would be the Biblical Garden of Eden. Another well-known paradise is described in the mid-14th century poem The Land of Cockaigne, where fully cooked turkey legs literally fly through the air and into one’s mouth. In this place the only effort one need put in is to chew. The whole idea of a Cockaigne, or a paradise, is that everything one would ever need is abundantly supplied without any effort. The natural world is just so constructed—either at random or by design—that there springs forth automatically an abundance of everything necessary for everyone, all the time, always. In this kind of society, or world, there never arises anything resembling what we—or most societies in the history of our world—recognize as a political problem. Everyone has enough of

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everything. So there is no cause for argument. There is no inequality, because everyone has everything everyone else has. Or at least, everyone has access to just as much of what others have whenever they would like it. In this kind of world what causes could there be for strife, or for civil war? A paradise, or a golden age, is thus totally nonpolitical, and as such not terribly interesting. What this means is that utopias are enough like our own condition, our own world, that we can take inspiration from them. They are enough like the social conditions we know that we can learn lessons for and about ourselves and our societies by examining them. This is exactly what makes utopias so interesting. As we will see, utopian literature has a long, very long, history with human beings. The enduring appeal of and, interest in utopias testifies to their relevance. This is the reason that we too are looking at utopias. We are all concerned with, or at least we are all affected by, the way our society is organized. By looking at how other ideal societies might be organized we can explore the merits, and demerits of various kinds of social institutions, and of the various ways of structuring those institutions. We are concerned to change our own society, and utopias allow us to think about the direction of that change. We have a colloquial usage of the word utopia and utopian in contemporary society that works to prohibit much creative thought, and dismisses utopian thought as feckless, and as such, worthless. Part of the aims of this series is to demonstrate the value of this “worthless” endeavor. Dreaming, far from idle, far from impotent, is essential. Without wonder, without questions, the human imagination will atrophy. The value of this is that thinking about utopias allows us to both critique present societies, but also to articulate a vision of how we’d like our societies to be different. The deeper value of utopian thinking is that it sets us free, free to speculate and more importantly to give expression to our striving, to our desire for a better world. Everything human beings can be must first be dreamed by human beings. This is the value of utopia and dystopia. Thus, the first prerequisite for this series is the rejection of this colloquial notion of utopia and the utopian. Dismissed from the start, it will not be a surprise if we fail to learn anything from our utopian traditions. INTRODUCTION In another part of this series I discussed the American tradition of radical utopianism. Owenites, Fourierists, as well as various and sundry religious sects, all attempted experiments in communal living inspired by utopian political or spiritual ideologies. By removing themselves from the world, these groups sought to remake society in miniature, as an example that

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could be replicated throughout the country as an alternative to the ascendant bourgeois society. American history also contains a dystopian tradition. Some individuals who came under the sway of certain utopian ideas also happened to have large amounts of money, and or were proprietors of large business concerns. Several very wealthy businessmen-cum-would-be philanthropists embarked on many now forgotten utopian experiments. In some ways their schemes resemble Owen’s original New Lanark project, in that a firm’s profit motive was used to argue for less abusive working conditions for workers. I am talking, of course, about the company town.1 A term now, and for good reason, loaded with connotations of antidemocratic forms of dependence and surveillance, a modern industrial feudalism, that galled observers and greatly angered many worker residents. At many points in American history wealthy capitalists saw it as beneficial to construct planned communities for their workers. These ran the gamut from unsanitary ramshackle slums and ghettoes with little planning or services, to highly elaborate planned communities designed according to the proprietors’ ideology of choice, in which even small details were prescribed and regimented. In some of these capitalist-inspired, utopian experiments, designed to “elevate” workers, one can see clear examples of many dystopian themes manifested in real life. Looking at the experience of company towns one readily discerns significant dystopian elements (e.g., some rather reminiscent of George Orwell’s now famous Big Brother). The highhanded, obtrusive, and moralistic scrutiny of private life; the regimentation of work and social life; the uniformity of living standards; strictly imposed and enforced moral codes, are all dystopian elements one can find in the work of the most well-known dystopian writers (e.g., Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin). The United States has had a unique experience with company towns, quite different from the experience of European countries. America saw both a greater number of company towns, as well as greater diversity among them. The uniqueness of the American experience has to do mainly with the size of America and the prominence of the frontier, and the small-government sensibilities of the founding generation. That the country was expanding geographically, and that the government was typically disposed to take a laissez-faire stance on interference with the private undertakings of businessmen and entrepreneurs. These factors combined to allow private sector actors wide latitude in their ability to construct ideal communities, that is, communities that were ideal for the bosses in that they served the bosses’ interests more than those of workers. This freedom for the private sector has sometimes resulted in neo-feudal conditions (e.g., like those that were found in many Appalachian coal towns, and other times in the more bucolic and rural utopian project of magnates like Milton Hershey).

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IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS LOWELL The Pilgrims who came to North America had designs to create a “city on a hill,” a symbol to all the world of how to live justly and righteously. There is a certain obvious utopian aspect to this view. The chartered basis of these colonies, and their need to make a profit gave them some of the shades of the company town. They remained for many years trapped in a cycle of debt, always needing to consume more in supplies to sustain themselves than the value their exports would purchase. This is one reason that the early colonists pursued whaling, as well as fur trading and trapping right from the start. Beaver pelts in particular were extremely lucrative, and it was the expressed intention of many colonial leaders to use export of pelts to pay not only for the debts incurred for the initial transportation to the American continent, but also the provision, supplies, and other goods the colonists would eventually want and need to import. A famed British historian writes, “Whoever says Industrial Revolution says cotton.”2 Thus, we should not be surprised to see cotton, the company town, and utopianism come together in the early phase of American industrialization. As such, one must look first to Lowell, Massachusetts where its eponymous founder Francis Cabot Lowell established one of America’s first water-mill operations, as well as one of its first well-known company towns. Indeed, the town, famous for its past, continues to drawn large numbers of tourists year after year. Francis certainly had some utopian ideas behind his designs in business, and community building plans. A wealthy Boston merchant, Lowell, toured England in 1811 where he saw firsthand the conditions in the mill towns of industrializing Britain. What he saw there, especially in places like Manchester, shocked him, as it would many others including Friedrich Engels. The poverty, degradation, squalor, misery, disease, and “moral corruption,” which was perceived to run rampant in the new large urban industrial city, disturbed Lowell. Those few capitalists who did have qualms about industrialization, and the rise of industrial society, tried to find ways to achieve the social benefits of industrialization, but to avoid the crushing desperation of life in industrial cities like Manchester. This is the inspiration for Robert Owen’s brand of utopian socialism. His New Lanark mill town was a model of reform, and saw the material improvement of workers and their living conditions as the basis of the transformation of society. It is in this same spirit that Francis Cabot Lowell conceived his American mill town. Lowell sought to create the opposite of what he saw in Manchester, a bright, healthy, and virtuous community. Yet, he also certainly sought the immense profits to be made in the textile industry. He certainly had no intention of operating his business at a loss. Owen, for instance, while certainly a

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prosperous businessman, had a moral and ideological mission, which balanced his quest for profits, and New Lanark was profitable. Lowell imagined his mill town as an intellectually and morally uplifting community, which would fit into the needs of American society at large, and in this way help form the economic basis of an American capitalist utopia. His community would help create that “city on a hill” so many different groups had hoped to turn America into. Lowell’s plan was to recruit his workforce from the younger women living and working on the farms in the area. These young New England ladies would come to work seasonally in Lowell, not become full-time proletarian toilers. In order to attract these workers Lowell advertised the intellectually stimulating, culturally vibrant, and moral upright way of life that characterized the community. He wanted these young women, and especially their parents, to think of their time in Lowell as a kind of preparation for adult life and for marriage. Francis was always keen to point out in his pitch that his lady workers had access to such essential icons of “middle class” life as books and pianos. He also highlighted the presence of older women who acted as supervisors of the boarding houses where these young women were housed, and who enforced a strict 10:00 p.m. curfew. Between studying music, or literature and poetry, attending free lectures or other amusements, life in Lowell was supposed by Lowell himself to be as good for the workers, their families, and even the country, as it was profitable for himself and his business partners. The reality of life in the town, and the experience of the people who resided in it, differed in several large respects from Cabot Lowell’s intentions. Some aspects of life in the community at Lowell we will see reappear in company towns throughout American history. The most important of these is despotism, in one or another of its many forms. The control wielded over the life of the town, and thus over the residents, by the company’s owners would work to foster several dystopian and despotic elements in Lowell, as well as in later company towns. The company regimented the rhythms of life in town, fitting it to the needs of the production process, and it announced the progression of each day’s routine through the sounding of bells. Workers were woken at 4:30 a.m., and required to be at work by 4:50 a.m. The working day ended at 7:00 p.m., and there was a 10:00 p.m. curfew in town. The bells marked the transition from each part of the day to the next, when to get up, when to work, when to eat, when to rest. This regime was no doubt onerous to many. Lowell’s vision of where his workforce would come from soon crumbled, as he failed to attract as many young New England ladies as he hoped. Thus, very soon Lowell and his partners had predominantly immigrant workforce in their town. On the job, workers were subject to the personal discipline of the foreman. This was usually entirely arbitrary, and workers lacked any recourse against such depredations. Off the job, workers were subject to the scrutiny

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and censure of a system of “moral police” operating in the town. The older women boarding housekeepers were some of the main agents in this network of spies and informants, of which other workers might well also be a part. The company ( i.e., its officials), could fine or fire any workers for immoral conduct, like consuming alcohol. Any employee that failed to fulfill their contractual one year of service, because they quit without the contractually mandated 2 weeks’ notice or were not “honorably discharged,” would be blacklisted from employment in the area. Workers were required to attend church services, and to pay a mandatory fee to support this church. They also had to pay a fee to stay in the boarding houses, which apparently not lacking in food, were overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and lacking entirely in privacy. Workers came to live and work at Lowell despite these kinds of conditions because the pay was too good to pass up. A striking vision of the lives of the women who toiled in factories like these in antebellum America can be found in a lesser-known work by famed American author Herman Melville. In his short-story, The Paradise of the Bachelors & the Tartarus of the Maids, Melville paints a vivid picture of the drudgery of the actual work of producing cotton textiles in these early factories.3 Though the workers in his story are making paper and not textiles, the main outlines of the workers’ experience would have been much the same. Melville describes the entrance to his fictional, yet all too real, mill in the most daunting imagery, invoking the idea of “Dantean gate” one must pass through. In describing the operations and workers of this mill, Melville uses language that evokes the toil, degradation, overbearing foremen, the sexism, being beholden to the whims and demands of the company on whom one depends. Melville is just one rather famous example of a common view at this time, that factory work, wage work, was a kind of slavery. At a time of rising sentiment of opposition to slavery, this was a potent objection to capitalism, and to the plans of capitalists, that it was slavery by another means, and not acceptable treatment for White people. This sentiment was also part of the inspiration for two strikes in Lowell in 1834 and 1836 largely in response to wage cuts announced by the company in reaction to falling prices for textile goods. UTOPIAN PATERNALISM Francis Cabot Lowell was not to be the last American capitalist to dream of creating a model community where the vices and sins of the rapidly modernizing world would be excluded, and a more idyllic life recreated. First and foremost of these new modern ills, in the minds of capitalist utopian visionaries like George Pullman, Milton Hershey, and Henry Ford, among others, was labor strife, that is, labor unions. Thus, one of the main foci

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of the efforts of capitalist utopian was preventing workers from organizing and bargaining collectively. What we will see in each of the examples mentioned above is that these attempts at creating a more ideal kind of life within modernizing, and industrializing American society share certain dystopian elements. The most apt way to characterize the main themes of these capitalist-led efforts at building and operating planned communities is as utopian paternalism. Capitalists like Pullman and Ford certainly saw themselves as advancing the workers’ own good, even when those workers’ views about their own good were to the contrary. These men thought they knew better than workers what was in their best interests. Unsurprisingly, none of these utopian experiments was successful from the point of view of their founders, since they all failed to prevent the rise of labor unions. In 1880 George Pullman, maker of the famous Pullman Palace Car, the ubiquitous sleeping car which made transcontinental rail travel more comfortable, began to construct an ideal community on the outskirts of Chicago.4 The town of Pullman would feature several lavish public buildings, including a library and theater. The residences were supposed to be more commodious, most were connected to natural gas and running water, some even featured bathrooms. There was a wide array of shops housed in public buildings to accommodate the needs of the town’s residents. Much effort was made to create a pleasant aesthetic in the town, from the design of the buildings to the layout of the community. Pullman desired to recreate a more bucolic atmosphere to contrast with the grit and grime of the cities. Pullman, based on a firm profit motive, believed that treating workers better would make them more loyal, harder working, and less likely to want to join a labor union. His model community would not only save money by locating workers near their place of work, but also would help to forge a new kind of worker. This new worker would be more dependable, more docile, more compliant, etcetera. This change would of course be more conducive to capitalists’ accumulation of wealth. One thing every building in Pullman had in common, from the work buildings, to the residential buildings, was that they were all owned by the Pullman company. Workers were compelled to be renters, and not permitted to own their homes. The rent payments were deducted automatically from workers’ paychecks. Not just workers, but also all community organizations, were prohibited from owning buildings, and anyone could be evicted with a mere 10 days warning. Moreover, what came to pass for a municipal government in the town of Pullman was completely under the control of the Pullman company. The foundations of community life were only further eroded by the use of “inspectors” by the Pullman company in its town, whose job it was to report on the workers, their activities, affiliations, and opinions. These inspectors were to report any resident who was found to have undesirable or immoral views, attitudes, or habits. The atmosphere of

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the town of Pullman was best described as a kind of, “benevolent, well-wishing feudalism” with George Pullman as its king.5 Discontent with conditions in the town of Pullman contributed to the desire of workers to unionize, and helped spark the famous 1894 strike of the Pullman company by the American Railway Union led by Eugene V. Debs.6 Inspired to some extent by the example of Pullman, the man and the town, in 1903 Milton Hershey began work on his own planned industrial community.7 His was to be modeled to a degree after the Mennonite villages familiar in the area of Pennsylvania Hershey. The area had one key virtue for him, lots of dairy farms nearby to provide the critical ingredient he needed for his chocolate (i.e., milk). Like Pullman, and others, Hershey was a critic of the growing urban society. The urban environment was seen as morally corrupting and physically unhealthy for the people who lived in them. Thus, Milton thought that by recreating a more pastoral, healthier kind of life workers lives would be improved. What could also be improved was his profits, by reducing labor agitation. In the same profit-first motive of Pullman and Lowell, Hershey thought that contented works would be more productive, more loyal, workers. In a further echo of the Amish who lived in the area, Hershey envisioned a prosperous community full of clean-living residents. Even more than Pullman, Hershey invested in public buildings in his town, including the now famous Hershey Industrial School which housed and educated orphaned boys. His eponymous town would in this way, and others, serve as a living advertisement for his product, the wholesomeness of the one reinforcing that of the other. The town of Hershey would also experience many dystopian elements, despite its founders’ intentions, though perhaps less intensely than in Pullman. In contrast to Pullman and Lowell, the high-handed moral despotism in Hershey would be doled out by the proprietor himself. In the town of Hershey, Milton was the moral police; he was also the mayor, chief of police, and fire chief, as there were no elected officials. The comfortable life available to worker residents of Hershey came as part of a trade-off in which one sacrificed democracy. In exchange for having no control over their community, worker-residents received several benefits, medical coverage and a retirement plan; free garbage pickup and snow removal; public buildings like churches and schools, including a junior college with free tuition for workers; and, despite having all this, there were no local taxes. In many ways Hershey’s plans came to fruition, and the town enjoyed a fairly harmonious existence for many years. Indeed, it was not long before the town achieved notoriety as a tourist attraction, both the chocolate factory as well as the Hershey Park amusement park. The modern world caught up to Hershey eventually, leaving a large black mark on the town’s reputation. In 1937 labor violence in the town made all the wrong kind of headlines. Local dairy farmers dependent on selling to the Hershey factory brawled with

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striking workers. Outnumbered four to one, the strikers were badly beaten and chased away from company grounds by the mob of dairy farmers. Henry Ford also fancied himself a philanthropic businessman, someone who could help educate workers and elevate their lives. His famous $5 a day plan was built on the same kind of hard-headed, profit-oriented logic we’ve seen in both Pullman and Hershey, as well as the capitalist utopian visions of the moral improvement of workers. And just like both of these others, Ford’s generosity came at price. There was a rather dark side to Ford’s desire to improve the lives of his largely immigrant workers. In exchange for a higher wage, workers had to pledge to live wholesome lives, that is, conduct themselves both on and off the job according to Ford’s moral precepts. Just as we saw with Lowell, higher than average wages attracted an enormous glut of applicants. Workers came and they stayed, despite the brutish tactics of Ford’s anti-union henchmen in the service department and the condescending racism of Ford’s sociological department, because of the higher pay and benefits offered.8 The infamous service department at Ford was headed by Harry Bennett, a vicious enforcer whose egregious abuses of workers remained mostly secret from the public. He used fear, intimidation, and a paramilitary gang to pressure workers into doing as they were told. The main job of this secret police force was to prevent and disrupt any potential union organizing activity by Ford workers, by any means necessary. Surveillance and beatings were to main tactics Bennett and his thugs applied to suspected union activists. Bennett also constructed a huge network of spies within the company, so that potential agitators never knew if they were talking to one of his informers. Ford’s sociological department was responsible for turning his immigrant workers into “real” Americans. In a racist and very insensitive way, workers were to be stripped of their foreign customs and beliefs, and then remade to be as American as apple pie. Employment was conditional on workers learning English and American civics at company provided classes. Intentionally symbolically, the highly choreographed graduation ceremony for the Ford school began with workers in their native dress, and ended with them in American-style clothes. After graduating, workers were supposed to have gotten rid of their old ways, and completely adopted American ideals and values. Ford’s sociological department was also responsible for a highly intrusive regime of surveillance of workers and their personal lives. Members of the sociological department interviewed workers, and their family members, often several times, asking extremely invasive questions about many different aspects of workers’ lives. Though billed as a project aimed at social reform, the operatives of this department collected massive amounts of information about Ford employees and their families. How many times they were married, how much debt they had, how much money they remitted to relatives,

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and whether they had bank accounts, were all questions sociological department agents asked workers. These interviews were not one-off affairs. Two, three, even four, interviews would not have been uncommon, and this applies to the workers’ family members as well. Workers were lectured by these company men to maintain a certain standard of cleanliness and order at home. Naturally they were heavily discouraged from the vices of drinking, smoking, and gambling. INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM The darkest side of the American experience with the company town can be found in the example of coal and steel towns, as well as oil-boom towns. Hardy Green concisely describes this variety of the company town as, “exploitationville.”9 This title is largely self-explanatory. This is because the image of the coal town, especially the Appalachian coal town, has remained such a vivid part of America’s popular consciousness. The reign of the company, its officials, and its store, is legendary for its ruthlessness, brutality, arbitrary punishment, and oppression through debt. The famous song “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford affixes in the popular imagination the tyranny of the company in the coal town; the drudgery of the work; the inadequate pay; company theft of that pay; reliance on debt, and corresponding servitude to it; as well as the despair and despondency this way of life created. Often times these “towns” were little more than camps or agglomerations of shacks, shanties, and hovels. There were often few or no public services, and when they did exist workers were usually forced to pay exorbitant prices for the most basic services (e.g., garbage collection and sanitation infrastructure). Like other company towns, workers in coal towns were not allowed to own property, and thus forced to rent from the company at the prices it set. Workers were often paid in “scrip,” a form of local money only good at the company store. They were thus dependent on the company for everything they needed. As one might expect, workers were routinely bilked of their hard-earned wages by their unscrupulous employers through inflated prices for staple goods, as well as taxes and fees for basic services. Like in other company towns, there were usually no elected officials, and all law enforcement was overseen by the company. The 1871 Coal Creek War in Tennessee is a prominent example of the kind of reaction workers had to the many ways their employers dominated, oppressed, and robbed them. It is also a characteristic example of how employers in many different sectors dealt with organized labor in similar ways. Nor were such practices limited to the coal mining industry. Mining communities all over the country endured conditions, to one degree or another like those of the coal towns,

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from the omnipresent surveillance and spies, to the tyrannical foremen and threats of violence. In many cases steel towns were not much better, though the housing might be better than the notoriously poor housing afforded workers in mining towns, particularly the coal towns. Gary, Indiana and Homestead, Pennsylvania are two prominent examples of company towns in the steel industry. Both projects were motivated by the same utopian capitalist logic about making workers materially better off enough to reject union membership. The broad outlines of the story in both communities are familiar: inadequate, unsanitary, and or over-crowded housing; housing allocated by status; housing dependent upon employment; overpriced rents automatically deducted from wages; abusive foremen acting with impunity; workers forced to sing “yellow dog” contracts promising not to join a union as a condition of employment; no independent stores; workers paid in company “scrip”; overbearing moral codes imposed on workers by “moral police.” Conditions at Homestead, in addition to issues like wages and hours, were one of the most significant factors in sparking the infamously bloody strike in 1892. Labor strife would come to Gary in a big way in 1919. Workers striking for improved wages and reduced hours were certainly also very upset about the living conditions in town. In both cases, the owners with help from the state, used violence to disperse the workers and repress their demands and their organizations. AMERICAN DYSTOPIAS It should be clear, after a look at the historical experience of company towns in America that, in many, if not most, instances this experience contains many distinctly dystopian elements. Indeed, the experience of workers in company towns across America forms a unique American dystopian tradition, which contrasts sharply with its robust utopian tradition. When we look to the works of some of the great dystopian writers, we will notice the same themes that we saw in the real-life, historical experience of American company towns. George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Evgeny Zamyatin, all present visions of future dystopian societies which embody—in some cases to a fantastic extreme—the abusive treatment and horrible living conditions that characterized the life of many American company towns. All three dystopian authors depict future societies in which an authoritarian government, composed of an elite minority, rules despotically over the rest of the population. Moreover, in all three, the activities of the dominated population are structured in a way that furthers the social, economic, and political aims of the ruling elite. All three of these dystopian societies make use of some particular combination of omnipresent surveillance,

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brutal and violent repression and torture, or some form of psychological conditioning to compel the population into compliance with the government’s policies. The people of these dystopian societies are led, or forced, to believe that the current order of things is actually for everyone’s benefit; though clearly some benefit more than others. All three are portrayed by their leaders as peaceful and harmonious societies, despite the fact that violence and repression, of one kind or another, are needed to maintain order in society.10 Whether Orwell’s Big Brother in Oceania, Huxley’s Alphas in the future London, or The Benefactor in Zamyatin’s the One State, features from all three of these dystopian societies find analogs in American company towns: a single-minded and ideologically motivated founder or leader; the enforced dependence of the population on the state, that is the elite minority who run it; the abusive treatment of the population by the officials of the state; an unrelenting and intrusive propaganda offensive against the enemies of the state; monopoly on the press, and censorship of rivals as a form of persecution; universal surveillance of the population by the ruling elite, including an extensive network of spies and informers; unhealthy and degrading living conditions for the majority of the population, but opulence for the elite; systematic theft from, or exploitation of, the population to meet the needs of the ruling elite; and thoroughly rational, totally invasive, and frustratingly stultifying regimentation of life both on and off the job. CONCLUSION The company towns in America all seem to share one thing in common, a pattern of boom and bust. This might be separated by decades, but all company towns seem to share a common fate. Namely, when the business dries up, or the industry collapses, the town dies. Sometimes the death is quick, other times long, drawn out, and painful. The oil or gold boom towns would be on one extreme, as they could disappear entirely overnight, and reestablished at the next site in rapid order. Closer to the other end of the spectrum, company towns collapse because the industry changed or relocated (e.g., Lowell or Pullman). Other company towns collapse because their reason for existing disappears (e.g., the coal seam, or silver vein is tapped out). Sometimes company towns survive the collapse of the firms that dominate them, but as mere ghosts of their former selves (e.g., Gary). Only a very small successful few remain in operation, like Hershey. It is in light of this history of the company town in America that one should see the collapse of Detroit. One industry so dominated employment in that city, that as it fortunes flagged, so too did those of the city. Just as the industry declined, and resorted to new methods to remain competitive and

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continue to generate the profits shareholders expected, indeed demanded, so too did Detroit decline. And, as a result, the city was forced to resort to measures that accelerated the city’s decline by encouraging disinvestment, diminishing public services, and eroding quality of life. To many Americans, fascism, as represented in regimes like Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, is the ultimate real-life dystopia. Many Americans also think that this is a foreign problem, something embedded in the cultural DNA of the Old World. Many think this kind of ideology is not, and cannot be, indigenously American. Hence the extreme xenophobia that arose during both world wars, and the antipathy many Americans felt towards the early labor movement. Yet, the historical experience of the company town in America demonstrates that these conceptions are quite misleading. When given freest reign, capitalists, have created social environments that resemble quite closely the kinds of literary dystopias that most haunt our imagination. Fascism, in fact, has an American pedigree in the legacy of the company town. The legacy of the company town also quite nicely illustrates that fascism is not only bigoted hate groups waving swastika flags. It also comes in more patriotic, more benevolent, and well-meaning forms, like the kind of utopian paternalism that was evident in most company towns. It can also be seen, naked and direct, in the violent and authoritarian regimes that dominated some company towns, especially those associated with the mining industry. NOTES 1. For an interesting history of the company town, see Hardy Green, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills that Shaped the American Economy (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2010). 2. Eric Hobsbawn, Industry & Empire (The New Press, 1968/1999), 34. 3. Melville, Herman, “The Paradise of the Bachelors and the Tartarus of the Maids” (1849), Great Short Works of Herman Melville (Perennial Classics, 2004). 4. See Green (2010): 27–35. 5. Richard T. Ely quoted in Green (2004): 31. 6. For an interesting insight into the living conditions in Pullman, and the how they contributed to the 1894 strike, see Ginger, Ray, The Bending Cross (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 1947/ 2007). See Green (2004): 35–41. 7. See Green (2004): 35–41. 8. See Greg Grandin, Fordlandia (Picador, 2010): Ch. 2 & 4. 9. Green (2004); Ch.3 10. See Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).; Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World (1932); Zamyatin, Evgeny. We (1924).

CHAPTER 31

THE SCIENCE OF CORROSIVE INEQUALITY Nicholas Partyka

As the presidential campaign season begins to get into full swing, inequality will become a prominent topic, and misleading conventional narratives will abound. Both of the presumptive nominees of the two major political parties have addressed this topic at length already, and will certainly have much more to say as the general election phase kicks off. Inequality is a prominent topic because we are still dealing with the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis that spawned the Occupy Wall Street movement, which did much to put the issue of economic and political inequality back on the table for discussion. This is why the topic came up in the 2012 presidential election cycle, and why during this election cycle one candidate in the Democratic Party’s primary was able to attract a very large following by focusing predominantly on this issue. The success of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump shows that the issue of inequality, and its various social, political, and economic effects, still resonates deeply with large portions of the electorate on both sides of the mainstream partisan divide. This is the case, principally, because a great many non-elite Americans are still living

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 355–369 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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with the economic consequences of the financial crisis and the ensuing great recession. Inequality, political and economic, not only helped to inflate the bubble whose bursting caused the crash, but it also determined in large measure who benefited from the bailouts and the “recovery.” Rising inequality, from the 1970s on, helped funnel more and more wealth to the top of the income scale. These people spend their money very differently from others. When this group has surplus income, they are very likely to purchase financial instruments. As more and more wealth was channeled into their hands by the economic and political policies of neoliberalism, as championed by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher, the demand for financial products grew correspondingly. Further, after the financial sector was deregulated in the late 1990s, this process of financialization only picked up speed. Once home mortgages were securitized, that is, made into financial instruments, the stage was set for the collapse. After the crash, elites used their political and economic clout to divert bailout funds from America’s proverbial “main streets” to Wall Street. This, combined with fiscal policy choices, that is, the choice by bourgeois politicians not to use it as a tool to combat unemployment, is why the so-called “recovery” has not extended all that far down from the top of the income scale. In order to know what kinds of solutions are necessary to address the problem of inequality it is important to know what kinds of problems it produces, as well as their scale. Scientists and scholars studying inequality, and its various impacts, have revealed a number of striking conclusions about the nature and extent of the social, political, and economic, impacts of inequality. When taken together these various research results paint a very clear picture of the corrosive effects of economic inequality on society, economy, and democratic politics. The totality of these wide-ranging effects constitutes a significant threat to a society aiming to be democratic and egalitarian. In what follows, we will examine some of these interesting studies and their results to see what they reveal about the multifaceted impacts of inequality on persons, societies, and democracy. What we will find is that the scale of the problem far outstrips the scale of most of the mainstream solutions proposed; even those put forward by the self-proclaimed (though quite incorrectly) “socialist” candidate in the presidential primaries. PIKETTY ON INEQUALITY It seems a safe bet that few would have predicted the overwhelming success that a hefty tome on economic inequality by a French economist would achieve in the Spring of 2014.1 The 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement did much to bring the issue of economic inequality in society, as well as its many

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social and political effects, into the public consciousness, as well as into political debates. Nevertheless, Thomas Piketty’s book, and its success, caught many totally by surprise, and set off a vigorous debate, and vitriolic reaction, upon its translation into English. Both liberals and radicals pointed to his work as evidence, as confirmation, of what they had been saying for many years. On the other side, conservatives seemed to accept his findings, but dismiss his policy suggestions, or to find technical “flaws” with his data or methodology as a way of undermining all his conclusions. Using mainly tax return records, from several countries, Piketty’s work presents the most comprehensive view of the historical evolution, and structure, of income inequality throughout the industrialized world. Several highly significant, and well-established conclusions result from his research. First, Piketty confirms empirically several notions the left has asserted— namely, income inequality in the United States has returned to a historic high level, and it has been rising since the 1970s. The level of income inequality in the United States, especially the growth of incomes at the very top of the income spectrum, has, according to Piketty, revived the social significance of capital in the 21st century, and is bringing back the more patrimonial economy that dominated earlier centuries, until the period between 1914 and 1975. That is, once dynamic and equalizing societies are now increasingly reverting to the kinds of more rigidly defined, and largely hereditary, social relationships and attitudes that dominated the economy and society of the Gilded Age, as well as preceding centuries. Second, and very importantly, Piketty’s research provides much needed context for perceptions of growth, both of capital and wages. What Piketty’s historical research reveals is that average annual growth rates, even in this most recent and most fecund epoch, are actually rather small. Average annual growth rates for the most productive societies, in the most productive era, are still only about 1–1.5% per annum. Capital, on the other hand, has grown on an average of 4–5% per annum over the same historical period. This observation gives rise to one of Piketty’s fundamental conclusions, namely the law(r > g).2 This law is the biggest source of divergence in market economies, because it directly implies that a capital, however small, will with time invariably become a large capital; exogenous shocks, natural catastrophes, and acts of God notwithstanding. What this law also implies, and very significantly, is that the economic and social landscape of the mid-20th century is an economically and historically unique, and likely non-replicable period. Why did economic inequality decline in the United States during the middle part of the 20th century? Piketty’s answer is that this decline was largely the result of the confluence of historical events, namely the World Wars and the Great Depression. It is the historical conjuncture of these events in this period, as well as the political and social response to them,

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that accounts for the uniqueness of this era. Piketty’s fundamental law (r > g) was able to be broken in this period because of the exigencies of combating foreign military foes and domestic economic woes. One of the most significant results of the efforts to combat both is that working people in the United States accumulated during the war years the largest stock of disposable income ever. It was the spending of this money, as well as exploiting the United States’ position as global hegemon, that fueled the postwar economic boom up until the mid-1970s. When the economic effects of the 1914–1945 period wore off, inequality began to rise again. INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY One of the major implications of Piketty’s conclusions was on the topic of social mobility in the United States. Many on the left have been arguing for some time that social mobility in America is much lower than commonly thought, and Piketty’s data on inequality seems to support just such an argument. If economic inequality in a society is very high, and growing, then social mobility is likely to be low. The reasons for this are that as economic inequality increases, the economy comes to be more and more patrimonial, and thus economic divisions come to settle more and more into sharp caste divides. This is, of course, because in a capitalist society, income determines the extent of an individual’s, or a family’s, ability to consume, that is, their income determines the range of their consumption choices. One thing Piketty’s work demonstrated clearly was just how stark income inequality is in America. What he also, very importantly, showed is that the growth of inequality in the United States since the 1970s is due principally to the rise in the incomes of the wealthiest 1%, and .1% of income earners.3 This increasing concentration of wealth among the wealthiest certainly bodes ill for high levels of social mobility. One of the main features of a patrimonial economy is that, at least from the point of view of social mobility, it is not dynamic. Piketty appeals to interesting evidence from 19th century Victorian literature to demonstrate this fact. In a highly patrimonial economy the ability of individuals at the very bottom of the economic scale to advance into the “middle classes,” let alone into the top 10% or 1% is difficult. A patrimonial economy also makes it very easy for those who have accumulated wealth to be fairly confident of never falling below the middle classes, if one falls out of the elite classes at all. One of the most striking features, at least to modern readers, of Piketty’s use of the economic evidence in Victorian novels, is that with conservative management an accumulated fortune is unlikely to be dissipated, and thus to be transmitted to the next generation. The notion that classes, or castes, define American society is anathema to many pundits and commentators. Thus the vigorous attempts to rebut,

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dispute, and discredit Piketty’s work and conclusions. This image of a patrimonial economy does not square well with the cherished nostrum of capitalist society as dynamic and highly socially mobile. To some extent this belief in mobility is evidenced in empirical studies. What these studies often compare are the economic, or educational, outcomes achieved by parents and their children. What they reveal is a strikingly low level of social mobility, at least as defined by the “rags to riches” mythos of America. Indeed only .2% of those born into the bottom 20% of the income scale will end up rising into the top 1% of income earners. And, as one might expect, the picture is more bleak for persons of color, and other marginalized groups. What some researchers found is that the picture of social mobility in America is much more complex than simplified narratives from right or center left suggest. The reality for the majority of Americans is rather fluid, in that people enjoy bouts of relative prosperity and affluence, as well as bouts of relative poverty and deprivation. If such a picture of social mobility were not shocking enough, research taking a different tack suggests that social mobility is actually much lower that the picture presented by intergenerational studies mentioned above, and has been very low throughout history.4 Economist Gregory Clark studied the prevalence and endurance of “elite” surnames in elite institutions as a way of measuring social mobility with societies. Using a variety of sources, including census records, tax returns, death records, graduation records, and others, Clark makes a case that the rate of social mobility in the United States is much lower than contemporary estimates suggest. He argues that the common perception of very slow long-term mobility is more accurate than the estimates presented by social scientific research. For the case of the United States, Clark first identifies certain elite surname groups, as well as underclass surname groups. Then, he looks to test the prevalence of both groups among occupations identified as high status. Clark uses membership lists, mainly from professional associations, of doctors and lawyers as the high status occupations. Among the elite surname groups in America Clark lists Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, what he calls the 1923–1924 rich, and pre-1850 Ivy League graduates. The underclass groups are Black Americans, and a group Clark terms New French settlers. What his research concluded was that elite surnames show a very strong persistence, between 0.7 and 0.9, over the long-term, that is, for Clark, at least three generations.5 Another very interesting body of research suggests that humans have innate physiological and psychological reactions to the particular stresses induced by scarcity, by having less than is needed to make ends meet. Researchers found that these reactions impair humans’ long-run decision making faculties, even if boosting short-term focus, resulting in patterns of behavior that lead the poor to be likely to remain in poverty.6 The experience

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of scarcity causes people to “tunnel,” that is, focus on immediate goals and concerns, and thus to neglect many other important goals or other things one values. While this focus does yield an important benefit in increased productivity, the long-run consequences can lead to what researchers call a scarcity trap. As one tunnels in on pressing immediate goals, the things that fall outside one’s view are neglected, and thus become shocks as they suddenly appear on the tunnel of the person experiencing scarcity. As one reacts to each successive shock, even when “shocks” are predictable and routine events, one resorts to increasingly dodgy schemes to make ends meet. This is how people end up in, and unable to extract themselves from, one or another of the many kinds of scarcity traps. This is only compounded by the fact that the experience of scarcity imposes a kind of tax on humans’ cognitive capacities, such that as scarcity increases one comes to have less and less of the most important mental resources for escaping scarcity. Will-power is a finite resource, and the effects of scarcity are such that this resource is heavily depleted by scarcity, and the tendency of humans to psychologically obsess about their deprivations. Moreover, scarcity erodes intellectual capacities, in some studies the effect was the equivalent of as much as 13 or 14 IQ points. Thus, as scarcity taxes one’s cognitive capacities, shocks continue to arise, and one must constantly react, always seemingly one step behind. Thus, one will end up making poorer, more impulsive decisions that meet short-term needs, but at the expense of the individual’s long-term goals and interests. Scarcity, in this way, perpetuates scarcity, leading people to remain locked into debt and poverty. Unfortunately, even when poor people do escape poverty, or debt, they often fall back in because they lack any kind of buffer or cushion. The truth is that the poor tend to stay poor because of the physiological and psychological effects of the experience of scarcity, and the rich tend to stay rich because of the effects of abundance. INEQUALITY AND PERSONALITY Beyond its effects on the rates of social mobility, and how this affects people’s lives, inequality also seems to change who people are on a deeper level. Inequality has some interesting, and disquieting, impacts on what people think, their attitudes, their moral values, their perceptions of situations and of other people, and more. Wealth, or the lack thereof, impacts on individual’s personality in many ways. It directly provokes the question of whether the wealthy and the poor are qualitatively different sorts of persons, or whether they are constructed that way by their social environment. The results of empirical research suggest that the experience of inequality, from the top or the bottom of the economic scale, has profound effects

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on our personalities. The clear implication is that our personalities are in some very significant ways shaped by the contingent realities of the social environment. In the wake of the 2008 great financial crisis, and its aftermath, came much scorn, and condemnation of Wall Street’s recklessness and greed. The great recession brought increased scrutiny to the 1% as a class, and to the misdeeds and cupidity of the finance industry and financial institutions in the lead-up to and during the 2007–2008 Crisis. The treatment of the whole matter by the federal government angered many citizens, and further fueled the public’s fury and indignation. One of the threads that emerged from this storm of vitriol that was poured on Wall Street bankers was comparing corporate CEOs to sociopaths. The callousness, selfishness, and nonchalance with which many in the financial industry profited from the crash which they themselves had both created and precipitated, even as others were being fired en masse, made many Americans think of corporate CEOs as basically sociopaths. Some pundits took this to the logical conclusion and compared clinical symptoms of sociopathic behavior to the characteristics of successful CEOs. As it turns out, a growing body of empirical research is suggesting that the wealthy are indeed very different from others, e.g., morally and emotionally, as a result of their wealth. A series of creatively designed studies by researchers Paul Piff, Dacher Keltner, Michael Kraus, Stephane Cote, and a host of collaborators, has revealed some very interesting results about the moral and emotional differences of rich people from persons of lower social class. Piff, Keltner et al., demonstrated in both naturalistic and laboratory settings that those of higher social class, that is, the wealthy, are more likely to lie, cheat, steal, and break the law than their counterparts in lower social classes.7 On the naturalistic side, they found that wealthier drivers, as determined by the model of the car, were more likely to illegally cut off both other drivers at intersections and pedestrians at crosswalks. On the laboratory side, they found that in experimental simulations those of higher social class, even if artificially created, were more likely to lie, cheat, and steal in order to win prizes. Moreover, in experimental simulations, even those whose position of wealth and dominance had been engineered as part of the experiment, showed the signs of feeling entitled to their totally unearned wealth. Other research found that those who had attitudes characteristic of social dominance were found to be more likely to come to feel entitled to their position in the inequality hierarchy, or to believe the “legitimizing myths” of inequality.8 Other studies have produced similarly striking results. One study showed that lower-class individuals were more “empathically accurate” than their wealthier counterparts. Empathic accuracy here refers to the ability of persons to correctly judge or predict the emotional states of others.9 They

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hypothesize that since poorer people have to rely more on others to get by, they become more accurate at judging other people’s emotional states, since their success in obtaining cooperation depends on managing the emotions of others. In another study, Kraus and Keltner demonstrated that the wealthier subjects in their experiments were less likely to pay attention to others, as demonstrated by a prevalence of “disengagement cues,” for example, looking at one’s cell phone while others are talking.10 A further study revealed that the wealthier subjects were more likely to have a predominance of “self-oriented affect,” that is, the rich are more likely to think about themselves before others.11 In yet a further study, Stellar, Keltner, and colleagues, demonstrated that wealthier subjects were not only slower to feel compassion, but reported feeling less compassion, for others experiencing suffering.12 Higher social status individuals were also shown in one experiment to be stingier than their less wealthy counterparts. Inequality, in addition to warping the perceptions and sensibilities of the rich, also distorts the perceptions of the working-classes. Kraus, Piff, and Keltner found in one study that those of lower social class position were more likely to favor contextual explanations over dispositional ones, because of a perceived lack of personal control over the outcome.13 This means that poorer people tend to explain, or rationalize, their own choices, or the events of their lives in terms of external causal factors, that is, factors over which they as individuals do not have control. This perceived lack of control is characteristic of how researchers Melvin Kohn, Carmi Schooler, and their collaborators, understand the concept of alienation.14 Their research demonstrated important connections between inequality in levels of alienation between high and low status groups in the workplace. The difference between the high- and low-status positions in the workplace roughly matches the colloquial “blue collar,” “white collar” distinction, where the latter type of jobs contains an abundance, and the former a paucity, of opportunities to exercise “occupation self-direction,” that is, control over their work. Each of these groups was found to have a distinct set of values and social orientations associated with it. The correlation between the social stratification position of lower-status workers within the firm, and the personal values, social orientations, and psychological functioning that predominate among these workers is troubling.15 The results obtained by Kohn and Schooler et al. demonstrate that the more alienated low-status group are more likely to have a specific set of values, attitudes, and social orientations. In particular, more alienated, blue collar, workers tend to take on personality traits like authoritarianism, conformity to authority, resistance to change, and a focus on the letter rather than the spirit of the law. This is in turn related to the lower levels of psychological functions, or intellectual flexibility, observed among the high-alienation, low-status workers. This research also shows that the

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observed connection between these traits and social-stratification position within the firm are mediated by the division of labor in the typical capitalist firm, whereby the low-status workers are denied opportunities to exercise self-direction at work. Of course, we should note that an individual’s socialstratification position with the firm is in many ways correlated with, and even determined by, that individual’s social class in society generally. This latter is not a conclusion issued by the research we’ve been discussing, but rather a more general observation about the fit, under capitalism, between low-status persons and those who perform the low-status work in society. One very telling, and worrisome, result of the work of Kohn and Schooler et al., is that alienation experienced in the workplace spilled over into the nonwork life of workers, affecting their leisure time preferences. The rate of interest in discussing nonpolitical matters was found to be consistent across both the high- and low-alienation groups. However, interest in discussing political topics was distinctly lower among the high-alienation group. Moreover, the intellectuality of the preferred leisure time activities among highly alienated workers was seen to be much lower than among their counterparts in the low-alienation group. As a further kind of informal test, the researchers conducted their survey in two separate parts. One part of the survey covered non-political topics, the other political topics. After controlling for Swedes’ cultural tendency to comply with researchers requests, they found, quite suggestively, that the political part of the survey was returned later on average by the high-alienation group. This specifically political withdrawal by the high-alienation, low-status workers will have profound implications for the well-being of political democracy. INEQUALITY AND HEALTH IN BOTH INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETIES A growing body of research in public health has shown that economic inequality is highly related to certain significant socials ills, for example, high levels of violence, as well as higher rates of illness and early death among those of lower class position in society. Building off this work on the “social determinants of health,” Richard Wilkinson presents an argument that societies with more inequality are also, for example, less trusting, less cohesive, less sociable, more prejudiced, and more violent.16 He begins by noting an apparent paradox. Modern societies are more wealthy and productive, and with more luxuries readily available, than most of our ancestors would have ever dreamed. He cites the example of indoor plumbing and hot and cold running water as luxuries often taken for granted. And yet, modern societies also appear rife with unhappiness, for example, high rates of suicide and depression, illness, violence, and early death. Wilkinson links the sources

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of these manifestations of unhappiness with economic inequality and its social, as well as physiological, effects. Wilkinson’s work successfully showed that almost all the social problems that are indicators of unhappiness, are more concentrated in poor areas, and more common among poor people. He argues that, as a result of the “epidemiological transition,” the most common causes of death for all in developed countries shifted from infectious diseases to degenerative diseases. What he found is that health is graded by social status, that is, largely by income. His results demonstrated that as income increased so did health, according to a range of metrics, and vice versa. He appeals to a range of studies to help show that social problems indicative of unhappiness are caused by the same sources of stress as chronic diseases. Wilkinson points to three main categories of psychological risk factors namely, early childhood social and emotional development, being more socially isolated, and high or low social status. As inequality in a society rises, Wilkinson argues, the social relationships of that society increasingly become characterized by relations of dominance and subordination, that is, by increasing social distance. The more this latter is the case, the more the sense of autonomy, or of self-direction, decreases for the proverbial have-nots as their dependence on the haves increases. In Wilkinson’s causal mechanism, increased inequality leads to increased competition for social status, and subsequently the adoption of anti-social values and attitudes as people become more detached from and less reliant on others. These latter values progressively erode social relations and community life, and thus contribute to the social problems afflicting society. Basically, the psychological factors that create unhappiness, produce ill health and other social issues through increases in stress associated with inequality, and deprivation. For, indeed, as Wilkinson acknowledges, the connection between economic inequality and ability to access consumption goods will play a large part in explaining the connection between inequality and ill health. On the one hand, inequality makes societies less healthy. For example, one study based on data from the U.S. General Social Survey by Kawachi and Kennedy et al., Wilkinson cites, demonstrates that states with higher inequality were less trusting than in more equal states.17 Two studies by Robert Putnam and colleagues, one conducted in the United States and the other in Italy, found that the strength of community life varied with the level of inequality. The more inequality there was, the less likely people were to be involved with social, or civic organizations or activities.18 Building off others’ data for 10 U.S. cities, the more inequality there was the more hostility there was.19 Moreover, as Wilkinson notes, there are more than 50 studies showing a relationship between inequality and homicide rates.20 Other studies have shown that higher rates of economic inequality were related

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with increased racial prejudice, as were lower social status for women.21 Lastly, but by no means least, studies have shown that where inequality is greater political participation decreases, when participation is measured by propensity to vote.22 On the other hand, inequality also makes individuals less healthy, resulting in the early death of those on the short side of social inequalities. All three of the main psychological risk factors for unhappiness and stress, and thus illness, that Wilkinson identified are directly related to economic inequality. Prenatal and early childhood stress have been linked by studies to a range of later life health problems. The scientific evidence points to the stress hormones like cortisol as an important influencing factor.23 Social isolation, that is, lack of embeddedness with a robust network of friendships, and other social connections, has been shown to be related to higher mortality rates.24 Low social status has also been shown to be related to higher rates of mortality. What may be the most striking thing about what some of the research in this area suggests is that, yes the material conditions attached to poverty matter, but that the position of inequality, of subordination and deprivation, itself produces negative consequences for health.25 Compounding these effects of inequality on health is the visibility of inequality, which research has found further increases inequality.26 Subjects were experimentally manipulated into higher and lower status groups, the higher the status the more the initial endowment of the participant. The subjects participated in a game designed to test their choices given specific incentives. Basically, the experiment consists of a turn-based game where fake money is waged. The participants can choose to act cooperatively— that is, contribute to a common pool or bank. Alternatively, players can also choose to act selfishly, and defect from cooperation, and thus gain more money for themselves than if they had cooperated. The outcome of each round depends on the choices of each of the players, and each of the player’s choices affects the choices of each of the other players. The researchers found that when the levels of inequality were more visible in these experiments the outcomes of the games were more unequal distributions of wealth than in games where the levels of inequality were invisible to the players. If the visibility of wealth increases inequality in the distribution of wealth, then it stands to reason that, given the link between inequality and social health, visibility of inequality will exacerbate the negative health effects of inequality. INEQUALITY IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC I am in deep agreement with Wilkinson when he asserts that the surprise should not be so much that inequality is as harmful to ourselves and to

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society as it is, but rather that we should have forgotten this. For, indeed, when we look back into the history of our modern democratic political culture, we see that the concern about economic, and thus social and political, inequality has been a major one. Both the ancient Greek and Romans had important laws, not always scrupulously abided, that limited land ownership by individuals. The idea behind these laws was to attempt to preserve a wide distribution of landownership, because owning land and political and social independence were linked. Indeed, in ancient minds, the former was the necessary material foundation of the latter.27 For the Greeks, someone who depended on another for work, for a livelihood, would be thought of as an unreliable citizen. This was because the relationship between employer and employee, patron and client, is one of domination and subjugation. If one’s ability to access important subsistence goods hinges on the disposition of another, then one is unlikely to oppose that other politically; especially in a time when political debate and voting was done face to face, and in public. The rise of patron–client relationships was in part responsible, in the case of the Romans, for the fall of the republic. Consider the classic slogan of the French revolution, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” or liberty, equality, and solidarity. As Wilkinson rightly notes, each one of these values, is a demand, and is addressed or related to inequality. We’ve seen already that inequality leads to subordination, which is the antithesis of democratic political relations. Solidarity has to do with our understanding of social relations themselves, and their quality. A robust democratic culture must maintain a certain level and quality of social cohesion, built on relationships that affirm liberty and cooperation. We’ve seen already that research shows that as inequality increases, the quality of social relations decreases; importantly, inequality was found to decrease levels of participation. Equality can thus be seen as the basic precondition for liberty and solidarity. This is because of the importance of the material bases of liberty and solidarity, and the link between access to these material bases and income. Thus, the most essential foundation of any democratizing reform must be a change in the distribution of levels of access to the material prerequisites of a decent life as this enables substantial political participation. Inequality is also antidemocratic because it skews the outcome of public political deliberative institutions and processes, as well as “competitive” elections. A recent study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page demonstrated that that the majority of the U.S. electorate had little or no control over the legislative outcomes of their “democratic” institutions. That is, as their research shows, there is no statistically significant connection between the preferences of the majority of voters and the legislative outcomes of their political institutions.28 The wealthiest elites have a statistically significant lead over the rest of the American citizenry in the likelihood of their preference being realized in public policy and law. The recent Citizens United

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ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court only further entrenched the role of money in the contemporary American political system, by legally equating money with speech. It is very likely because people perceive the way that their political elites serve economic elites and their interests much more than those of the proverbial “common man.” This is also very likely behind the deep decline in voter participation in America over a period of many years. It is also almost certainly part of why other research found that a full one-third of survey respondents replied “not at all” when asked, “How democratically is your country being governed?”29 CONCLUSION Economic inequality is thus highly corrosive of democracy because it limits social mobility, creates ill health and social problems, warps the personalities of those involved in undemocratic ways, and distorts the outcomes of the political process in favor of the wealthy. Inequality lowers mobility and results in more rigid social hierarchies divided by class, that is, by income. The result of this is a society in which a great gulf opens between these classes as their social, political, and economic experiences become increasingly divorced from each other. Further, because of the link between income and consumption, there is a connection between income inequality and health; both in persons and in societies. Inequality makes people more stressed, triggering physiological reactions, that when sustained over long durations produce consequences leading to more illness and earlier death. Inequalities in societies, in particular inequalities in income, resources, and opportunities, help produce unhealthy social maladies like increased violence and crime, reduced levels of compassion, higher levels of hostility, and reduced levels of trust. In essence, inequality tends to decrease social cohesion, and the robustness of participation in community life, leading to increased levels of social isolation. Inequality also leads to the creation of social and economic conditions, and structures of work, under which individuals are incentivized to become persons with antidemocratic values, attitudes, and preferences. Increases in exposure to relationships of domination and subordination lead those subordinated to take on adaptive preferences, e.g., the specifically political withdrawal noted in the work of Kohn and Schooler et al. What we can see now is that the responses to the problem—really problems—of inequality are woefully inadequate to address the wide range of maladies created or exacerbated by inequality. Raising taxes on the rich, and spending that money on social programs sounds like an appealing solution. But, from what we have just seen, this strategy is not capable of providing real solutions to the variegated social, economic, and political

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problems related to high levels of inequality in society. Tackling the problem of inequality will require much more robust measures. What should be clear from what we’ve discussed here is that the political and economic problems of economic and political inequality cannot be addressed singly or in isolation. Only a comprehensive strategy addressing them all simultaneously will suffice to effect real change. The economic power of capitalists gives them political power, which they use to preserve and even enhance their economic power. Unless the very social and economic foundations of this feedback loop are extirpated, the hold of bourgeois elites on both economic and political power is unlikely to be broken. This is why even a successful “political revolution” would be ineffective in combating inequality; let alone reversing the four decade old trend towards rising inequality. The only effective means of combating inequality, and its myriad of detrimental consequences, is the seizure of political and economic power from the capitalist class by a working class that is conscious of itself as a class both in itself and for itself. NOTES 1. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2014). 2. In this equation r = average annual rate of growth of capital, and g = average annual rate of growth of income, or output. See Piketty (2014), 25. 3. See Piketty (2014); Figs. 8.5–8.10 4. See Gregory Clark, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). 5. See Clark (2014), Ch. 3. 6. See Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives (Picador, 2014). 7. Paul Piff, D. Stancato, Stephane Côté, R. Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, “Higher Social Status Leads to Increased Unethical Behavior.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109:11 (2012): 4086–4091. 8. See Wilkinson (2005), 196. 9. Michael W. Kraus, Stephane Cote, & Dacher Keltner. “Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy.” Psychological Science 21:11 (2010): 1716–1723. 10. Michael W. Kraus and Dacher Keltner, “Signs of Socioeconomic Status: A thin Slicing Approach.” Psychological Science 20:1 (2009): 99–106. 11. Michael W. Kraus, Paul Piff, & Dacher Keltner, “Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20:4 (2011): 246–250. 12. Jennifer Stellar, V. M. Manzo, Michael W. Kraus, and Dacher Keltner, “Class and Compassion: Socioeconomic Factors Predict Response to Suffering.” Emotion 12:3 (2012): 449–459.

The Science of Corrosive Inequality     369 13. Michael W. Kraus, Paul Piff, and Dacher Keltner, “Social Class, Sense of Control, and Social Explanation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97:6 (2009): 992–1004. 14. Kohn, Schooler, and their colleagues take their conception of alienation from work done by Melvin Seeman in the early 1960s. See Seeman,”Alienation and Social Learning in a Reformatory.” American Journal of Sociology 69:3 (1963): 270–284. Also see Seeman and John W. Evans, “Alienation and Learning in a Hospital Setting.” American Sociological Review 27:6 (1962): 772–782. 15. See Melvin Kohn, Class and Conformity: A Study in Values. 1969. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977). Also see Kohn and Schooler et al. Work and Personality (New York, NY: Ablex Publishing, 1983). 16. See Richard Wilkinson, The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (New York, NY: The New Press, 2005). 17. I. Kawachi, B. P. Kennedy, K. Lochner, & D. Prothrow-Smith, “Social Capital, Income Inequality and Mortality.” American Journal of Public Health 87:1 (1997): 21–32. 18. See Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Also see R. D. Putnam, R. Leonardi, and R. Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 19. Wilkinson (2005), 51. 20. Wilkinson (2005), 47–50. 21. B. P. Kennedy, I. Kawachi, K. Lochner, C. P. Jones, & D. Prothrow-Smith, “(Dis)respect and Black Mortality. Ethnicity & Disease 7 (1997): 207–214. Also see F. D. Blau and L. M. Kahn, “The Gender Earnings Gap—Learning From International Comparisons.” American Economic Review 82 (1992): 533–538. 22. See V. A. Mahler, “Exploring the Subnational Dimension of Income Inequality.” Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper 292, January, 2002. Also see T. A. Blakely, B. P. Kennedy, and I. Kawachi, “Socioeconomic Inequality in Voting Participation and Self-rated Health.” American Journal of Public Health 91:1 (2001): 99–104. 23. Wilkinson (2005), 81–85. 24. Wilkinson (2005), 78–81. 25. Wilkinson (2005), 73–76. Also see C. A. Shively and T. B. Clarkson, “Social Status and Coronary Artery Atherosclerosis in Female Monkeys.” Arteriosclerosis & Thrombosis 14 (1994): 721–726. 26. Akahiro Nishi, Hirokazu Shirado, David G. Rand, and Nicholas A. Christakis, “Inequality and Visibility of Wealth in Experimental Social Networks.” Nature 526:Oct. (2015): 426–429. 27. See H. L. Havell, Republican Rome. (1914). (Oracle Publishing, 1996). Also see Victor Davis Hanson, The Other Greeks (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1999). 28. Martin Gilens and I. Page Benjamin, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” Perspectives on Politics 12:3 (2014). 29. See World Values Survey Wave 6 (2010–2014).

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PART VIII SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES

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CHAPTER 32

AMERICANISM PERSONIFIED Why Fascism Has Always Been an Inevitable Outcome of the American Project Colin Jenkins

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” This quote, which has often been misattributed to Sinclair Lewis, is wise in its recognizing the authoritarian potential of both nationalism and organized religion. In slight contrast, Professor Halford E. Luccock of the Divinity School of Yale University said in a 1938 interview, “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’” (“Disguised Fascism,” 1938, Luccock’s view was that of a Christian theologian during the height of Nazi Germany, likely meant to not only downplay the role of religion, but perhaps more so warn against the false idolatry of nationalistic reverence. Despite the tidbits of insight offered, both quotes underestimate Americanism as a highly authoritative and dominating national project in and of itself. At the time of both quotes, America had already cemented strong The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 373–384 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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elements conducive to fascism: an economy based in capitalist modes of production, a geography created through mass extermination of Native American populations, White supremacist ideals rooted in both dominant culture and pseudoscience, and aggressive expansionist and imperialist projects throughout the Western hemisphere. It should come as no surprise that Adolf Hitler studied, admired, and was inspired by the U.S. genocide of Native Americans as well as its subsequent reservation program. “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history,” John Toland (1991, p. 202) wrote in his book, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.” This notion of American fascism is certainly nothing new. As Steve Martinot (2008) explains in his invaluable essay on “Fascism in the U.S.,” this discussion has been around for a long time: In an early, now canonical discussion of racism in the U.S., Pierre Van den Berghe (1967) pointed out that a prevalent racial despotism coexisted with constitutionality, a confluence he characterized as “herrenvolk democracy”— “democracy for White people.” In his book, Friendly Fascism (1980), Bertram Gross argues that the U.S. under Reagan began moving toward a form of governance closely analogous to 1930s European fascism; he compares the social consequences of corporate influence to Mussolini’s “corporate state.” George Jackson finds no better word than “fascism” to describe the psychotic use of power and violence by which White prisoners relate to Black, or by which the prison administration maintains its hierarchical system—and which he sees mirrored in White–Black relations outside the prison. (para. 3)

As a settler-colonial project steeped in White supremacist domination and capitalist ideals, America is and always has been an ideal fascist breeding ground. The current rise of Donald Trump, the alt-right, neo-Nazism, and White nationalism is nothing new, it is merely Americanism becoming further personified through the vulnerabilities opened by the failures of capitalism and the weakening of liberal democracy—systems that were constructed on shoddy, hypocritical foundations to begin with. FASCISM AS A CAPITALIST PHENOMENON People that are more concerned with the trappings of this pseudo mass society and its spectacular leisure sports; parades where strangers meet, shout each other down and often trample each other on the way home will never see

Americanism Personified    375 the ugly reality of fascism. Amerikkkan fascism is so effective in emotionally appealing to people’s desires and fears that when we point out to them that Amerikkkan capitalism has had 200 years to disguise and refine its face, and 50 years to consolidate fascist control of the country, they would simply dismiss us. —Shaka Sankofa Zulu

Fascism, as a conscious and working ideology, was intentionally constructed to serve as a polar opposite to the materialist conception of thinking that scientific socialism (Marxism) was based in. Benito Mussolini, a former socialist, specifically noted this in his Doctrine of Fascism, which he wrote with Giovanni Gentile (“Modern History Sourcebook,” n.d.). Fascism is a collectivist ideology, much like socialism; however, fascism calls on a societal tie that differs greatly from that of socialism. While socialist collectivism is rooted in an inclusive, communal responsibility to have basic material needs met for all, fascist collectivism is rooted in an exclusive, nationalistic responsibility to dominate and conquer peoples who are viewed as not belonging. While socialist collectivism is based in worker-control of the means of production, fascist collectivism is based in a natural adherence to corporatism, which takes form in concentrated control of the means of production (mimicking that of capitalism). While socialism seeks to undermine and ultimately destroy the capitalist system, fascism seeks to fortify the late stages of capitalist accumulation by merging corporate power with the state. As socialists view the working-class struggle as the primary vehicle to creating self-determination, fascists flatly reject economic (material) motives as a potential driving force for societal change. The authoritarian nature of capitalism is an ideal precursor to fascism. Because of this, fascism seeks to take the reins of the system and use it to carry out its nationalistic project that is based in a form of heritage or national identity as determined by the fascists. The Doctrine of Fascism explains, Fascism [is] the complete opposite of . . . Marxian Socialism, [which posits] the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production. Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And if the economic conception of history be denied, according to which theory men are no more than puppets, carried to and fro by the waves of chance, while the real directing forces are quite out of their control, it follows that the existence of an unchangeable and unchanging class-war is also denied–the natural progeny of the economic conception of history. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society. (“Modern History Sourcebook,” n.d., para. 4)

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The authoritarian nature of capitalism is rooted in its most elemental relationship—that between the owners and the workers—which naturally creates minority class dominance over the majority class. Fascism seeks to transform this class dominance into national dominance. Because of this, parasitic billionaire exploiters of the capitalist class (like Donald Trump) become welcome members of this nationalist project, and exploited workers who embrace fascism are more than willing to overlook the complicity of the creators of their own misery as long as these overseers are willing to repent through an embrace and renewal of ethnic nationalism. The natural extension from capitalism to fascism is impossible to ignore. In structural terms, as concentrations of wealth and power are created through the mechanisms of capitalism, so too are widespread dispossession for the masses of people who exist under the system. Despite the construction of robust welfare and police states, which have been implemented to prevent this widespread dispossession from transforming into civil unrest, the weight of such unequal power dynamics is bound to crush the experiment we’ve come to know as “liberal capitalist democracy.” This has never been more evident than in the neoliberal era, where both globalization and so-called “free-market” ideology have unleashed the system to do what it is designed to do. An anarcho-capitalist (American “libertarian”) analysis of fascism, presented by Sheldon Richman (n.d.) in the Library of Economics and Liberty, recognizes at least a part of the natural connection between capitalism and fascism, without overtly saying so: Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions. (para. 2)

While Richman would surely argue that such elements—autocratic control, currency manipulation, and the end of entrepreneurship—are not natural byproducts of capitalism, they perfectly describe the stage of monopoly capitalism (actual existing capitalism) that has inevitably developed as a result of the most basic mechanisms of the system: the labor–capital relationship and the private ownership of land as a means to exploit. In other words, what American libertarians like Richman describe as “corporatism”

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or “crony capitalism” is really just a mature and naturally developed stage of capitalism. The “cronies” are merely the benefactors of this inherent process. This point has been illustrated by many economists outside of the establishment, and perhaps most effectively and intensely by the Monthly Review school. The insurmountable weight that capitalism has brought down on democracy has demanded the need for more authoritarian adjustments within government, as societal unrest becomes more likely. This mature stage of capitalism creates a ripe environment for fascism, both in its creation of a highly-centralized state apparatus that has already meshed with corporate power, as well as in its need to recruit masses of foot soldiers from within the systematically dispossessed population. The Doctrine of Fascism describes the transfer of the “Liberal State” to the “Fascist State”: The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality—thus it may be called the “ethic” State. (“Modern History Sourcebook,” n.d., para. 10)

The transformation that Mussolini and Gentile describe is that of a capitalist state with pluralistic tendencies that are conducive to capitalist growth to one of a corporatist state with homogenous tendencies that are designed to protect and grow nationalist interests. While modern fascists in the United States tend to focus on “multiculturalism” and what they refer to as “cultural Marxism,” they fail to realize that the same structure which shaped these social dynamics happens to be a prerequisite for the fascist transition. The Western capitalist system required a massive, intercontinental slave trade to get started, centuries of internationalist/globalist expansion to spur continuous growth, and an imperialist agenda that has displaced entire societies throughout the global South. In other words, the tactics that have been used to feed the capitalist system, most of which could be characterized as crimes against humanity, not only created the incredibly unequal distributions of wealth and power both nationally and internationally, but also created the societal makeups that fascist foot soldiers decry. In this sense, capitalism has not dug its own grave, like Marx once promised that it would; it actually has birthed the inevitability of fascism.

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FROM LIBERAL STATE TO FASCIST STATE Through capitalism’s reliance on imperialism, the transition from Liberal State to Fascist State has already begun. In order to be formally transitioned into fascist control, it merely needs time, political direction, and a forceful wresting of power from the entrenched Liberal State. Once completed, the nature of imperialism shifts from one of economic motivations to one of nationalistic motivations. The doctrine discusses this process: For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and it’s opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people, like the people of Italy, who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude. But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century—repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order. If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it. (“Modern History Sourcebook,” n.d., para. 12)

While gaining control of the state is formally accomplished through the emergence of electoral movements, it still requires a groundswell of support from the lower classes. The class divisions created by capitalism, especially within post-industrialized societies like that of the United States, present the most opportune dynamics for what is sometimes referred to as “right-wing populism.” Not only is the emergence of an industrialized middle class a key component in this development, but even more crucial is the subsequent collapse of this middle class. This second stage has been occurring in the United States since the 1980s, with the onset of neoliberalism and globalization. Politically speaking, it has manifested itself in Reagan’s neoliberal blueprint, the neoliberalization of the Democratic Party, the complete economic abandonment of the American working class by both major parties, the rise of proto-fascist groups like the Tea Party, the triumph of lesser-evilism, and now in the rise of 21st century neo-Nazism and White

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nationalism, both of which have helped buoy an actual billionaire capitalist to the White House. Gaining political support from the working class seems like a difficult proposition for those running for office, since the political parties in power are the same parties which have abandoned most Americans for the past several decades. However, this is where fascism’s reliance on emotion and identity, or what Mussolini refers to as “duty,” “holiness,” and “heroism,” over material need becomes so powerful. The structural dispossession of masses of people by macro systems like capitalism is difficult to pinpoint, especially when systemic understanding is absent. Left-wing populism relies on these understandings, as well as the expectation that material conditions will motivate the working class to act in its own best interests, which are diametrically opposed to the interests of capital, bourgeois politicians from within the liberal democratic system, and of course billionaire businessmen. Fascism makes things easier, focuses on a national/racial identity, and deems all who exist outside of that identity to be enemies of the state. The structural pressure created capitalism, especially against that of the former middle class, or against anyone feeling as though they’re losing privilege, creates an environment conducive for recruitment. This process was never explained more succinctly than by George Jackson (1990): The shock troops of fascism on the mass political level are drawn from members of the lower-middle class who feel the upward thrust of the lower classes more acutely. These classes feel that any dislocation of the present economy resulting from the upward thrust of the masses would affect their status first. They are joined by that sector of the working class which is backward enough to be affected by nationalistic trappings and loyalty syndrome that sociologists have termed the “Authoritarian Personality” One primary aim of the fascist arrangement is to extend and develop this new pig class, to degenerate and diffuse working-class consciousness with a psycho-social appeal to man’s herd instincts. Development and exploitation of the authoritarian syndrome is at the center of “totalitarian” capitalism (fascism). It feeds on a small but false sense of class consciousness and the need for community. (p. 152)

The authoritarian nature of fascism is found in its reliance on identity, a fluid concept that allows for some maneuverability within the minds of its adherents, while also shoring up the herd mentality that becomes rooted in its perceived national agenda. In other words, the individual within a fascist movement may perceive themselves, the movement, and even the ultimate goal of the movement in varying ways; however, when called upon to act, their actions will always fall in line with the national agenda as set by its directors. This is why fascism requires the presence of strong leaders. Much like the Orc armies in JRR Tolkien’s famous Hobbit series (Tolkien, 2012), the foot soldiers of fascism are easily swayed into violent action for a greater

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good that is constructed by a strong, charismatic leader. And with this support, those leaders can accomplish electoral feats previously unheard of. PUNCHING DOWN: THE FASCIST ENGINE OF WHITE SUPREMACY AND XENOPHOBIA Despite the structural failures of both capitalism and liberal capitalist democracy, American fascism would find difficulties materializing without a strong element of identity. Whereas left-wing populism clearly relies on the material desperation of the working class under capitalism, fascism’s reliance on the vague concepts of holiness and heroism needs a constructed and recognizable identity. In America, the structural and cultural phenomenon of White supremacy serves as this identity, and therefore acts as the engine needed to redirect the widespread angst developed through the systematic dispossession created by capitalism and democracy into a nationalistic movement. It is important to understand that White supremacy is not something only reserved for jackbooted neo-Nazis giving “Heil Hitler!” salutes, but that it is a systemic phenomenon which is heavily seeped in American culture. It is both a conditioned mentality and a material reality. The conditioned mentality that Black lives are substandard has been shaped through centuries of popular culture, from the racist minstrel shows of the early 19th century, which utilized the “coon caricature” to lampoon Black people as dim-witted, lazy, and buffoonish, to modern TV shows like COPS, which perpetuates the racist stereotype that Black people are more prone to debauchery and criminality. The material reality has been shaped by two and a half centuries of chattel slavery followed by various forms of legalized systems of servitude and second-class citizenship, including sharecropping, convict leasing, Jim Crow Laws, and mass incarceration. This history has built complex layers of institutional racism carried out under the guise of legality, and a systematic ghettoization supported by both “White flight” and widespread discriminatory housing and employment practices, all of which have combined to shape a uniquely intense experience for Black Americans who must face both class and racial oppression. The two factors (conditioned mentality and material reality) interplay with one another in a way that is increasingly disastrous for the ways in which American society views and treats its Black citizens. Because of the perpetuation of racial stereotypes, people on average are less empathetic toward their Black counterparts. Studies have shown that White children as young as seven years old believe that Black children feel less pain than them; that emergency medical personnel are less likely to give pain medication to Black and Latinx children who are in pain; and that “Caucasian

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observers reacted to pain suffered by African people significantly less than to pain of Caucasian people.” The material reality shaped by institutional racism has created a landscape where Black people are disproportionately poor, unemployed, and in prison. Martinot (2008) talks about this seemingly never-ending cycle that is centered within a highly racialized criminal punishment system: The social effects of this process are catastrophic, yet familiar. Not only does felonization of a population insure massive unemployment (a general tendency not to hire people with a record), but routine felony charges amount to systematic disenfranchisement (14% of black people by 1998, according to Fellner and Mauer). Recent studies indicate that one out of every three black men under the age of 30 has been through the judicial system in the last 25 years. To continually remove a sizable number of people from a community in this way constitutes a massive disruption of its social coherence. This disruption buttresses its criminalization as a community in white society’s eyes, and rationalizes the disinvestment of capital and a general financial obstruction of community asset accumulation. Racial oppression, impoverishment, imprisonment and police impunity are all of a piece. Ultimately, the increase in prison population has become one of the arguments, in social discourse, for further drug laws and racial profiling. It is a selfgenerating cycle. What is significant about it is that it is not perceived by white society at large as an extant injustice. Instead, more prisons are called for and accepted, again with a sense form of cultural familiarity (“How else are we going to deal with crime?”). This acceptance euphemizes itself in political campaigns as being “hard on crime” as opposed to addressing the social conditions that generate crime. It inhabits a white consensus in solidarity with the police and prison industry that have allowed for their untrammeled growth— a consensus whose content is white racialized identity. (section 2, para. 9)

When turned on its head, White supremacists can use this current reality to support their arguments that Black people are in these positions because of “poor decisions,” “a lack of personal responsibility,” “a lack of work ethic,” “laziness,” or even some type of biological shortcoming, as is argued by so-called “race realists” (the modern term for pseudoscientific racism). Individualizing systemic problems is both a convenient way to blame victims of societal oppression, by basically ignoring history, and the result of a general lack of historical and practical knowledge regarding how systems shape lived realities for people within those systems. The latter point helps explain why ignorance is naturally drawn to reactionary politics, and why fascism has always been the likely outcome for America. As most Americans suffer from extreme deficits in sociological, historical, economic, and systemic understanding, any reaction against personal misgivings (which are experienced by the working class as a whole

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under capitalism) will surely default into raw emotion for many. This is fascism’s advantage, as it feeds off aimless frustrations. Ignorance is easily swayed; and guiding these frustrations into an intense anger against women, immigrants, Muslims, Black people, Brown people, or LGBTQ people, is easily accomplished. Ignorance is also a harbinger to cowardice. Due to a lack of general understanding of the world around them, such people grow to see the world as a dangerous place. So they must back themselves into a corner, stockpile guns, become suspicious of any and all who do not look like them, and brace themselves for the globalist, Illuminati-led, Bilderberg-planned, Soros-funded, politically-correct, cultural-Marxist New World order. Their lack of understanding leads them down a delusional rabbit hole, and their vulnerabilities and insecurities breed a cowardice that drives them to “punch down” at those who appear even more vulnerable than they. This authoritarian stance taken against class peers, and its need to dominate and brutalize marginalized people, is just waiting to get swept up in the fascist tide. And for many Americans, it inevitably has. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST INEVITABILITY Since the inevitability of American fascism is deeply rooted in both capitalism and White supremacy, any resistance against this fascist tide must be focused on destroying these two systems. Therefore, the only suitable orientation to embrace is one of a left-wing populist, internationalist, working-class, anti-racist ideology. The black-clad, masked anarchists and antifascists who have been physically confronting Trump’s shock troops in the streets are firmly rooted in this orientation. They are the front lines of this struggle, but their effectiveness will ultimately be dependent on a mass, organized movement that includes political and labor-oriented groups on the left, and most importantly liberation groups that are rooted in justice for people of color and immigrant populations. The upcoming war against American fascism will occur on multiple fronts. First, ground troops of the left (antifa and others ) are desperately needed to confront the violent, bigoted, gun-obsessed right wing that has formed under the banner of Americanism. These ground troops must be armed and proficient with guns, physically conditioned, and trained in hand-to-hand combat skills. A guerilla orientation influenced by the teachings of Che Guevara and Abraham Guillen, among others, and rooted in the approach of the original Black Panther party and Fred Hampton’s rainbow coalition (the BPP, Young Lords, and Young Patriots) is vital. Included in this need are community defense projects that can protect working-class

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people from the immediate dangers posed by right-wing militia groups, neo-Nazis, White supremacists, and police. Second, a multi-pronged attack against the capitalist system is needed. This must include a return to militant labor organizing and the inclusion and politicization of low-wage service sector workers. This must also include a left unity project that creates a coalition of anti-capitalist political, labor, and social justice groups that can effectively bring in and give the reins to immigrant laborers, the unemployed and underemployed, and specifically those who are most marginalized due to their racial, gender, or religious identity. A rejection of both capitalist political parties (Democrats and Republicans) is necessary in this struggle, as is a rejection of the lesser-evil approach to electoral politics that has brought the entire system rightward over the past 40 years. Third, a struggle against government repression is unavoidable. The American government has a brutal history of crushing anti-capitalist dissent: the Haymarket martyrs, the execution of Joe Hill, the targeting and forced exile of Bill Haywood, the Palmer raids, the framing of Sacco and Vanzetti, McCarthyism, Communist blacklists, COINTELPRO, the MOVE bombing, the assassination of Fred Hampton, the imprisonment of folks like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Oscar Lopez Rivera, and the forced exile of Assata Shakur, are a few examples. Legitimizing the movement with a formidable, nationally-based political wing can help with this. A third party rooted firmly in anti-capitalism is needed to serve as a vehicle for spreading class consciousness among an American working class that has been strategically and historically shielded from this. While electoral victories would be nearly impossible and largely ineffective in the current structure, political pressure and education is a crucial tool that should be used to create legitimacy and transparency. This struggle must be carried out with an understanding of the role that liberals and many progressives play in protecting the fascist movement. While conservatives and those on the “alt” and far right represent a clear enemy, liberals can sometimes pose as allies when it comes to mainstream political rhetoric. History shows this is not the case. It shows that no matter how progressive their platforms may appear, liberals will always side with the capitalist system and, most importantly, with their own stability and comfort within the system. This has never been more evident than in their recent support of a proven corporatist and war hawk in Hillary Clinton, their red-baiting propaganda since the election, their blanket condemnation of anti-fascists, their constant cries against counter-violence, and their false equivalencies against “extremists on both sides.” The fact that the Democratic party sabotaged Bernie Sanders, a politician whose platform is nothing more than that of a New Deal liberal, shows how far to the right they have moved since the inception of neoliberalism. Nancy Pelosi’s

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honest proclamation that “we’re capitalists and that’s just the way it is” while answering an unscripted question from a student at a January Town Hall appearance perfectly captured the smug elitism of the party, especially when considering Pelosi herself is married to a wealthy businessman/investor and has a net worth in the range of $43–$200 million. Capitalism has been great for her and her family; however, not so great for 200 million Americans. And now we have a war on our hands. REFERENCES Disguised Fascism Seen as a Menace; Prof. Luccock Warns That It Will Bear the Misleading Label ‘Americanism.’ (1938, September 12). New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1938/09/12/archives/disguised-fascism-seen-as-a-menace-prof-luccock-warns-that-it-will.html Jackson, G. (1990). Blood in my eye. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press. Martinot, S. (2008). “The question of fascism in the U.S.” Retrieved from https:// www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~marto/fascism.htm Modern History Sourcebook: Benito Mussolini: What Is Fascism, 1932. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp Richman, S. (n.d.). Fascism. Retrieved from https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/ Fascism.html Toland, J. (1991). Adolf Hitler: The definitive biography. New York, NY: Anchor. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2012). The hobbit. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

CHAPTER 33

IDENTITY, INC. Liberal Multiculturalism and the Political Economy of Identity Politics Jacob Ertel

The Left in the United States is at a critical juncture. Then again, it has been for roughly the past 35 years. With the onset of neoliberalism and the dissolution of the class-based politics of the 1960s and 1970s, a new political framework has emerged typified by the politicization of identity. It is this discourse that has prevailed on the Left since the early 1980s, always in tension with popular current Marxian critique but oft posited as the sole truly radical theory and practice. To be sure, identity politics comes with indisputable benefits, including the reclaiming and centering of historical narratives and a more nuanced understanding of interpersonal forms of aggression and abuse. At the same time, however, certain critical features of Marxian critique have taken a backseat to this framework, which largely abjures a substantive analysis of the material conditions central to capitalist social relations in lieu of the purported deconstruction of institutional norms. In other words, the critique of classism (the individual denigration of people not exhibiting behavior or values associated with certain social

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 385–395 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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classes) has largely superseded the critique of capitalism. It is worth considering, then, whether there is anything inherent about identity politics that necessitates an abandonment of veritable anti-capitalism in lieu of a more individualized form of putative radicalism. Is it purely by chance that the rise of identity politics coincides with the imposition of neoliberalism? Many might argue that political movements have in fact secured significant victories since the 1980s. This sentiment often hinges on the successes of mainstream gay rights movements, but is perhaps most explicitly embodied by myopic utterances of “post-racialism” since the beginning of the Obama presidency. However, victories such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the election of Obama, do nothing to prevent state violence or the conditions that undergird it. At best they present a hyper-individualized conception of success and at worst they further legitimate the state as the supreme arbiter of rights in its capacity to promote ostensibly progressive social values, but without questioning how such rights are contingent on the state’s own monopoly on violence both domestic and abroad. Perhaps most disturbing is that many self-described “radicals” who share similar critiques of mainstream political movements maintain the central logic of identity politics while espousing a militant rhetoric that claims to challenge White bourgeois norms at the same time as it inadvertently reaffirms them. Identity politics, then, must be rooted in liberalism. Much has been made of the deficiencies of identity politics and its cousin, liberal multiculturalism; fewer analyses actually trace the genealogy of these discourses. In moving from early liberal theorists to contemporary critics, this essay attempts to briefly sketch such a genealogy. In doing so, it examines the effects of these discourses on the potential for militant anticapitalist organizing. It is ultimately argued that identity politics serves to further retrench the state’s narrative of progress and liberal multiculturalism at the same time that economic stratification only intensifies under neoliberalism, in which appeals to a rights-based framework focused on representing a diversity of experiences do little to mitigate large-scale social upheaval. In this way, the shift from the insurgent materialist perspectives of the 1960s and early 1970s to a politics of identity often plays into the same narratives that it positions itself against. LIBERALISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL The exercising of individual rights is a key tenet of civic liberalism that dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries, first articulated by theoreticians such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Mill in particular asserts the primacy of the self-determining liberal subject in contributing to societal progress.

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Through exercising individual liberties, he argues, “human life also becomes rich, diversified and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie to which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to.”1 Such liberty is not without parameters, however. In fact, Mill avers that it is precisely the necessary limits to behavior imposed on individuals through rights that enable “human beings [to] become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation” and fully cultivate themselves.2 Law serves a paradoxical purpose here: It imposes limits on the individual at the same time as it engenders it through its very constitution. In other words, the individual, as an inherently juridical construct, cannot exist without the law and the limitations it imposes. Mill himself is acutely aware of this contradiction. “Whenever . . . there is definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public,” he explains, “the case is taken out of the province of liberty and placed in that of morality or law.”3 Individual self-determination can thus only be understood as such when it is circumscribed in accordance with the purview of the state’s legal personality. This facet of liberalism presents essential problems for early critics such as Marx. In “On the Jewish Question” in particular, Marx argues that the law’s primary function is the maintenance of private property as the central structuring mechanism of society. For Marx, property embodies the truest expression of self-interest, “the right to enjoy one’s fortune and to dispose of it as one will; without regard for other men and independently of society . . . this individual liberty, and it’s application, form the basis of civil society.”4 Such enjoyment, however, must also be secured through legal curtailment, as an unregulated expression of self-interest could hinder others’ ability to cultivate their own property and thus develop as citizens. In this sense security is a natural consequence of private property and no less foundational to civil society. This dynamic poses an immitigable tension for Marx. If society “exists only in order to guarantee for each of its members the preservation of his person, his rights and his property,”5 and if such preservation is inherently limiting to individual expression in its truest form, then the individual—and the political community to which the individual contributes—exists as a mere means for the preservation of rights.6 Within this framework, the bourgeois property owner becomes the symbol of authenticity as the personification of liberal rights. This is why for Marx the achievement of “political emancipation” is ultimately futile as a finite strategy: Political rights entail state recognition, and thus the perpetuation of the capitalist mode of production in which rights are constituted as an indispensable precondition.

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LIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM AS “AMERICAN-NESS” Liberalism has endured as a central philosophical strain centuries after Mill formulated his famed treatise. Indeed, liberalism’s emphasis on individual liberty, unregulated market rationality, and universality characterizes both the social dynamics and capital flows that permeate society. Yet it is important to interrogate the codification of individual freedom within a given set of all encompassing, state-legitimated rights. It is easily observed that not everyone residing in liberal states receives truly equal treatment; more often than not the law may appear to operate unfairly, and its ostensible commitment to equality can undermine radically unequal material conditions. Black people in the United States, for example, have been particularly subjected to tremendous physical violence, but also legally excluded from civic participation. Many activists and scholars believe that because of this, an intuitive approach to political agitation should involve advocating for greater state recognition. This stance takes for granted that, as Will Kymlicka puts it, “accommodating ethnic and national differences is only part of a larger struggle to make a more tolerant and inclusive democracy . . . An adequate theory of the rights of cultural minorities must therefore be compatible with the just demands of disadvantaged social groups. . . .”7 Kymlicka’s proposition is important because it attempts to mitigate social inequities through a multicultural and rights-based framework deemed able to accommodate historical, social, and cultural differences. Rather than emphasizing the benefits of legal universalism, Kymlicka acknowledges that a blanketed application of the law is insufficient. His provocation is less successful in its application, however. In positioning “the fact that anyone can integrate into the common culture, regardless of race or color”8 as the great triumph of liberal democracy, Kymlicka participates in the very mode of erasure he seeks to ameliorate by failing to interrogate the composition of the “common” (read: middle-class, White) culture into which minorities are purportedly choosing to incorporate themselves. His assertion that “[Latino] immigrants who come to the United States with the intention to stay and become citizens . . . are committed to learning English and participating in the mainstream society,”9 for example, whitewashes any semblance of difference by commending minority groups for their ability to effectively shed such difference in striving for political recognition. On the other hand, Kymlicka misunderstands the effectiveness of specific legal provisions, claiming that “national minorities in the United States have a range of rights intended to reflect and protect their status as distinct cultural communities, and they have fought to retain and expand these rights.”10 Kymlicka takes this to signify the superiority of liberal democracy while characterizing integration into the U.S. legal framework as liberalism’s crowning achievement.

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On the contrary, the dual subsumption and glorification of difference is foundational to U.S. nation building. To recall Marx, it is the normalization of political emancipation—as opposed to full human emancipation—as the main form of struggle that naturalizes the capitalist social order by positing the bourgeois property owner as the telos of human progress. Reading Kymlicka through Mill in conjunction with Marx, then, illustrates that liberal multiculturalism presupposes a universal standard that both inherently limits individual expression through the incorporation of minority groups into a presumptively “common culture” premised on specifically normative discourses and institutions. This mode of incorporation circumvents the potential for opposition to capitalism while simultaneously producing newly racialized subjects who are excluded from the political rights now propounded as the fullest actualization of freedom. Jodi Melamed explains how this dynamic has been maintained through U.S. efforts to promote racial equality by espousing a formal policy of “racial liberalism” not dissimilar to Kymlicka’s propositions. Writes Melamed: The liberal race paradigm recognizes racial inequality as a problem, and it secures a liberal symbolic framework for race reform centered in abstract equality, market individualism, and inclusive civic nationalism. Anti-racism becomes a nationally recognized social value and, for the first time, gets absorbed into U.S. governmentality.11

Moreover, the official anti-racism of the post-war period can be read as constitutive of U.S. nationalism, as it becomes a rationalization for transnational capitalism and foreign intervention in the name of U.S. interests.12 The “suturing of liberal antiracism to U.S. nationalism, which manages, develops, and depoliticizes capitalism by collapsing it with Americanism,” Melamed writes, “results in a situation where ‘official’ antiracist discourse and politics actually limit awareness of global capitalism.”13 In other words, a policy of racial liberalism positions the U.S. as a fully multicultural state necessarily counterpoised to the “monoculturalism” of non-Western societies.14 Multiculturalism as American-ness now reflects a universal subject, construed as a victory against racism at the same time as it is repurposed to further entrench global capitalism.15 Liberal multiculturalism here functions not only with regard to race, but all nonnormative identities. A pertinent example is the enfolding of queer people into the narrative of U.S. nationalism after the September 11, 2001 attacks. As Jasbir Puar explains, “Even as patriotism immediately after September 11 was inextricably tied to a reinvigoration of heterosexual norms for Americans, progressive sexuality was championed as a hallmark of U.S. modernity.” Despite this glorification of heteronormativity, “the United States was also portrayed as ‘feminist’ in relation to the Taliban’s treatment of Afghani women . . . and gay-safe in comparison to the Middle East.”16 Puar’s insight demonstrates the ease with

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which nonnormative cultural narratives are incorporated into U.S. nationalism under liberal multiculturalism and subsequently recast as no less normative than Marx’s bourgeois property owner. Queerness is still politicized, but not as an oppositional identity; rather, capitalism, orientalism, and heteronormativity are grafted onto it and reconstitute it as the expression of truly American values. THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF IDENTITY POLITICS Though it is crucial to identify the development of liberal multiculturalism as essential to the naturalization of capitalism, it is also worth gauging the extent to which liberal multiculturalism has been enmeshed within larger political-economic processes such as the dissolution of Fordism. As the post-war Fordist model of standardized mass production and mass consumption began to outpace more relaxed consumption patterns, Fordism’s systemic rigidities began to negatively impact its ability (in tandem with a relatively strong Keynesian welfare state) to mitigate capitalism’s volatility. When exogenous factors such as the OPEC oil shock of 1973 compounded this dynamic, firms attempted to deal with these increasingly unsustainable political-economic features by diversifying their production lines to spike demand, a tactical shift made possible through the flexibilization of production along with the growingly transnational character of capital flows. Many firms moved their production lines offshore and marked up prices by way of customization at the same time as production costs were drastically lowered. As Wolfgang Streeck argues, however, a new accumulation regime is not just a new accumulation regime: it engenders a new individual.17 Within a globalizing economy, the expression of individual autonomy increasingly rests upon the exercising of agency now inextricable from the political economy of customized consumption. Streeck refers to this dynamic as “a way for individuals to link up to others and thereby define their place in the world” in which one may “conceive an act of purchase . . . as an act of self-identification and self-presentation, one that sets the individual apart from some social groups while uniting him or her with others.”18 It is not as though individuals regularly defined themselves in contrast to normative identities before the neoliberal turn, through a range of practices not inherently contingent on the act of consumption; however, the development of identity politics in conjunction with neoliberalism’s emergence at the very least shares an affinity with the differentiated patterns of individuation present within the flexibilized production processes explicated by Streeck, in which politics is decontextualized as “individual market choice trumps collective political choice.”19

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Fordism’s demise contributed to the fundamental restructuring of the Left in the United States. The class-based politics of Left movements began to erode as New Right politicians like Reagan and Thatcher grew to ascendance in the late 1970s and early 1980s and used the inflationary crisis as a means to radically restructure their respective countries’ economies. Such a restructuring involved scaling back social welfare institutions, busting unions, and imposing austerity measures, all of which present grave consequences for the ability of the working class to sustain itself politically. Whereas the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s had largely foregone an analysis of cultural difference (often to a fault) in lieu of forming strong classbased alliances, Left movements arising during the 1980s began to mirror the individualized ethos and distrust of political institutions embodied by neoliberal governments. As Adolph Reed Jr. notes, within the purview of this new form of identity politics, “as in Thatcher’s apothegm, there is no such thing as society, ‘only individuals and their families.’”20 With the subsequent rightward turn of the Democratic Party in the United States, moreover, much of the working class “by and large proceeded to distance itself from the New Left’s agenda, no longer seeing themselves reflected in or spoken for by its politics or its electoral strategies.”21 Originally conceived in the late 1950s as a response to the bureaucratic, top-down approach of the Old Left, the New Left had attempted to politicize identity throughout the 1960s and early 1970s in response to the Vietnam War and virulent racism on the home front. Though the movement often included significant numbers of people of color and sexual minorities, the explicit politicization of these identities was never understood as central to its functioning.22 The emergence of identity politics, in contrast, represents “the achievement of minority public ‘voice,’ metaphorically speaking, an enfranchisement of Black, female, gay, bisexual, and ethnic communities,” both within intentional political communities and the state at large.23 This structuring of political communities by way of politicized identity takes as its foundation that the achievement of “social and economic equality” depends on increasing “political equality.”24 Here we can begin to outline how identity politics as a contemporary iteration of Left radicalism is in fact inextricable from the regimes of racial liberalism and liberal multiculturalism. IDENTITY, INC. The aim here is not to critique identity politics in and of itself as a method of organizing, but rather to demonstrate how compatible it is with the discourse of liberal multiculturalism. Identity politics in part arose as a reaction to the New Left’s inability to account for difference in its composition. At

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the same time, a range of political-economic factors such as the collapse of Fordism and the consequent restructuring of the welfare state dissolved the New Left’s ability to maintain a veritable anti-capitalist disposition. Reed also points to the notable retreat of the Left into academia and the materialization of identity politics as a corollary of cultural studies and post-structuralist discourse characterized by the “rejection of any form of centralizing power or notion of objective truth.”25 In practice, according to Reed, this discourse translates into “a focus on the supposedly liberatory significance of communities and practices defined by their marginality in relation to systems of entrenched power or institutions, a preference for strategies of ‘resistance’ to imperatives of institutions and ‘transgression’ of conventions rather than strategies aimed at transformation of institutions and social relations,” and the belief that radical political movements should be composed of “groups formed around ascriptive identities that relate to one another on a principle of recognizing and preserving the integrity of their various differences.”26 Reed opposes identity politics because he believes it uncritically accepts capitalist social relations by focusing its efforts on transgression of institutional norms rather than on institutions themselves. In recalling Puar’s explication of the manipulation of queer narratives after September 11, Reed’s concern is understandable because of how seamlessly difference is codified through narratives of societal progress and liberal social values that both pass implicit judgment on those who continue to reside outside the parameters of normative liberal discourse, while legitimating imperialist projects abroad in opposition to putatively less-accepting “monocultural” states. At the same time, activists and scholars have argued in defense of identity politics as a radical discourse that enables the “re-creation of minority histories in a public sphere that had long been hostile or indifferent to narratives of that self and community.” For Grant Farred, “Identity politics . . . represents not only the marginal subject speaking back, but a more engaging philosophical project: the oppressed not only resisting but also negotiating the limitations of agency.”27 In other words, the reclaiming of historical narratives and the construction of intentional communities through identity politics embodies the redefining of state-imposed limitations to self-determination and can thus contribute to both radical social transformation and a more nuanced and culturally aware Left. Indeed, potential exists for identity politics to enable the construction of previously censored histories or cultural narratives. There is certainly a perennial need within the Left for more complex understandings of power, for more less dogmatic visions of emancipation, and for a more expansive formulation of class-based politics. Yet while all this may be true, Wendy Brown explains, identity politics is “partly dependent on the demise of a critique of capitalism and of bourgeois cultural and economic values,” and “tethered to a formulation of justice which, ironically, reinscribes a bourgeois ideal as its measure.”28

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DISCURSIVE DILEMMAS Drawing on Foucault’s theoretical contributions, Brown notes that identity itself is produced through disciplinary mechanisms that, when combined with liberalism’s true inability to provide the universal protections it claims to embody, result in “the emergence of politicized identity rooted in disciplinary productions but oriented by liberal discourse toward protest against exclusion from a discursive formation of universal justice.”29 In other words, the politicization of identity is discursively ineluctable from liberalism’s claim to universality. Through this form of protest, identity politics is driven by an inherent desire for incorporation into this universal framework, one that, as we have seen through Mill and Kymlicka, has come to tolerate a degree of diversity while presupposing the universal standard of the bourgeois White male property owner. Such a standard can only function when codified through the conferral of rights. Brown questions that if it is “this ideal against which many of the exclusions and privations of people of color, gays and lesbians, and women are articulated, then the political purchase of contemporary American identity politics would seem to be achieved in part through a certain discursive renaturalization of capitalism that can be said to have marked progressive discourse since the 1970s.”30 None of this is to deride the tactics of various social and political groups, but to acknowledge how the destruction of the Fordist-Keynesian regime has made it more difficult to center an analysis of class when the alreadyinsubstantial institutions of class-based social cohesion have been so drastically eroded since the 1970s and 1980s, especially. In this way we may understand neoliberalism not solely as the political-economic reassertion of free market rationality, but also as the reconstitution of Mill’s brand of civic liberalism through a multicultural discourse that, as Brown notes, “retains the real or imagined holdings of its reviled subject-in this case, the bourgeois male privileges-as objects of desire.”31 Identity politics thus necessarily “abjure[s] a critique of class power and class norms precisely because the injuries suffered by these identities are measured by bourgeois norms of social acceptance, legal protection, relative material comfort, and social acceptance.”32 The politicization of identity under neoliberalism thus arises through the exclusion of identity from liberalism’s presumptively universal subjectivity, thus reinstalling the ideal of the White bourgeoisie as the base expression of such subjectivity. Politicized identity requires the maintenance of this universal subjectivity, as well as its own exclusion from it, in order to endure as identity itself.33 As a vehicle for protesting exclusion through the incorporation of the interests of social groups into the bourgeois power structure, identity politics inadvertently reifies it while framing rights, recognition, or (in its most militant variation) the transgression of norms as the actualization of resistance.

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What might an alternative political praxis to identity politics look like, then? How can the liberalism at the core of identity politics actually be contested when it seems to be so pervasive within a range of radical leftist circles? It is difficult to know for sure. Perhaps it would entail a recommitment to challenging the liberal discourse through which capitalism is legitimated. Perhaps it would include a recognition of and sensitivity towards the intersectional character of difference while seeking to destabilize the paradigm of transgression-as-revolution in lieu of a more fundamentally materialist framework that specifically prioritizes working class struggle. Perhaps it would mean a rearticulation of identity as a fluid rather than a historically and biologically fixed point while continuing to center the importance of historical and cultural narratives. These are merely provocations, however; it is ultimately up to the people to decide. NOTES 1. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in “On Liberty” and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 60. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid, 80. 4. Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978), 42. 5. Ibid, 43. 6. Ibid. 7. Will Kymlicka, “The Politics of Multiculturalism,” in Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 10. 8. Ibid, 15. 9. Ibid, 8. 10. Ibid, 4. 11. Jodi Melamed, “From Racial Liberalism to Neoliberal Multiculturalism,” Social Text 89, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter 2006), 2. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid, 6. 14. Ibid, 8. 15. Ibid, 6. 16. Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 41. 17. Wolfgang Streeck, “Citizens as Customers: Considerations on the New Politics of Consumption,” New Left Review, Vol. 76 (July–August 2012), 35. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid, 44. 20. Adolph Reed Jr., Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (New York, NY: The New Press, 2001), xxvi. 21. Grant Farred, “Endgame Identity? Mapping the New Left Root of Identity Politics,” New Literary History, Vol. 31 (2000), 634.

Identity, Inc.    395 22. Ibid, 636. 23. Ibid, 631. 24. Iris Marion Young, “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship,” in Theorizing Citizenship, ed. Ronald Beiner (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 185. 25. Reed, Class Notes, xiv. 26. Ibid. 27. Farred, “Endgame Identity? Mapping the New Left Roots of Identity Politics,” 638. 28. Wendy Brown, “Wounded Attachments,” Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 3 (August 1993), 394. 29. Ibid, 393. 30. Ibid, 394. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid, 398.

REFERENCES Brown, W. (1993, August). Wounded attachments. Political Theory, 21(3), 390–410. Farred, G. (2000). Endgame identity? Mapping the new left root of identity politics. New Literary History, 31, 627–648. Kymlicka, W. (1995). “The politics of multiculturalism” in multicultural citizenship. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Marx, K. (1978). On the Jewish question. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels reader. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Melamed, J. (2006). From racial Liberalism to neoliberal multiculturalism. Social Text 89, 24(4), 1–24. Mill, J. S. (1989). On Liberty. In S. Collini (Ed.), “On liberty” and other writings. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Reed, A., Jr. (2001). Class notes: Posing as politics and other thoughts on the American scene. New York, NY: The New Press. Streeck, W. (2012). Citizens as customers: Considerations on the new politics of consumption. New Left Review, 76, 27–47. Young, I. M. (1995). Polity and group difference: A critique of the ideal of universal citizenship. In R. Beiner (Ed.), Theorizing citizenship. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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CHAPTER 34

RETHINKING THE MARXIST CONCEPTION OF REVOLUTION Chris Wright

In the 21st century, as capitalism enters an epoch of unprecedented crisis, it is time to reconsider the Marxist theory of proletarian revolution. More precisely, it is time to critically reconsider it, to determine if it has to be revised in order to speak more directly to our own time and our own struggles. It was, after all, conceived in the mid-19th century, in a political and social context very different from the present. Given the 160-year span from then to now, one might expect it to require a bit of updating. In this article I’ll argue that it does need to be revised, both for a priori reasons of consistency with the body of Marx’s thought and in order to make it more relevant to the contemporary scene. That is, I’ll argue that when Marx conceptualized revolution in terms of a fettering of the productive forces by production relations, as well as in terms of a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” he was the victim of both intellectual sloppiness and a misunderstanding of his own system. Accordingly, I will purify Marx’s conception of revolution of his and his followers’ mistakes. What we’ll find is that the purification not only makes the theory more cogent but updates it for our own time, in such a way that it can teach activists strategic lessons.

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 397–408 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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In brief, I’ll conclude that in order to make Marxism consistent with itself it is necessary to abandon the statist perspective to which Marx and Engels arguably were committed, and which they transmitted to most of their successors. It is necessary to conceive of revolution in a gradualist way, not as a sudden historical “rupture” in which the working class or its representatives take over the national state and organize social reconstruction on the basis of a unitary political will (the proletarian dictatorship). According to a properly understood Marxism, even the early stages of the transition from capitalism to post-capitalism must take place over generations, and not in a planned way but unconsciously and rather “spontaneously,” in a process slightly comparable to the transition from feudalism to capitalism. I will also argue that my revision can be the basis, finally, for a rapprochement between Marxists and anarchists.1 Marx has, in effect, two theories of revolution, one that applies only to the transition from capitalism to socialism and another that is more transhistorical, applying, for instance, also to the earlier transition between feudalism and capitalism. The former emerges from his analysis of capitalist economic dynamics, according to which a strong tendency toward class polarization divides society, in the long run, between a small elite of big capitalists and a huge majority of relatively immiserated workers, who finally succeed in overthrowing the capitalist state and organizing a socialist one. It is the transhistorical theory, however, that I will focus on here. Its locus classicus is the last four sentences of the following paragraph from the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.2

This paragraph has inspired reams of commentary and criticism, but for our purposes a few critical remarks will suffice. First of all, it is clearly the

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barest of outlines, desperately in need of elaboration. Unfortunately, nowhere in Marx’s writings does he elaborate it in a rigorous way. Second, it is stated in functionalist terms. Revolution happens supposedly because the productive forces—that is, technology, scientific knowledge, and the skills of the labor force—have evolved to such a point that production relations are no longer compatible with their socially efficient use and development. But what are the causal mechanisms that connect this functionalist concept of “fettering of the productive forces” to social revolution? As far as I know, nowhere does Marx express his theory in causal, as opposed to functionalist, terms. Perhaps the biggest problem is that, as it is stated above, the theory verges on meaninglessness. How does one determine when production relations have started to impede the use and development of productive forces? It would seem that to some extent they are always doing so. In capitalism, for example, one can point to the following facts: (a) recurring recessions and depressions periodically make useless much of society’s productive capacity; (b) enormous amounts of resources are wasted on socially useless advertising and marketing campaigns; (c) there is a lack of incentives for capital to invest in public goods such as mass transit, the provision of free education, and public parks; (d) the recent financialization of the Western economy has entailed investment not in the improvement of infrastructure but in glorified gambling that doesn’t benefit society; (e) artificial obstacles such as intellectual copyright laws hinder the development and diffusion of knowledge and technology; (f) a colossal level of expenditures is devoted to war and destructive military technology; and (g) in general, capitalism distributes resources in a profoundly irrational way, such that, for example, hundreds of millions of people starve while a few become multibillionaires. Despite all this, however, no transition to a new society has happened. Indeed, in other respects capitalism continues to develop productive forces, as shown by recent momentous advances in information technology. It’s true that most of this technology was originally developed in the state sector;3 nevertheless, the broader economic and social context was and is that of capitalism. It is therefore clear that a mode of production can “fetter” and “develop” productive forces at the same time, a fact Marx did not acknowledge. In order to salvage his hypothesis quoted above, and in fact to make it quite useful, a subtle revision is necessary. We have to replace his idea of a conflict between productive forces and production relations with that of a conflict between two sets of production relations, one of which uses productive forces in a more socially rational and “un-fettering” way than the other. This change, slight as it might seem, has major consequences for the Marxist conception of revolution. It is no exaggeration to say that, in

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addition to making the theory logically and empirically cogent, it changes its entire orientation, from advocating a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that directs social and economic reconstruction to advocating a more grassroots-centered long-term evolution of social movements that remake the economy and society from the ground up. My revision of the theory, then, is simply that at certain moments in history, new forces and relations of production evolve in an older economic, social, political, and cultural framework, undermining it from within. The gradual process of social revolution begins to happen when the old set of production relations fetters, or irrationally uses, productive forces in relation to the new set of widely emerging production relations. The “in relation to . . .” that I have added saves the Marxian theory from meaninglessness, for it indicates a definite point at which the “old” society really begins to yield to the “new” one, namely when an emergent economy has evolved to the point that it commands substantial resources and is clearly more “effective” or “powerful” in some sense than the old economy. The first time such a radical transformation ever happened was with the Neolithic Revolution (or Agricultural Revolution), which started around 12,000 years ago. As knowledge and techniques of agriculture developed that made possible sedentary populations, the hunter-gatherer mode of production withered away, as did the ways of life appropriate to it. Similarly, starting around the thirteenth century in parts of Europe, an economy and society organized around manorialism and feudalism began to transform into an economy centered in the accumulation of capital. Several factors contributed to this process, among them (a) the revival of longdistance trade (after centuries of Europe’s relative isolation from the rest of the world), which stimulated the growth of merchant capitalism in the urban interstices of the feudal order; (b) mercantile support for the growth of the nation-state with a strong central authority that could dismantle feudal restrictions to trade and integrated markets; (c) the rise, particularly in England, of a class of agrarian capitalists who took advantage of new national and international markets (e.g., for wool) by investing in improved cultivation methods and enclosing formerly communal lands to use them for pasturage; (d) the partly resultant migration of masses of the peasantry to cities, where, during the 16th to 19th centuries, they added greatly to the class of laborers who could be used in manufacturing; (e) the discovery of the Americas, which further stimulated commerce and the accumulation of wealth. In short, from the 13th to the 19th centuries, capitalist classes—agrarian, mercantile, financial, and industrial—emerged in Europe, aided by technological innovations such as the printing press and then, later on, by all the technologies that were made possible by the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. All this is just to say that in the womb of the old

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society, new productive forces and production relations evolved that were more dynamic and wealth-generating than earlier ones. Moreover, on the foundation of these new technologies, economic relations, and scientific discourses arose new social, political, and cultural relations and ideologies that were propagated by the most dynamic groups with the most resources, that is, the bourgeoisie and its intellectual hangers-on.4 My correction of Marx’s formulation of his hypothesis in the abovementioned Preface has another advantage besides making the theory more meaningful: It also supplies a causal mechanism by which a particular mode of production’s “fettering of the productive forces” leads to revolution—indeed, to successful revolution. The mechanism is that the emergent mode of production, in being less dysfunctional or more socially rational than the dominant mode, eventually—after reaching a certain visibility in the society—attracts vast numbers of adherents who participate in it and propagandize for it—especially if the social context is one of general economic stagnation and class polarization, due to the dominant mode of production’s dysfunctionality. Moreover, this latter condition means that, after a long evolution, the emergent economic relations and their institutional partisans will have access to so many resources that they will be able to triumph economically and politically over the reactionary partisans of the old, deteriorating economy. This, of course, is what ultimately ensured the political success of the bourgeoisie in its confrontations with the feudal aristocracy. Likewise, one can predict that if capitalism continues to stagnate and experience massive crisis over the next century, a new, more cooperative mode of production that has developed in the interstices of a capitalist society may eventually mount the summits of political power. In short, my seemingly minor revision provides a condition for the success of an anti-capitalist revolution, and thus helps explain why no such revolution has so far been successful in the long run (namely because the condition has been absent). Another way of seeing the implications and advantages of the revision is by contrasting it with the views of orthodox Marxists. A single sentence from Friedrich Engels sums up these views: “The proletariat seizes state power, and then transforms the means of production into state property.”5 This statement, approved by Lenin and apparently also by Marx, encapsulates the mistaken statist perspective of the orthodox Marxist conception of proletarian revolution. This perspective is briefly described in the Communist Manifesto, where Marx writes, “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class,” and then lays out a 10-point plan of social reconstruction by means of state decrees. By the 1870s Marx had abandoned the specifics

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of his earlier plan, but his (qualified) statism remained, and transmitted itself to his followers.6 It is true that orthodox Marxists expect the state, “as a state,” to somehow (inexplicably) wither away eventually, but they do have a statist point of view in relation to the early stages of revolution. This statist vision emerges naturally from Marx’s famous passage quoted above, in that the idea of a conflict between the rational use and development of productive forces and the fettering nature of current production relations suggests that at some point a social “explosion” will occur whereby the productive forces are finally liberated from the chains of the irrational mode of production. Pressure builds up, so to speak, over many years, as the mode of production keeps fettering the socially rational use of technology and scientific knowledge; through the agency of the working class, the productive forces struggle against the shackles of economic relations; at long last they burst free, when the working class takes over the state and reorganizes the economy. These are the metaphors naturally conjured by the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. But there are logical and empirical problems with the statist view, the view according to which the substance of social revolution occurs after the seizure of state power. First of all, it is in tension with the Marxian conception of social dynamics. Briefly stated, Marx sees the economy—rightly—as the relative foundation of the rest of society, including politics, which suggests that a post-capitalist social revolution cannot be politically willed and imposed. This would seem to reverse the order of “dominant causality,” from politics to the economy rather than vice versa. Moreover, such extreme statism exalts will as determining human affairs, a notion that is quite incompatible with the dialectical spirit of Marxism. According to “dialectics,” history really happens “behind the backs” of actors: It evolves “unconsciously,” so to speak, as Hegel understood. Social and institutional conflicts work themselves out, slowly, through the actions of large numbers of people who generally have little idea of the true historical significance of their acts. As Marx suggested, we should never trust the self-interpretations of historical actors. And yet apparently he suspends this injunction, and his whole dialectical method, when it comes to the socalled proletarian revolution. These historical actors are somehow supposed to have perfect understanding of themselves and their place in history, and their historical designs are supposed to work out perfectly and straightforwardly—despite the massive complexity and “dialectical contradictions” of society. The reality is that if “the working class” or its ostensible representatives seize control of the state in a predominantly capitalist society—and if, miraculously, they are not crushed by the forces of reaction—they can expect to face overwhelming obstacles to the realization of their revolutionary plans. Some of these obstacles are straightforward: for example, divisions

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among the new ruling elite, divisions within the working class itself (which is not a unitary entity), popular resistance to plans to remake the economy, the necessity for brutal authoritarian methods of rule in order to force people to accept the new government’s plans, the inevitable creation of a large bureaucracy to carry out so-called reconstruction, etc. Fundamental to all these obstacles is the fact that the revolutionaries have to contend with the institutional legacies of capitalism: Relations of coercion and domination condition everything the government does, and there is no way to break free of them. They cannot be magically transcended through political will. In particular, it is impossible through top–down directives to transform production relations from authoritarian to democratic: Marxism itself suggests that the state is not socially creative in this way. The hope to reorganize exploitative relations of production into liberatory, democratic relations by means of bureaucracy and the exercise of a unitary political will is utterly utopian and un-Marxist. The record of so-called Communist revolutions in the 20th century is instructive. While some Marxists may deny that lessons should be drawn from these revolutions, since they happened in relatively “primitive” rather than advanced capitalist countries, the experiences are at least suggestive. For what they created in their respective societies was not socialism (workers’ democratic control of production) or communism (a classless, stateless, moneyless society of anarchistic democracy), but a kind of ultrastatist state capitalism. To quote the economist Richard Wolff, “the internal organization of the vast majority of industrial enterprises [in Communist countries] remained capitalist. The productive workers continued in all cases to produce surpluses: they added more in value by their labor than what they received in return for that labor. Their surpluses were in all cases appropriated and distributed by others.”7 Workers continued to be viciously exploited and oppressed, as in capitalism; the accumulation of capital continued to be the overriding systemic imperative, to which human needs were subordinated. While there are specific historical reasons for the way these economies developed, the general underlying condition was that it was and is impossible to transcend the capitalist framework if the political revolution takes place in a capitalist world, ultimately because the economy dominates politics more than political will can dominate the economy. In any case, it was and is breathtakingly utopian to think that an attempted seizing of the state in an advanced and still overwhelmingly capitalist country, however crisis-ridden its economy, could ever succeed, because the ruling class has a monopoly over the most sophisticated and destructive means of violence available in the world. Even rebellions in relatively primitive countries have almost always been crushed, first because the ruling classes there had disproportionate access to means of violence, and

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second because the ruling classes in more advanced countries could send their even more sophisticated instruments of warfare to these countries in order to put down the revolution. But if a mass rebellion came close to overthrowing the regime of one of the core capitalist nations, as opposed to a peripheral one, the reaction of ruling classes worldwide would be nearly apocalyptic. They would likely prefer the nuclear destruction of civilization to permitting the working class or some subsection of it to take over a central capitalist state. Thus, the only possible way—and the only Marxist way—for a transition out of capitalism to occur is that it be grounded in, and organized on the basis of, the new, gradually and widely emerging production relations themselves. This is the condition that has been absent in all attempts at revolution so far, and it explains why, aside from a few isolated pockets of momentary socialism (such as Catalonia in 1936),8 they never managed to transcend a kind of state capitalism. They existed in a capitalist world, so they were constrained by the institutional limits of that world. Ironically, Marx understood that this would be the case unless the revolution was international. He understood that “socialism in one country” is impossible. He knew that unless a revolution in Russia triggered or coincided with revolutions elsewhere, which on an international scale worked together, so to speak, to build a socialist mode of production, it was doomed to failure. What he did not understand was that the only way a revolution can be international is that it happen in a vaguely similar way to the centuries-long “bourgeois revolution” in Europe and North America, namely by sprouting first on the local level, the municipal level, the regional level, and expanding on that “grassroots” basis. The hope that the states and ruling classes of many nations can fall at approximately the same time to a succession of national uprisings of workers—which is the only way that Marx’s conception of revolution can come to pass—was always wildly unrealistic, again because of the nature of capitalist power relations that Marxism itself clarifies. The alternative paradigm of revolution sketched here is not only more logically consistent and realistic, it is also the only one appropriate to the 21st century. For we are beginning to see the glimmers of new production relations on which a future society will have to be erected. This article is primarily theoretical, not empirical, so I will not discuss recent developments in depth. It will suffice to mention that such ideas as public banking, municipal enterprise, worker cooperatives, and participatory budgeting are becoming ever more popular, as scholar-activists like Gar Alperovitz, Richard Wolff, and Ellen Brown, and magazines such as Yes! Magazine and In These Times, publicize them. Incipient popular movements are coalescing around anti-capitalist institutions associated with the “solidarity economy,” as this cooperative

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political economy has been called. For many years the World Social Forum has served as a venue to promote such non-capitalist initiatives, where activists from around the world can propose new ideas, publicize their work, connect with one another, and birth new regional or transnational organizations to spread the ethos of “cooperativism.” One can predict that as society descends into prolonged crisis—economic, political, social, and environmental crisis—worldwide activism on behalf of a more cooperative, democratic economy and politics will grow in influence, ultimately making possible, perhaps, a gradual transformation of the corporatist political economy of the present into something more socialistic, that is, economically democratic. It will certainly not be a peaceful process, as innumerable political clashes with oligarchical authorities will have to occur. And it will not be consummated in the short term, likely requiring well over a century to carve out even the basic infrastructure of a post-capitalist society. Nevertheless, given the unsustainability of the global corporate-capitalist regime, it would seem that the only alternative to complete social collapse and an ensuing Hobbesian state of nature is this slow transformation—proceeding on the foundation of slowly emerging anti-capitalist production relations—to a more democratic political economy.9 Another advantage of the revision I have made to Marx’s conception of revolution—besides providing an analytical framework to interpret the emerging solidarity economy—is that it shows a way out of the sectarian conflicts between Marxists and anarchists that have afflicted the left since Marx’s bitter fight with Bakunin. The way to transcend these old divisions is to recognize that, in its prescriptions and ideals, Marxism is not so different from certain strains of anarchism, such as anarcho-syndicalism. Indeed, properly understood, Leninist vanguardism and elitism—or any other statist version of Marxism—is less Marxian than anarcho-syndicalism, or any school of thought committed to building the new society within the shell of the old. “Every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the old organism,” the anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker writes. “Without this preliminary any social evolution is unthinkable. Even revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have made their way into the consciousness of men; they cannot themselves create these germs or generate new worlds out of nothing.”10 The institutions around which anarcho-syndicalists hope to construct a new society are labor unions and labor councils—organized in federations and possessing somewhat different functions than they have in capitalist society—but whatever one thinks of these specific institutions as germs of the future, one can agree with the basic premise of prefigurative politics (or economics). And it is this that is, or should be seen as, quintessentially Marxist.

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We may recall, in addition, that the “economism” of anarcho-syndicalism that Gramsci so deplored is reminiscent of Marxism’s materialism and economism. Both schools of thought privilege economics over politics and culture, focusing on economic struggles and such tools of workingclass agency as unions and labor councils (though Marxists have generally acknowledged the potential utility of political parties as well). For both, the class struggle is paramount. For both, workers’ self-organization is the means to triumph over capitalism. James P. Cannon has a telling remark in the context of a discussion of the anarcho-syndicalist IWW: “The IWW borrowed something from Marxism; quite a bit, in fact. Its two principal weapons-the doctrine of the class struggle and the idea that the workers must accomplish their own emancipation through their own organized powercame from this mighty arsenal.”11 The very life and work of Marx evince an unshakeable commitment to the idea of working-class initiative, “selfactivity” (Selbsttätigkeit ), self-organization. The word “self-activity” evolved into the even more anarchist concept of “spontaneity” under the pen of Marx’s disciple Rosa Luxemburg, who devoted herself to elaborating and acting on the Marxist belief in workers’ dignity, rationality, and creativity.12 Traditionally, anarchists and Marxists had another conviction in common (aside from their shared moral critique of capitalism and vision of an ideal, stateless society)—a mistaken one, however. Namely, they both thought that a revolutionary rupture was possible and desirable. They had a millennial faith in the coming of a redemptive moment that would, so to speak, wash away humanity’s sins. By concerted action, the working class would with one fell blow, or a series of blows, overturn capitalist relations and establish socialist ones. This is the basic utopian mistake that Marxism (if purified) can prove wrong but anarchism cannot, because it lacks the theoretical equipment to do so. Even anarcho-syndicalists, despite their verbal recognition that the seeds of the new society had to be planted in the old, shared the utopian belief in a possible historical rupture, not understanding that the only feasible way to realize their “prefigurative politics” was to build up a new mode or modes of production over generations in the womb of the old regime. And the only way that would be possible is in the context of the gradual, self-inflicted deterioration of corporate capitalism, such as we are beginning to see now, in the neoliberal era. It is neoliberalism that has carried to their global consummation the destructive tendencies of capitalism, viz, privatization, marketization, the commodification of everything, suppression of workers’ power, class polarization, integration of the world under the aegis of capitalist relations of production, ever-increasing capital mobility, and consequent despoliation of the natural environment. It is neoliberalism, therefore, that, in bringing about the climax of the capitalist era—sharpening the system’s

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contradictions to the breaking point—will end up precipitating its demise and making possible the rise of something new. All these speculations and conceptual revisions require a more extended treatment, which I have attempted in my above-cited book Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States. Much more, for example, needs to be said about the relation between anarchism and a purified, updated Marxism. Much more can be said about the historical logic of how a gradualist global revolution will proceed, and why progressive sectors of the ruling class—not understanding the long-term revolutionary potential of local experiments in cooperativism and new types of socialism—will support it and sponsor it (as, indeed, they are already doing in the United States with respect to worker cooperatives).13 Hopefully the foregoing has at least suggested fruitful avenues of research and activism, and has shown how Marxism may be made relevant—rather than antagonistic—to cooperativism, interstitial/decentralized socialism, and the solidarity economy in general. Whatever logical and political mistakes Marxists have made in the past, these (for now) “interstitial” phenomena—which of course must be supported by popular movements and constant pressure on political authorities, including all forms of “direct action”—should be seen as quintessentially Marxist, and in fact as being a key component of any viable path to a post-capitalist order. NOTES 1. This essay is a distillation of some of the ideas in Chris Wright, Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States (Bradenton, FL: Booklocker, 2014). 2. Marx, K. (1859). A contribution to the critique of political economy (Preface), para. 6. Retrieved from www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/ critique-pol-economy/ 3. See, for example, Arthur L. Norberg and Judy E. O’Neill, Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962–1986 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 4. Among many others, see Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Robert Brenner, “The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,” New Left Review I/104 (July–August 1977): 25–92; Rodney Hilton, Ed., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1976); T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986); Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (New York, NY: Verso, 1994); and Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 5. Quoted in Lenin, State and Revolution (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1969), 15.

408    C. WRIGHT 6. See, e.g., ibid., 51, 52. Marx’s pamphlet The Civil War in France, written in 1871, expresses an attitude close to anarchism, but it is not clear that this essay is a direct statement of his considered views. To a great extent it had to be a eulogy for the Commune and a defense of it against its bourgeois critics, not just a neutral discussion of what it did right and wrong. Elsewhere, Marx is critical of the Commune. 7. Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), 109. 8. See Sam Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939 (New York, NY: Black Rose Books, 1974). 9. On the social and political logic of such a gradual transformation, see chapter four of Chris Wright, Worker Cooperatives and Revolution (Bradenton, FL: BookLocker.com, 2014). On the anti-capitalist institutions and initiatives mentioned above, see Gar Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013); John Restakis, Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital (British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2010); José Corrêa Leite,The World Social Forum: Strategies of Resistance (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005); Carmen Diana Deere and Frederick S. Royce, Eds., Rural Social Movements in Latin America: Organizing for Sustainable Livelihoods (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2009); Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (New York, NY: Verso, 2010); Ellen Brown, “Banking for California’s Future,” Yes! Magazine, September 14, 2011; David Dayen, “A Bank Even a Socialist Could Love,” In These Times, April 17, 2017. 10. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (Oakland: AK Press, 2004), 58. 11. James P. Cannon, “The I.W.W.” (1955). Available at http://www.marxists.org 12. See, e.g., Rosa Luxemburg, “The Russian Revolution” and “Leninism or Marxism?” (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961/2000). 13. See Wright, 2014, 68, 69, 115.

PART IX SOCIETY AND CULTURE

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CHAPTER 35

ETERNAL FASCISM AND THE SOUTHERN IDEOLOGY Jeremy Brunger

Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism” informally outlines the most striking qualities of fascistic theory and practice. It remains one of the most popular tool kits for intellectuals in discovering where the barbarity of fascism might once again materialize, for Eco was convinced fascism did not die at the end of the second World War. If there is an “eternal fascism” inherent to Western life, the critical observer must ask: In which groups is it most fostered? Is it limited to bald-headed neo-Nazis manufacturing methamphetamine by moonlight, the poor White lumpen proletariat of godforsaken boondocks, the aged reactionaries of the Mediterranean and the Rhine? To the chagrin of sanity, the evidence suggests otherwise: One can trace the fascist tone to one of the most politically active regions of the United States. The American South features in abundance all the tendencies of protofascism, from its enduring historical disadvantage following Reconstruction, reverence for the redemptive firearm and the punitive crucifix, hegemonic tendencies in matters of race and religion, and perhaps most importantly, the affinity for hero-worship. If fascism finds its formal renaissance anywhere in the 21st century, it will be in the Southern ideology,

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 411–425 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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which still mutters vaguely the threat that “the South will rise again,” confuses faith in the God of Abraham for the will to power over man, and sees fit to solve its social ills with paranoid gun-toting, capitalist republicanism, and social excommunication rather than the humane critical understanding of the Other. * * * To begin this analysis of the Southern ideology, it is necessary to point out that “ideology” is not identical with “culture.” Culture is a metaphor quite aptly likened to the situation of a bacterium being cultured in a petri dish; the bacterium can sense nothing other than that substance in which it is being grown, and as such, does not recognize it as anything but a natural, eternal verity. To humanize the metaphor, consider ideology to be the words written on the walls of the petri dish. Then consider these words are inscribed in culture only by those who hold power. As such, all Southerners are not fascists—many, perhaps most, are well distanced from this theory. The ideology is fostered by, and fosters, those already in power, those not citizens by default but rather citizens by assertion. * * * Eco’s (1995) first tenet of eternal fascism has it that the first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism . . . This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice;” such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. (p. 5–6)

Such a description no doubt boggles the mind of any native Southerner. Traditionalist conservatism is the dominant political form from Florida to the majority of Appalachia to Texarkana. The reigning political agenda, stemming from the mid-century Republican platform onto the neoconservative administration of former President Bush, sees modernism as something to be defended against, as though the progressive agenda were intimately tied to some imaginary “red plot.” Since the 2000s, the Southern

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peculiarity has been nationalized. Any politician antagonizing traditional values will not be elected to office; nor will any non-Christian politician survive the culture of criticism pertaining to his religion. Tradition is seen as possessing more utility than mere historical value, while progressiveness and modernism are seen as dangerous attempts to reinstate state socialism. In the familial sphere, the traditional patriarch–submissive wife–obedient children triad still stands dominant, while nontraditional families, like homosexual or polyamorous families, are seen as undesirable, confused, and confusing. Home ownership is viewed as a key to political participation, with proletarian and other non-propertied classes being relegated to the ideological back burner. There is no vivid unionization movement, nor political support for the welfare state. In fact, attacking the foundations of the welfare state appears to be one of conservativism’s chief weapons in his political arsenal—macroeconomics of the flunking polity is still seen as a microeconomic moral infirmity. All of these developments are seen—once again—as outgrowths of communist subversion dating from the mid-century, or as otherwise foreign intrusions into the classic Southern community. Of course, such forays into the 1950’s golden age are based on mythological assumptions of communitarian solidarity rather than statistical analysis of real historical social relations, when broken families, impoverished districts, and moral panics defined social life as much in the past as they do in the present. Romantic histories—the gallant South, the mystical Pacific— conceal and apologize for peasant suffering. The most obvious symptom of this ideological syncretism is the marriage of biblical Christianity and politico-economic conservatism. Especially within the Fundamentalist strain, biblical morality posits that poverty is less a moral problem than a problem in distributive justice; yet the conservative critique of poverty lays its blame on sinful individuals. That the poor ought to be supported by the wealthy does not pass muster in the conservative worldview, no matter how much it thinks itself biblically grounded. Both the communism of the early Christians and the socialism of 19th century Christianity are cast aside in pursuing Christian capitalism (a distinctly 20th century phenomenon). These contradictions stand to Eco’s reason—truths are not dialectical and do not come from debate, but rather are found in sola scriptura biblical exegesis of a characteristically conservative pattern. It does not matter that state welfare programs are categorically more effective than church services in alleviating local working-class poverty; it only matters, for the Southern conservative, that state intervention is destructive by definition. Compelling comparisons might be made of historical feudal social relations to the Third Estate and the modern status of poverty in the South, given that nobility and the clerical class—when not engaged in class warfare—saw themselves as sole paternal caregivers to the poor. Limited-government ideologies proliferate, insisting the government is

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not designed to care for the well-being of its people in the aggregate, but rather to bolster and maintain the property relations of its upper class and maintain their singular dominance in the most impoverished region of the country: the sprawling hills and mountains of the South. Eco (1995) continues his critique, saying that Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism. (p. 6)

While there is not a proper anti-technology movement in the South per se, there is a pervasive climate of anti-intellectualism and anti-scientism, as foremost expressed in the popular disagreement with the neo-Darwinian synthesis. In fact, Tennessee is home to the most aggressive anti-evolution movement of the 20th century, while Texas is home to the most vocal opponents of the theory of environmental decline as a result of industrial activity. Darwinian-derived evolution, environmental concern, and the more worrying insights of sociology are all seen as species of false consciousness—with some even going so far as to label environmentalism a Marxist invention. The Southern ideology forgets that, once upon a time, the parsons and the preachers were the only men of letters to be found. Beyond this, the traditionalist identification of self with land is a strong cultural current throughout the rural areas of the region, along with its inevitable accompaniment of xenophobic racism. The homeland institution wars with the anonymous drifters of the city culture. Given that historical fascism did not, in practice, limit the excesses of capitalism, but merely aimed its roaring engine to the benefit of the state, Eco’s position that fascism was not coincident with capitalism is faulty. Nevertheless, Southern republicanism allies itself wherever possible with high capital, even if it is to the detriment of its population. From its tourist towns to its metropolises, Southern governments support capitalism enthusiastically—usually in the form of importing business for the exploitation of its cheap, half-educated labor force. The irrational practices of racism, patriarchal social relations, and misinterpreted biblical religion all link the American South to Eco’s understanding of eternal fascism: Just consider the Rebel flag, a militant relic of the Civil War and reified symbol of slave republicanism, and then consider the tilted swastika of the Germano-Fascist regime. The only difference is one can still see the Rebel flag touted through township and city,

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pasted on university dorm walls and tattooed on shoulder blades, flashing the ancient petulance in the public eye. The Southern proletarians who exhibit this rebellion live in cramped living quarters even while supporting their betters; in mistaking the cause of the misery in multicultural initiatives and liberal movements toward equality, the poorest in the region bolster the social positions of their real oppressors and universalize squalor among their young in a nationalist delusion. In discussing fascistic disdain for the intellectual in society, Eco (1995) writes: Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values. (p. 6)

There is, perhaps, no better characterization of Southern culture than Eco’s description of Fascism here. Southern culture is largely heteronormative, and given that it has only recently industrialized since the 1970s, it is still largely based on reproducing social relations based on athletics rather than intellect. In an economy of pure muscle, this survival might be understood as once having value; but in an Information Age economy that values thought-work over grunt-work, it has little practical utility beyond willing wage-slavery. Right-wing media is popular in the South, with its usual targets of the “liberal intelligentsia,” the secular university, racial minorities, and the specter of communism issuing from all of the above. Masculinity is viewed as an end in itself, with all deviations therefrom being devalued or derided. Military culture, the chief characteristic of Fascist social life, is prevalent—given that much of America’s standing army comes from the South, due in part to there being little opportunity for lower-middle class youth to establish a future, this is not surprising. Post-WWI German fascism came to prominence after Germany began to feel itself existentially and economically threatened after the Treaty of Versailles ruined its national vitality. Given that the South remains an economic underachiever in the domestic arena, and that culturally it is seen as subordinate to the general Northern zeitgeist (Southern English is not standard, but is rather a basilect which hopeful emigrants quickly learn to forget), it is not surprising that, in their discourses, Southern ideologues and Fascist ideologues sound startlingly similar in their aims and rhetoric. Social science dare not enter.

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Eco (1995), discussing the value of critical theory, continues: No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason. (p. 6)

What better description of fundamentalist religion and socially-embedded opposition to scientific inquiry? In questioning the reigning dogmas of capitalist competition, anti-welfare government, and the nuclear family, the Southern activist is instantly marginalized or linked to the boogeyman of socialism. In the sphere of political theory, criticizing the marriage of conservatism and an essentially socialistic religion—a contradiction in terms—is sure to paint the critic as an uninformed, ahistorical dissenter. But analyzing the surface of Southern culture’s conservatism by relating to its rather proletarian past reveals it to be what it is: a logical paradox unsupportable by thinking people. The philosophic tendency subordinates to the religious tendency, if not for intellectual value, then for mere social utility— Southern Christianity is a shibboleth, and as such, an entryway into power that defies the very foundations of the faith it cynically uses. The original Christians were outcasts from Roman hegemony, poor and diseased, marginal and pathetic. They were mytho revolutionaries, not conservatives; at any rate, the early Church was awash in heresy and doctrinal battles, not unified in theoria. In the South, the only “liberation theology” extant is a variation on right-wing anarchism, while the general religion preaches the long-outdated theme of obedience. As roving bands of cash-poor Christians addicted to the fetishism of authority flock and flit from one city to the next hoping for a better turn of fate, they are categorically denied by Christians who pay their property taxes, sent to live in downtown wastelands, and fret the police whose patience grows as dim as their hope for this life. Religion disintegrates when actually confronted with the moral dilemmas for which it was designed. Even the bigger cities have the small-town feel of isolation, the distinct impression their denizens have not yet left the outer bounds, and catercorner to every liquor store there are two churches which deliver much the same. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition. (Eco, 1995, p. 6)

The Southern syncretism is globally renowned for its pathological racism. Nineteenth-century theories of racialism are still common currency in the South, as is the lay understanding of racial essentialism. Families still

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see fit to bar their young from interracial dating and marriage, and Whiteness, as a social fact, is still viewed as a supreme value. The typical habit of denouncing foreign influences, especially with immigrant Mexican labor, melds comfortably with the denunciation of models of sexual difference. Homosexuality is mistaken for an incarnation of “Hollywood Values” rather than a natural human phenomenon and is beaten or prayed away. Diversity and the Rawlsian difference principle, in general, are decried as liberal intrusions into a primordial white capitalist paradise founded not in actual history but in the pseudo-historical imagination. Even as municipal services decline in breadth and quality, Southerners worry more of an incoming horde of Babel, a Brown Plague come to undo their immemorial caste system and expand their multicultural nightmare. Race horror is more prevalent than the horror of war, which is why they support the second by decrying the first. In exclaiming the virtues of First World aristocratic philosophy, Southern thought closes in on itself, and ignores how much of the region resembles the underdeveloped world when exposed to realist scrutiny unsympathetic to the romance of white property. The Fascist impulse owes its prevalence to Eco’s (1995) next observation: Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority. (p. 6–7)

In Germany and Italy, fascism was specifically a lower-middle class development. Fundamentalist Christianity and institutional racism do not find much expression in the Southern lower class, which tends to have more divergent religious views and more tolerant views on interracial marriage; rather, the Southern parallels to fascism find their most vocal expressions in its middle class. Especially since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the Southern middle class has returned to a thorough-going religious atmosphere centering on the family and private property, racial rhetoric is abundant (“even as President Obama was nearing the end of his second term in office”), and the decrying of socialistic policies (which are actually centrist policies according to the global political spectrum) rallies in the popular domain. Rather than recognizing that middle-class precarity depends on corporate malpractice and right-wing government, the Southern middle class understands only that it is endangered, and so sees fit to vent its worries on its classic targets: those who are different. Economic difficulties are due to the Black president’s corruption, not an essentially unstable national-economic way of life, just as threats to culture are due to outside

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influences rather than internal contradictions. To study these contradictions is to incite the charge of red-baited communism, even as accusers forget who first coined the term of their beloved capitalism. Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in the same state that gave birth to the Klan for preaching that both the White man and the Black man were exploited in common. Even in the university towns, 10-story tall crucifixes dot Alpine highways in robust mimesis of the theocratic pretension as symbols wholly antithetical to King’s message: They signify authority, not inquiry. In an era of social disruption and economic change—when “all that is solid melts into air”—the eternal fascism finds its home. Eco (1995) writes, To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the U.S., a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others. (p. 7)

America is no longer a White, protestant, wealthy country; those who do fall into this category, having their social identity threatened by a changing cultural climate, seek more and more intensive ideologies with which to understand the world. The politics of the American South are, still, overwhelmingly White and protestant, but many of its subjects are not. The misattribution of this change to recent developments rather than diversifying historical currents—in the melting pot era, the Whiteness of Irish immigrants was not yet an established social fact, but became one over time—reveals that historical ignorance is one of the many vices of dominant Southern culture. The vague idea that some obscure subculture is constantly threatening American virtues (ISIS, crypto-Marxist senators, “the Left Coasts”) routinely crops up in Southern discourse, even as poverty and underemployment grow within the Southern states due to its inherent infrastructural and social deficits. Instead of Jews, Southern discourse focuses on the plots of racial, sexual, and religious minorities from nearby and abroad. In offloading responsibility to outlanders, the Southern status quo is maintained in all its contradictions. The Southern ideology expresses the contradiction between its opponents, its leaders, and the people who subscribe to it:

Eternal Fascism and the Southern Ideology    419 The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. (Eco, 1995, p. 7)

Southern discourse is pro-capitalist, but its adherents are more often than not in poverty themselves. Rather than distrusting their better-off superiors, however, the Southern conservative poor prefer to distrust East Coast liberals as symbols of wealth—a perversion of what wealth is for, the establishment of a family, or for wealth stolen through socialistic redistribution. The rhetoric of “Wall Street versus Main Street” is a populist example of this (Tea Party on the right, Occupy on the left), but the emphasis tends to lie on the idea that Main Street represents a social minority, when in fact it does not. Most Americans either live or aspire to live middle-class lifestyles, and most government attention is paid to this group, with the rest looking out for the interests of high capital and the limited interests of the working poor. Imagining that they are persecuted lends their ideology credence, given the current zeitgeist of identity politics (replacing proletarians and women with White Christian patriarchs in a muddled, illogical algebra of oppression); but they are, in reality, no more persecuted than normal people ever have been. Actual minorities have vocal defense groups defending their interests against normative onslaughts, and sensing that their own group lacks this special defense, the White Southern middle class invents one for the sickly purpose of special pleading. The idea that there is a cultural war against their lifestyle is preposterous, but leading media outlets, like Fox News, continue to insist that the typical American way of life is under threat from non-White queer Bolsheviki. Of course, the only threat to this lifestyle is the capitalist economic model it itself supports, and the rudderless antinomies the Southern ideology preserves. In fact, Southern political culture is rather Hobbesian in the most alarming sense of the word: For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No Fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament. (Eco, 1995, p. 7)

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In “right-to-work” states, employment is seen as a privilege rather than a right or a mere path to survival, and welfare assistance is seen as a deep taboo suggesting moral incompetence. The South overwhelmingly supported the Iraq War—elements of racism and Islamophobia aside—in the most jingoistic manner possible. Neoconservative policy has as its direct and stated aim that “democracy,” an abstraction, ought to be violently spread throughout the whole world. This teleological end to history, once seen in the Jacobinite-Hegelian view of the French Revolution, finds its next expression in the economic policies of globalization, by which Washingtonian economic models are assumed to work in disparate economies the world over. In short, America assumes it holds the key to global problems, and sets itself up to manage them. The most vocal applause for these globalist efforts resound from the militaristic South which, despite its native diversity, cannot imagine a world that operates according to social laws different than its own. Southern thought-leaders preach that leftism is a conspiracy theory even as they scour the doctrines of the holy book of the West’s very first conspiracy theory. In any society with vast economic divides between rich and poor, Eco (1995) suggests the eternal fascism can erupt once again in elitist terms that deride elitism: Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism. (p. 7)

The Southern elite are, of course, the white propertied class that views all others as inferior and subordinate—hardly worth the political time, in fact. Even where this fails, Southerners take up the mantle of nationalism: “America is the best country in the world.” It isn’t the best country in the world by any statistical analysis, but such mythologies are common to fascistic ideologies. When not serving in the military, they serve in intensive capitalist industries (which themselves feature militaristic labor hierarchies) that bolster their notions that everyone has a place in society. In this respect the tone turns to Calvinism, and the moral realism of poverty, for those who fail to succeed in the capitalist environment, comes to the ascendant. No scientific critique of economic failure is allowed. Only criticism of moral

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failure is sanctioned—and thus to be poor is to become un-American. The mid-level employee, glad to have a job, detests the entry-level employee, as though the mid-level were any less an existential penalty. Below them all exist the unemployed and underemployed who rarely even make blips on the political radar except to remind the wealthy there are barbarians concerned only with use-value circling the borders. Eco (1995) presses on one of his most salient points about everyday heroism next: In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-Fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death. (p. 7)

American popular culture is unequivocally heroic. The most successful films in its canon feature violent farces in which the White male hero vanquishes the egghead evil genius, or the syndicalist Soviet forces, or the alien (cargo-cultish immigrant) machinations of foreign powers. The hero looks like the typical viewer of these films: White males who want to be heroes. Since the world is not a fantasy, however, these children later grow up to think of the world in embattled terms of nation and enemy, Manichean reckonings of good and evil, gun-violence and double-standard law and order. The educational system grades students according to a hierarchical ability to integrate into capitalism, graduating top-10 heroes directly into the workforce and the rest into the welfare offices. Beyond education lies the whole sports industry—football has a monolithic presence in the South, with its university teams commanding higher budgets than entire academic departments combined—in which a few gladiators, selected from among the hoi polloi, are paraded in shows of athletic feat to audiences struggling at home for the means of subsistence. The collective struggle for existence becomes the individual struggle for existence against others—who this is, it matters not, so long as there are heroes and enemies to be fought. Behind all this lies a well-spring of nihilism that disallows the everyman to merely exist and be comfortable. The American way ensures that one is always fighting, whether people or their causes, oneself or some outsider figure dreamed up in the paranoid imagination of an Old Testament demagogue. This is a general product of the American monoculture, but it finds more grizzly embodiment in the South: Anti-Muslim sentiment mingles with

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anti-secular sentiments as some twin conspiracy from beyond the national borders in a nation that was, according to the conservative myth, founded on Christo-propertarian values. Once the culture war dissipates, the military absorbs and recruits them all: long live death. Next, (1995) Eco focuses on the culture of uber-masculinity: Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the UrFascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons–doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise. (p. 7–8)

Southern patriarchy is the norm, with non-patriarchal families being relegated to the cultural shadows, about which popular culture frightfully whispers. The overwhelming popular distaste for homosexuality in general, and especially the idea of gay-led families, speaks to the value the South places on masculinity taken to excess. A man is not his job, since most jobs there (retail, auto, maintenance, construction) are dismal: He is his sexual prowess, he is the distance between himself and the feminine. Gun culture is a massive feature of its everyday life, from its legal rulings (guns being allowed in high schools and grocery stores) to its tragedies (children shooting themselves with their parents’ handguns). Gunslinging plays as large a role in Southern culture as the consumption of literature might play in other parts of the world—they are the regional past-time, taken as an extension of innocence from home protection to gift-giving. Of course, this is due in part to the crime endemic to the region’s cities (caused, in turn, by poverty and political corruption) and in part to the practice of hunting in the rural hinterlands. It is not an uncommon rite of passage for a father to take his son to the shooting range, or indeed, even his daughter, for the paranoiac social climate co-extends in equal measures. The odd one out is the person who sues; the gunslinger mythos becomes universal as the South achieves an antic matrimony of the Nazarene with Sade. Eco (1995) highlights a distinction between democratic practice and republican practice by examining the politico-theology of eternal fascism: Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they

Eternal Fascism and the Southern Ideology    423 are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. (p. 8)

The South is not a democratic region—it prefers to elect republican elements, which, by nature, do not much defer to their Rousseauvian demos. The “common will” is filtered through popular right-wing media and deflected against actual parliamentary practice. It is a noted eccentricity that, in the South, elections are decided in the churches. Its populism is one which ignores the secular history of American politics and instead focuses on its religious fringe. No matter that most people do not want a president who decides which war to wage according to his prayers, or the scattering of tea-leaves in his breakfast cup—it only matters if the religious majority thinks it right. Right-wing pulpits condemn minority lifestyles as being nonreligious, and therefore nonpolitical. They ask: What use does vox Dei have for the vox populi of the poor, or homosexuals, or immigrants? The fictive majority aligns itself with God and his exact prescriptions, leaving the deviants to the shadows of civilization. Horse-mouthed small business owners refer to their own neighbors as trash as their own children sink into hedonism; unread, uncouth mercenaries of capital pretend to culture even as they skirt Mosaic law and condemn the universities that wouldn’t accept them. Patriarchal ontology has not yet been dismantled by the last stages of the Enlightenment: Married man is below God, below him married woman, below him the offspring. The dreadful rest may do as they please provided they do not hog the political platform or scrounge from the public trough—that is for “people who deserve it,” which is everyone, not the people who apply. The private narrative of one alone being deserving of civilization’s benefits, and all others being thieving parasites, speaks to the Southern citizen’s identification with a personal God: They bear the burden of civilization and suffer for it so that the sinners may frolic with their grotesque families in abiding narcosis. They pay no heed to the actual aggregate population; only certain of its members have a say in the community, while the rest are rabble, even when the rabble outnumber them. To the rest of the country, the highest Southern citizen casts a pale lot in a contest against their lowest citizen—a king of the hill complex—but when one lives ascendant in the New Feudalism, surrounded by stranded and illiterate people desperate even for day labor, such comparisons little matter. Eco (1995) ends his list on an Orwellian note: Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism

424    J. BRUNGER are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show. (p. 8)

It does not take the reader long to glance through school textbooks in the South to note glaring inconsistencies, or worse yet, the homeschool textbooks purveyed by its religiously-inclined companies. The lack of educational attainment in the South is nothing short of depressing, from illiteracy rates being the highest in the country (excluding immigrants who do not speak English), statistics concerning how many books households with children have (few to none), to cultural disrespect for intellectual endeavor (book smarts are devalued as effete, while street smarts are encouraged as masculine even in a world that has passed these values by). In fact, the Southern educational sector is the worst performing sector in the country by any relevant means of analysis. The Southern economy does not need many thinkers; otherwise, its factories would idle into rust. As for Newspeak, only the eternal Fascist could think “democracy” means “American hegemony” or that “the land of the free” means “the Christian dominion.” Pertaining to Eco’s (1995) final remark—”even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show” (p. 8)—who is not reminded of Fox News, the radio butcheries of Rush Limbaugh, or the slew of political candidates wielding God and corruption with the same hand, whose respective audiences enthusiastically outnumber the populations of entire states? * * * The greatest misfortune of the Southern ideology is that Southerners themselves suffer for it. By misplacing the blame for systemic poverty on communist specters and liberal spooks, Southern politicos impoverish their own constituents—both those who consent and those who dissent. By insisting on racist practices, unavowed but extant, White Southerners learn to distrust their own Black neighbors while praising the capitalists who rent and exploit them both. In the middle of this dramatic “race to the bottom,” are children who, with underfunded educations, can expect little in the way of an agreeable future beyond the workhouse or the charities of church. Fascism by another name is not just a topic for punditry. Real, living people think and speak in its terms without the slightest idea of their affinity with the 20th century’s darkest movement. The will to fascism, masquerading as the Southern ideology, stands to benefit only a very select milieu of the region’s population. Beyond these elect, it has such abundant victims they either live their lives in isolation or become finally convinced they must flee the South rather than fix it: because, they think, there is no fixing it. To the

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detriment of all concerned, reactionaries and regressives provoke this exodus with all too human satisfaction, as the project of Enlightenment moves first to dusk and concludes in night, suspending the somber South in the medieval gloom it deserves. REFERENCES Eco, U. (1995). Ur-fascism. Retrieved from http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/ eco_ur-fascism.pdf

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CHAPTER 36

GANGSTERS FOR CAPITALISM Why the U.S. Working Class Enlists Colin Jenkins

Through its reliance on the relationship between labor and capital, fortified by state-enforced protections for private property to facilitate this relationship, capitalism creates a natural dependency on wages for the vast majority. With the removal of “the commons” during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the peasantry was transformed into a working-class majority that now must serve as both commodities and tools for those who own the means of production. While those of us born into the working-class majority have little or no choice but to submit to our ritualistic commodification, we are sometimes presented with degrees of options regarding how far we allow capitalists, landlords, corporations, and their politicians to dehumanize us as their tools. While we are forced into the labor market, for example, we can sometimes choose public jobs over private, therefore limiting the degree of exploitation. While we are forced to find housing, we may sometimes choose to live in communal situations with family or friends.

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 427–440 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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One of the areas where total choice is allowed is in the business of empire, particularly in the maintenance and proliferation of the modern U.S. empire. Although governments worldwide are using technological advances in robotics to replace human bodies in their military ranks, and thus lessen their dependence on the working class, there is still a heavy reliance on people to act as tools of war. In “all-volunteer” militaries like that of the United States, “willingness” is still a crucial component to the mission. As global capitalism’s forerunner and guardian, the U.S. military has nearly 3 million employees worldwide, including active duty and reserve personnel and “civilian full-time equivalents.” The U.S. Department of Defense’s official proposed budget for FY 2017 is $582.7 billion, which, combined with corollary systems of “security,” swells to over $1 trillion (“Department of Defense,” 2016). According to public Pentagon reports, the U.S. empire officially comprises of 662 overseas military bases across 38 countries. Since the birth of the United States in 1776, the country has been involved in a war or military conflict in 219 of these 240 years (Department of Defense, n.d.). Throughout this history, the U.S. government, which has directly represented and acted upon the interests of capital and economic elites, has required the participation of many millions of its working-class citizens to join its military ranks in order to carry out its missions by force. For many generations, the U.S. working class has answered this call to serve as what U.S. Marine General Smedley Butler once deemed, “gangsters for capitalism” (Butler, 1935). Millions upon millions have lost life and limb to clear the path for new global markets, steal and extract valuable natural resources from other lands, and ensure the procurement of trillions of dollars of corporate profit for a privileged few. Why? Why does the working class willingly, even enthusiastically, join to serve in a military that bolsters the very system which undermines and alienates them in their everyday lives? CULTURAL HEGEMONY AND CAPITALIST INDOCTRINATION We can start to answer this question by drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony to see how capitalist interests have shaped the dominant culture in U.S. society. Utilizing Hegel’s binary of social influence, where societal power is jockeyed between “political society” and “civil society,” Gramsci suggested that power is based on two forms: coercion (Dominio) or consensus (Direzione). According to Gramsci, the battle over ideology between the ruling and subaltern classes is ultimately won through “the hegemony of one social

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group over the whole of society exercised through so-called private organizations, such as the church, trade unions, schools, etc.” (p. 204). Under capitalism, the hierarchy relies on the state to control and dictate these central organs of ideological influence, thus establishing cultural hegemony. This isn’t necessarily done in a highly centralized or coordinated manner by a tight-knit group, but rather occurs naturally through the mechanisms of the economic system. Just as the economic base shapes society’s “superstructure,” the superstructure in turn solidifies the interests of the economic base. In this cycle, the interests of the capitalist class are morphed into the interests of the working class. Unearthing these dynamics allows us to explain why impoverished Americans living in dilapidated trailers and depending on government projects still proudly wave the red, white, and blue cloth; why tens of millions of impoverished people measure their value according to which designer clothes or sneakers they’re wearing; why these same tens of millions, who can barely afford basic necessities to survive, spend much of their waking time gawking at and worshipping obscenely wealthy celebrities; or why over 100 million working-class people show up every few years to vote for politicians that do not represent them. It also allows us to explain, at least in part, why members of the working class so willingly carry out the brutalization of their class peers by serving in imperialistic militaries and militarized police forces. This culture, which is ultimately shaped by capitalism, receives its values through many different channels, formal and informal. Part of this is accomplished through formal education, where traditional intellectuals become more specialized, and where the process of learning and thinking is replaced by indoctrination. In his 1926 examination of the “Southern Question,” Gramsci (1926) wrote of this phenomenon: The old type of intellectual was the organizing element in a society with a mainly peasant and artisanal basis. To organize the State, to organize commerce, the dominant class bred a particular type of intellectual . . . the technical organizer, the specialist in applied science . . . it is this second type of intellectual which has prevailed, with all his characteristics of order and intellectual discipline. (p. 14)

While Gramsci (1926) was specifically referring to the dominant intellectuals in northern Italy during his time, and how they influenced the “rural bourgeoisie” and their “crazy fear of the peasants,” he was also expounding on the general development of a cultural hegemony that characterizes the capitalist system:

430    C. JENKINS The first problem to resolve . . . was how to modify the political stance and general ideology of the proletariat itself, as a national element which exists within the ensemble of State life and is unconsciously subjected to the influence of bourgeois education, the bourgeois press and bourgeois traditions. (p. 4)

Uncovering these hegemonic elements stemming from society’s economic base, according to Gramsci, was crucial in exposing the ruling-class propaganda that seeped through layer upon layer of working-class and peasant cultures of the time. So, how does Gramsci’s analysis play out today? Within systems of formal education, it exposes the strict parameters set by the capitalist modes of production and the social norms that result. It explains why formal education, even at its highest level, often takes the form of indoctrination. A prime example of this indoctrination can be seen in the field of economics, whose students at the most prestigious institutions and earning the highest academic achievements seem unable to apply their thought beyond the narrow confines of classical liberalism and its modern form of neoliberal capitalism. They may be Ivy League PhDs, members of the Federal Reserve, or highly influential presidential cabinet members, but all exhibit an unwillingness or inability to see the most obvious of contradictions within their theory. The indoctrination that has essentially taken over all fields of formal “study” and “expertise” inevitably flows throughout society, originating from elite institutions that are specifically designed to justify and maintain the economic base, and transferred from there into so-called public policy. In turn, public education programs that are shaped by the capitalist hierarchy are not concerned with the students’ ability to comprehend or critically think, but rather with turning them into “docile and passive tools of production.” Part of this process is focused on the creation of obedient workers who are minimally competent to fulfil their exploitative labor role; and another part is focused on preventing the same workers from being able to critically think about, and thus recognize, their exploited labor role within this system. The former fetishizes obedience, control, and “work ethic”; the latter obstructs awareness and resistance. These formal, “public” structures of dominant ideology are naturally coupled with more informal arrangements deriving from the market system, notably the consumption process. As such, workers are moulded through a structured progression that begins at birth. In fulfilling this role, workers become consumers in the market for both necessary and conspicuous consumption. As the U.S. capitalist system has become ever more reliant on conspicuous consumption (evidenced in the “supply-side” phenomenon of the 1980s), this way of life once reserved for the “leisure class” has now taken hold of the “industrious class” (working class).

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This intensification of the consumption process has exposed the working class to informal channels of indoctrination, established through advertising and marketing, popular entertainment such as television shows, movies, and video games, and the arrival of a billion-dollar voyeur industry based on worshipping the “cult of personality” and celebrity (and, thus, wealth). Clearly, when consumption becomes the only goal in life, people are pushed to consume more and more. In doing so, the working class is serving capitalist culture even in its “personal life.” And through this manufactured encouragement to consume lies a complementary ideology that convinces working-class folks to literally buy into, become vested in, and thus serve and protect, the capitalist system. WHOSE SECURITY? In a class-based society, fear becomes a convenient and effective tool in shaping ideology and pushing through ruling-class agendas with widespread working-class approval. As in Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony, where the interests of the owners and facilitators of capital are gradually accepted as the interests of the masses, issues of security also become blurred between those designed to protect the powerful and those designed to protect the powerless. The modern security culture that has come to fruition in the United States, especially after 9/11, compels masses of citizens to not only be subjected to increasing measures of authority and surveillance, but also to join in the effort to carry out these measures. Americans do so with a shocking willingness. The reasons for this unquestioned submission to authority can be found in the most blatant of examples: the formation of the U.S. Patriot Act (2001). With the threat of “extreme Islam” and “global terrorism,” such legislation passed with ease because, like all such measures, it exploits the emotional (and irrational) needs brought on by fear. Mark Neocleous (2009) tells us: Security presupposes exclusion. Take the piece of legislation passed just a few weeks after the attack on the World Trade Centre, called the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. Coming in at over 340 pages and carrying twenty-one legal amendments, the Act was said to be necessary and essential to the new security project about to be unleashed on the world. It changed criminal law and immigration procedures to allow people to be held indefinitely, altered intelligence-gathering procedures to allow for the monitoring of people’s reading habits through surveillance of library and bookshop records, and introduced measures to allow for greater access to property, email, computers, and financial and educational records. But if the

432    C. JENKINS Act is about security, it is also immediately notable for the wordy title, designed for the acronym it produces: USA PATRIOT. The implication is clear: this is an Act for American patriotism. To oppose it is unpatriotic. (p. 23)

This modern security culture has also taken on an extremely broad and vague agenda of “national security,” a term that represents a very specific construction of government strategy designed to create a catchall apparatus that accommodates the never-ending growth of the military–industrial complex. In fact, the term was deliberately chosen as a play of words with “national defense,” used during post-World War II reconfiguration efforts aimed at creating “a unified military establishment along with a national defense council.” “By 1947, ‘common defense’ had been dropped and replaced with ‘national security’—hence the creation of the National Security Council and the National Security Act” (Neocleous, 2006). The purpose of this change in wording was tipped by Navy Secretary James Forrestal (1947), who commented that, “‘national security’ can only be secured with a broad and comprehensive front,” while explaining, “I am using the word ‘security’ here consistently and continuously rather than ‘defense’” (p. 364). As Neocleous (2006) notes, “Security” was a far more expansive term than “defense,” which was seen as too narrowly military, and far more suggestive than “national interest,” seen by many as either too weak a concept to form the basis of the exercise of state power or, with its selfish connotations, simply too negative.

This conscious shift from “defense” to “security” was made for fairly obvious reasons. President Dwight Eisenhower’s outgoing speech in 1961, which included an eerie warning of a creeping military-industrial complex that had become largely unaccountable, exposed the underlying reason in a rare act of deep truth coming from a major political figure. In a similar act some 4 decades earlier, U.S. Major General Smedley Butler exposed the embryo of this insidious institution, famously equating his 33-year military career to serving “as a high-class muscle man for big business, Wall St., and the bankers” and “a racketeer and gangster for capitalism” (Butler, 1935, p. 10) by making Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In

Gangsters for Capitalism    433 China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. (Butler, 1935, p. 10)

This shift also highlights the importance of understanding Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony and how it plays out in the real world. By examining the focus of U.S. domestic policy over the past century, we can see how forms of “security” can be dissected into two parts: those focusing on the interests of the ruling-class minority, and those focusing on the interests of the working-class majority. An example of the latter, which can aptly be described as “social security,” can be seen in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the subsequent focus on working-class (social) security in the New Deal. Neocleous (2006) points to the literature of the time to highlight this culture rooted in social security: The economist Abraham Epstein, for example, had published a book called “Insecurity: A Challenge to America,” in which he spoke of “the specter of insecurity” as the bane of the worker’s life under capitalism, while Max Rubinow had been articulating demands for “a complete structure of security” in a book called “The Quest for Security.” (p. 368)

A 2012 report issued by The Corner House provides a very clear and useful differentiation between what is referred to as “lower-case” and “uppercase” security. The first type, which they label as “lower-case” (which Neocleous refers to as “social”), specifically applies to that of the working-class majority. This type of security, which relates to us all, include “the mundane, plural protections of subsistence: holding the land you work and depend on; having a roof over your head; being able to count on clean water and regular seasons; knowing you can walk home without being assaulted by thieves or marauders; getting a good enough price for your crop to make ends meet; above all, knowing you have the right to the wherewithal for survival” (The Corner House, 2012). The second type of security, which they label as “upper-case” (and which Neocleous refers to as “national”), applies specifically to the capitalist class. “This is the Security that matters particularly to ruling elites: security of property and privilege, as well as access to enough force to contain any gains made by, or to counter the resistance of, the dispossessed or deprived” (The Corner House, 2012, p. 63). Actions taken under the umbrella of national security are done so for two main reasons: to protect ruling-class interests, and to feed the immensely profitable military-industrial complex. When major political figures own personal financial stock in the arms industry, as they often do in the United States, these dual purposes go hand in hand. The fact that it has developed

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so intensely within the global epicenter of capitalist power (the United States) is expected. Karl Kautsky’s 1914 essay on “ultra-imperialism” described this inevitable stage clearly, stating that, as capitalist governments, in representing their profit sectors, were forced to seek out new industrial zones, “the sweet dream of international harmony (free trade) quickly came to an end” because, “as a rule, industrial zones overmaster and dominate agrarian zones” (para. 4). Hence, the massive outgrowth of industrial capitalism, in its constant search for new markets to exploit, can be accomplished only through widespread shows of force and power. Once the ball is rolling, this forceful expansion becomes a perpetual cycle through the opening of markets, the manufacturing and deployment of massively destructive armaments, and the rebuilding of markets. In this process, the enormous loss of human life is viewed as a necessary and acceptable sacrifice in light of the potential profit to be made. The final stage of capitalism, which has materialized over the course of the last 50 years or so, confirms these power relations based in the obsessive search for more profit. It is occupied by corporations that “gobble down government expenditures, in essence taxpayer money, like pigs at a trough,” and are facilitated by a “security” industry that is funded “with its official $612 billion defense authorization bill” that contributes to “real expenditures on national security expenses to over $1 trillion a year” and “has gotten the government this year (2015) to commit to spending $348 billion over the next decade to modernize our nuclear weapons and build 12 new Ohio-class nuclear submarines, estimated at $8 billion each” (Hedges, 2015, para. 10). Ironically, by upholding upper-case security, the working-class majority undermines its own security. As upper-case security strengthens so too does our insecurity. Despite this, we remain active participants in maintaining the highly militarized status quo. PATRIOTISM AND PENURY Realizing the difference between “lower-case” and “upper-case” security allows us to see how the interests of the ruling class can be inherited by the working-class majority through the construction of an “outside threat” or common enemy: Traditionally the business of lord or state, security has always had an uneasy, ambivalent relationship with the lower-case “securities” of the commons. The law was used to take people’s land and subsistence away, but it could also occasionally be mobilised in their defence. The lord or the state’s ability to make war was typically used against many of the common people both at home and

Gangsters for Capitalism    435 abroad, but could also enlist a willing community to defend territory and livelihoods against common enemies. (The Corner House, 2012, p. 63)

Today, outside threats and common enemies are constructed through popular culture. Corporate news stations that are concerned only with ratings (thus, profit) choose sensationalist narratives that strike fear and shock in the viewer. In this realm of profit-based “news,” there is no need for government propaganda because corporate “news” outlets fill this role through sensationalism. The successful creation of foreign threats runs hand in hand with the dominant narrative of safety that is centered in upper-case security. It is also made possible through an intense conditioning of patriotism to which every U.S. citizen is subjected from an early age, where as children we are forced to stand in formation in school classrooms with our hands to our hearts, citing a pledge of allegiance in drone-like fashion. Children as young as 5 years old are made to participate in this ritual, with absolutely no idea what they’re saying, why they’re saying it, and what this odd pledge to a piece of cloth hanging in the corner means. As we grow older, this forced allegiance is layered with vague notions of pride and loyalty, all of which remain defined in the eyes of the beholder, with virtually no substance. The notion of American exceptionalism serves as the foundation for this conditioning, and has roots in the cultural and religious practices of the original European settler-colonists. “It’s there in the first settlers’ belief that they were conducting a special errand into the wilderness to construct a city on a hill in the name of their Heavenly Father,” explains Ron Jacobs (2004): It is this belief that gave the Pilgrims their heavenly go-ahead to murder Pequot women and children and it was this belief that gave General Custer his approval to kill as many Sioux as he could. It made the mass murder of Korean and Vietnamese civilians acceptable to the soldiers at No Gun Ri and My Lai, and exonerated the officers who tried to hide those and many other war crimes from the world. It [gave] George Bush the only rationale he needed to continue his crusade against the part of the world that stands in the way of the more mercenary men and women behind his throne as they pursue their project for a new American century. (para. 3)

This notion has motivated the ruling classes of the United States (and subsequently, the global capitalist order) to ride roughshod over the world’s people in order to establish a global hegemony conducive to capitalist growth. And it is this notion, often rooted in White-Christian supremacy, that has given many working-class Americans a false sense of superiority over the global population—whether labeled “savages,” “uncivilized heathens,” “filthy Communists,” “backwards Arabs,” or “Muslim extremists.”

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Because of its Eurocentric organization, the global capitalist onslaught that has dominated the modern world has blatantly racial underpinnings. The “core nations” that have led this global hegemony (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany) tend to be “lighter” on the skin-color scale, while the “periphery nations” that make up its dominated group (primarily in the global South) tend to be “darker.” This oppression based in white makes it easier for core-nation ruling classes to justify their actions to their own. As world-systems theorist Samir Amin (2006) tells us, for the peoples who live within periphery nations, “colonization was (and is) atrocious. Like slavery, it was (and is) an attack on fundamental rights” (para. 2), and its perpetuation is motivated by material gain. “If you want to understand why these rights were trampled on and why they still are being trodden on in the world today,” explains Amin (2006, para. 2), “you have to get rid of the idea that colonialism was the result of some sort of conspiracy. What was at stake was the economic and social logic that must be called by its real name: capitalism.” In relation to the trajectory of imperialism, notions of American exceptionalism and patriotism are almost always fronts for deeper emotional calls to obey capitalism and White supremacy. These are effective and powerful tools. Most answer this call because, quite frankly, we are incapable of comprehending the systemic exploitation that plagues us under capitalism. It is difficult for many to understand that cheering for the carpet-bombing of Arab and Muslim peoples worldwide, or publicly calling for the mass killing of Black protestors in places like Ferguson and Baltimore, only strengthens the proverbial boot that crushes us in our daily lives. This inability to understand is rooted in the aforementioned formal education system that prioritizes obedience over enquiry, with the ultimate goal of obstructing any degree of class consciousness from forming among American citizens. For working-class kids in the United States, this “manufactured consent” doubles down on the existing desperation that materializes through a forced dependence on wage labor. Jobs and income are needed to sustain us, but often these do not exist. In the United States, unemployment, a staple of capitalism, consistently fluctuates between 4% and 8%. Underemployment, or the lack of jobs that provide a living wage, plagues another 25–30% of the population, with some estimates as high as 40% in the age of neoliberalism and globalization, where many former unionized, “middle-class” jobs have been sent overseas. The poverty rate, as defined by the government, consistently rests between 13% and 15% of the U.S. population. As of 2015, 15.8 million households (42.2 million Americans) suffer food insecurity. Because of this bleak economic landscape, many in the United States are forced to consider military enlistment. My own entry into military service,

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for which I served 4 years in the U.S. Army, was strongly influenced by a lack of options. With college appearing too costly, the job market appearing too scarce, and with few resources to explore life as an adult, it was a relatively easy decision despite the severity that it posed. Choosing an unknown future where I could find myself anywhere in the world, fighting whichever enemy my government chooses, and ultimately risking my life and well-being was, I concluded, a better option than wandering aimlessly into a world where my basic needs were not guaranteed, and where jobs, living wages, and affordable housing were scarce. During my time in basic military training, I recall each soldier being asked why they enlisted. The most common answers were, “Because I needed a job” or “I need money for college.” My personal experience is confirmed by a 2015 field study conducted by Brad Thomson for the Institute of Anarchist Studies, where a series of interviews with veterans concluded that “a significant common thread is that they came from working-class backgrounds and overwhelmingly named financial reasons as their motivation to enlist” (Thomson, 2016). As one veteran, Crystal Colon, said: “Most of them [recruits] are people that just want money for college, or medical care, or have a family and need money” (Thomson, 2016, p. 26). Another veteran, Seth Manzel, sacrificed personal beliefs in order to satisfy material needs, saying: “I was aware of the war in Afghanistan—it seemed misguided but I was willing to go. I heard the drums beating for Iraq. We hadn’t invaded yet but it was pretty clear that we were going to. I was opposed to the idea, but again I didn’t really have a lot of options as far as skills that could transfer to other jobs” (Thomson, 2016, p. 28). In the face of material desperation, the addition of spiritual and emotional calls to duty becomes even more effective. As one interviewee recalled: “When I joined, in all honesty, I was very, well, that way I would put it now is indoctrinated . . . your thinking is that this is your country, you’re giving back, it harkens on those strings, and then there’s the pragmatic side—How am I going to pay for college? I’ve got these problems, my family didn’t plan well, financially, so I’ve gotta take care of my own, and how am I going to do that?” For me, the calls to duty were firmly planted through the repetitive ritual of pledging allegiance. And, growing up in the 1980s, Hollywood had no shortage of blockbusters that glorified war and military service. From Red Dawn to Rambo to Top Gun, working-class kids like myself were (and continue to be) inundated with films that delivered passionate and emotional calls to serve. It is no coincidence that U.S. military recruiters strategically seek out economically marginalized populations to fill their ranks—which explains why the ranks are disproportionately Black, Latino, poor, and working class. This modern practice reflects historical precedence. During the Vietnam War, African Americans and poor Whites were drafted at much higher

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rates than their middle-class counterparts, leading to numerous allegations that “Blacks and the poor were intentionally used as cannon fodder.” Today, African Americans represent 20% of the military population, but only 13% of the general population. In contrast, Whites make up about 60% of the military ranks, despite representing 78% of the general population. Only 7% of all enlistees hold a bachelor’s degree. Nearly 30% of military recruits in 2008 did not possess a high school diploma, a large proportion of whom came from families with incomes of less than $40,000 a year. The military (all branches combined) spends roughly $1 billion per year on advertising, which is specifically designed to pull at these emotional strings. The content of these ads, along with recruitment promises, are largely misleading. The money for college, whether through the GI Bill or the College Fund, is overestimated; the supposed job skills that can transfer to the civilian sector are almost always nonexistent; and the compensation itself, which is skewed by “housing” and “meal” adjustments, is drastically overvalued. During my time in service, it wasn’t unusual to see soldiers using public assistance programs and receiving Article 15 punishment for writing bad checks in order to buy groceries. At each of my duty stations—Ft. Jackson (South Carolina), Ft. Sill (Oklahoma), and Ft. Campbell (Kentucky)—pawnbrokers and check-cashing establishments were strategically positioned nearby, ready to exploit the many soldiers who needed their services. My last 2 years in service were sustained by using check-cashing services that charged up to 40% interest on advancing money 1 or 2 weeks ahead. For me, as for many, this was a necessary evil to sustain any semblance of a reasonable standard of living. CONCLUSION Under capitalism, the working-class majority constantly finds itself in a paradoxical state. Our entire lives are dominated by activities that directly benefit those who own the houses we live in, control the production of the commodities we buy, and own the businesses we work for. Our participation in these activities both strengthens those owners while also further alienating us from what would otherwise be productive and creative lives. Our activities increase the owners’ social and political capital while at the same time separating us from our own families and communities. This soul-sapping existence takes on a more severe form when we are called upon to fight and die in wars that, once again, only benefit these owners. In our social capacities, we are conditioned to follow the status quo, despite its propensity to subject many of us to authoritative and militaristic avenues. The vague notion of patriotism ironically leaves us vulnerable to direct repression from our own government. For those who run our worlds, the use of the

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term “patriot” in the USA Patriot Act (2001) was not arbitrary, just as the decision to replace “defense” with “security” in official policy discussions was not. This play on words is very effective to an already dumbed-down population. And the cognitive dissonance it creates is blatant—while over 80% of Americans do not believe the government represents our interests, most of us go along with the authoritative policies stemming from this same government, as long as they’re labeled patriotic or presented as being designed to keep “the Other” in check. Even blind faith in a Constitution that was written 229 years ago by wealthy elite landowners (many of whom were also slave-owners) strengthens this method of control, for it creates another vague form of Americanism that can be used for coercive means. Just as patriotism is a naturally vague notion, so too are our respective ideas of freedom, liberty, justice, loyalty, and service to our country. So, when called upon to give our lives for the “greater good,” “for God and country,” for “defense of the homeland,” or “for freedom,” working-class Americans volunteer en masse, without question, are slaughtered and maimed en masse, and remain socially and economically disenfranchised en masse, despite our “service.” Capitalism’s tendency toward mass dependence on wage labor (and, thus, widespread desperation) serves the military-industrial complex well. The politicians who facilitate the system know this, and actively seek to maintain this advantageous breeding ground. Arizona Senator John McCain’s off-hand comments during his 2008 presidential campaign, warning about the dangers of “making veterans’ benefits so good that nobody will stay in service,” alluded to this fact. When tens of millions of working-class kids are faced with the dire options of McDonald’s or the military, or perhaps college followed by impotent job markets and lifelong student-loan debt, the coercive nature of military recruitment tends to set in. So, we join en masse, travel the world in metal machines, kill impoverished people whom we’ve never met, fight, get maimed, sometimes die . . . and return home still broke, living paycheck-to-paycheck, with inadequate benefits and medical care, struggling to support our families and keep our heads above proverbial water. All the while, arms manufacturers enjoy skyrocketing stock prices and unfathomable profits. And the American military machine keeps churning, spitting us all out in its tracks. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This chapter was originally published as part of the Transnational Institute’s State of Power 2017 report.

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REFERENCES Samir Amin: Colonialism is inseparable from capitalism. (2006, January 28). P. Bolland (Trans.). Retrieved from www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip. php?article70 Butler, D. (1935). War Is a racket. Los Angeles, CA: Farel House. Cammett, J. (1967). Antonion Gramsci and the origins of Italian communism. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Department of Defense. (n.d.). Base Structure Report—Fiscal Year 2015 Baseline. Retrieved from https://www.acq.osd.mil/eie/Downloads/BSI/Base%20 Structure%20Report%20FY15.pdf Department of Defense Releases Fiscal Year 2017 Prsident’s Budget Proposal. (2016, February 9). Retrieved from https://dod.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/ News-Release-View/Article/652687/department-of-defense-dod-releases-fiscal-year-2017-presidents-budget-proposal/ Gramsci, A. (1926). Some aspects of the Southern question text from Antonio Gramsci’s “selections from political writings (1921–1926) (Q. Hoare, Trans. & Ed.). London, England: Lawrence and Wishart. Hedges, C. (2015, June 1). Karl Marx was right. Retrieved from www.truthdig.com/ articles/karl-marx-was-right-2 Jacobs, R. (2004, July 21). A disease of conceit. Retrieved from www.counterpunch. org/2004/07/21/a-disease-of-conceit Kautsky, K. (1914). Ultra-imperialism. Retrieved from www.marxists.org/archive/ kautsky/1914/09/ultra-imp.htm Neocleous, M. (2006). From social to national security: On the fabrication of economic order. Security Dialogue, 37, 363–384. https://doi.org/10.1177 /0967010606069061 Neocleous, M. (2009). The fascist moment: Security, exclusion, extermination studies in social justice, 3(1), 23–37. The Corner House. (2012, February). Energy Security for Whom? For What? Dorset, England: Author. Retrieved from http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/sites/ thecornerhouse.org.uk/files/Energy%20Security%20For%20Whom%20 For%20What.pdf Thomson, B. (2016). Breaking the chain of command: Anarchist veterans of the U.S. military (Perspectives on anarchist theory, No. 28). Institute of Anarchist Studies. USA Patriot Act, HR 3162, 2001. Retrieved from https://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html

CHAPTER 37

INSTITUTIONALIZING LONE-WOLF TERRORISM How Fascist Organizations Inspire Mass Violence Shane Burley

As Mulugeta Seraw and a friend hopped out of their ride’s car, they didn’t notice the pack of three skinheads wearing tight Levi’s tucked into leather boots, laces tied from toe to ankle. The gang were members of East Side White Pride, affiliated with the larger White Aryan Resistance. Seraw was a student who had come to Portland, Oregon from Ethiopia, likely expecting Portland’s long reputation of diversity and liberal values. It has another history, one that is caked in the KKK revival in the Northern United States and would later be marked by White expansion and gentrification. When the three men saw him on the corner of SE 31st and Pine Street, a flurry of racial slurs were thrown before they took a baseball bat and caved in his head. This was just one of the many violent attacks that marked the war on the streets of Portland in the 1980s and 1990s, where Antifa and anti-racist skinheads went literally up in arms with Volksfront, Hammerskin Nation,

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 441–452 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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and other White pride gangs. The blood was visible on the corner of that street for weeks, and some swear you can still see it at night.1 This story resonates as we are inundated with recent horrors like the Dylan Roof massacre of nine churchgoers after reading the Council of Conservative Citizens website, or the two men who beat an older hispanic man in south Boston after listening to Donald Trump’s speech of racial arson. The radical right can fundamentally be dropped into two camps. There are the above ground operations that focus on propagating “ideas” or political programs. These would be things like the “HBD” scientific racist organizations like American Renaissance, Mankind Quarterly, and the Pioneer Fund. There are the neo-fascist cultural and “radical traditionalist” organizations like Traditionalist Youth Network, Occidental Observer, and The National Policy Institute. There are vague political parties and organizations like the American Freedom Party and Council of Conservative Citizens, but the time that formations like these had any mainstream power has shortly passed. There are many other subdivisions of these, but in most of them you are likely not to hear the N-word or see many iron crosses or swastikas. The second type of organization you can likely call insurrectionary, vanguardist, revolutionary, or simply angrily racist. These are organizations whose prime mission is a right-wing racialist revolution of some sorts, or the use of direct action in the re-establishment of formal White supremacy. There have been versions of this type of organization that has formed often over the years. The uniquely American flavor of this type of confrontational White supremacist organizing has its deep history in the Ku Klux Klan. Formed first in 1866, the clan used a fraternal structure that places former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest as its Grand Wizard. From 1867 forward the KKK founded its purpose to challenge the entry of freed slaves into public life during Reconstruction. In this way they acted as a sort of guerilla army attempting to, if not reverse the course of the Civil War, re-establish the kind of White hegemony that they had during the time of slave patrols. Northern politicians would essentially go to war with the Klan as they murdered seven of the first Black legislators during the 1867–1868 congressional convention. The real resurgence of the Klan came in the 1920s when they brought back an extensive leadership using the Greek fraternal system, and rose to the ranks of about 4 million people. This meant that they were a real political force, leading in senators and governors, as well as many that had to seek Klan endorsement if they were to be elected. This political clout certainly influenced policy of the time, but the real power was to terrorize communities of color with mass lynching and tortures of Black people all across the south. This violence became institutional as the Klan infiltrated all areas of law enforcement, and lynching were so widespread and accepted that people literally sold photos of dead

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Black men hanging from trees as popular postcards. The political power it had in the 1920s was never again replicated, though it came out again as a powerful force for violence during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. This helped to push forward the White Citizen’s Councils that would evolve into the Council of Conservative Citizens that we have today.2 While the Klan is all but gone in the 21st century, the other element of White resistance was the neo-Nazi skinhead movement. This was much more inspired from their British punk-rock dissidents of the Rock Against Communism flair. This created an essentially “working class” urban racialist movement that was drawn from the organizing traditions of anti-racist Trojan Skinheads. The skinhead culture, with networks like Volksfront and Hammerskin Nation dominating the U.S. scene, operate like street gangs with initiations and requirements of members to engage in racist violence. Their connections to other essentially “White gangs,” most notably different motorcycle gangs, has cemented their association with distributing drugs like crystal meth and oxycontin, though on the more militant side there is also a straight edge tradition. The main threat of organizations like this was never successful political organizing, though semi-skinhead organizations like the National Socialist Movement maintain delusions that they will someday have political influence through bridge topics like immigration and affirmative action. The real threat here was violence on an interpersonal level, often times resulting in random violence against targeted groups on the streets. This can appear as “random” violence, but is only random in as much as there is not an overarching political goal that can be seen with any coherence. Beyond the skinhead gangs and shrinking KKK locals, these will also include groups that do have an ideological framework and some sense of revolutionary organizing in the long term, yet do not work with the more moderate kinds of above ground organizations. This includes many of the racialist Christian Identity churches that are tied to survivalist militias. The Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, otherwise known as Aryan Nations, was one of the largest and best known of these, residing in Hayden Lake, Idaho. There they had a large compound where they held sermons about how Jews were biologically descended from Satan, how people of color were literally the “beasts of the field” and were animals that did not have souls, and that all White people are the people called Israelites in the Bible. They tied racial revolution to Biblical eschatology for a conspiracy-laden mix of Nazism and American conservative Christianity. After several members attacked a family driving by the compound, the church and its leader, Reverend Richard Butler, were sued and the land confiscated. Today Christian Identity still plays a major role in underground militia oriented circles, though Kinism, a slightly more mainstream appearing racist Christian interpretation, is stealing many converts.

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The National Socialist Movement, National Alliance, and many other militant Nazi organizations have straddled the line between organizing and revolutionary violence for most of their life. While their stated goals are often just well organized propaganda, education, and political programs, their revolutionary rhetoric has seen more results with inspiring single individuals to commit homicidal acts than having any kind of political program of any value. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of individual strands that all attempt to claim some serious legitimacy on political or ideological grounds, but they broadly can fall into the two categories and hold much of the same potential for inspiring singular acts of extreme violence. The violence that is exhibited is markedly different between groups based principally on the location and specific revolutionary vision of the organizations, but all the violence takes the form of singular acts of terrorism. What this means is that the kind of violent incidents that is seen from militia groups like The Order and Posse Comitatus is much different than the street skinheads of Vinland. When it comes to the kind of racist violence that Anti-Fascist Action has staked much of its history on was confronting the random violence of the urban skinhead gangs. Much of the focus on these groups is that they tended to be one of the few groups that engaged in public acts of violent direct action into the 1990s, while the Ku Klux Klan and other groups had really receded or were attempting to moderate their politics. Skinheads, on the other hand, were mirroring other punk rock subcultures and creating a counter culture that engaged in gang violence in large cities. They were also coming into direct contact with left-oriented organizations by having some subcultural crossover in music venues, as well as having a high presence in drug running and prison gang culture. These were not heavily ideological groups, and those that had a stronger sense of White nationalism evolved into the more moderate path that many of the Klan splinter groups did in the 1980s. Instead of being a more overarching political program, the myth about skinheads was based in their seemingly random targeting of minorities in public locations for incidental acts of incredibly cruelty. This has led to a consistent set of attacks since the mid 1970s, where people of color are often targeted in otherwise White areas, or young queer folks are “hunted” in areas where they might frequent. This has the effect of generalized fear since the attacks seem to be randomly selected, do not have a distinct pattern, and can essentially happen “anytime and anywhere.” People have always tried to see these gangs as part of a larger fascist movement or political vision, but this is difficult since there is not a lot of connection between them and the more mainstream intellectual movements and the violence itself would be hard to systematize. What occurs internally is to create a culture where violence is foundational to the community, and

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where prestige within the group is based on the history of engaging in violence. Since there is no outlet for this growing violent culture in anyway that can be a part of a larger political movement, as there would have been with the KKK in the 1920s, they instead wait in the wings for chances to let rage explode at random targets. Violence is the impetus for these groups, and recruiting often targets people who may have a history of violence and disaffection already, taking on an almost “cult like” structure of taking over a new recruit’s world. This violence is stoked so effectively internally that it doesn’t even require some type of antagonism from the left, as would happen at some kind of political protest clash. Instead, right from the start recruits are being emotionally prepared to engage in some type of violence as a way of securing a place in the social order that has chosen them. As said earlier, the image that AFA and ARA organizers have of racist violence often comes from northern skinhead gangs because those are the street clashes that are common, the risk of larger incidents of violence are actually coming out of the woods instead of the alleys. The militia movement, though often associated with the far right, is not always considered a racialized group. While much of the rhetoric is made up of racial “dog whistle” language and vague discussions of “socialism” or “the federal government,” a large contingent of racial revolutionaries mix with these groups and have their own agenda. Over the course of the 1980s we have seen massive trends towards violence, some of it on an almost unbelievable scale. The Order, active through 1983 and 1984, took credit for the murder of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg as well as bank robberies totaling over $3.6 million. They were birthed out of groups like the Aryan Nations and National Alliance, which they kept in close contact with. The most famous of these men was David Lane, who went on to coin the Wotanist religion, which is essentially a hyper-racist version of folkish Asatru. He is best known for coining what White nationalists refer to as the “14 Words,” which says, “We must secure the existence of our people and the future for White Children.” The Order maintained a close relationship with Frazier Glenn Miller of the White Patriot Party. He went on to shoot several congregants at the Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom retirement center. He killed several here in a moment of mass murder, several of which turned out not to be Jewish. Similarly, Aryan Nations member Buford O. Furrow Jr. shot and killed several children at the Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, as well as murdering a Filipino postal worker. All of these different members discussed the need to engage in revolution against the Zionist Occupation Government, in which subversive Jews use “mud races” to destroy the purity of the White race. The most dramatic example of these is obviously the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people while injuring an additional 680 others. A huge number of these were children since the Federal Building

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that was attacked had a childcare center in it. This was carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols driven by anti-Federal ideas that were heavily racialized. McVeigh was even found to have pages from the Turner Diaries in his car. The book, which is something of a Bible from the racist militia movement, is a novel written by National Alliance founder William Pierce that describes an incredibly violent race war where Blacks and Jews are exterminated at will. Their connections to the fringes of these movements were clear, yet what they actually intended to result from their actions were not. In many of these cases, the idea is for the violence to trigger the subliminal racism of middle America to rise up against their “subversive Jewish masters.” These kinds of gun-based attacks have largely come out of the more militant groups dealing both with racialized ideologies and also having connections to broader militia groups, conspiracy theory organizations, and the new Sovereign Citizens movement. On the west coast the Posse Comitatus had been on the vanguard of this racist militia milieu for years, and more recently groups like the Northwest Front may be taking up that mantle. It would be nice to write these attacks up to a few disturbed people, and, in a lot of ways, you can. The organizations that do still exist that pushed these people into their moments of extreme violence often times denounce the actions, or passively support them. What we do see is that organizations like these use people with questionable social standing and emotional stability to commit the most violent acts against people of color, queer folks, Muslims, immigrants, and anyone else they have decided to hate that week. What is important to also consider when thinking about these types of groups is that their lip service, and even attacks, against the government are not what is really at issue. The state is only a subject of attack because of its relationship to communities of color, Jews, and others. The real violence here is against random minority community members and, in the case of bomb attacks, low-level government workers. Their threat is still, no matter what they say they target, against individuals in our communities and not lofty government or corporate actors. The acts of mass murder themselves have often taken on the “blaze of glory” format where the act itself is not always hidden very well, and the actor tends to see this as the culminating act of their life. This again has led many in the media and state agencies to list these people as just being emotionally disturbed, and this is a narrative that many of the larger revolutionary racist organizations have supported. Instead, it actually comes at the direct result of much of the organizing rhetoric that happens internal to these organizations. Two primary organizing documents have led to help create the space for these acts of mass killings. The first is “leaderless resistance,” which is the name of an essay written by White nationalist Col. Ulius Louis Amoss in

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1962.3 The notion came from the idea that the top–down “pyramid structure” used by White vanguard organizations were easy to be infiltrated and instead advocated a “phantom cell” model that lacks any kind of centralized control. Many would actually see that this is similar to many “affinity group” models used in insurrectionary left-anarchist organizing, but while there are connections in the use of anti-organizational modes, the goals are radically different. As Simson Garfinkel writes in the journal First Monday, the goals of leaderless resistance in this context is in interpersonal violence. Under many circumstances, the “resistance” advocated by Louis Beam4 could easily devolve into random acts of anarchistic violence without any formal political objective. Indeed, the effects of Leaderless Resistance can easily be dismissed as the work of “wannabe terrorists,” petty criminals engaging in copycat crimes, and angry loners participating in “sympathy attacks.” That is, it could easily devolve into traditional forms of “resistance” or “cultural resistance” employed by the poor or powerless to impede or subvert a more powerful foe. The violence of Leaderless Resistance is different from what sociologists often refer to as “cultural resistance.” While it is uncoordinated, Leaderless Resistance supports a common political goal: It is violence with an agenda. Typically, this agenda is set by political tracts or other documents that set forth objectives, demands, and classes of particular targets. Agenda-setting is also performed by specific individuals who take part in terrorist activities: When one Earth Liberation Front member attacks a dealership for sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that opens another “front” in the “battle,” and gives others the idea and motivation of attacking SUV dealerships as well.5 He goes on to note that there actually is a kind of de facto leadership in this format in that there tends to be public figures who advocate these methodologies. These end up existing as leadership, and the constant media feedback loop creates a sense of validation in the actions. The second concept that was important to this is that of the “lone wolf” type action. This concept was heavily popularized by people like Tom Metzger, whose group White Aryan Resistance was a major driving force in supporting neo-Nazi skinhead formations in the United States. He saw the potential of these groups as the KKK went into decline, seeing them as vanguardist “brown shirts.” Metzger’s concept of the lone wolf is again a form of leaderless resistance, except specifically focused on assassination-ready targets. As he says in his famous essay “Laws for the Lone Wolf,” “anyone is capable of being a Lone Wolf.” Always start off small. Many small victories are better than one huge blunder (which may be the end of your career as a Lone Wolf). Every little bit counts in a resistance. Knowledge is power. Learn from your mistakes as well as the mistakes of others. Never rush into anything, time and planning are keys to success. Never attempt anything beyond your own abilities,

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failure could lead to disaster. The less any outsider knows, the safer and more successful you will be. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Never truly admit to anything . . . I have never said there will never be a time when all small cells and lonewolves may evolve into a highly structure but ruthlessly militant organization with steel hard leaders. That time is not now and will not be for the foreseeable future. No present leader including myself will be leading that phase. We are only to prepare the way. Hopefully what we say and do now will make future victory possible. Remember, those who have come before you are counting on you, those who will come after you are depending on you. Think White, act White, be White!6 While Metzger tries to be vague, he is discussing the murder of high-level targets. This could be politicians that he sees as being a part of ZOG, or this could just be people in interracial relationships, anti-fascist and left-wing organizers, and people organizing the protections of LGBTQ people. This methodology has been a popular idea taken up in various KKK and neoNazi factions, the militia movement, and in some of the more violent racialist ideology, like the vile Creativity Movement. You can see this resulting in incidents like the recent targeting of the Sikh Temple members, the killing of the security guard at the Smithsonian Holocaust Museum, and the various Jewish Temple shootings. Metzger’s ideas often come under a free-speech caveat, and it would be unwise to head into a liberal “anti-hate speech” line of organizing as this would end up being counterproductive. But his words do have meaning. After all three skinheads indicted for Mulugeta Seraw’s murder, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center thought that the case needed to go further than just those with literal blood on their hands. The SPLC is known for doing its research, education, and trainings around hate groups, as well as having different court cases and lawsuits targeting these organizations and individuals. Dees wanted to target one of the overarching organizations and individuals that had been pushing these neo-Nazi skinheads into acts of individual violence. Tom Metzger and WAR became the obvious culprits, after Dees found a letter that John Metzger, Tom’s son, wrote braggin that the skinhead who committed the murder did so to show his town how this Aryan youth movement operated. Dees won a $7 million lawsuit against Tom Metzger, functionally bankrupting him and his organization. Metzger’s ideas have been central to the functioning of these bouts of skinhead violence, and this court case put him up for it. But he is still out there, legally allowed to keep publishing and the skinheads who continue to read his diatribes continue to stay inspired. The question as to why violence seems inevitable from these organizations brings up a lot of complicated answers. The vanguard and revolutionary fascists groups do not have the political clout to ever engage in an actual military insurrection against the government. The fear of this

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type of action is much more theoretical and more based around the more organized above-ground groups since they have the potential to create a radical undercurrent that could be militant come periods of mass collapse and crisis. The current militia and skinhead groups, however, will not have enough pull in the contemporary world to actually mobilize against the state in any meaningful way. Even on their small scale, anti-fascist organizations, both liberal and radical, successfully shut down their growth and any resources they get their mitts on the second they do. At the same time, their rhetoric, often tied to movements so roundly reviled at this point, such as Nazi Germany, does not have enough palatability to ever be a dangerous political movement. While they do not have the ability to put a person in congress, or even put enough people successfully in fatigues, they do tend to maintain the most radical elements in the insurrectionary racist ranks. These organizations attract and groom those prone to violence. While the people often engaging in the violence may be walking into the actions themselves with a mix both of ideology and interpersonal issues, there is still a political impetus that drives these organizations to groom people towards violence. It is actually this dynamic that reminds us of many debates on the left circles of insurrectionary anarchism, where by militant actions that may or may not be considered violent are often used to “break the spell” of the current order and inspire further action. This is the classic “propaganda of the deed” mentality that led to the assassinations of presidents and bombings of law enforcement strongholds. It is essentially this notion that actually drives many of these violent acts, the idea being that this will break the “spell of multiculturalism” and drive people to engage in RaHoWa (Racial Holy War). The very nature of these organizations are in their dissent from the largest fascist milieu, and that point is usually on the basis of the necessity of violence. The larger organizations have differing opinions on whether or not to engage in the political system. Many still advocate running candidates in local elections, both inside open racialist parties like the American Freedom Party or through closely aligned political formations like the Tea Party or the Constitution Party. Others instead want to create a cultural and social milieu in challenge to the system, but is not advocating open insurrection. We see this in the Radix, Alternative Right, H. L. Menken Club crowd, where many actually do advocate revolutionary politics but would never openly associate with violent direct action. Groups like Aryan Nations exists, to a large part, because they are willing to acknowledge the need for violence in the here and now. It is what gives these organizations a modicum of individuality and a purpose to exist. Because violence is at the heart of their reason to exist, it is inevitable that these formations will lead to violence. As mentioned before, since there is

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no chance at revolutionary militarism, this takes the form of random acts of violence towards target communities. Outside of the existing organizations, there is one area where vanguardist fascists have made their way into that has seen a notable rise in violence. The movement against racist police violence has been given a steroid injection with Black Lives Matter rising out of Ferguson, Brooklyn, and Baltimore. It is here that the institutionalized biases lead police to use their positions as defenders of capital to lord over communities of color, engaging in lethal violence at inordinate rates against people of color. This is implicit to a racist society where capitalism and the state rely on racial inequality, and this is baked into the social order that gives police their queues as to who they see as being threatening. In the now widely publicized FBI report of 2006 titled “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” gives us a sense of where much of the effort for state subversion could be for organized racists. Even the state itself acknowledges that its role as the monopolistic holder over the right to violence could allow fascists to use it to further wield violence. White supremacist presence among law enforcement personnel is a concern due to the access they may possess to restricted areas vulnerable to sabotage and to elected officials or protected persons, whom they could see as potential targets for violence.7 The limitations of this report are obvious in the fact that the main threat they see is that those who would like to engage in the sort of “apocalyptic violence” may have access to otherwise “restricted” government officials. What they fail to address is the actual threat that racists who see people of color as subhuman will have access to them as subjects of lethal force. Much of this draws from the obvious rise in racial extremism between 2008 and 2014, which also marked the increase for the more mainstream versions of these groups like the Tea Party. The reasons for this are obvious as Barack Obama is a bridge-too-far for many of them, but in general the changing demographics of the country is baiting those that simply cannot take the idea of a multi-ethnic society. Many of these organizations target law enforcement because they would like to personally aid in shifting towards a militarized pro-White avenue within policing, where they really do see people of color as violent threats to White society. Policing adds a lethal dimension to the existing inequality of a society, and as the vanguards of White privilege these organizations want to help further make the police force a violent protector of White hegemony. On the more interpersonal level, the petty power that many low-level police get, mirrors the kind of White privilege that White nationalists and reactionaries desperately want to hold onto at the cost of the working class unity that could afford them a better position in the world. The same situation has proven true in many of the anti-Islamic threads in the military or, more appropriately, in the private military complex with companies

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like Blackwater. Here a racist ideological thread helps to aid in the career choice, where protecting the United States from “dangerous Muslims and foreigners” may seem like a morally positive choice. The reality of this situation can only be heightened by its seeming impossibility. With the bureaucratic state that essentially weeds out dissenting opinions through Human Resource apparatus, you would think that these kind of racial revolutionaries would be barred from employment. Then we see the high number of organized racists heading into the police force, or radicalizing within the police force due to the type of racialized policing methods that can warp their perception of the communities of color they engage with. We see in countries like Greece where Golden Dawn may only get a small percentage of votes from the general electorate, but have over 50% support from the police. And we need to remember what kind of threat this actually holds even beyond the fact that we can expect for more racist violence from the police. In periods of revolutionary upheaval, the police can easily align themselves with reactionary direct action parties and embody the brown-shirt role they already socially hold. One of the primary elements that anti-fascists have always confronted is that the dissemination of racist ideas will continue to increase racist violence, even if much racist violence on a daily basis are happening outside of the organized racist movement. This increase is not only due to the production of material from the revolutionary groups, but the intellectual organizing-focused fascist organizations play just as much into producing the material that eventually pushes “lone wolves” over the edge. The primary threat in terms of organizing is over the fate of radicalism, but there is also an intensification effect that these groups have over the violent wing of their movement. They continue to stoke racial hatred, the need for “revolution,” and other ideas that lead to conscious acts of protecting White supremacy. NOTES



1. Denson, Bryan. “Legacy of a Hate Crime: Mulugeta Seraw’s Death a Decade Ago Avenged.” (Oregonlive.com. 1998). Republished November 12, 2014. http:// www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/11/1998_story_legacy _of_a_hate_cr.html. 2. “Ku Klux Klan.” History.com. Last accessed September 11th, 2015. http:// www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan. 3. As cited in Beam, Louis. “Leaderless Resistance.” The Seditionist (Issue 12, February 1992). www.louisbeam.com/leaderless.htm 4. Ibid 5. Garfinkel, Simson L. “Leaderless resistance today.” First Monday, 8:3 (March 3, 2003). http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1040/961

452    S. BURLEY 5. Metzger, Tom. “Laws for the Lone Wolf.” http://www.resist.com/Articles/ literature/LawsForTheLoneWolfByTomMetzger.htm. 6. FBI Counterterrorism Division. “(U) White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement.” (Federal Bureau of Investigation Intelligence Assessment, October 17, 2006). http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26 -white-supremacist-infiltration.pdf

PART X SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION

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CHAPTER 38

ISLAMOPHOBIA AND THE RISE OF TRUMP P. Joshua Hatala

Since the November 13th Paris attacks, right-wing terrorism and support for the demagogues who fuel it has intensified in the United States as largely unreported acts of violence against Muslims and Muslim communities grow both in number and intensity. Despite the fact that White extremists kill more Americans in the United States than “jihadists,” the rightwing media juggernaut and certain Republican presidential candidates have tapped into the fears of dispossessed Whites to ramp up and exploit a Muslim-as-terrorist narrative. The recent attacks in San Bernardino will, of course, reinforce this narrative, being framed as another case illustrating the need for White, Christian Americans to protect themselves from the Muslim “other” through vigilante justice, suspicion, and the expansion of the security state. While terror is real and wrong, and its victims matter, it is necessary that those concerned with social justice respond to this terror in ways that challenge the right’s invariably xenophobic and militaristic responses to such tragedies. This means building stronger bonds with the Muslim community, not demonizing American Muslims. Donald Trump’s recently constructed “memory” of thousands of Muslims cheering as the

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World Trade Center collapsed is pure propaganda, but it sells. The more vile and vitriolic his rhetoric becomes, the more Trump’s base responds with admiration and enthusiasm for Trump’s policies. For those of us still living in a “reality-based community,” Trump’s manufactured reality and his base’s response to it bring only astonishment and dread as attacks on American Muslims intensify. Though it is unlikely that the cognitive biases of Americans swept up in an Islamophobic fervor will allow most of them to reevaluate their beliefs and fears, for those of us concerned with social justice, it is still worth noting some key points about the nature of religion and religious violence. For those who suggest that Islam is inherently violent, and thus needs to be rooted out, historian Karen Armstrong’s most recent book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, serves as a corrective. In David Shariatmadari’s The Guardian review of the book, he writes: In her sprawling survey Armstrong shows that doctrine alone cannot give rise to intercommunal strife. Instead, it is usually a reaction to social upheaval and the new forms of structural oppression—gross inequality or overt persecution—that come with it. In the absence of these conditions, religion tends to encourage peaceful coexistence. To blame one or other faith, when the evidence shows so clearly that all types of violence have been committed in the name of all religions and none, is to supply an extraordinarily—you might say willfully—superficial reading of history.1

Armstrong offers a material explanation for religious violence, not an excuse for it. Religion, like a morally neutral tool, can be molded into a vehicle for oppression and violence, or a vehicle for peace and social cohesion. Religious belief informed the course of Europe’s Thirty Years War and the course of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life; it has served as a misshapen mechanism for delivering “Islamic” terror, as well as the impetus for the abolition of female infanticide on the Arabian peninsula in the time of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) and the rise of scientifically and mathematically advanced Islamic civilizations. Though the “new atheists” have often been at best simplistic and at worst reprehensible in their discussions of Islam, there are a few things they get at least somewhat right. Following the success of his 2004 The End of Faith, Sam Harris offered a concise critique of the monotheistic traditions in his 2006 Letter to a Christian Nation. Because it is a short book written for a popular audience it is necessarily limited in its depth of argument and engagement with the best theological minds—minds that would, quite likely, make mincemeat of most of the “new atheists’” claims. However, in Harris’ most compelling argument he suggests that believers use their moral intuition to guide and make fresh their interpretation of scripture—a fact that challenges the idea that scripture itself should be, and more importantly is, an

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ultimate source of knowledge for believers. Harris posits that secular moral and ethical trends within a society precede changes to scriptural reinterpretation and that it is these nontheistic progressive advances that in turn reshape readings of sacred texts. Although Harris does not delve deeply into what he calls “liberal theology,” he cites it, and not fundamentalism, as the worst offender here. According to Harris, liberal theologians cannot say in one breath that God was wrong to drown humanity in a flood, but that Jesus is the Son of God and the Golden Rule is the pinnacle of moral revelation. He writes, “You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible—and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world; rather, we must depend upon the prescriptions of the Bible.” Ultimately, “we decide what is good in the Good Book.”2 Harris’ argument is challenging, but mostly to those who have not reflected deeply on their faith or who see scripture as somehow constructed outside of time and place, dropped here from another world. Again, understanding Karen Armstrong’s more sound argument serves as a way to overcome Harris’ simplicity. However, despite his deficiencies, Harris does understand that the nature of religious faith is often or partially socially constructed. The force of Harris’ argument is challenged, however, by the progressive advances made by the world’s religions—advances that stem from the traditions themselves, or work in a kind of dialectical system made up of believer, scripture, and world, with each informing the other. In spite of the attempts of some fundamentalists in every faith to turn religion into an entirely reactionary force, religious ideas and communities have themselves often been forces for justice. Imagine the Civil Rights movement without the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and his idea of the Beloved Community, or Gandhi without the Bhagavad-Gita, or Malcolm X without the Qur’an. Harris similarly overlooks the Buddha’s role in disrupting the caste system, or Mohammad’s role in uplifting women and the oppressed. At its inception in 610 CE, Islam introduced the revolutionary concept of equality of all people, regardless of gender or social status. Islam became a liberating force uniting warring Berbers and for women this meant an enhanced position. As Lisa Beyer put it in Time Magazine, “For his day, the Prophet Muhammad was a feminist.”3 Actively engaged in liberating the marginalized sections of society, the principles Mohammad established through the Qur’an enhanced the position of women. For his time and place, Mohammad’s statement that “the best Islam is that you feed the hungry and spread peace among people you know and those you do not know,” was truly revolutionary and ran directly counter to more repressive Arabian tribal values.4 The same emphasis on equality—Paul’s insistence that there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek—can be found in the Christian faith. Far from being alterations to the faith that

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were spurred by external notions of progress, these are clear examples of a progressive morality that grew out of religious traditions and religious communities that were, of course, rooted in particular cultural contexts. Will sound reason and a cursory understanding of history convince the 40% of North Carolinians who favor outlawing Islam that they are misguided? Will it dissuade an arsonist from burning down a mosque and instead look to the social and political roots of extremism—roots that are inextricably connected to the United States’ own imperialistic role in the Islamic world? When one considers our long history of demonizing the Other— particularly immigrants—it is doubtful. Popular enthusiasm for an easily identifiable enemy and a strong leader to save us from that enemy, the intellectual challenge of accepting a nuanced reading of history and geopolitics, along with decades of ingrained racial hatred are not easy obstacles to overcome. Just as material conditions give rise to a religious “type,” they also give rise to a political type. In this case, the same sense of hopelessness that turns a young Muslim into a soldier for ISIS turns vulnerable Americans—particularly White Americans—toward demagogues and the politics of hate. In an era of neoliberal austerity, where all hope for a meaningful future is shredded like so many social safety nets, extremism and polarization will increasingly become the new normal. It is the root causes of extremism that need to be addressed, not its symptoms. So what can we do? Continue to act on our principles. Continue to connect to the justice filled heart of spiritual belief and practice. Continue to build connections with our Muslim brothers and sisters in our communities and demand an end to racial injustice, bigotry, and religious intolerance. Continue to craft our own counter-narrative that puts love and reason above hate and irrationality. We may not win, but we are possessed by a moral imperative to fight for the good and the just, so fight we must. NOTES 1. D. Shariatmadari, “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong-Review,” The Guardian (October 8, 2014, para. 5). 2. Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 49. 3. Lisa Beyer, “The Women of Islam,” Time Magazine. 4. Mary Pat Fisher, Living Religions (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2014), 383.

CHAPTER 39

RELIGION AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION P. Joshua Hatala

In his 1905 article “Socialism and Religion,” Lenin explained the Social Democratic Labour Party’s attitude towards religion in general and the Russian Orthodox Church in particular. Noting the proletarianization and resulting secularization of the urban workforce in pre-revolutionary Russia, he wrote: The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth. The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.1

Lenin lays out a dichotomous proposition for the proletariat and the party: the choice to struggle either for heaven or earth; one must accept materialism and “scientific socialism” or religion. Many within the church’s hierarchy and among the parish clergy similarly framed these two competing The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 459–467 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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worldviews as incompatible. Naturally, these churchmen rejected materialism and socialism, favoring secular and religious traditionalism and the promotion of charity while typically stopping short of endorsing structural reforms to address urban exploitation or solve the problems of land reform that had plagued Russia for decades. Yet, in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, urban clergy, orientated towards the workers’ struggle sought to bridge the divide between these two choices. For these urban clergy of pre-revolutionary Russia, the world and its material conditions could be transformed by a social justice oriented Gospel. After the revolution, these Russian clergymen found themselves in an uneasy alliance with the new Soviet authorities, and by 1922 these “renovationist” clergy had organized themselves into the Живая Церковь, or “Living Church”—a church organization that would be controlled in large part by Soviet authorities in a war to undermine and destroy the traditionalist and usually politically reactionary Russian Orthodox Church from which it had sprung. These Living Church clergy became participants in a war against tradition and, unwittingly, against all varieties of religious belief and practice. The Living Church was eventually rejected as a pseudo-Church by most ordinary believers and the Soviet assault on religion, broadly speaking, intensified. Though the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply wedded to an oppressive, autocratic state, and was thus understandably challenged by Soviet rule, religious belief in general need not have borne the brunt of militant atheism. This is especially true in light of recent research that explores the role of urban clergy intent on reform and social uplift. Not only did the policy of militant atheism undermine basic religious freedoms, it was a poorly conceived political strategy, turning large swaths of the peasantry into enemies, and ultimately doing little to advance the goals of the revolution. CONTEXT To understand the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in the early 20th century one must look back to the secular and religious reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 18th century, Russia underwent a dramatic transformation that resulted in the formation of the Imperial Russian state. On the foundations laid by Peter the Great, 18th century Russia moved from the traditional and culturally guarded world of old Muscovy to a more secular and westernized modern state. Naturally, the Russian Orthodox Church, the centerpiece of Russian spiritual and cultural life, was affected by these changes. The abolition of the Orthodox Patriarchate in 1721 and its replacement by a more tightly controlled Synod based on existing Swedish and Prussian

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models worked to restrict the Church’s autonomy. Peter took another blow at the Church’s independence by placing it on a state budget and confiscating its lands, thereby limiting its economic autonomy and power. As a result, ecclesiastical authority became more subservient to the will of the state. It is within this context of increased rigidity that the Church functioned, with the results “trickling down” to the clergy. As a result of Peter’s reforms, the clergy, once solely responsible for service and obedience to the Church, were forced to become servants of the state on economic, legal, and ethical levels. The Petrine state demanded service from all groups within society according to their particular station. Since Peter did not view the clergy as a social group, but another service order, clergy came to lose rights previously held in old Muscovy. The influence of the state upon the Church as well as the clergy’s own desire to protect and provide for their own, transformed the White clergy (i.e., nonmonastic parish clergy), “into a clerical estate-caste.”2 A combination of state service obligations, tax status, juridical status, mixed with old cultural trappings and ways of thinking eighteenth century clergy existed, according to historian Gregory Freeze, in a closed subculture separate from mainstream society. The clergy found themselves on one side faced with Petrine reforms coming down from above while on the other faced the will of their parishioners. Freeze alludes to the idea that this caste-like but non-culturally cohesive group of clergy was rendered basically ineffectual to “check the whims of landlords, soften the crunch of serfdom, or even hold the stormy peasants in pious submission.”3 This weakness, Freeze suggests, allowed for revolutionary sentiment to foment in the century to follow. In 1722, a year after the abolition of the Patriarchate, Peter forced clergy to reveal any subversive information that had been confessed by a penitent as well as to swear allegiance to the tsar and state’s interests. The relationship between priest and bishop also underwent a change in the eighteenth century. The main catalyst for this change was the bishop’s subordination to the Synod that restricted the autonomy the bishop formerly enjoyed. The Synod took steps to standardize the relationship of priest and bishop as they tried to create uniformity and regularity in their bishop’s practices. “The Church,” Freeze writes, “internalized the state’s model of bureaucratization.” As a result of this strengthening of administrative ability, the bishop was able to exert more control upon the actions of priests at the parish level. Part of this control existed in the bishop’s demand that more sermons be given by priests in order to combat heresy and to increase the knowledge of the “simple minded” parishioners. In an effort to raise the status of the clergy by creating an educated clerical class, Petrine reforms called for the building of seminaries and compulsory religious education for potential clerics. From the point of view of the Church hierarchy the seminary would come to serve three major purposes. First, it could train priests

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to perform services better. The seminary would also serve the function of teaching priests Orthodox theology and by doing so aid in the fight against Old Belief and superstition. The seminary would also serve the Church by creating more educated candidates to take high-ranking positions within the Church. Further isolation of the “clerical estate” occurred as a result of a weakening of the bond between clergy and parish community during the eighteenth century. In pre-Petrine Russia the parish stood as an autonomous cultural and commercial center within the community with parishioners exerting great control over the life of the parish. The reorganization of parishes according to lines drawn up by bishops, Freeze suggests, resulted in a loss of a sense of community. Contributing to the breakdown between clergy and parish community was Peter’s demand that priests reveal antistate confessions and read state laws in the church. This “spying for the police imposed on the ‘servants of God’” is what Lenin criticizes in his 1905 tract “Socialism and Religion.”4 After the Petrine reforms, even if the Church had “internalized” models of state bureaucratization, the alliance between state and Church was indeed strong, and remained so for the next two centuries. EVE OF THE REVOLUTION At the time of the Great Reforms of the 1860s the caste-like nature of the clerical estate was challenged. In 1867, the clerical estate was abolished, and the church schools were opened to people of all classes. This opened the door for believers to pursue a genuine religious calling. Additionally, the monastics and bishops, who had often harbored contemptuous attitudes towards a parish clergy they saw as ignorant, backwards, and drunken, began to have their authority challenged by the initiatives of the less powerful parish or “White” clergy who had deeper ties to the people. Between 1860 and 1890 parish priests began to preach more and more on moral issues, becoming true “pastors,” not mere “servers” administering the sacraments. Extra-liturgical preaching, or beseda, were created, which consisted of open discussions of faith—initiated in large part as a response to a similar contemporaneous Catholic initiative. In time, secular philanthropists, clergy, and the laity began working together for the alleviation of poverty and social uplift.5 Russian Orthodox thinkers began to argue more forcefully that the Church had a greater responsibility to society, and that it should place greater emphasis on leading believers towards building a new society based on the gospel and its principles—principles like justice, mercy, and charity. After the Revolution of 1905 many of St. Petersburg’s parish clergy, to the chagrin of their more moderate brother priests, began to intensify this

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push for reform and the social application of gospel principles. In this context, Lenin drew a line in the sand, making something of an appeal to the more reform-minded and sometimes radical clergy: However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the “servants of God.” We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cozy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.6

These “awakened” clergy, as Lenin described them, leaned towards socialism as early as 1905 when a group of 32 parish priests joined with lay Christian socialists to propose reforms that included the separation of church and state, democratic church administration, a move to the Gregorian calendar (instead of the Julian), and the use of the vernacular (instead of archaic Church Slavonic) for church services.7 Hailing primarily from St. Petersburg, these highly educated priests typically studied at the St. Petersburg Ecclesiastical Academy and had regular contact with other students and intellectuals pursuing secular careers. Defying the stereotype of the backwards, drunken, uneducated rural priest with no religious vocation, these priests were well equipped to grapple with Russia’s most pressing problems. Moving beyond simply performing liturgical rites, they saw their mission as deeply connected to the world around them. In this vein, these priests created the Society for Moral-Religious Enlightenment, in which they developed an earth-centered social gospel message for late Imperial Russia—a message not dissimilar to the one promulgated by their contemporary in America, Walter Rauschenbusch, whose 1907 Christianity and the Social Crisis8 conjured up the voices of the Old Testament prophets to critique American capitalism. The most prominent of these renovationist clergy was Alexander Vvedenskii, who attributed the decline of the Church to reactionary clergy and the Church’s rejection of science. His goal was to renew the church in order to correct the causes of clerical conservatism. On becoming a priest in

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1914, Vvedenskii immediately began implementing liturgical innovations that, he hoped, would enliven parish life through greater inclusion of the laity in church services. Similarly, Boiarskii, a priest and close friend of Vvedenskii, took an interest in the plight of factory workers and became more radical—eventually accepting a kind of fusion of Christian morality and the ideals of the burgeoning revolutionary movements. The renovationists made some advances after the abdication of the Tsar when Vladimir Lvov became the chief procurator and purged a number of conservative bishops from the Church, laying the groundwork for a long awaited church council that would save the Church from the stagnation and backwardness brought on by the Petrine reforms of the 18th century. In March 1917, the reforming and and radical clergy of St. Petersburg created the Union of Democratic Clergy and Laity—an organization that was socialist in character, opposed the restoration of the monarchy, and advocated for the separation of Church and state.9 From the fall of the provisional government in February 1917 the renovationists remained in a kind of limbo. Long awaited Church reforms had not come quickly enough and the future of the Church, so intimately linked to the state, was uncertain. It was not until after the October Revolution that the renovationists, in the form of the Living Church, would find their place in the new Soviet society. The Bolsheviks were initially reluctant to take the renovationists on as partners, but in 1921, the Soviet government sought to use the renovationists as a wedge against what they considered to be a reactionary official Orthodox Church. The 1921 famine created a pretext for an attack on the Church. The Bolsheviks confiscated Church valuables and liturgical items containing precious metals and jewels. They were seized from the churches and monasteries and sold in order to mitigate the effects of the famine. This confiscation of wealth weakened the Church and, by 1922, helped prepare a path for Soviet sponsored renovationist control of the Church. The Bolsheviks’ goal was not to present an alternative vision for religion in Russia, but to divide and destroy the Church in its entirety. The renovationists then established their own supreme Church administration to replace the former Church administration; however, lay believers saw the renovationists as traitors who had displaced legitimate Church authority, including the authority of the much loved Church leader Patriarch Tikhon, who had been accused of sabotage and put under house arrest in Donskoy Monastery during the famine.10 At the first council of the Living Church in 1922 the goal was was to remove reactionary leaders, close monasteries, and to allow bishops to marry—goals of a number of progressive Church reformers before the revolution. Living Church hierarchs enlisted the help of the state to institute these measures because much of the Church opposed them. At this point splintering occurred among the renovationists themselves, some

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of whom thought the reforms were too radical. In 1923 Patriach Tikhon was released from house arrest and was deposed by a council of the Living Church; however, the majority of the laity flocked back to Tikhon, rejecting the decrees of the Living Church. By then the Living Church’s short stint as leader of Russian ecclesiastic life was over. Caught between the hatred of much of the laity and the suspicions of the new Soviet authorities, they were left with no support. Following the downfall of the Living Church, the new Soviet government ramped up its persecution of religious activity. The 1929 Religious Laws forbid all manner of Church societies and Bible study, and relegated churches to the performance of rituals. By 1930 all monasteries were shut down. This led to an underground network of believers who met secretly to pray and, in some cases, continue living as monks and nuns “in the world.” In the years that followed it became professional and social suicide to be seen entering a place of worship. These attacks would, in part, cost the revolution the support of large segments of the peasantry during Stalin’s drive for forced collectivization who, rather than viewing the Soviet authorities as liberators, would see them in nearly apocalyptic terms—as godless militants, intent on destroying their cherished traditional culture. The peasants of Ukraine, the Volga, the Northern Caucasus, and other areas resisted Stalin’s collectivization policies, uniting as a class—the village against the state—to defend their traditions and livelihoods. These peasants understood the state’s incursions not as economic policy, but as a “culture war” leveled by an anti-Christian conquering power. After the treatment of the Church in the first decade after the revolution, the traditionally religious peasantry had reasons to be suspicious. And while the Bolsheviks’ stated aim was an end to the role of the exploitative Kulaks, they were also intent on eradicating the culture and local economies of the “pre-modern” peasantry.11 Rumors of a return to serfdom swept the countryside, along with tales of slaughtered peasants, and fear of the beginnings of the reign of the antichrist. The peasants, rightly, equated communism with atheism, and responded accordingly. Collectivization efforts were met with forms of agricultural luddism—the destruction of crops, livestock, and machines, culminating in the March Fever of 1930, a mass peasant uprising. By the late 1930s the collective farm had won out and resistance took new, subtler forms—refusal to work, sabotage, and laziness.12 One wonders if a different approach to the “problem” of religion in Russia—and more specifically to the reactionary character of the Russian Orthodox Church—could have led to a different kind of Soviet state. While many Church leaders were staunch monarchists, and Russian Orthodoxy generally served as a bulwark against socialist conceptions of the state and morality, other progressive and even revolutionary minded clergy and laity

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shared common goals with socialist revolutionaries by 1917.13 Perhaps a more organic revolutionary process could have unfolded if religious sentiment was understood as an ally on the road to socialism. Instead, traditional structures of religious life were upended and religious life was dogmatically understood as antithetical to Marxism. Yet, focusing on the material origins of religious feeling, Lenin wrote that “the combating of religion . . . must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion.”14 He continues: No educational book can eradicate religion from the minds of masses who are crushed by capitalist hard labour, and who are at the mercy of the blind destructive forces of capitalism, until those masses themselves learn to fight this root of religion, fight the rule of capital in all its forms, in a united, organised, planned and conscious way.15

If material conditions and exploitation are the rotten roots that give rise to religion, then these roots must first be addressed. The continued existence of religious feeling in “really existing” socialist states presents an interesting problem for the materialist who expects the demise of religion once the conditions that “produce” religion are “remedied.” In a similar vein, Marx wrote that, “religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”16 If religion is the “sigh of the oppressed,” then the Marxist should not look to critique religion on ideological grounds, but to address the roots of oppression that give rise to religious feeling. But what if after the revolution people continue to “sigh”? In their firm faith in dialectical materialism, the Bolsheviks believed that the establishment of the socialist state would, in time, give way to the “withering away” of religion. Perhaps it was this firm conviction (one might say dogmatism) that led them to opportunistically divide and conquer not just the reactionary elements in the Orthodox Church, but to attack all expression of religious faith and feeling, as if the two were one and the same. But perhaps no amount of material progress will quell the urge to answer life’s ultimate questions: Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Do my loved ones live on after they die? Why am I inspired by beauty and why do I feel, at times, like I was made for another world? Perhaps the fact that this spiritual yearning pre-dates class society is a sign that it is, to use a phrase generally maligned on the left, elemental to “human nature” and that it cannot be uprooted en masse, nor should it be if we are to respect human dignity. The Soviet state, both under Lenin and Stalin, did not wipe out religious sentiment—it simply drove its expression underground and, when advantageous, channeled it for the state’s purposes, both in the form of

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a tightly controlled patriarchate under Stalin and subsequent party leaders, and when the state needed to comfort and inspire the nation. Eleven days after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin spoke to the people of Russia. After addressing the crowd with the customary greeting of “comrades,” his language shifted. For the first time he employed language that would have been familiar and comforting to many, but seemed, in this instance, out of place. He addressed the people not just as “comrades,” but as “brothers and sisters.” This form of intimate address was the language of the Church—the language of the opening greetings of a prepared sermon. NOTES 1. Gregory Freeze, The Russian Levites (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 218. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 222. 4. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion.” 5. Jennifer Hedda, His Kingdom Come (Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), 62. 6. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion.” 7. Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovation, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2002), 7. 8. W. Rauschenbosch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: MacMillan, 1907). 9. Roslof, Red Priests. 10. Ibid. 11. See Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996). 12. Ibid. 13. Indeed, a number of leading bishops fled Russia during the Civil War and established the monarchist Russian Orthodox Church in Exile which broke off communication and liturgical concelebration, on principle, with the Russian Church throughout the Soviet period. 14. Vladimir Lenin, “The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion,” Marxists Internet Archive (May, 1909). https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/ works/1909/may/13.htm. 15. Ibid. 16. Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” Marxists Internet Archive (January 1844). https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm

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CHAPTER 40

A CRITIQUE OF DAVID HARVEY’S CONCEPTION OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Collin Chambers

Though David Harvey is not a “China scholar” per se, he is someone many people and activists outside of academia read to gain knowledge about particular matters. He is one of the most prominent contemporary Marxists in academia. If he is classifying the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as somehow “neoliberal,” then it naturally affects the degree of zeal that activists and workers will have to defend China against imperialism. How we relate and understand certain countries theoretically affects the way we view them politically. Understanding and interpreting post-reform China as “neoliberal,” in a process of “neoliberalization,” or even “capitalist” is problematic both theoretically and politically. This is not saying that we should not be critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the current developmental path they are deploying, but we need to keep in mind the consequences of how we conceptualize China in the age of global

The 2017 Hampton Reader, pages 469–479 Copyright © 2019 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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capitalism (i.e., imperialism). This short piece seeks to display and critique David Harvey’s conception of post reform China as “neoliberal” and the theoretical foundations of his understanding of post-reform China (1978 to present), in particular his important theoretical concept of the “spatial fix” developed in the early 1980s right at the time of the “opening up” of the PRC. In addition, this piece seeks to provide a more sufficient historical and theoretical understanding of post-reform China in global political economic space. In David Harvey’s (2005) book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, he argues that: “In so far as neoliberalism requires a large, easily exploited, and relatively powerless labour force, then China certainly qualifies as a neoliberal economy, albeit ‘with Chinese characteristics’” (p. 144). Harvey explains and understands the dynamic transformations in the Chinese political economy as a form of neoliberalism that looks similar to the West. Harvey (2005) provides a succinct definition of neoliberalism: Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state . . . must also set up those military, defense, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. (pp. 2–3)

Harvey (2005) continues, stating that “[a]lmost all states . . . embraced, sometimes voluntarily and in other instances in response to coercive pressures, some version of neoliberal theory,” and that “even contemporary China . . . appears to be headed in this direction” (p. 3). Additionally, Harvey (2005) argues that China is an outcome of a “particular kind of neoliberalism interdigitated with authoritarian centralized control,” or is in the midst of going through “neoliberalization with Chinese characteristics” (p. 34). The “restoration of class power” through accumulation by dispossession is part of the process of neoliberalization (Harvey, 2005, p. 79), and has, according to Harvey, occurred in China despite the fact that the almost 90 million-strong CCP is still in control of the Chinese state apparatuses. Harvey argues that a form of primitive accumulation or “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2003) is taking place in post-reform China, and that the word “primitive” in Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation is not so “primitive” as it is occurring in the here and now in China. Peasants are stripped from their means of production and means of subsistence in the countryside, and forced to go to the city centers for work, and contribute to

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the rapid urbanization that has been occurring in China since the capitalist reforms. Harvey himself does not give any concrete examples of peasants moving to the city centers because of accumulation by dispossession. There are those like Arrighi (2007) who argues in his book Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century that we should keep our distance away from Harvey’s conception of China as neoliberal, because of the role of the CCP in the economy, and the fact that the rapid transformations within China post-Mao have been based on agricultural reforms that have been “relatively egalitarian” (Arrighi, 2007). The agricultural reforms have been led by distribution of land that is quite different from the images portrayed in his final section of Capital Volume I (Marx 1990, pp. 873–940). Throughout the reform process land has been redistributed, thus enabling farmers not to lose control of their means of production and to be involved in other non-agricultural rural activities (see Amin, 2013; Arrighi, 2007). Additionally, some show that migration from the countryside to the cities in China is drastically different and more organized in contrast with experiences from places like Brazil and India because of the continued state and collective ownership of the land in China (see Amin, 2013). For example, in China there are not the kinds of slums that exist around cities as in Brazil and India. Harvey (2003) differentiates primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession, by saying they are interrelated but distinct. Accumulation by dispossession and primitive accumulation are aspects of neoliberalism, but I argue that just because one or both occur in a given social formation it does mean that the social formation is “neoliberal” as such. According to Marx (1990, pp. 873–904) primitive accumulation is the historical violent process in the changes in the class relations of production and the separation of people (mostly people from the countryside) from their means of subsistence. However, Harvey describes “accumulation by dispossession,” on the other hand “in a more general sense to include the erosion of such common property rights as state pensions, paid vacations, and access to education and healthcare” (Webber, 2008, p. 401). In China today, on the contrary, we actually see the rise of wages, pensions, and access to education and healthcare to the masses of people (see Lardy, 2012). Additionally, migrant workers who congregate into the city centers to work maintain legal land rights to parcels of land in the countryside and thus are not completely stripped from their means of subsistence through the current urban-centric developmental plan of the CCP (see Amin, 2013; Lim, 2014). George Lin (2009) complicates Harvey’s (2003, 2005) conceptions of “accumulation by dispossession” in relation to China through his critique of neoliberal formulations on post-reform China. These formulations, according to Lin, do not take account of the “fundamental social and political

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conditions” that create the conditions for the kind of land development that is currently pursued in China. Lin (2009) states that: In a country with an established tradition to use land as a basic source of subsistence, concern over food and social security, not just for some but for everyone in the society, has taken a position preceding over many others including utility maximization, market order, and exclusiveness of individual access to land to warrant its long-term efficient use. This is further compounded by a transitional socialist political economy in which the Party-state sets the parametres for the operation of market forces. (p. 10)

Thus, the continued existence and involvement of the CCP in all economic and social affairs, and the long revolutionary history of the Chinese masses, problematizes much of the conceptions of what neoliberalism and neoliberalization look like in post-reform China. Additionally, Harvey’s argument that Chinese workers are “relatively powerless” and “easily exploitable” is incorrect in both a historical and contemporary sense. Workers strikes and protests in China have been steadily on the rise in the reform period (Friedman & Lee, 2010), and wages and conditions have improved for Chinese working in privately owned and foreign enterprises as a result. Half of China’s workers are still employed in state owned enterprises (Hurst, 2015) and it is in the historical memory of Chinese workers of the “iron rice bowl” where, during the Maoist era, Chinese workers enjoyed more control of the productive process, cheap living, and large state pensions that went to all. The Chinese state dictates the geographical parameters of where global capital can invest in China. The coastal regions (where the Special Economic Zones exist) are famous for allowing the influx of global capital into China, while the inner regions in China are more heavily controlled by state protections. Thus, the workers in the inner regions of China are protected by the existence of the CCP in the state apparatus, which dictates capital rather than capital dictating the state as is often the case in capitalist countries. If it were not for the existence of the CCP in the Chinese state apparatus, all of China would be under the dictates of global capital, rather than just the coastal regions, but even in the coastal regions capital has to deal with particular regulations that are set in place by the Chinese state. The way the Chinese state dealt with the 2007–2008 global financial crisis was drastically different from how the western capitalist countries dealt with the crisis, especially the United States. While the U.S. government bailed out the big banks that started the crisis to begin with (and left foreclosed on homeowners to largely fend for themselves), China did something quite different. China was heavily affected by the crisis because of its dependence on exports to the capitalist West. 67,000 factories were shut down and 20 million jobs were lost quickly in export manufacturing centers along the

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southeast coast, and especially in Guangdong Province, from the lack of demand for China’s products of export (Lardy, 2012; Wong, 2008). However, in 2009 when GDP expansion in China was at its lowest in almost a decade, consumption grew, wages went up, and the government created enough jobs to deal with the massive layoffs that occurred due to the global economic crisis (Lardy, 2012). Due to the continued existence of central planning that still occurs in post-reform China, the Chinese state was able to offset the crisis by heavily investing in large infrastructure projects and increasing wages and pensions, and so on, for the people of China. One can easily imagine that this would not be possible if the CCP was not in power. The CCP, rather than being an agent that perpetuates neoliberalism is a political agent that actively resists neoliberalism and that is why capital’s mouthpieces in the west scorn it. This solution to the 2007–2008 crisis does not sound “neoliberal” in the least bit. One could argue that it is more of a “Keynesian” response, and that Keynesianism is just another form or regime of capitalism. However, this so-called “Keynesian” response to the crisis would not be possible if it was not for the CCP, which actively resists neoliberalism and imperialism. If a more western friendly “neoliberal” political party dominated China, the Chinese people would have faced austerity and the gutting of social programs rather than the increased social spending on part of the Chinese government. Harvey’s conception of neoliberalism is limiting in the sense that they do not sufficiently “acknowledge those states that are not only not neoliberal, but are antagonistic to neoliberalism” (Ford, 2017, p. 43). It is important to theorize about the contemporary form of global capitalism (neoliberalism), but we must also theorize about how to transcend global capitalism. Scholars, such as Harvey who deploy the neoliberal framework to critique contemporary conditions do not take in account enough the actually-existing resistance to global capital and neoliberalism, which includes particular nation-states and political agents. As Ford (2017) states: “[w]e need to open up our Eurocentric academic frameworks and learn from those who have done what we want to do: break free from imperialism and exploitation” (p. 50). Derek Ford posits a new way of understanding neoliberalism in the current era of imperialism that sees the dominance of a unipolar power of the United States. He suggests that rather than conceptualizing neoliberalism as an economic and ideological condition that is being applied everywhere, neoliberalism is: an ideological and political offensive waged by the global bourgeoisie against the ascendant power of organized labor in the advanced capitalist countries and . . . the solidified power of the global working class that resulted from the wave of socialist and anti-colonial struggles starting with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and picking up steam after World War II (Ford, 2017, p. 36, emphasis added).

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Understanding post-reform China in the context of the current era of imperialism and with this understanding of that neoliberalism really is, we see a country that is simply trying to rise within a system dominated by the global imperialist class camp, its “international” political and economic institutions, and the logics of global capital. Though China’s opening up in general has helped global capital to temporarily solve its crisis of overaccumulation in the late 1960s and 1970s, I argue that China is rising and developing in a fashion that offers an alternative for other developing countries to Western dominated developmental methods. And because of the historical communist values that root back to the days of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, China’s rise within the global capitalist system challenges Western economic and political hegemony in the global economy in general, and in particular neoliberal capitalism. China, and more specifically the CCP, represent “actually existing resistance to neoliberalism,” and historically global capitalism in general. This resistance to neoliberal capitalism, the unipolar dominance of the United States and Western international political economic institutions can be seen by the development of the newly established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is similar to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), but is an “Asian” bank that is actually controlled by Asian countries. Mirsha (2016) states: the AIIB “can be termed as a manifestation of Xi Jinping’s idea that Asian powers should be directly responsible for key decisions that might shape the future of the continent in times to come. In a broader economic sense, it mirrors his idea of ‘Asia for Asians’” (p. 164). The AIIB is a bank that invests in large infrastructure projects across the Asia-Pacific region and Eurasia. As Xi Jinping stated: “The AIIB will enable China to undertake more global obligations and help make the current global economic governance system more just, equitable and effective” (Teo, 2016). Additionally, Xi lauded the AIIB as a bank that would work to invest in “high quality, low-cost” projects” (Teo, 2016). The establishment of the AIIB has shown that China has successfully “tried to address the concerns of developing countries that have been feeling marginalized and under-represented at the international financial forums” (Mishra, 2016, p. 172). The AIIB is also seen as way to finance China’s New Silk Road Strategy, and to spearhead China’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiatives (Hong, 2016; Mishra, 2016). The “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “Maritime Silk Road of the Twenty-First Century” respectively are “contemporary versions of the centuries-old Silk Road trade routes” (Hong, 2016, p. 1). The OBOR initiative is an attempt to “boost regional trade and economic development in Asia through inter-regional infrastructure improvement and industrial transfer . . . [through] high-speed railway connectivity and maritime trade via deep-water ports and harbors” across Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region (Hong, 2016, p. 5). As of late, China has been

A Critique of David Harvey’s Conception of the People’s Republic of China    475 winning over many developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America with preferential loans and grants for infrastructure development. Since the announcement of the AIIB proposal, many Asian countries have been eager to gain financial assistance from China for large-scale public infrastructure projects that they are incapable of self-funding (Hong, 2016, p. 7)

The United States has refused to join and has reservations about their allies such as the United Kingdom and Germany already joining the AIIB, marking a possible emerging rift between the classical imperialist powers. After 2008, China has become “more proactive, assertive and globally driven . . . Xi has abandoned China’s long-held policy of ‘keeping a low profile in international affairs’ adhered to since the 1980s . . . China’s foreign policy is now more centralized [and] proactive” (Hong, 2016, p. 4). Hong (2016) and Mirsha (2016) allude to the possibility of the development of a new “Beijing Consensus” that will eventually take over global hegemony or match the “Washington Consensus.” This is cynical at worse and misguided at best. China is drastically different today from the times of Mao Zedong, but there is still much left over from the Maoist era. For example, Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of the PRC, formulated the guidelines for its foreign aid programs called “Eight Principles,” which are still followed today in China strictly. Zhou Enlai announced the guidelines when he was visiting Africa from December 1963 to February 1964. The “Eight Principles” are: mutual benefit; no conditions attached; the no-interest or low-interest loans would not create a debt burden for the recipient country; to help the recipient nation develop its economy, not to create its dependence on China; to help the recipient country with projects that needs less capital and quick returns; the aid in kind must be of high quality at the world market price; to ensure that the technology can be learned and mastered by the locals; the Chinese experts and technicians working for the aid recipient country are treated equally as the local ones with no extra benefits to them (Jiang, 2011).

China is often criticized for the principle of “no strings attached,” to loans but China defends this principle by upholding the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence,” which respects recipient countries’ right to independently select their own path and model of development, and believes that every country should explore a development path suitable to its unique conditions. Therefore, China never uses foreign aid as a means to interfere in recipient countries’ internal affairs or seek political privileges for itself (Jiang, 2011).

In the context of the current unipolar imperialist world we live in, the AIIB should be a welcomed development. Long time Australian defense and intelligence analyst Hugh White (2014) certainly knows the global class

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character of the AIIB. In this statement Hugh White showcases the fear the global imperialist class camp has of the AIIB even though it is a gross mischaracterization of it and of China itself: Do not imagine for a moment that the AIIB is just about economics. For decades, US strategic and political pre-eminence has been underwritten by Washington’s primary role in international financial institutions, like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. So, Americans know how effective the AIIB could prove to be in expanding China’s influence in Asia, not just economically, but politically and strategically too. (para. 2)

Though the same logics of capital are being deployed within the AIIB with debt-financed infrastructure projects, the AIIB is clearly qualitatively different than Western examples of loaning money to developing countries where institutions like the IMF enforce neoliberal structural adjustment policies of the debt-incumbent countries, in order to continue to receive money to fund large developmental projects. The AIIB is developing in the face of international neoliberal political economic institutions and is showcasing to the world that alternatives are available in the era of unipolar imperialism. When analyzing the AIIB, or anything else for that matter, “a Marxist should see the whole as well as the parts. A frog in a well says, ‘The sky is no bigger than the mouth of the well.’ That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well. If it said, ‘A part of the sky is the size of the mouth of a well,’ that would be true, for it tallies with the facts” (Mao, 1972, p. 221). Harvey uses the concept of the “spatial fix” to display how capital temporarily solves its internal contradictions and inevitable crises. Capital expands geographically through fixed capital investment to other regions (e.g., within a city, to different states, and even to other countries) to fix crises of overaccumulation and devaluation in specific places. However, and unfortunately for capital, the newly invested fixed capital eventually becomes a further barrier for continued capitalist accumulation that must be transcended again by another “spatial fix.” Capital goes around cities and the globe to spatially fix itself while leaving a path of devaluation and social destruction. Thus, the more places that are open and friendly to capitalist investment the better off capital is in the long run. Harvey (1982/2006, p. 428) puts it this way: “The more open the world is to geographical restructuring [i.e., capitalist restructuring], the more easily temporarily resolutions to problems of overaccumulation can be found.” He continues: overaccumulation at home can be relieved only if surplus money capital (or its equivalent in commodities) is sent abroad to create fresh productive forces in new regions on a continuously accelerating basis. Furthermore, the productive forces have to be used in a certain way if capital is to be reproduced.

A Critique of David Harvey’s Conception of the People’s Republic of China    477 The social relations appropriate to capitalism—wage labour—have to be in place and capable of parallel expansion (Harvey, 1982/2006, p. 434).

The opening up of China provided capital with a vast space to perform a “spatial fix” (Harvey, 1982/2006). The theoretical foundation of the “spatial fix” is generally how Harvey understands post-reform China. When China “opened up” after Deng Xiaoping and the capitalist roaders took control of the CCP in 1978, global capital was able to unload surplus capital to temporarily solve the crisis of overaccumulation that plagued western countries in the 1970s. China provided global capital with huge new consumer and labor markets that can be easily exploited through low pay and a disciplined workforce. The way David Harvey conceptualizes China as “neoliberal” and as a “spatial fix” for global capital disregards the economic and social developments made during the Maoist era that created the material foundation for the market reforms to take off at such a pace that it did. Harvey’s theoretical fixation with the “spatial fix” really brushes off of the economic and social achievements that were made under Mao Zedong and abstracts away from the revolutionary history of the PRC. The Maoists of course knew of the utmost importance in developing the productive forces in order to create the material foundations for socialism. However, the Maoists wanted to develop China’s underdeveloped and feudal-like productive forces and social relations through socialist means not capitalist means as the capitalist-roaders do who currently head the CCP (FN: Deng Xiaoping being the most famous “capitalist roader.” Capitalist roaders believed that China had to allow for some degree of capitalist accumulation to take place in China in order to develop China’s productive forces before they could think of creating and having socialism). There were impressive economic and social successes during the Mao era that created the foundation for China to become so attractive to foreign capital after the reforms were put in place. Between 1952 and 1976, industrial output increased annually by 11.2%, and agricultural production had a twofold increase in the same period (Kim, 2012). During the Maoist era, peasants were literally turned into workers through the exact opposite means of primitive accumulation. All the means of production were brought to them in countryside (e.g., the backyard steel furnaces) which allowed the Chinese peasantry to become well trained and educated about the productive process within heavy industry and thus benefited global capital when it came flooding into China in the early 1980s because the Chinese workforce was so well educated (both manually and mentally). The social relations necessary for capital to function in China were created during the Maoist era as well. Old feudal and patriarchal social relations such as foot-binding were finally done away with during Mao’s time and women were very much liberated in the sense that they joined men in the workforce and were freed

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from constraining sphere of social reproductive tasks in the communes that developed in the countryside and in cities such as Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. We see that the way Harvey theoretically understands post-reform China through the theoretical concept of the “spatial-fix” and as being “neoliberal” albeit with Chinese characteristics is wrong both politically and theoretically because it abstracts away from the current class struggle that is now occurring on the global level between the imperialist forces and the forces that are finally trying to arise within a system created and dominated by the imperialist powers. In addition Harvey theorization of post-reform China abstracts away from the revolutionary heritage of the Chinese people and the CCP. Though the capitalist roaders are very much in charge of the CCP, we must keep our critiques of China’s post-reform social formation in a global context. China opened up not to appease the western capitalist countries or to help global capital to spatially fix itself, but to help develop China’s productive forces and to obtain the newest technologies from the west to create the material foundations for a prosperous socialist society where the material conditions for poverty are nonexistent. Because of the revolutionary heritage of the CCP, as long as the party still exists and is in control of the Chinese state apparatus there is hope that the real socialists and communists in the party can take control of the party and return to socialist policies that do not allow the Chinese people to be exploited by capital. There are many cases in recent Chinese history where we can see that there are still real socialists and communists in the party who heavily critique the negative consequences of the market reforms that began after the death of Mao Zedong. Despite all its flaws, the contemporary CCP maintains and perpetuates the socialist foundation in China and thus should be looked upon as an example of “actually existing resistance to neoliberalism” (Ford, 2017), and should be defended on this basis and within this context. REFERENCES Amin, S. (2013). China 2013. Monthly Review, 64(10). Retrieved from https:// monthlyreview.org/2013/03/01/china-2013/#enl Arrighi, G. (2007). Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the twenty-first century. London, England: Verso. Ford, D. (2017). Education and the production of space. New York, NY: Routledge. Friedman, E., & Lee, C. K. (2010). Remaking the world of Chinese labor: A 30 year retrospective. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 48(30, 507–533. Harvey, D. (2003. The new imperialism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

A Critique of David Harvey’s Conception of the People’s Republic of China    479 Harvey, D. (2006). The limits to capital. New York, NY: Verso. (Originally published in 1982) Hong, Y. (2016). Motivation behind China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiatives and establishment of the Asian infrastructure investment bank. Journal of Contemporary China, 1(15), 353–368. Hurst, W. (2015). Chinese labor divided. Dissent Magazine, Spring 2015. Retrieved from https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/chinese-labor-divided Jiang, S. (2011, November 29). China’s principles in foreign aid. China.org.cn Retrieved from http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2011-11/29/content _24030234.htm Kim, C. (2012). Lenin and the new economic policy: Can market methods be used to build socialism? In A. McInerney (Ed.), China: Revolution and counterrevolution (pp. 81–86), San Francisco, CA: PSL. Lardy, N. R. (2012). Sustaining China’s economic growth after the global financial crisis. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute For International Economics Press. Lim, K. F. (2014). “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”: Uneven development, variegated neoliberalization and the dialectical differentiation of state spatiality. Progress in Human Geography, 38(2), 221–247. Lin, G. C. S. (2009). Developing China: Land, politics and social conditions. New York, NY: Routledge. Mao, T.-T. (1972). Quotations from chairman Mao Tse Tung. Peking, China: Foreign Languages Press. Marx, K. (1990). Capital ,Volume 1. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Mishra, R. (2016). Asian infrastructure investment bank: An assessment. Indian Quarterly, 72(2), 163–176. Teo, E. (2016, January 17). AIIB kicks off with $72m boost from China. The Straits Times Asia. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/ aiib-kicks-off-with-72m-boost-from-china Webber, M. (2008). The places of primitive accumulation in rural China. Economic Geography 84(4): 395–421. White, H. (2014, October 29). AIIB: America’s influence in the balance. The Straight Times. Retrieved from http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/aiib-americas -influence-in-the-Balance Wong, E. (2008, November 13). Factories shut, china workers are suffering. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/ asia/14china.html