Also published by OpEdNews, Countercurrents, and The Rag Blog.

Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown

by Max Rameau

Nia Press, 2008

Review by Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com

I first heard about a group called Take Back the Land, which was illegally moving homeless families into empty homes in Miami, in a study group about the Civil Rights movement and the grassroots organizing that made it so powerful. The reference was highly appropriate. In many ways, Take Back the Land is a direct heir of that bottom-up, Black self-empowerment, civil disobedient, movement-building tradition, and is one of the most inspiring examples of a group renewing and developing that tradition today.

In our moment of crisis and stagnation, here is a group full of creativity, improvisation, and highly potent political analysis. Through its actions, the group proclaims: ‘Families are being foreclosed on and kicked out onto the street? We’re not going to lobby Washington and hope for some crumbs to come down. We’ll take matters into our own hands and move people directly into homes!’ This is precisely the spirit of direct action and participatory democracy that kick-started the Civil Rights movement, and the spirit that we need if we are to escape the human suffering that the elite are imposing on the poor and working class in this economic crisis.

Max Rameau, author of this book and a principal organizer in Take Back the Land Miami, came and spoke in Philadelphia a few months ago. I was struck not only by how charismatic and effective a speaker he was (something I could say about many smooth-talking political or corporate salesmen of our age), but by how Max was able to break down complex, abstract theoretical questions into common language that was easily understood. In this way, he demystifies politics and translates concepts usually reserved for academics or professionals in such a way that average, everyday people can take away something new and useful from the exchange. It’s clear that his primary goal is not an ego-trip to show off his brilliance, or to sell books and make money, but to do something much more difficult and meaningful: to spark movement to force the US government to recognize housing as a human right.

This book is written in that same frank style. In fact, it’s basically a how-to on grassroots housing organizing. It’s short – only 132 pages – but all you need to know is laid out here: the political context of Miami and nationally in terms of lack of affordable housing and gentrification that drives poor and Black people out of their homes, the strategic decisions and organizing that go into launching a new organization and campaign, the challenges and joys of working with homeless people, and the difficult and deceptive terrain of interacting with politicians, who are often agents of larger and more powerful corporate forces. Max Rameau just tells the story of his group, but in such a provocatively specific way. He explains to us exactly how things were done, who did them, who interfered and how, and he’s not at all afraid to name names.

The book centers on the incredible story of the Umoja Village, a shantytown built by Take Back the Land and allies on a vacant lot in a poor Black section of Miami. Because “In South Florida… local governments responded to the [housing] crisis by actively decreasing the number of low-income housing units” (pg. 23), Take Back the Land took the initiative to seize land and invite homeless people to take up residence there. The purpose of the action was not only to house people, an immediate need, but to draw attention to the crisis and to the government’s inaction, thereby hopefully shaming them into creating more low-income housing.

In the long run, the group’s “Political Objectives” were as follows (72):
“1. House and feed people
2. Assert the right of the black community to control land in the black community.
3. Build a new society.”

Even before the land seizure, much groundwork had been laid, including debating the strategy and politics of this type of action, discussing the possibility with allies and neighbors of the site, and trying to line up legal, fundraising, and other forms of support that would be necessary.  Citing a legal precedent that homeless people had a right to not be evicted from territory where their basic living needs were met, the group was able to dissuade the police from immediately evicting them once they did move onto the land.

Seeing the police cars back away without arresting anyone made a strong impression on the homeless and poor people moving onto this land. “This was a real, tangible victory that the people witnessed with their own eyes” (65).

With shanty homes and compost toilets built, the Umoja Village stood on the land for 6 months, and was self-organized by the homeless residents. Take Back the Land prioritized that their group, while inspiring and leading this takeover, would become increasingly unnecessary in the day-to-day operation of the shantytown, so that the residents had total control.  The self-empowerment of the homeless was one of the most inspiring aspects of this book.  You read about individuals who had been victims for decades, or their entire lives, and grappling with mental illness and/or drug addiction, becoming confident by working with one another and making the decisions that affect their lives.

“[W]e assert that the most marginal members of society are better qualified to run their ‘city’ or ‘village’ than the college educated elected official and bureaucrat. We not only asserted the proposition, we proved it as Umoja’s residents made real decisions about the rules of the Village and the manner in which it was run” (75).

Here is precisely the principle of participatory democracy that Ella Baker championed in the Civil Rights movement. Rather than turn for help to political elites, religious leaders, business leaders, or whomever, we can take matters into our own hands and manage our own affairs. Forget what passes for “American Democracy.” Real democracy is about ‘people power’. Demos in Greek means people, cracy means rule. Put it together – Democracy: Rule by the people.

Unfortunately, true democracy is rarely tolerated by the U.S. corporate and governmental establishment, and that was the case in Miami. Shortly after the Umoja’s 6-month anniversary celebrations, a “suspicious” fire burned down the entire village. Before Max, the homeless residents, and allies could clear the wreckage and begin the process of rebuilding, the city of Miami sent in the police to permanently evict them from the land.

What follows the disastrous fire and eviction is perhaps the most intriguing section of the book. Take Back the Land, still trying to re-occupy the site, is approached by a “progressive” city councilperson, who offers to house all the homeless residents in a new low-income housing unit that Take Back the Land would develop. The group then has to debate whether to accept this deal, which would mean giving up some of their oppositional character against the government, in order to gain the immediate goal of moving people off the street and into homes.

The difficulty of this decision opens up an important question that all grassroots movements need to address at some point: whether to compromise with government/”the system” and receive tangible gains, or hold fast to ideals and principles and potentially miss some opportunities.  It is never an easy decision.

In Max’s words, “as the opposition, it is difficult for us to accept victory, even when we win. Virtually any settlement between us and our political targets can be interpreted as a sell out simply because there is an agreement or because those in power no longer stand against the demand. Consequently, we, as a movement, must clearly define what constitutes victory, particularly in the context of the US political and economic system” (118).

If the goal is to “Build a new society” and that necessitates sweeping away the existing order of oppression, how do you compromise with elites whose job is to uphold that very order? On the other hand, because those elites have the power to give you what you need, at least in the short term, how can you avoid accepting a deal when they agree to give you something you need?

Ultimately, it is a question about “revolutionary reforms” – theoretically a change in policy (reform) that leads to the empowerment of a movement, and therefore the ability to carry on further campaigns towards revolution. But what does that actually look like in a capitalist society that has successfully undercut and co-opted grassroots social movements for the last century or more, and which even more skillfully ignores and silences those movements so that they feel powerless and marginalized?

In a situation as desperate as our own, how do you avoid the temptation to work within the system, even if it means abandoning some of your political principles? And how do you stay true to those ideals while at the same time engaging that system to gain concrete victories?

I encourage all to read this book and discover how Take Back the Land wrestled with these and other pressing strategic questions. I hope it won’t be a “spoiler” to say that in the end the city of Miami betrayed the “deal” and the land was never restored, nor was there any new low-income housing construction. The government failed the public yet again.

The U.S. housing crisis has only gotten worse since this book was written in 2007, especially now that the economy has tanked. An estimated 3.5 million homes will be foreclosed in 2010, a 25% jump from 2009. The work of Take Back the Land therefore becomes increasingly relevant and inspiring. As Michael Moore’s latest film Capitalism: A Love Story highlighted, the group has gone from taking over one piece of land to moving many homeless families into abandoned buildings throughout Miami. In this way, they have continued to make headlines and push the issue of housing as a human right.

“There is no way to sugarcoat the loss of Umoja Village. The land we controlled for just over six months is now out of our control, a tremendous defeat for the community and the movement. Our efforts to take full and legal control over the land also ended in failure. However, none should confuse the killing of a deal with the killing of a movement. Umoja not only forged a model for the adversarial takeover of land, but also established a potential conclusion to the struggle: community ownership of that land.” (130)

To solve the immense problems we face in this crisis, not just housing but unemployment, lack of health care, attacks on immigrants and Muslims, the endless wars, climate chaos, etc., requires active, confrontational, and creative social movements. Even more, it requires a return to Ella Baker’s principle of participatory democracy, the taking of power away from unsympathetic elites and into the hands of people who are directly affected by issues on the neighborhood level. Take Back the Land is a particularly striking example of a group hard at work pursuing this vision.

The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
published 1939 during the last Great Depression.
Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com, May 25, 2010

Also posted on The Rag Blog and TowardFreedom.

Arizona SB1070, signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, requires Arizona’s local and state law enforcement to demand the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally, and arrest them if they lack documents proving citizenship or legal residency. Effectively making racial profiling into state policy, this law is the latest in a series of attacks on Latin American immigrants, as well as the entire Latino community, who must live with the fear of being interrogated by police for their brown skin. Then on May 11, Arizona went one step further, outlawing the teaching of ethnic studies classes, or any classes that “are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity”. This same law also states that schools must fire English teachers who speak with a “heavy accent.”

Perhaps these new laws make sense if we imagine that undocumented immigrants are merely “aliens”, a danger to the good, mostly white citizens of this great country. But suppose we look at the problem of immigration from the perspective of the immigrants? Why are they risking life and limb to come to a foreign land, far from their home and families? Why aren’t they deterred from making this trip no matter how many walls we put up, no matter how many police collaborate with ICE, no matter how many angry armed “Minutemen” vigilantes are conscripted to guard the border?

John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, following the Joad family as they migrate to California during the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, sheds light on these questions in a way that perhaps every American can relate to. One of the most popular and well-written American books of all time, The Grapes of Wrath provides a very human perspective on the harsh lives of migrants, personified by the Joads – a family of poor sharecroppers from Oklahoma. Evicted from their family farm, just as the millions of Mexicans who have suffered enclosure from their land and become homeless and jobless because of NAFTA, the Joads travel to California in a desperate search of work, only to encounter the harassment of authorities and the hatred of the local population.

There are important differences between the “Okies” who traveled to the Southwest in the 1930s and Latino migrantes of the 2000s. The Joads, of course, were white, and did not cross a national border when they made their exodus. But at its core the story of the Joads is the story of the migrant workers, their troubles, their fears, but also their humanity, and their hope. It is a story that can inspire us to recognize the historic nature of the moment in which we live, understand why these enormous transformations are occurring, and recognize that justice for the immigrants is justice for everyone, regardless of color or citizenship status.

Enclosure

In order to understand the migrantes we first have to understand the story of their displacement, or the enclosure of their land, which has left them homeless and with no other options than to leave their homeland in search of a wage. What can The Grapes of Wrath tell us about this reality?

People usually do not resort to risky and desperate moves unless they have nothing left to lose. Steinbeck begins the Joads’ story with the loss of everything they had: the small farm on which they had sustained their family for generations by growing cotton. Young Tom Joad, fresh out of prison, returns to his home to find it deserted. “The Reverend Casy and young Tom stood on the hill and looked down on the Joad place… Where the dooryard had been pounded hard by the bare feet of children and by stamping horses’ hooves and by the broad wagon wheels, it was cultivated now, and the dark green, dusty cotton grew… ‘Jesus!’ he said at last. ‘Hell musta popped here. There ain’t nobody livin’ there.’” (51).

Mexican farmer with corn / image courtesy of "© Juan_de" on flickr

Whether as tenants or small landholders, either for subsistence or for markets, the vast majority of the poor migrantes now coming to this country are fleeing the loss of their farms and their livelihoods, just as the Joads. Perhaps for generations, maybe hundreds or even thousands of years, they had lived in connection with the land and had been able to depend on it for the survival of their families and culture. The loss of this land is devastating to those cultures, but larger forces stand to gain by driving these people into homelessness.

The phenomenal book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia 2004) details the violent origins of capitalism in 15th-17th century Europe. In it, author Silvia Federici defines the “enclosures” that were necessary for giving birth to capitalism by divorcing the European peasantry from their traditional lands and leaving them with no other choice but to sell their labor for a wage in the emerging industrial economy.

She goes on, revealing that this enclosure process remains a core element of the capitalist economy we live in:

Enclosure is precisely the part of the story we never hear about in the mainstream immigration debate in America. It is never questioned why hundreds of thousands of workers are scrambling to come to the U.S., other than for “our freedom” or to “take our jobs.” But Steinbeck boldly begins The Grapes of Wrath by highlighting the enclosure process as it operated in rural America during the Great Depression.

This famous photograph shows a family of homeless migrants fleeing the "Dust Bowl."

In the 1930s, Oklahoma was ground zero for the “Dust Bowl“. Unsustainable industrial farming practices such as the monoculture of cotton without crop rotation caused the soil to die, then be picked up by the wind and create enormous dust storms. On page 41, Steinbeck laments, “You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.” The settling layers of dust killed the crops and made it harder for small farmers to earn a living, and many were driven into debt and became tenants on land that was then technically owned by the bank. At the same time, large, wealthy landowners were able to use tractors and other new farming machinery to replace the many tenants who had previously been needed to work the land. “Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company – that’s the bank when it has land – wants tractors, not families on the land” (193).

In this passage, Steinbeck brilliantly exposes the evictions as part of the normal functioning of capitalism, as a land owner arrives to evict a tenant family:

As far as capitalism is concerned, whatever will maximize profit is the arrangement that must be pursued, regardless of the human consequences. The situation in Mexico today resembles that of Oklahoma 75 years ago. Small family farms are no longer profitable enough, and people are being thrown off their land every year by the thousands.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed into law by Bill Clinton on December 8, 1993, created the largest “free trade” zone in the world: Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The treaty stipulated that there could be no “barriers to trade”, such as a tariff/tax on foreign products. In this video MIT professor Noam Chomsky, interviewed by Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, explains how the modern enclosures in Mexico are a result of NAFTA, which has not had the effect it was promised to have for the U.S. and Mexican economies.

As mentioned by Prof. Chomsky, one direct result of NAFTA was the flooding of the Mexican market with artificially cheap agricultural products from the United States, such as corn, which is heavily subsidized by the U.S. government. From 1990-2000, the price of corn in Mexico fell by 58 percent, and as there is simply no way for the vast majority of Mexican tenant farmers to compete with this artificially low cost of American corn and other products, millions were driven into poverty and debt, and soon faced eviction.

This excellent article from the Institute for Food & Development Policy states that “Since NAFTA, 80 percent of rural Mexicans live in poverty, with 60 percent living in extreme poverty.” It also points out that as of 2004, a total of 1.7 million subsistence farmers had been pushed off their land because of NAFTA. So it should be no surprise that the number of Mexican immigrants entering the U.S. increased by 75 percent in the 5 years after NAFTA became law.

The form of enclosure has changed, but the fact has remained. People driven from their land will search for work in other places.

Xenophobia

The second great lesson The Grapes of Wrath reveals about the immigrants is how they are feared and hated, by the local population as well as the authorities, and what it means to endure and overcome this xenophobia.

Throughout the book, as the weary Joads meander west on their old jalopy, their eagerness and optimism about finding decent work and a better life in California are dashed against the rocks of poverty and hatred. Early in the book, Tom’s pregnant sister Rose-of-Sharon Joad goes on about her expectations for life in California.

But shortly after crossing the border into California, the Joad family encounters the authorities, who are less than pleased by the arrival of more migrants into their state. After setting up camp by a river, Ma settles down for a nap in the tent, only to be disturbed by a law enforcement agent who gives her a threatening welcome.

"Minutemen" vigilantes patrol the U.S.-Mexico border / picture courtesy of boinboing

It becomes clear through the story that the California police and authorities tolerate the presence of the “Okies” so they can be exploited for their extremely cheap labor. Sheriffs and rangers even guard the grounds of large private farms where migrants are bussed in. However, the cops maintain a close eye on the Okies, and are not afraid to resort to violence when they step out of line.

The Joads arrive one night in a “Hooverville,” the name for the slums on the edges of towns during the Great Depression where unemployed would set up camp. Here a contractor comes to find desperate workers, escorted by a deputy sheriff with whom Tom Joad gets into an altercation.

The goal of the authorities in the story, as in the country today, is to keep immigrants in a constant state of precariousness, where they cannot make waves for fear of being imprisoned or deported. This climate of fear is the real effect of Arizona SB1070, not to actually deport all the undocumented workers from the state, because that would hurt the economy that depends on their cheap labor. In fact, this CNN video documents that SB1070 has already driven away too many workers from the state and hurting the businesses that had employed them. It seems it has backfired so much that even Russell Pearce, the author of the legislation, has now reversed his stance and is supporting “guest worker” legislation to invite undocumented workers back into the state.

What does the climate of fear surrounding immigrants do for the U.S. capitalist economy and its ruling class?

First, it keeps undocumented immigrants in that precarious state where they will not seek help or point out injustices, nor will they try to organize unions and demand higher pay or working conditions. It guarantees they will mostly toil for less-than-minimum wages and suffer in silence. Most Americans are not even aware that since NAFTA was enacted, at least 3,000 Mexicans have died trying to cross the border. Every wall that goes up on the border drives the immigrants into more remote deserts to reach their destination, increasing the likelihood of injury and death, but precious few U.S. citizens are willing to stick their necks out to help prevent such unnecessary deaths.

Second, the xenophobia encouraged by measures like SB1070 is useful for the ruling class because it drives a racial wedge into the American working class. Instead of uniting to fight for better jobs, affordable education, health care, housing, an end to environmental nightmare and endless wars, the anger of the common people is directed at the scapegoat of the immigrant. Steinbeck illustrates this phenomenon when “a crowd of men… armed with pick handles and shotguns,” confront the Joads after they flee the Hooverville. Interrogating and threatening the Joad family, these self-styled vigilantes act just as the “Minutemen” who today rove the deserts of Arizona, looking for “illegals.”

Though these people’s anger and fear over the economy and lack of democracy in the U.S. is warranted, they are failing to confront the actual thieves and criminals who have plunged the world into a new Great Depression. Because by identifying “foreigners” and people with brown skin and different accents as the reason why wages are low and jobs are lost, corporations and politicians are able to deflect attention away from the real source of economic hardship: themselves.

Conclusion

The crisis in the Southwest in the 1930s is unfortunately similar to the situation today. Hundreds of thousands of poor migrants, their land enclosed and with nowhere to go, facing long trips through the heat of the desert and the ice of xenophobia, are nevertheless persisting to do what they need to do to feed their families.

There is a tidal wave coming north now, which resembles one that 3 generations ago came west, but like that one there will be no stopping it by putting up walls and threatening people with violence or deportation. Desperate people will always do what they need to do to survive.

The only way to stem the flow is to repair the dam that has burst, through poverty and enclosure. Latinos need decent livelihoods in Latin America before they will stop coming here, “scurrying to find work to do.” Repealing NAFTA and ending the massive corn subsidies for U.S. agribusiness would be two huge steps in the right direction. Rather than making the United States into a nasty place that no one will want to come to, why not focus on helping Mexico, Latin America and the world as a whole, to be suitable places to live, work and raise a family?

The Grapes of Wrath, though it details the hardships of the migrant workers at great length, won the Pulitzer prize and captured the hearts of the nation because it is ultimately a hopeful book that inspires us to act for positive change. John Steinbeck, flexing his radical muscles, argues in the book that by targeting the weak and poor with desperate measures such as those currently being enacted in Arizona, capitalism is only putting off its inevitable demise. “The great owners ignored the cries of history.” “[Especially,] the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”

He explains:

Many people today have heard the cries of history and are taking a stand. The website Alto Arizona is coordinating a national day of action on Saturday, May 29 to repeal SB1070, which they call “a law that creates 21st century apartheid in the United States.” They invite us to “join the right side of history” by standing up for immigrants’ rights and against racial profiling.

A wonderful note that’s currently circulating on Facebook from the Catalyst Project shows us ten ways, large and small, to meet this challenge:

[Thanks to Beau Bibeau for sharing.]

Review also posted on The Rag Blog.

Review of Men’s Work: How to Stop the Violence That Tears Our Lives Apart

by Paul Kivel

Ballantine Books, 1992

Paul Kivel, cofounder of the Oakland Men’s Project, has given all men (and those concerned about them) a tremendous gift in the form of this inspirational book. This Valentine’s Day, let us accept this gift so that we might heal our relationships to the ones we love and to ourselves.

Men’s Work draws on Kivel’s decades of experience in the movement to end male violence, along with his life experiences as a father, son, partner, and friend, to speak about the trauma and feelings of powerlessness men experience to in our capitalist, patriarchal society. He describes how men reproduce this system by hurting women, trans folks, children, and themselves.

He explains that this is crisis cannot be solved by locking up male offenders, because this will only cause more violence and trauma. Instead, Kivel has devoted his life to helping men understand the roots of their behavior so that they might change, to become more caring and compassionate. One helpful way he approaches these roots is through the “Act Like a Man” box, which shows how patriarchal masculinity limits and hurts men:

men…………………………. men are…
yell at people………………. aggressive
have no emotions………… responsible
get good grades………….. mean
stand up for themselves… bullies
don’t cry……………………. tough
don’t make mistakes…….. angry
know about sex………….. successful
take care of people………. strong
don’t back down…………. in control
push people around…….. active
can take it………………… dominant over women

All men have received this male training, and know that when they step outside these boundaries they will face abuse, scorn, name-calling, accusations of homosexuality or femininity, or violence. The fear of this abuse is ultimately what keeps us inside the Box.

Paul relates, “It is not an irrational fear. This fear in me was built by getting beaten up after school by some older kid in the neighborhood who didn’t like me, by being teased and called names because sometimes I cried after I got beaten up. This fear was built by all the times my dad put me down because I wasn’t good enough in sports., at school, or whatever he decided was the standard that day.” Hearing a man brave enough to tell these kinds of stories was empowering and validated my own experiences.

The book also includes a wealth of activities that the Oakland Men’s Project developed to help men think about violence, masculinity, abuse and privilege, so that they might change their behavior. For those who are organizing men’s groups or accountability processes, these activities are fantastically useful examples.

“Men’s Attitudes and the Cost to Women:

Stand up silently if you have ever…
- interrupted a woman by talking louder than she
- not valued a woman’s opinion about something because she was a woman
- made a comment in public about a woman’s body
- discussed a woman’s body with another man
- been told by a woman that you are sexist
- been told by a woman that she wanted more affection and less sex from you
- lied to a woman with whom you were intimate about a sexual relationship with another woman
- left care for birth control up to the woman with whom you had a sexual relationship
- used your voice or body to scare or intimidate a woman
- hit, slapped, shoved, or pushed a woman
- had sex with a woman when you knew she didn’t want to
“

There are many more example activities and scenarios that are helpfully fleshed out by real-life experiences of Paul and other men from the Oakland Men’s Project facilitating them in schools, groups of child sex offenders, and elsewhere. This way we get a realistic picture of how difficult, but also inspiring, it is when individual men learn and grow from their experiences.

On the other hand, I think what makes Men’s Work best is that it puts the actions of individual men within a systemic context. We understand that changing individuals’ behaviors, while important, is not enough to end patriarchy as a whole. We also must tackle the violence carried out by institutions such as the military, prisons, and capitalism. Paul states, “When we advocate local and national politics that encourage war, prevent people from meeting basic needs, or destroy the environment, we are supporting violent behavior.” He also incorporates an intersectional analysis of race, class, sexuality, and age, so that we understand that male violence is not only used to hold up some generic colorless classless patriarchy, but a system that hurts people differently according to where they stand in society.

As feminist men and those working towards gender equality, we need to develop strategies to tackle our own individual patriarchal behaviors and attitudes, while also working against the patriarchal system as a whole. This kind of strategy is not really laid out in Men’s Work, but at least the book provides us a political context in which this work could be possible.

The one major criticism I have of the book is that it’s not inclusive of trans or gender non-conforming issues, really at all. The language is limited pretty much to “men” and “women” all throughout. There is also a lot of language that basically assumes heterosexuality, which of course is not inclusive of those of us who are queer or pansexual. This book was written in 1991, and in some ways it seems to still be a part of the “Second Wave” of feminism which viewed “men” as the perpetrators and “women” as the victims of patriarchy. Obviously it is not that simple, because anyone can abuse anyone. As a male survivor of various forms of abuse, I know this firsthand. Nevertheless, I don’t think this unfortunate limitation prevents Men’s Work or its analysis from remaining useful. The reality is that MOST abuse IS perpetrated by male-socialized people, and therefore men need to step up and take responsibility for ending this abuse.

“Perhaps the greatest tragedy in our training is that we literally lost our souls. We became so cut off from our feelings that we no longer connected with other people, with life, or with the natural world. We became protective and controlling, unable to participate in the giving and receiving of love, intimacy, and relationship.”

For me what ultimately makes this book necessary is that it talks about how men need to heal. We all suffer tremendously from patriarchy, including men (not more than women or trans folks, just differently), and therefore we all stand to gain from its overthrow. Paul Kivel writes in plain, everyday language that giving up male privilege will benefit men by opening up infinite possibilities, to understand and express emotions, to love, to live without fear and abuse, and to tap into a spiritual wholeness that we yearn for and need.

Thank you, Paul! Check it out, men everywhere!

“We had gone underground in the early eighties, not a high-tide period for revolutionary activity in the US. Unlike the people who had formed the Weather Underground Organization in the sixties, we were not swept into clandestinity as a response to the Vietnam War or the militancy of the Black Panthers…As we saw it, armed struggle was still a necessary component of every revolutionary movement, and the movement within the US was no exception.” – Diana Block

How do we decide where to put our political energy? For many of us on the left our politicization began with critiques of the dominant ideology. Our critiques may have been a result of formal education, though for many our critiques were lifeboats we clung to keep from drowning in the chasm between what we were told and what we experienced. Upon confronting contradictions we look for explanations. We attempt to deconstruct the world and then reconstruct it to make sense of it and find our place in it. We make our underlying ideologies conscious. We develop our analysis and principles and then attempt to act in a way that is aligned with their logical conclusions.

As leftist revolutionaries we ask ourselves the same questions at different times in our history. What is to be done? What does revolutionary work look like in our time and what is my role within it?

Diana Block’s memoir, Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back, is an example of a leftist making sense of the world around her, attempting to act with integrity, and searching for political strategy and home. The memoir moves easily back and forth between two aspects of her story. The book begins with Block’s partner, Claude Marks, finding a bug in their car in 1985 after several years of organizing and living clandestinely, and only two months after she gave birth to their first child. This main narrative details her life underground and her re-emergence and re-engagement with organizing from 1995 to the present. It is interspersed with the back story of Block’s experiences, politics, and the context that led to her decision to form a clandestine revolutionary collective to support Third World anti-colonialist armed struggles. Block’s book is her answer to the question of what it means to be a revolutionary in one’s own time. In particular, Block analyzes her role as a white person in the US with feminist, lesbian/queer, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist politics.

I do not feel compelled to use this book, or this review, as a site to evaluate the usefulness of clandestine work, or the question of armed struggle. Due in part to the fact that Block does not provide us with enough information about the years of clandestine work to fully evaluate or understand those actions, but mainly because the debates that Diana engaged in around the question of armed struggle are not those that are currently relevant on the ground in social movements or at large in in broader left intentional spaces today. However, understanding the climate in which these decisions came about, the fissures, fractures, and traumas of past movements, and the personal roads traveled by our  revolutionaries, help us to understand our current conditions. It assists us to recognize the roots of our ideas about what is possible, and the state of our left institutions and movements. For myself, at age 31 and with more than a decade of movement involvement, and for my leftist identified activist peers, the most interesting aspects of ATS are the ways in which Block articulates the internal and external factors that influenced her political trajectory, in her particular circumstances and time. For this purpose I will ground this review in looking at Blocks political circumstances, choices, and their consequences through the lens of her memories and analysis.

In prose as engaging as a good novel Block depicts her childhood, her politicization, her coming out, her search for the right political program, her experiences with partnering and parenting, and the day to day details of life underground. At the same time the book offers a wealth of history lessons.  Her experiences attempting to do radical political work and then being underground in the US eras of Reagan and Bush, and of solidarity organizing with what seemed a radical anti-colonialist peoples’ movement in Zimbabwe (and then experiencing the profound disappointments of that movement), and with the Puerto Rican Independence movement, have not been described in other memoirs of revolutionaries from that era, such as those by Bill Ayers, or Mark Rudd, or Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz.  In particular, Arm the Spirit is a great start for learning some of the history and continued struggles around Puerto Rican anti-colonial movement in the US.

How did Block and her collective get to the decision to organize clandestinely in support of the Puerto Rican independence movement? According to her memoir, mostly through frustration. Frustration with a lack of radicalism, holistic approaches, and strategic programs within various aspects of left movements and the rollbacks of even the most reformist social justice programs.

“Most of the white left had distanced themselves from the efforts of Blacks, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos to develop clandestine organizations and activity, denouncing these endeavors as “ultra-left” and out of touch with the social reality of the masses of Americans. We argued that a social reality dominated by electoral politics, unions tied to the Democratic Party, white supremacy, debilitating cynicism, and an increasing right wing backlash had to be contested on many different levels in order for any significant political breakthrough to occur…”

Block describes how she moved from group to group following her political ideals. Arm the Spirit could be read as a series of disappointments. As she tells it, Block was critical of the anti war student movement for its patriarchal sexism, so didn’t get involved while in school. Living in NY, in 1968, she attempted to teach in a Harlem program that was a response to the civil rights movement, but was disappointed by the white supremacy within the teachers union, and the limits of relying on institutionalized reforms.

She then became active in the radical anti-rape movement in NY and then SF, helping to found San Francisco Woman Against Rape (SF WAR) in 1972. Block became disappointed with the lack of connection and commitment to larger leftist organization, the debates about serving victims by building alliances with the criminal injustice system and state law enforcement, and the unchallenged white supremacy in the anti-rape and woman’s liberation movement. As Block was becoming disenchanted with SF WAR, she was exposed to the Weather Underground’s book Prairie Fire (1974) as it emerged from the underground. In it, she found the anti-imperialist critique, clear arguments for white revolutionaries to support anti-colonialist armed struggle within and outside of the US, and the specific instruction for action that she was looking for. Her excitement about the text was augmented by witnessing the strong leadership of lesbian feminists, like Laura Whitehorn, in the East Coast Prairie Fire Organizing Committee.

Block joined the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee and became involved in, and inspired by,  more directly building relationships and working in solidarity with third world revolutionary groups. After doing this work above ground for some time Block and her collective threw all of their efforts towards supporting the Puerto Rican Independence movement.

“The debates (over armed struggle) went on for years and in the end we had to put our theoretical commitments to the test. We owed it to the third world forces we worked with and to our own political integrity. And so, as Ronald Reagan embarked on his effort to consolidate counter-revolution worldwide, we went underground.”

Supporting the Independentistas’ movement for self-determination of a colony of the US was an obvious fit with her anti-racist and anti-imperialist principles and beliefs about the roles of white revolutionaries. Yet even after making the decision to do clandestine solidarity work there were sacrifices to Block’s desire for strategic political work. Block recalls her remorse that their clandestine acts were not done in connection to a larger left movement as they had hoped.

Like many on the far left who ended up underground for fear of prosecution, their political isolation dramatically intensified after they found evidence of surveillance. During this time Block and some of her comrades tried to find low profile ways to engage in political work. For Block and several of the other women in the collective this mostly took the form of doing local based work with women in the AIDS movement and being involved with other parents in their communities. Though they attempted to continue to live their principles and transmit them to their children while underground, they were unable to be explicit about their politics and were cut off from the political communities that they had left.

When she resurfaces in the mid 1990s, however, she reports that much of the political landscape has changed.

“There were dozens of political groups-anti-racist, feminist, queer, environmentalist, globalist. Yet as I began to investigate their programs and activities, it seemed each one operated separately from the others, pursuing projects and goals that I supported, but without the breadth of vision of ideological orientation that was necessary to build a more unified political movement. In fact the burgeoning non-profit industrial complex seemed, in many ways, to have taken over the spirit and structure of the left.”

As a reader it was profound to recognize that her observation upon surfacing largely echoes her thinking about her political work in the mid-70s. In the 70s she was involved in various campaigns and commitments, including building SF WAR, working on immigrant education and education local reform issues, and collective studies of Marxism-Leninism. But this work lacked cohesion. “This was the question that preoccupied me. All various pieces of work that I was doing were good, up to a point. But there was no over arching vision to fit them all together, no set of principles and no organizational framework.”  I wonder after reading Block’s memoir, how much did the conditions change and how much of it just followed the trajectory that was beginning in those early SFWAR debates? How could radical voices like Block’s have influenced the direction of these organizations which had been born out of popular struggle as so many colluded with the state to become a-political service centered nonprofits?

In Block’s reflections from a SFWAR reunion that she attends in 2003, she realizes that she had been oblivious to the women from her initial group of founding members who committed themselves to working with SFWAR. She had been so frustrated with the political choices and debates within the group that she hadn’t even been aware that they had made the choice to stick around and commit to the group. SFWAR, she writes, has resisted becoming co-opted by the system and has struggled to maintain its anti-racist analysis both within its own distribution of power within the organization and in its programmatic work. Block credits this to her and other of the founding members initial values, but this history would not have been enough if none of those members had committed to domestic violence work and to the organization.

The question of where to focus political work is one so many struggle to answer. I have heard many anti-racist, anti-imperialist activists of the younger generations who study revolutionary histories bemoan that they do not perceive themselves to have obvious anti-imperialist, people of color led movements to join or work in solidarity with. Others relocate to countries in the Global South to do just that. Others move from group to group working on single issue campaigns, working for non-profits or in cafes, taking part in political study groups and anti-oppression workshops, creating community gardens, co-ops and other and new or alternative institutions, creating queer social spaces with chosen families, etc and still lament the lack of overarching left strategy, and diverse inclusive political community. I am not encouraging one over the other, but noting how these diverse options illustrate the ways this lack of shared strategy plays out in a contemporary landscape.

Arm the Spirit is in part the story of an activist’s search for political home. This is a search that so many of us embark on. The questions continue: Where am I most useful? Where am I fully my self? What should I commit to? When is a group worth trying to transform and when should I move on to the next group more in line with my principles? Many of us want to commit, but we still find our selves engaging in something, being disappointed, and moving on to find a better fit–all the while critiquing and defending our own and each others choices. How do we link our various left work to a larger struggle? How do we have a strong unified left capable of socialist revolution? Block’s story, however compelling and insightful, cannot provide us with a solution as to where to work. She is still active, and still engaging with these same questions today. In her words:

“Superficially my life had begun to assume the same normalized contours as those of my friends. Our relative privilege and the support we received had allowed me to resume a viable life…But inside I was driven by constant self-interrogation. What should I be doing politically at this time? What would be the most effective choices, given who I was? Was there any way to apply everything that I felt I had learned from our history that didn’t sound like a didactic lesson from an anachronistic past?”

Block continues to be a principled activist working mainly with political prisoners, and California Coalition For Women Prisoners, and with this book acts as a historical resource for the next generations. Her collective’s solidarity work with the Puerto Rican independence movement’s militant challenge to US imperialism, their support for political prisoners and grand jury resisters, and protest of the violence of colonialism against independence activists was and is needed and important.  The importance of their solidarity work was reaffirmed to Block by the Puerto Rican community’s fierce support and loving embrace of her collective when they resurfaced in 1995. Our work on the left is on many fronts, but though the questions that Block tried to respond to still remain, revolutionaries today can benefit from her acknowledgment of the destructive processes that surrounded determinations of strategy in the late 70s.

At a point early in the book Block talks about the years of polarizing debates on the left that locked them into dichotomous positioning. She reflects that if the arguments weren’t so polarizing, and if they weren’t so headstrong, they could have admitted and explored their own doubts and concerns about how to strategically support anti-imperialist struggle. They could have discussed questions about their clandestine formation and its “sustainability at that point in history” and “which type of activities were feasible at that stage of struggle.” It’s possible that it wouldn’t have changed their choice, but it might have changed their preparation, their way of going about it, and their connection to broader, public movements. Maybe there could have been a way to make it more connected and more sustainable if only they had the space to deeply discuss it?  One of the most important lessons to take is the necessity for multi-tendency discussions about left strategy that are not polarizing.

Recent convergences in the US such as the Left Forum, the US Social Forums, cross organizational attempts at “strategic dialogues,” and the abundance of movement people involved in multi-tendency political theory study groups gives reason to hope that many revolutionaries today recognize it as our task to have unifying discussions about revolutionary strategy. While some from Block’s generation still seem to be hashing out the same debates with the ghosts of movements’ past, I believe that there are more possibilities for productive dialogue for this generation of activists who have some emotional distance from the past, a willingness to study, access to contemporary and historic sources of information, and an analysis rooted more strongly by anti-racism, feminism, and queer liberation.

As the last chapter of the book is titled: A Luta Continua! Block concludes her book with a quote from political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim, former member of the Black Panther Party*. Jalil was a founder of Arm the Spirit, the prisoner-written and produced newspaper of the late 1970s-early 80s, in which Block and many others who were incarcerated and outside found a source of education and inspiration. In response to the question of what the phrase “arm the spirit” means to him today Jalil responded “The call to arm the spirit is for revolutionaries to comprehend their capacity to love, to give themselves to humanity, to know one’s purpose in the course of building and sustaining the revolutionary struggle.” May it be so.

***

*For more information about the campaign to support political prisoner Jalil Muntaqim visit http://www.freejalil.com/

Dana Barnett is a leftist activist, organizer, mediator, trainer, and legal aide paralegal in Philadelphia, PA.

David Korten, long-time global justice activist, co-founder of Yes! Magazine, and author of such books as When Corporations Rule the World, lays out the fundamental crossroads facing the world in his 2006 book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. In response to global climate change, war, oil scarcity, persistent racism and sexism and many other mounting crises, Korten argues we must recognize these as symptoms of a larger system of Empire, so that we might move in a radically different direction of equality, ecological sustainability, and cooperation, which he terms Earth Community. This is a powerful and important book, which excels in overviewing the big picture of threats facing our ecosphere and our communities at the hands of global capitalism¹, and translating this into the simplest and most accessible language so we might all do something about it. It’s pretty much anti-capitalism for the masses. And it has the power to inspire many of us to transform our lives and work towards the transformation of society.

Capitalism and Empire

Of course, Korten has made the strategic decision to avoid pointing the finger at “capitalism” as such in order to speak to an American public which largely still confuses the term as equivalent to “freedom” or “democracy.” In fact the “C” word is rarely mentioned in the book, almost never without some sort of modifier as in “corporate capitalism” or “predatory capitalism”, as if those weren’t already features of the system as a whole. Instead, Korten names “Empire” as the culprit responsible for our global economic and ecological predicament, which is defined as a value-system that promotes the views that “Humans are flawed and dangerous”, “Order by dominator hierarchy”, “Compete or die”, “Masculine dominant”, etc. (32).

Korten explains that Empire, “has been a defining feature of the most powerful and influential human societies for some five thousand years, [and] appropriates much of the productive surplus of society to maintain a system of dominator power and elite competition. Racism, sexism, and classism are endemic features” (25). In this way the anarchist concept of the State is repackaged as a transcendent human tendency, which has more to do with conscious decision-making and maturity level than it does with political power. While this compromise does limit the book’s effectiveness in offering solutions later on, it does speak in a language more familiar to the vast non-politicized majority of Americans, and may have the potential to unify a larger movement for change.

Whatever you want to call the system, the danger it presents to the planet is now clear. Korten spells out the grim statistics: “Fossil fuel use is five times what it was [in 1950], and global use of freshwater has tripled… the [Arctic] polar ice cap has thinned by 46 percent over twenty years… [while we've seen] a steady increase over the past five decades in severe weather events such as major hurricanes, floods, and droughts. Globally there were only thirteen severe events in the 1950s. By comparison, seventy-two such events occurred during the first nine years of the 1990s” (59-60). If this destruction continues, it’s uncertain if the Earth will survive.

This ecological damage is considered alongside the social damage of billions living without clean water or adequate food, as well as the immense costs of war and genocide. But Korten understands that the danger is relative to where you stand in the social hierarchy – the system creates extreme poverty for many, and an extreme wealth for a few others. He explains how the system is based on a deep inequality that is growing ever worse, “In the 1990s, per capita income fell in fifty-four of the world’s poorest countries… At the other end of the scale, the number of billionaires worldwide swelled from 274 in 1991 to 691 in 2005″ (67). The critical point that these few wealthy elites wield excessive power and influence within the system to stop or slow necessary reform could be made more clearly, but at least the book exposes the existence of this upper class, who are usually quite effective at hiding from public scrutiny and outrage over the suffering they are causing.²

Earth Community – Growing a Revolution

Standing at odds with the bastions of Empire is what David Korten calls “Earth Community,” a “higher-order” value-system promoting the views of, “Cooperate and live,” “Love life”, “Defend the rights of all”, “Gender balanced”, etc. (32). These values are elaborated to describe a counter-force to the dominant paradigm of society that seeks to replace it. “Earth Community, which emphasizes the demonstrated human capacity for caring, compassion, cooperation, partnership, and community in the service of life, assumes a capacity for responsible self-direction and self-organization and thereby the possibility of creating radically democratic organizations and societies” (33). It’s immediately obvious that these values stand in direct opposition to the self-interested, competitive and top-down capitalist order that now stands over the entire planet.

In an era when “TINA – There Is No Alternative” (to capitalism)³ remains the dominant political-economic viewpoint, at least in the U.S., it’s this clear contrast between the two fundamental directions of Empire and Earth Community which is the book’s main strength. The crisis-laden society we live in today is rightfully understood as not a result of destiny, but merely one possibility that we have the power to overturn through our individual and collective actions.

Actually, Great Turning does one better and puts forward the controversial, though I think certainly correct, argument that the “corporate global economy” (capitalism) is facing unprecedented disruptions which will likely spell the end of its worldwide dominance, “forc[ing] a restructuring in favor of local production and self-reliance” (70-71). The conditions bringing about this potentially monumental paradigm shift are pinpointed as peak oil,⁴ global warming, the decline of the U.S. Dollar, and the ineffectiveness of standard military strategy.

As the editor of endofcapitalism.com, it makes me glad to see others writing about the limits to capitalist expansion, both ecological and social. However I would have hoped that as a veteran of the global justice movement Korten would have added to this outline of obstacles to global capitalism at least a broad description of how organized communities are consciously resisting and making progressive change possible. From labor to environmentalists to students to feminists to people of color to queer and trans communities and far beyond, everyday people everywhere are involved in an active struggle to restore their dignity and create a better world. And despite a steady stream of propaganda to the contrary, in many ways these movements are winning.⁵ We must give thanks and honor their successes, and their failures, so that we may grow a wiser movement for change.

The Great Turning also lays out a vision for what a future society organized around the values of Earth Community would look like, from culture to economy to spiritual values and more. Economically, the proposals are put forward under the heading “Local Living Economies”, and include such common-sense but radical ideas as “Economic Democracy”, “Human Scale”, “Information and Technology Sharing”, and “Fair and Balanced Trade” (342-45). It must be noted that Korten advocates the use of markets as “an essential and beneficial human institution”, but only if they are thoroughly regulated to “assure an equitable distribution of ownership and income” (304).

Another key insight is the distinction made between the “fictional wealth” of bank accounts, stocks, bonds, derivatives and so forth which are the obsession of our current economy, and what Korten calls “real” wealth: “Real wealth consists of those things that have actual utilitarian or artistic value: food, land, energy, knowledge, technology, forests, beauty, and much else. The natural systems of the planet are the foundation of all real wealth, for we depend on them for our very lives” (68). By flipping the idea of wealth on its head, Korten shows that social and ecological benefit should be primary considerations in all economic decision-making. For the author, and for myself, the goal is to create a system that seeks to maximize these real forms of wealth, not the profits of a few large corporations and wealthy investors. Investing in this form of wealth would allow for dramatically different economic outcomes, for example after surveying the poverty and immense pollution created through Mountain-Top Coal Removal, we might decide that it made more sense to use sites such as Coal River Mountain, West Virginia to produce wind energy instead.⁶

Korten outlines the society we are working towards in such vivid language that it’s worth quoting from him at length:
“We will know a society has succeeded when it matches the following description…
- There is a vibrant community life grounded in mutual trust, shared values, and a sense of connection. Risks of physical harm perpetrated by humans against humans through war, terrorism, crime, sexual abuse, and random violence are minimal. Civil liberties are secure event for the most vulnerable.
- All people have a meaningful and dignified vocation that contributes to the well-being of the larger community and fulfills their own basic needs for healthful food, clean water, clothing, shelter, transport, education, entertainment, and health care. Paid employment allows ample time for family, friends, participation in community and political life, healthful physical activity, learning, and spiritual growth.
- Intellectual life and scientific inquiry are vibrant, open, and dedicated to the development and sharing of knowledge and life-serving technologies that address society’s priority needs.
- Families are strong and stable. Children are well nourished, recieve a quality education, and live in secure and loving homes. Rates of suicide, divorce, abortion, and teenage pregnancy are low.
- Political participation and civic engagement are high, and people feel their political civic participation makes a positive difference. Persons in formal leadership positions are respected for their wisdom, integrity, and commitment to the public good.
- Forests, fisheries, waterways, the land, and the air are clean, healthy, and vibrant with the diversity of life. Mother’s milk is wholesome and toxin free, and endangered species populations are in recovery.
- Physical infrastructure – including public transit, road, bridge, rail, water and sewerage systems, and electric power generation and transmission facilities – is well maintained, accessible to all, and adequate to demand” (297-98).

This kind of vision for the society we want is all too rarely discussed, but it should inform all our decisions – otherwise we can too easily be confined to false choices and distractions from the way forwards. In its best moments, this book acts as a beacon, illuminating the path we need to walk.

Limitations

In a book as ambitious as The Great Turning, there are bound to be parts that don’t succeed. Perhaps the most problematic ideas in the book come from the section on “Culture and consciousness.” Here David Korten lays out a system of five “orders” of consciousness, from the lowest, “Magical Consciousness”, up to the “Fifth Order: Spiritual Consciousness” (54). This hierarchy of consciousness is used to explain that those who favor Empire tend to think in terms of either fantasies or in simple power terms, while those favoring Earth Community are much more complex thinkers, incorporating concern for others and concern for the future into their decisions. It’s an analysis that appears relatively benign at first, but in the end is sadly limited by the problematic liberal belief that we must win a “culture war” against the other half of society which is perceived as hopelessly ignorant. This line of thought fits in nicely with Red-State/Blue-State politics and the essentially classist stereotype that Southerners and rural Americans are backwards and uneducated. As long as progressives allow politicians and the media to convince us of the enormity of this “cultural divide”, forward motion on the path to a just and sustainable world will be held hostage by partisan bickering.

Another direction, based on overcoming differences and emphasizing unity of interests is far more strategic. This can be made much easier by dropping the obsession with “culture and consciousness” and talking specifically about class, wealth, and power. Not that necessary and potentially divisive issues like race, gender, or sexuality should be left unraised! But when we begin to study the ways that most everyone, including the vast majority of Americans, are being victimized by capitalism, it becomes much easier to locate the true enemy. For one example, recall that upwards of 95% of calls, emails and faxes to Congress in advance of the vote on the $700 billion Wall St. bailout last September were strongly negative. Here we can find an immediate rallying point against entrenched financial elites (who were able to buy the politicians into passing the bailout package over public opposition).

The “five orders of consciousness” analysis is further weakened by its apparent ageism. It’s bad enough to suggest that supporting the values of Earth Community is a function of “maturity”, which implies that education and age are prerequisites for human decency. But the book goes one step further and actually assigns age numbers to each of the five levels of the consciousness ladder. Level 4, “Cultural Consciousness”, which is associated with having “the capacity to question the dysfunctional cultural premises of Empire,” is specifically declared the domain of adults. “A Cultural Consciousness is rarely achieved before age thirty,” states page 46, in direct contradiction to Abbie Hoffman’s warning not to trust anyone older than the big three-oh. Speaking as someone under thirty, I have to question the notion that older folks are more inclined to support justice than my generation. Ageist statements like this have the effect of invisiblizing youth and student activism, which has always been at the forefront of progressive change. At this very moment, hundreds of students in California are organizing rallies and occupations of their school buildings in order to save public education from unprecedented tuition increases.⁷ I’d like to see the over-thirty crowd take such inspiring action for change!

A final limitation of the book is the lack of strategy it puts forward for achieving the “Great Turning” itself. As described by Korten, this enormous transformation will occur mostly by people elevating their consciousnesses and living differently – “a turning from relations of domination to relations of partnership based on organizing principles discerned from the study of healthy living systems” (295). But what steps must be taken to transform these relations are not adequately explained. Instead there are vague passages such as, “As communities of congruence grow and connect, they advance the process of liberation from the cultural trance of Empire and offer visible manifestations of the possibilities of Earth Community. Individually and collectively they become attractors of the life energy that Empire has co-opted – thus weakening Empire and strengthening Earth Community in an emergent process of displacement and eventual succession” (317). It sounds good, but how is that supposed to actually happen?

If history is any guide, Empire doesn’t just fade away when something better comes along. Overcoming the system will require confronting the real forces of power that dominate our lives, and taking power back for our communities. The Civil Rights Movement remains the most inspiring and instructive example of democratic change in America. Black folks in the South had been struggling for freedom since before slavery ended and continued to resist Jim Crow laws through the 1960s, when legal segregation was finally defeated (though de facto segregation and racism continue today). It wasn’t enough to set up separate Black-owned schools or restaurants as refuge from the white supremacist realities of America, although this helped and is a positive step. Taking down legal segregation required direct confrontations with power – sit-ins at “Whites Only” restaurants, legal action which brought about Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, voter registration drives, and many, many other manifestations of mass-based popular struggle. To take down global capitalism and U.S. imperialism, the actual institutions behind what Korten calls Empire, any viable strategy will require a worldwide and multi-faceted, long-term movement for democratic change. This movement already exists, thankfully, so let’s celebrate it and talk about how to strengthen it to achieve our common goals!

Conclusion – Giving Thanks for Life and Struggle

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community is a much-needed book, which accomplishes a surprising amount despite its limitations. We can all be thankful that David Korten has compiled such wisdom from many different sources of inspiration in order to present a holistic vision of the world we need to lose and the world we want to gain. By translating anti-capitalist and anarchist concepts into everyday language, Korten widens the appeal of the fundamental transformation of society that is needed.

Moreover, he points towards a common-sense, radical politics by highlighting the strong majority of Americans supporting progressive change. For example, he quotes from various polls to show that, “Nearly nine out of ten U.S. adults (87 percent) believe we need to treat the planet as a living system and that we should have more respect and reverence for nature… Seventy-six percent of Americans reject the idea that the United States should play the role of world police officer, and 80 percent feel it is playing that role more than it should be… Eighty-eight percent distrust corporate executives, and 90 percent want new corporate regulations and tougher enforcement of existing laws.” And, “More than two in three would like to see a return to a simpler way of life with less emphasis on consumption and wealth (68 percent)” (332-33). This is the common ground held by Americans that should be seen as the base for moving in the direction of Earth Community. If the United States can transform itself, than surely other nations will follow.

This Thanksgiving, let us be thankful for our friends, families and communities, as well as our spiritualities for enriching our lives. And let us be grateful for the planet which sustains all that we do and all that we work towards. But let us also give thanks for those who speak and act boldly for justice and sustainability. From the generations that came before us and won so many victories, like ending segregation so that we might strive for unity, to the new generation currently struggling to save education in California and clean energy in Appalachia, millions have been struggling so that we might continue working towards a future worth living in. By giving thanks, we honor that challenge.

1 – I’ve tried to summarize the main features of capitalism in my essay “What is Capitalism?” Online at http://endofcapitalism.com/about/2-what-is-capitalism/
2 – The “ruling class” is exposed in simple but compelling terms by Paul Kivel in his 2004 book You Call This a Democracy? Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides
3 – Right-wing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher coined the TINA phrase. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative
4 – For a good introduction to the concept of “peak oil” see Energy Bulletin’s “Peak Oil Primer.” Online at http://energybulletin.net/primer
5 – Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber has written about the surprising success of grassroots movements for change in his essay “The Shock of Victory.” Online at http://endofcapitalism.com/2008/01/31/the-shock-of-victory/
6 – See Coal River Wind for background on this choice, Online at http://www.coalriverwind.org/ and Mountain Justice for ongoing news from the struggle to stop Mountain-Top Removal, online at http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/
7 – After the UC Board of Regents passed a 32% tuition increase and similar measures were taken across the state, students have fought back by building an enormous movement to save affordable education. A recent compilation of links and information regarding the California student struggle can be found here (although it’s all over the internets): http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629379.php

Who Were the Witches? – Patriarchal Terror and the Creation of Capitalism
Alex Knight
November 5, 2009

This Halloween season, there is no book I could recommend more highly than Silvia Federici’s brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia 2004), which tells the dark saga of the Witch Hunt that consumed Europe for more than 200 years. In uncovering this forgotten history, Federici exposes the origins of capitalism in the heightened oppression of workers (represented by Shakespeare’s character Caliban), and most strikingly, in the brutal subjugation of women. She also brings to light the enormous and colorful European peasant movements that fought against the injustices of their time, connecting their defeat to the imposition of a new patriarchal order that divided male from female workers. Today, as more and more people question the usefulness of a capitalist system that has thrown the world into crisis, Caliban and the Witch stands out as essential reading for unmasking the shocking violence and inequality that capitalism has relied upon from its very creation.

Who Were the Witches?

Parents putting a pointed hat on their young son or daughter before Trick-or-Treating might never pause to wonder this question, seeing witches as just another cartoonish Halloween icon like Frankenstein’s monster or Dracula. But deep within our ritual lies a hidden history that can tell us important truths about our world, as the legacy of past events continues to affect us 500 years later. In this book, Silvia Federici takes us back in time to show how the mysterious figure of the witch is key to understanding the creation of capitalism, the profit-motivated economic system that now reigns over the entire planet.

During the 15th – 17th centuries the fear of witches was ever-present in Europe and Colonial America, so much so that if a woman was accused of witchcraft she could face the cruellest of torture until confession was given, or even be executed based on suspicion alone. There was often no evidence whatsoever. The author recounts, “for more than two centuries, in several European countries, hundreds of thousands of women were tried, tortured, burned alive or hanged, accused of having sold body and soul to the devil and, by magical means, murdered scores of children, sucked their blood, made potions with their flesh, caused the death of their neighbors, destroyed cattle and crops, raised storms, and performed many other abominations” (169).

In other words, just about anything bad that might or might not have happened was blamed on witches during that time. So where did this tidal wave of hysteria come from that took the lives so many poor women, most of whom had almost certainly never flown on broomsticks or stirred eye-of-newt into large black cauldrons?

Caliban underscores that the persecution of witches was not just some error of ignorant peasants, but in fact the deliberate policy of Church and State, the very ruling class of society. To put this in perspective, today witchcraft would be a far-fetched cause for alarm, but the fear of hidden terrorists who could strike at any moment because they “hate our freedom” is widespread. Not surprising, since politicians and the media have been drilling this frightening message into people’s heads for years, even though terrorism is a much less likely cause of death than, say, lack of health care.¹ And just as the panic over terrorism has enabled today’s powers-that-be to attempt to remake the Middle East, this book makes the case that the powers-that-were of Medieval Europe exploited or invented the fear of witches to remake European society towards a social paradigm that met their interests.

Interestingly, a major component of both of these crusades was the use of so-called “shock and awe” tactics to astound the population with “spectacular displays of force,” which helped to soften up resistance to drastic or unpopular reforms.² In the case of the Witch Hunt, shock therapy was applied through the witch burnings – spectacles of such stupefying violence that they paralyzed whole villages and regions into accepting fundamental restructuring of medieval society.³ Federici describes a typical witch burning as, “an important public event, which all the members of the community had to attend, including the children of the witches, especially their daughters who, in some cases, would be whipped in front of the stake on which they could see their mother burning alive” (186).

The witch burning was the medieval version of "Shock and Awe"

The book argues that these gruesome executions not only punished “witches” but graphically demonstrated the repercussions for any kind of disobedience to the clergy or nobility. In particular, the witch burnings were meant to terrify women into accepting “a new patriarchal order where women’s bodies, their labor, their sexual and reproductive powers were placed under the control of the state and transformed into economic resources” (170).

Federici puts forward that up until the 16th century, though living in a sexist society, European women retained significant economic independence from men that they typically do not under capitalism, where gender roles are more distinguished. “If we also take into account that in medieval society collective relations prevailed over familial ones, and most of the tasks that female serfs performed (washing, spinning, harvesting, and tending to animals on the commons) were done in cooperation with other women, we then realize… [this] was a source of power and protection for women. It was the basis for an intense female sociality and solidarity that enabled women to stand up to men.”

The Witch Hunt initiated a period where women were forced to become what she calls “servants of the male work force” (115) – excluded from receiving a wage, they were confined to the unpaid labor of raising children, caring for the elderly and sick, nurturing their husbands or partners, and maintaining the home. In Federici’s words, this was the “housewifization of women,” the reduction to a second-class status where women became totally dependent on the income of men (27).

The author goes on to show how female sexuality, which was seen as a source of women’s potential power over men, became an object of suspicion and came under sharp attack by the authorities. This assault manifested in new laws that took away women’s control over the reproductive process, such as the banning of birth control measures, the replacement of midwives with male doctors, and the outlawing of abortion and infanticide.⁴ Federici calls it an attempt to turn the female body into “a machine for the reproduction of labor,” such that women’s only purpose in life was supposedly to produce children (144).

But we also learn that this was just one component of a broader move by Church and State to ban all forms of sexuality that were considered “non-productive.” For example, “homosexuality, sex between young and old, sex between people of different classes, anal coitus, coitus from behind, nudity, and dances. Also proscribed was the public, collective sexuality that had prevailed in the Middle Ages, as in the Spring festivals of pagan origins that, in the 16th-century, were still celebrated all over Europe” (194). To this end, the Witch Hunt targeted not only female sexuality but homosexuality and gender non-conformity as well, helping to craft the patriarchal sexual boundaries that define our society to this day.

Capitalism - Born in Flames

What separates Caliban from other works exploring the “witch” phenomenon is that this book puts the persecution of witches into the context of the development of capitalism. For Silvia Federici, it’s no accident that “the witch-hunt occurred simultaneously with the colonization and extermination of the populations of the New World, the English enclosures, [or] the beginning of the slave trade” (164). She instructs that all of these seemingly unrelated tragedies were initiated by the same European ruling elite at the very moment that capitalism was in formation, the late 15th through 17th centuries. Contrary to “laissez-faire” orthodoxy which holds that capitalism functions best without state intervention, Federici posits that it was precisely the state violence of these campaigns that laid the foundation for capitalist economics.

A new era was forged in the flames of the Witch Hunt

Thankfully for the reader, who may not be very familiar with the history of this era, Federici outlines these events in clear and accessible language. She focuses on the Land Enclosures in particular because their significance has been largely lost in time.

Many of us will not remember that during Europe’s Middle Ages, before the Enclosures, even the lowliest of serfs had their own plot of land with which they could use for just about any purpose. Federici adds, “With the use of land also came the use of the ‘commons’ – meadows, forests, lakes, wild pastures – that provided crucial resources for the peasant economy (wood for fuel, timber for building, fishponds, grazing grounds for animals) and fostered community cohesion and cooperation” (24). This access to land acted as a buffer, providing security for peasants who otherwise were mostly subject to the whim of their “Lord.” Not only could they grow their own food, or hunt in the relatively plentiful forests which were still standing in that era, but connection to the commons also gave peasants territory with which to organize resistance movements and alternative economies outside the control of their masters.

The Enclosures were a process by which this land was taken away – closed off by the State and typically handed over to entrepreneurs to pursue a profit in sheep or cow herding, or large-scale agriculture. Instead of being used for subsistence as it had been, the land’s bounty was sold away to fledgling national and international markets. A new class of profit-motivated landowners emerged, known as “gentry,” but the underside of this development was the trauma experienced by the evicted peasants. In the author’s words, “As soon as they lost access to land, all workers were plunged into a dependence unknown in medieval times, as their landless condition gave employers the power to cut their pay and lengthen the working-day” (72).

For Federici, then, the chief creation of the Enclosures was a property-less, landless working class, a “proletariat” who were left with little option but to work for a wage in order to survive; wage labor being one of the defining features of capitalism.

Cut off from their traditional soil, many communities scattered across the countryside to find new homesteads. But the State countered with the so-called “Bloody Laws”, which made it legal to capture wandering “vagabonds” and force them to work for a wage, or put them to death. Federici reveals the result: “What followed was the absolute impoverishment of the European working class… Evidence is the change that occurred in the workers’ diets. Meat disappeared from their tables, except for a few scraps of lard, and so did beer and wine, salt and olive oil” (77). Although European workers typically labored for longer hours under their new capitalist employers, living standards were reduced sharply throughout the 16th century, and it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that earnings returned to the level they had been before the Enclosures.⁵

According to Federici, the witch hunts played a key role in facilitating this process of impoverishment by driving a sexist wedge into the working class that “undermined class solidarity,” making it more difficult for communities to resist displacement from their land (48). While women were faced with the threat of horrific torture and death if they did not conform to new submissive gender roles, men were in effect bribed with the promise of obedient wives and new access to women’s bodies. The author cites that “Another aspect of the divisive sexual politics to diffuse workers’ protest was the institutionalization of prostitution, implemented through the opening of municipal brothels soon proliferating throughout Europe” (49). And in addition to prostitution, a legalization of sexual violence provided further sanction for the exploitation of women’s bodies. She explains, “In France, the municipal authorities practically decriminalized rape, provided the victims were women of the lower class” (47). This initiated what Federici calls a “virtual rape movement,” making it unsafe for women to even leave their homes.

The witch trials were the final assault, which all but obliterated the integrity of peasant communities by fostering mutual suspicion and fear. Amidst deteriorating conditions, neighbors were encouraged to turn against one another, so that any insult or annoyance became grounds for an accusation of witchcraft. As the terror spread, a new era was forged in the flames of the witch burnings. Surveying the damage, Silvia Federici concludes that “the persecution of the witches, in Europe as in the New World, was as important as colonization and the expropriation of the European peasantry from its land were for the development of capitalism” (12).

A Forgotten Revolution

Federici maintains that it didn’t have to turn out this way. “Capitalism was not the only possible response to the crisis of feudal power. Throughout Europe, vast communalistic social movements and rebellions against feudalism had offered the promise of a new egalitarian society built on social equality and cooperation” (61).

Caliban‘s most inspiring chapters make visible an enormous continent-wide series of poor people’s movements that nearly toppled Church and State at the end of the Middle Ages. These peasant movements of the 13th – 16th centuries were often labelled “heretical” for challenging the religious power of the Vatican, but as the book details they aimed for a much broader transformation of feudal society. The so-called “heretics” often “denounced social hierarchies, private property and the accumulation of wealth, and disseminated among the people a new, revolutionary conception of society that, for the first time in the Middle Ages, redefined every aspect of daily life (work, property, sexual reproduction, and the position of women), posing the question of emancipation in truly universal terms” (33).

Silvia Federici shows us how the heretical movements took many forms, from the vegetarian and anti-war Cathars of southern France to the communistic and anti-nobility Taborites of Bohemia, but were united in the call for the elimination of social inequality. Many put forth the argument that it was anti-Christian for the clergy and nobility to live in opulence while so many suffered from lack of adequate food, housing or medical attention.

The vegetarian and anti-war Cathars were rounded up by the Crusaders.

Another common thread weaving the European peasant movements together was the leadership of women. Federici describes that, “[Heretical women] had the same rights as men, and could enjoy a social life and mobility that nowhere else was available to them in the Middle Ages… Not surprisingly, women are present in the history of heresy as in no other aspect of medieval life.” (38). Some heretical sects, like the Cathars, discouraged marriage and emphasized birth control – advocating a sexual liberation which directly challenged the Church’s moral authority.

The gender politics of peasant movements proved to be a strength, and they attracted a wide following that undercut the power of a feudal system which was already in crisis. Federici explains how the movements became increasingly revolutionary as they grew in size. “In the course of this process, the political horizon and the organizational dimensions of the peasant and artisan struggle broadened. Entire regions revolted, forming assemblies and recruiting armies. At times, the peasants organized in bands, attacking the castles of the lords, and destroying the archives where the written marks of their servitude were kept” (45).

What started as a religious movement became increasingly revolutionary. For example, in the 1420s and 30s, the Taborites fought to liberate all of Bohemia, beating back several Crusades of 100,000+ men organized by the Vatican (54-55). The uprisings became contagious all across Europe, so much so that in the crucial period of 1350-1500, unprecedented concessions were made including the doubling of wages, reduction in prices and rents, and a shorter working day. In the words of Silvia Federici, “the feudal economy was doomed” (62).

The author documents that the initial reaction by elites was to institute the “Holy Inquisition,” a brutal campaign of state repression that included torturing and even burning heretics to death. But as time went on, ruling class strategy shifted from targeting heretics in general to specifically targeting female community leaders. The Inquisition morphed into the Witch Hunt.

Soon, simple meetings of peasant women were stigmatized as possible “Sabbats,” where women were supposedly seduced by the devil to become witches, but as Federici clarifies, it was the rebellious politics and non-conforming gender relations of such gatherings which were demonized (177). Strong, defiant women were murdered by the tens of thousands, and along with them the Witch Hunt also destroyed “a whole world of female practices, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the foundation of women’s power in pre-capitalist Europe, and the condition for their resistance in the struggle against feudalism” (103).

For elite European nobles and clergy, the Witch Hunt succeeded in stifling a working class revolution that had increasingly threatened their rule. Even more, Silvia Federici puts forward that the Witch Hunt facilitated the rise of a new, capitalist social paradigm – based on large-scale economic production for profit and the displacement of peasants from their lands into the burgeoning urban workforce. In time, this capitalist system would dominate all of Europe and be dispersed through conquistadors’ “guns, germs and steel” to every corner of the globe, destroying countless ancient civilizations and cultures in the process.⁶ Federici’s analysis is that, “Capitalism was the counter-revolution that destroyed the possibilities that had emerged from the anti-feudal struggle – possibilities which, if realized, might have spared us the immense destruction of lives and the environment that has marked the advance of capitalist relations worldwide” (22). How might things be different if the forgotten revolution had won?

Conclusion - Rediscovering the Magic of Truth-Telling

Malalai Joya speaking at a girls school in Farah province, Afghanistan

“Day by day, it’s worse for my people, especially for the women. And that’s why, because of all of these main reasons, we say this is the mockery of democracy and mockery of War on Terror.” – Malalai Joya, Afghan democracy activist, 2009

Caliban and the Witch is a book that challenges many important myths about the world we live in. First and foremost among these is the widely-held belief that capitalism, though perhaps flawed in its current form, started out as a “progressive” development that liberated workers and improved the conditions of women, people of color and other oppressed groups. Silvia Federici has done impressive work to take us back to the very foundations of the capitalist system in late-medieval Europe to uncover a secret history of land dispossession and impoverishment, gender and sexual terror, and brutal colonization of non-Europeans. This terrible legacy leads her to the profound conclusion that the system is “necessarily committed to racism and sexism” (17).

Most strongly, she writes, “It is impossible to associate capitalism with any form of liberation or attribute the longevity of the system to its capacity to satisfy human needs. If capitalism has been able to reproduce itself it is only because of the web of inequalities that it has built into the body of the world proletariat, and because of its capacity to globalize exploitation. This process is still unfolding under our eyes, as it has for the last 500 years” (17).

It’s been said that we can measure a society by how it treats its women. This book provides compelling documentation to suggest that capitalism is and has always been a male dominated system, which reduces opportunities and security for women as well as marginalizing those who don’t fit within narrow gender boundaries. In particular, Silvia Federici uses the story of the Witch Hunt to illuminate the inner workings of capitalism to show the restraining, silencing, and demonizing of female sexual power built into it.⁷ Responding to our question that started this essay, she writes, “The witch was not only the midwife, the woman who avoided maternity, or the beggar who eked out a living by stealing some wood or butter from her neighbors. She was also the loose, promiscuous woman – the prostitute or adulteress, and generally, the woman who exercised her sexuality outside the bonds of marriage and procreation… The witch was also the rebel woman who talked back, argued, swore, and did not cry under torture” (184).

In other words, the witches were those women who in one way or another resisted the establishment of an unjust social order – the mechanical exploitation of capitalism. The witches represented a whole world that Europe’s new masters were anxious to destroy: a world with strong female leadership, a world rooted in local communities and knowledge, a world alive with magical possibilities, a world in revolt.

We need not despair for the world that has been lost. Indeed, it is still with us today in the struggles of people everywhere organizing for justice. Today from Afghanistan we can hear the clarion voice of Malalai Joya, a courageous woman who was expelled from the Afghan parliament in 2007 for speaking out against the U.S.-installed warlords who now rule her country. She appeared recently on Democracy Now! saying, “Now my people are sandwiched between two powerful enemies: from the sky, occupation forces bombing and killing innocent civilians… [and] on the ground, Taliban and these warlords together continue to deliver fascism against our people.”⁸

Joya risks her life to make these comments, but her words carry the sparkling truth that is so necessary to end the insanity of war and occupation in the Middle East. Those who are summoned to action by her call do so in the immortal spirit of the “heretics” and “witches” who resisted capitalism and feudalism before it, carrying forward a movement that is wide as the Earth and old as time.

Notes

1 – Harvard University researchers released a study on Sept. 17, 2009 showing that approximately 45,000 Americans die unnecessarily from lack of medical coverage every year, unfortunately many times more than the number killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks. See this article for more on the Harvard study: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917

2 – “Shock and Awe”, Wikipedia. Online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe. Accessed Nov. 2, 2009.

3 – This “shock therapy” strategy is examined with detailed case studies by Naomi Klein in the excellent The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan Books 2007. For example she offers that the US-led devastation of Iraq’s social infrastructure, including destruction of hospitals, schools, and food and water systems traumatized the Iraqi people such that they could not mobilize to prevent the highly unpopular privatization of the country’s oil wealth.

4 – for more on the Witch Hunt’s effect on the male domination of reproduction and medicine, see Barbara Ehrenreich’s Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, The Feminist Press at CUNY 1972, pamphlet.

5 – “The high point of wages was immediately preceding the ‘long’ sixteenth century [roughly 1450], and the low point was at its end [roughly 1650]. The drop during the sixteenth century was immense.” Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1974. pg. 80.

6 – see Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, W.W. Norton Press 2005. Jared Diamond’s study of the rise of Europe focuses more on ecology than patriarchy, but is nonetheless useful for exposing the carnage of the colonization process.

7 – for a brilliant collection of insights into the many ways female sexuality is still under attack, see Friedman, Jaclyn & Jessica Valenti. Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. Seal Press 2008. My review of this book can also be found here: http://endofcapitalism.com/2009/05/17/review-of-yes-means-yes-visions-of-female-sexual-power-and-a-world-without-rape/

8 – Democracy Now! October 28, 2009 broadcast. “A Woman Among Warlords: Afghan Democracy Activist Malalai Joya Defies Threats to Challenge US Occupation, Local Warlords.” Online at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/28/a_woman_among_warlords_afghan_democracy

The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy

by Murray Bookchin

1982 Cheshire Books

Murray Bookchin (R.I.P., 2006) was one of the most important American theorists of the 20th century. He is most known for pioneering and promoting social ecology, which holds that “the very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human.” In other words, the only way to resolve the ecological crisis is to create a free and democratic society.

The Ecology of Freedom is one of Bookchin’s classic works, in which he not only outlines social ecology, but exposes hierarchy, “the cultural, traditional and psychological systems of obedience and command”, from its emergence in pre-’civilized’ patriarchy all the way to capitalism today. The book explains that hierarchy is exclusively a human phenomena, one which has only existed for a relatively short period of time in humanity’s 2 million year history. For that reason, and also because he finds examples of people resisting and overturning hierarchies ever since their emergence, Bookchin believes we can create a world based on social equality, direct democracy and ecological sustainability.

It seems to me this fundamental hope in human possibility is the most essential contribution of this book. In discussing healthier forms of life than we currently inhabit, Bookchin makes a distinction between “organic societies”, which were pre-literate, hunter-gatherer human communities existing before hierarchy took over, and “ecological society”, which he hopes we will create to bring humanity back into balance with nature, but without losing the intellectual and artistic advances of “civilization” (his quote-marks).

Of ‘organic society’ he says “I use the term to denote a spontaneously formed, noncoercive, and egalitarian society – a ‘natural’ society in the very definite sense that it emerges from innate human needs for association, interdependence, and care.” This, he explains, is where we come from. Not a utopia free of problems, but a real society based on the principle of “unity of diversity,” meaning respect for each member of the community, regardless of sex, age, etc. – an arrangement that is free of domination. He also characterizes pre-civilized organic societies as “part of the balance of nature – a forest community or a soil community – in short, a truly ecological community or ecocommunity peculiar to its ecosystem, with an active sense of participation in the overall environment and the cycles of nature.”

Things didn’t go wrong all at once, or all the sudden. It took eons of slow changes that eroded the solidarity and equality within certain societies before anything as destructive or coercive as the State, with its violent redistribution of goods, emerged. Along the way, many enclosures upon community life were reversed in whole or part. Nevertheless, a few areas of the world saw things degenerate into militaristic ruling classes coming to power, determined to conquer and destroy. To gain power for themselves required putting others down, by force if necessary, and taking as much as possible from the planet to supply their complicated technologies and armies. These people are still in control, hence our current state of affairs.

The other crucial point made in this book is that the structure of power is really the overriding issue when we think about moving towards an ecological society. Alternative technologies certainly have a role, as do more environmental consciousness, culture, etc. But none of these can do much unless we democratize the way power is distributed in society. Any attempt to “green” capitalism, for example, is futile because the system as such is precisely what is destroying the planet. Remedying this requires empowering people to take control of their lives and surroundings away from those interested only in domination of humans and the Earth. In Bookchin’s words, to achieve “harmony with nature”, we first need “harmony in society.”

The sweep of ideas that compose the doctrine of social ecology are compelling and extremely relevant for us today living in both social and ecological crises. Unfortunately Bookchin, while a great theorist, was a pretty lousy writer. In Ecology of Freedom he approaches his subject like a philosopher, attempting to separate himself from previous thinkers and carve an ideological niche for himself. He also constantly references other philosophers (mostly white dudes), in a way that assumes the reader knows what he is talking about. Most of the time, I didn’t.

What Bookchin lacked was the ability to speak to a mass audience, in their own language. He could not take the vast plethora of ideas in his head and synthesize them into a simple and readable program for change. Instead, we’re left with incredibly important and relevant ideas caught up in a web of philosophical jargon and sectarian attacks on other radicals. (His schizophrenic relationship with Karl Marx is especially frustrating because he never just comes out and says what he finds essential about Marx and what he finds destructive – we just get tons of side-comments as if he’s speaking to Marx while discussing other topics with the reader).

Nevertheless, I gained something from this book by taking Bookchin with a dose of irreverence. He had a lot of good ideas, but like all theorists, he’s no one to follow blindly. He was imperfect. But like the best of us he put his limited energies into making this world a better place.

“The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”

by Naomi Klein

2007 Metropolitan Books

I feel confident saying that The Shock Doctrine is one of the most important political non-fiction works of the last decade. This should be a high school textbook, or at least required reading in college. Naomi Klein applies her extensive vision and intellect to present us with a way of seeing our world that is extremely relevant and powerful: in the pursuit of enormous profits, those running the global economy intentionally exploit terrible catastrophes, or even create them, to take things for themselves that only shocked and traumatized populations would give up. This ambulance-chasing strategy of those in power is defined as the “shock doctrine,” and “disaster capitalism”, alternatively known as “neoliberalism” is the dominant social paradigm it has created.

Although there are flaws here, which I will mention, this book is both timely and well-written; Klein carries the reader through a story about grandiose topics like neoliberalism, torture, psychology, and international politics that is fundamentally readable.

The most important contribution made by this book in my view is the dismantling of the myth that capitalism’s global dominance is a function of democracy or destiny. This is the notion that with the defeat of the Soviet Union, all alternatives to “the free market” have naturally faded into history, presumably because capitalism is so irresistible. To the contrary, Naomi Klein provides numerous case studies to show us the exact opposite is true – the temporary triumph of global capitalism has been fertilized by the victims of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, wars, campaigns of torture, and economic calamity. In short, alternatives to capitalism have been shocked into submission wherever they’ve appeared.

This is no accident, it is part of a conscious crusade by market fundamentalists, those devoted to the pseudo-religious belief that “the market solves all.” Klein explains that the shock doctrine was developed (at least in part) by the patron saint of neoliberalism, free-market economist Milton Friedman. In his words, “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” And he intended to provide those ideas. It was Friedman’s opus “Capitalism and Freedom” that proclaimed neoliberalism’s core edicts: deregulation, privatization and cutbacks to social services.

Since the 1970s, these teachings have been vigorously applied across the globe by the “holy trinity” of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Their institutional missions have been to turn the globe into one enormous marketplace, and generate maximum profits by compelling governments to shed the ability to protect their people and natural environments from the plunder of capital. The trinity’s painful prescriptions (like selling health care and education to for-profit industries) typically followed on the heels of disaster, and were attached to much-needed loans or aid that could not be turned down in a time of crisis. Distressed governments took the bait, but in the long run the shock doctrine just created more poverty and ruin. Davison Budhoo, an IMF senior economist who designed these policies in Latin America and Africa throughout the ’80s explained in his resignation letter, “sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name.”

Naomi takes us on an extensive tour to survey the damage. The first stop is probably the most striking – Chile 1973. It was here that Salvador Allende, democratically-elected socialist president of Chile, was overthrown by the Chilean military with the support of the CIA and Richard Nixon. The brute violence, disappearances and torture that followed are painful to recount, but equally painful were the economic policies implemented straight out of Milton Friedman’s neoliberal playbook. Following the coup, it was disciples of Friedman – the “Chicago Boys” – who were put in charge of the economy, and they acted swiftly to reduce wages, break unions, and sell off vital social services to private multinational corporations. This first neoliberal testing ground showed that Friedmanism succeeded in raising profits, just as it raised the inflation, unemployment, and hunger that soon gripped the country.

These origins of the shock doctrine are fascinating, but Klein also brings us up to the present to inspect disaster capitalism as it operates in today’s world. One of the examples is Iraq, where “Shock and Awe” facilitated the complete dismantling of the Iraqi state, and continued US military occupation still prevents the population from interfering with highly unpopular shock treatment policies like selling off the nation’s vast oil wealth to western oil corporations. Likewise we see the same pattern in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, as officials jumped at the “opportunity” of this cataclysmic storm to push through policies that normally would have faced stiff opposition, like the shutting down of public schools and housing projects to make way for charters and condos. This privatization may have the effect of increasing the suffering of the impoverished and now somewhat homeless black majority of the city, but in the shock doctors’ eyes, such suffering is hidden behind large stacks of money.

In case you weren’t convinced yet, we also get to tour South Asia following the 2004 tsunami, post-Soviet Poland and Russia, post-Tiananmen Square Massacre China, post-Apartheid South Africa, and at least 5 other traumatized regions to study the shock doctrine in action, and everywhere we find the same theme – exploiting disasters with economic projects that benefit the few before the many can respond. Whether the crises are intentionally created or merely opportunistically seized upon, Naomi Klein helps us see that it’s the policies of deregulation, privatization, and cutbacks to social services that prove to be as disastrous as the calamities they follow.

My main criticisms of this book center around the fact that it’s simply too long and too depressing. There’s a tremendous wealth of information here, and the points are well made, but it ends up being overwhelming (even for me, and I’m used to reading about horrible tragedies). How much can one read about torture chambers, mass poverty, and violent exploitation before despair sets in? At 466 pages, this is overkill, and the author can’t help but be redundant. Worse, only the last of the 22 chapters actually deals with solutions, providing essential hope for our otherwise desolate and traumatic landscape.

This conclusion is by far the best and most important section, because it shows that in many ways this disaster capitalist complex is being defeated by the efforts of regular people, most dramatically in Latin America. Detailing how the global justice movement has delegitimized the neoliberal project and its trinity of institutions provides necessary knowledge for all organizers and activists today – the weakpoints of the worldwide capitalist menace.  But preceded by 400+ pages of gloom, I bet most readers don’t even reach this before giving up on the book. In short, as vital as The Shock Doctrine is, it could have been made truly transcendant by cutting at least half the exposee of the problem and supplementing several more hopeful chapters along the lines of the (excellent) conclusion. Surely the shock doctrine’s traumatic story doesn’t have to be a trauma to read.

In the end, Naomi Klein stands out as a genius who’s mastered an incredible library of knowledge, and an artist able to weave together a torrent of difficult concepts and facts into a compelling story that educates the reader on basic truths of their reality. The lessons and themes of The Shock Doctrine can be applied much more extensively than Klein dares to here, as it’s not just “disaster capitalism” that requires an element of shock to propagate itself, but capitalism as such. From the beginning with the land enclosures and the witch burnings of 15th-17th century Europe, capitalism was built through appalling theft and horrific flames. Understanding how the system we have to deal with now was birthed in those pioneering social and ecological shocks (as part of a more-or-less deliberate strategy by elites) is an effort made much easier with the help of this book.

And now that capitalism is suffering its own shocks, will new disasters present themselves as opportunities for the powerful to develop fresh forms of exploitation (bank bailouts spring to mind), or will we establish the space to finally heal from the trauma we’ve been subjected to under capitalism, as we move towards a more just and sustainable future?  That story is still being written, one day at a time, by all of us.

Chris Hedges

2006 Free Press

Are right-wing Christians in America developing a potentially fascist movement that would discard democracy for the sake of security and conservative values? This is answered affirmatively by Chris Hedges, author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, in his newest book.

We all know the worst of the evangelical movement, which Hedges calls the “dominionists”: they’re militantly anti-abortion and promote abstinence-only education, they hate queer and trans people, they don’t believe in evolution or environmentalism, they’re racist against immigrants and support US warfare and imperialism, and they can be violent, potentially terroristic. This book explores all of these themes, but it also exposes the frightening strength these people have in our society.

For example, “There are at least 70 million evangelicals in the United States attending more than 240,000 evangelical churches… Polls indicate that about 40 percent of respondents believe the Bible is ‘to be taken literally, word for word.’ .. Almost a third of all respondents say they believe in the Rapture.” Clearly this movement has developed a mass base by hiding behind Christianity.

But are these folks organized? Hedges says yes, quite so. He points to their dominance over the Republican Party, as well as billions of dollars received in the form of “faith-based” grants. This governmental power is matched by media influence, as the Christian Right also owns several national television and radio networks, as well as many local media outlets. Further, right-wing organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition are controlled by wealthy white male elites who claim to be “close to God” and are followed with feverish obedience by millions of supporters.

The best parts of the book are the interview sections which delve into the lives of the people drawn to, and spit out by, this movement. By humanizing the participants, we come to understand that their immersion into this Christian reality is often a flight from an overwhelming sense of meaninglessness and despair, genuine emotions which develop from real-world sufferings like unemployment and abuse.

However, much of the book does not live up to this potential and consists of Chris Hedges sending forth litanies of blanket indictments against the ideology of the Christian Right, and attaching a somewhat monolithic character to what in reality is probably a more scattered and heterogeneous right-wing Christian population. In other words, by attacking them as potentially all-powerful, do we not in fact imbue them with powers they do not actually possess?

Worse, although the author rightly argues we must not tolerate a movement which does not tolerate us, he leaves us with little useful ammunition for that struggle. Condemnations of fundamentalist thinking and similarities to Nazism will only get us so far, we need to locate the weak points in the armor of these Crusaders, and this book unfortunately serves little in developing such a strategy.

In a present and future marked by severe crises of an economic, ecological and social nature, the seductiveness of movements urging apocalyptic violence unfortunately may become quite great, and only an alternative movement that appeals to the best in humanity can prevent the emergence of a dictatorship of fear. That great Christian principle of love must be the guiding force as we address the mounting grievances of those left behind by this society and point towards a better future.

by Marvin Harris

1974 Random House

Why do Jews and Muslims refuse to eat pork? Why were thousands of witches burned at the stake during late medieval Europe? These and other riddles are explored by famous anthropologist Marvin Harris, and his conclusions are simple: people act within social and ecological contexts that make their actions meaningful. Put another way: cultural ideas and practices that seem strange to us may actually be vital and necessary to the people of those cultures.

Harris is especially good at explaining how societies create elaborate rituals to avoid harming the natural ecosystems they depend on, which clarifies the Middle Eastern ban on pig products. It turns out the chubby animals compete with humans for the same foods. Raising them in large numbers would place great strain on a land made fragile by thousands of years of deforestation and desertification. Better to ban them entirely and not risk further ecological damage.

This logic is then extended to elucidate why the institution of warfare probably first arose as a way to limit population pressure on the environment. In Harris’ words, “In most primitive societies, warfare is an effective means of population control because intense, recurring intergroup combat places a premium upon rearing male rather than female infants.” Since the rate of population growth depends on the number of healthy women, privileging males by making their larger bodies necessary for combat is a way of reducing the need to “eat the forest.” Not that male supremacy and violence is the BEST way to curb population growth, but it’s one ritual that societies have adopted to meet that goal.

This discussion of patriarchy leads to an exploration of class. The emergence of “big men”, chiefs, and finally the State is explained as a cascading distortion of the original principles of reciprocity into the rule of redistribution. “Big men” work harder than anyone in their tribe to provide a large feast for their community – with the only goal being prestige. Chiefs similarly pursue prestige, and plan great feasts to show off their managerial skills, but they themselves harvest little food. Finally “we end up with state-level societies ruled over by hereditary kings who perform no basic industrial or agricultural labor and who keep the most and best of everything for themselves.” At the root of this construction of inequality is the impetus to make people work harder to create larger surpluses so that greater social rewards can be given out to show off the leader’s generosity. But only at the State or Imperial level is this hierarchy enforced not by prestige but by force of arms, to stop the poor and working classes from revolting and sharing the fruits of their labor.

The most provocative sections of the book deal with revolutionary movements that fought for this liberation, within the context of the religious wars of Biblical Judea and Late Medieval Europe.

First, Harris tackles the Messiah complex by showing that Jews around the time of Jesus waged near-constant guerrilla warfare against their Roman rulers and oppressors. Perhaps half a million people died, in probably hundreds of Jewish uprisings, all led by religious insurgents called Messiahs. Whether Jesus was one of these revolutionary warriors is disputed, but Harris argues that the concept of the “peaceful messiah” only gained prominence later during Roman backlash, as a way to distinguish between the “harmless” Christians and the rebellious Jews. Finally, when Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, its emphasis shifted once more to be compatible with evangelizing the largest military on Earth as it colonized the Mediterranean and killed insurgents.

Christianity would come full circle and provide the ideological backing for revolutionary movements against the dominant social order of Europe during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. At the time feudalism was in crisis and huge peasant movements like the Anabaptists, led by messiah-like zealots, were gaining large followings against their noble and clergy overlords. These Christian messiahs called for breaking up large land estates and providing for the poor masses, who were suffering from unnecessary poverty and disease. The threatened defenders of Church and State needed to cook up some kind of distraction that would divide the population, while authorizing to executions of revolutionary leaders (who were mostly female).

Witchcraft fit the bill nicely. With the Pope’s approval, the accusation, torture, and execution of hundreds of thousands of “witches” effectively disrupted the enormous peasant movements and brought legitimacy to the forces of law and order. Harris explains, “The clergy and nobility emerged as the great protectors of mankind against an enemy who was omnipresent but difficult to detect. Here at last was a reason to pay tithes and obey the tax collector.”

If this crackdown on an invented evil parallels the spectre of “terrorism” today and the war on anti-American Islamist movements, then perhaps Marvin Harris’ effort to explain the seemingly insoluble mysteries of distant cultures can also come full circle to help us make sense of our own society. If Washington is the new Rome, then who are the new messiahs? Or, in a secular sense, who are the people concerned for the poor majority that suffers unnecessarily in our own time?

Richard Manning

2004 North Point Press

Agriculture has domesticated humans. This is the argument at the center of Richard Manning’s stunning history of food. Written with journalistic flavor, Manning explores the ways that agriculture has diminished human life and threatens the planet itself.

The book begins by exploring the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, in many ways superior to our own even at the height of industrial capitalism. Hunter-gatherers, it turns out, ate a wider variety of tasty foods, worked far less, and lived much more sensually and connected than “civilized” humans. About 10,000 years ago, certain groups of humans traded all this in for security, namely the ability to stay in one spot and harvest grain to be stored for future food.

What this crop manipulation produced, however, was the first wealth inequality known to the species, as leaders left working the fields to their followers. In time, these stationary and hierarchical societies expanded and conquered/killed their hunter-gatherer neighbors. Soon enough crops like wheat, corn, and rice spread across the globe through violence and disease.

Manning focuses on these three crops because, as he explains, some 2/3 of all calories consumed today originate with them. In the US, corn is especially dominant, made into all kinds of commodities, for example corn syrup which can be found in just about everything we eat now. The dominance of these few grains is a consequence of capitalism, as they lend themselves easily to processing and storage – making them ideal commodities.

But an important plot twist in the story of grain’s dominance lies hidden in the open. Farm subsidies, especially in the US and Europe, distort the market to make these crops extremely cheap at the expense of all other nutrition. This has the added effect of enriching a few large agribusiness corporations (like Archer Daniels Midland) that grow or process them from enormous monocrop fields, although at the cost of ruining millions of small farmers all over the world. Our health, and the health of the planet are likewise jeopardized by the overabundance of these few crops produced with massive inputs of oil and chemicals.

Nevertheless, Richard Manning is able to summon the hope at the end of the book that our food system doesn’t have to be this way. Finding a distinction between agriculture and “simply growing food”, he argues that we can build an economy based on feeding people, and not just accumulating wealth. Organic agriculture, permaculture, intercropping, farmer’s markets and co-ops all point in this more just and sustainable direction, and awareness of the superiority of these more human methods has been growing at a phenomenal rate.

If we can nourish ourselves by reconnecting with the land and our sensual natures, perhaps we can also heal society and the planet. Against the Grain is a big step in educating us for that effort. Highly recommended.

“Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape”

Jaclyn Friedman & Jessica Valenti

2008 Seal Press

Easily the best book I’ve read this year, if not ever. Yes Means Yes! is an anthology of essays from women and trans folks (and a few men) of all backgrounds, white, black, Latina, Asian, poor, affluent, queer, hetero, sex workers, dominatrices, bloggers, organizers, educators, artists, and survivors, all answering the question, “How can we create a world without rape?”

This book more than any other opened my eyes to the central importance of female sexual power to movement for progressive social change. Through dissecting sexual assault and “rape culture” from ALL angles, the writers articulate that the objectification and control of female bodies is literally the cornerstone of patriarchal society.  Therefore efforts to reclaim female body sovereignty and sexual power are at the forefront of revolutionary change.

This book does not just offer women tips on how to avoid sexual assault (although it does encourage self-defense classes!), it courageously directs blame at the male-dominated society that puts women in dangerous situations on a daily basis.  Similarly, as should be obvious from the title, this work is not just about teaching men to respect “No”, but showing women (all people really) how to love their bodies and embrace their sexuality, in whatever way it manifests.  Enthusiastic consent, responding to “Yes!” and cautious “Maybes”, and taking things one step at a time without assumptions or feelings of entitlement to orgasm, while respecting the ability of a sexual partner to say “Stop.” at any moment, shows a way to the best and most liberatory sex imaginable.

But the book covers so much more than consent. This is a feminist handbook for the masses: well-written, varied, practical, theoretical, yet accessible.

It’s hard to pick a favorite essay, but the one that spoke to me the most was “Killing Misogyny: A Personal Story of Love, Violence, and Strategies for Survival” by Cristina Meztli Tzintún, a personal story about overcoming abusive and controlling male partners. Cristina relates how she got involved with a “radical, feminist” man of color and bonded through activism.  Before she knew it she was years into an abusive relationship that gave her STDs and an inability to leave him, despite his cheating on her with his students, half his age. The pattern mirrored her parents’ disastrous marriage, which made it even more depressing that she could not break free of the cycle of abuse.

While it’s easy to demonize her partner, Alan, a more honest reading will recognize some of his patterns in each of us who have been male-socialized. For example, entitlement to women’s bodies and lack of consideration for the emotional damage wrought by selfish actions are things I know I have to struggle against. Cristina’s bravery in leaving Alan and demanding accountability for his assaults should encourage all of us, that misogyny can in fact be beaten and that personal transformation is an incredibly political act.

I can’t recommend this collection highly enough. Everyone needs to read this book.

“The Mass Psychology of Fascism”

by Wilhelm Reich

1946 The Noonday Press

First written in Germany in 1932 as Hitler was coming to power, then revised in the US in 1944, this is a classic study of the characteristics of fascist movement. Reich, a former Marxist from the Frankfurt School, emphasizes that fascism is not unique to Germany or Japan or Italy, but is instead “the basic emotional attitude of the suppressed man of our authoritarian machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life.”

In other words it’s not enough to blame Hitler or the Nazis or any political party for the rise of fascism, we have to understand why millions of people have been, and continue to be, drawn to Right-wing movement (its mass character is what distinguishes fascism from simple authoritarianism).  Finding its base in the Middle Classes, fascist movement feeds upon authoritarian patriarchal social structures, especially the father-dominated family, which prepares children to obey and even revere a harsh “leader.”

But what was most interesting to me about this book is the politics of sexuality.  Reich as a psychiatrist observed that the repression of sexuality, especially from a young age, prepares people for lifetimes of neurotic self-hatred as some of their most basic and healthy life functions become embedded with deep shame and guilt.  I would add, sexual assault and child abuse add much fuel to this fire.  Reich stresses that children, adolescents and women are perpetually denied control over their sexual desires and bodies, which is what gives the patriarchal father so much power in the family, and therefore the sexual repression of masses of people becomes the seeds that grow fascist political movements.

I will write more on this train of thought in my review of Yes Means Yes!, and it’s also something I’ve been sparked to consider after watching the film The Handmaid’s Tale, about a dark future where pollution has made most women sterile, and a Christian fascist movement seizes control of society to make the remaining fertile women into the sex slaves of powerful male leaders.  It’s surprisingly realistic in some scary ways, because it builds from the sad truth that the patriarchal Christian Right is a real force in society and continues to attack the rights of women to control their own bodies and sexuality.  This tendency must be overcome, by women and trans folks taking back their body sovereignty and proclaiming their sexuality as no one’s but their own.

Part 1 of The Handmaid’s Tale.

There’s a lot more in this book.  Reich also dissects the Soviet Union and tries to explain why worker’s self-management breaking down led to dictatorship and state capitalism.  He also quotes at length from Nazi and Soviet propaganda to illustrate his points.  Finally, I need to point out that a fair portion of this book is spent on Reich’s ideas of the “orgone”, which he believed was the fundamental component of life, work, love, and knowledge.  He’s been accused of pseudoscience, but if you look at it from a spiritual point of view, it doesn’t matter what you call that force inside each of us which strives for freedom, the point is to unleash it.

“Freedom does not have to be achieved – it is spontaneously present in every life function. It is the elimination of all obstacles to freedom that has to be achieved.”

“You Call This a Democracy? Who Benefits, Who Pays, and Who Really Decides?”

by Paul Kivel

2004 Apex Press

Paul Kivel exposes the ruling class of the United States and how it operates in this short, easy-to-read book. With simple concepts and cute illustrations, a nuanced class analysis is presented in a very clear and accessible format.

If the education system was any good at all, “You Call This a Democracy?” would be one of the textbooks used in all high schools. It explains what the ruling class is (those with a family income above $373,000 and net financial wealth of at least $2 million), how it controls the government, media, and economy, and the negative effects we all suffer, such as poverty, wars, disease, pollution, over-working, stress, and meaningless, isolated lives. Kivel particularly does a great job exposing how the ruling class uses racism, sexism, homophobia and other social divisions to keep itself, a relatively small group of basically white Protestant men, in power. Making the connections between systems of oppression is one of the keys to the freedom of everybody, and this book helps move that analysis forward.

There a couple criticisms I could make about the book, first that it doesn’t inspire enough hope or provide much of a systematic solution to the problem that it systematically critiques. And secondly that the book can be cumbersome to read because of a fair amount of repetition coupled with too many general statements about segments of the population. To a certain extent, this was unavoidable in a book of this nature, but I could have used more examples of particular corporations, politicians, and businesspeople and their ilk, even though the examples given in the book are all great.

Definitely check this out if you want to have any idea about the country you’re living in, and how you and your family and everyone you care about are being screwed over by the super-wealthy elite. The path to a democratic future starts when we become informed.

“How the Irish Became White”

by Noel Ignatiev

1995 Routledge

“It is a curious fact,” wrote John Finch, an English Owenite who traveled the United States in 1843, “that the democratic party, and particularly the poorer class of Irish immigrants in America, are greater enemies to the negro population, and greater advocates for the continuance of negro slavery, than any portion of the population in the free States.”

How did the Irish become White?  By violently subjugating African Americans, according to this courageous book by Noel Ignatiev.

As a part-Irish American, learning about the injustice that some of my ancestors took part in is deeply troubling, but it’s a history that we need to explore to uncover the true legacy of mass Irish immigration to America, and more fundamentally, the meaning of “Whiteness”.

The Irish in Ireland of the early-19th Century were a revolutionary people: impoverished, agrarian, and determined to break free of the grip of England’s tyranny. But once these same freedom-lovers emigrated to the United States, a peculiar thing happened: they were faced with a society based on racial segregation and industrial capitalism. Moreover, there began a large “Nativist” movement by wealthy Protestant Anglo-Saxons who tried to restrict immigration and subdue Irish/Catholic influence in the New World.

In order to overcome these barriers, the Irish made a strategic choice: escape the bottom-rung of poverty and be accepted into mainstream US society by aggressively aligning themselves with the Democratic Party and doing everything they could to keep African Americans in slavery or otherwise out of the labor market. Thus they earned the right to be considered “White” and receive the benefits and privileges associated with that social category.

Ignatiev makes a compelling case that “When Irish workers encountered Afro-Americans, they fought with them, it is true, but they also fought with immigrants of other nationalities, with each other, and with whomever else they were thrown up against in the marketplace.”  In other words, it wasn’t that the Irish were inherently more racist than any other group. Instead, the race riots when rowdy Irish attacked African Americans were largely in response to an economic condition arising in early US capitalism: Northern industrial labor markets were saturated by waves of immigrants and freed slaves competing over lower and lower wages. To secure jobs for themselves, the Irish became the hammer that pounded away at racial segregation to force African Americans out of the factories and into poverty and the ghetto.

By doing so, they also solidified the major distinction between relatively privileged sectors of the US working class and those on the bottom – “Whiteness”. Ignatiev explains: “Since ‘white’ was not a physical description but one term of a social relation which could not exist without its opposite, ‘white man’s work’ was simply, work from which Afro-Americans were excluded.”

Much of the book centers in Philadelphia, which made this book doubly relevant for me. Ignatiev explores how Irishmen found employment in Philly by systematically excluding Blacks from any workplaces they were involved in: they simply refused to work with Blacks. When this wasn’t enough, they also used terror to suppress the Black population.

The racial warfare which occurred throughout Philly was really quite drastic: Black churches, homes, and businesses were regularly attacked and burned during the 19th century. Irish-Americans formed themselves into private “fire companies” who were basically gangs who competed with other fire companies by setting fires in their territory, then attacking the firemen. These same gangs soon involved themselves in Democratic Party machine politics by stuffing ballot boxes, roughing up potential voters, and putting forth Irish candidates for offices.  The extreme violence and corruption shocked me at first, but in fact explains quite a lot about the current reality of Philadelphia, which remains racially tense and divided to this day.

This is not an easy book to read. Ignatiev uses a lot of primary sources so the language can be difficult. Worse though is that he often refrains from making his points clearly and directly, instead drawing you into long stories that only tangentially explain his key thesis. Nevertheless, with a subject-matter as compelling as this, the book can be gripping, and I highly recommend it.

To overcome the racial barriers of today and tomorrow, we need to learn from the mistakes of the past. Specifically, we are forced to wonder, how can we overcome centuries of racism in America? What does the election of a Black Democrat for President explain about the arc of US politics, and what challenges does it present? Is Ignatiev right that a free society can only be achieved on this land when “Whiteness” ceases to be a social category used to privilege one group of workers over another?

In any case, studying our troubled and dark history is the only way to escape it and open a door to a different reality.  As we take that intellectual journey we may also discover who we really are…

“On August 11, 1854, the Liberator [newspaper] published a letter from a Maine correspondent who wrote, ‘passage to the United States seems to produce the same effect upon the exile of Erin as the eating of the forbidden fruit did upon Adam and Eve. In the morning hey were pure, loving, and innocent; in the evening, guilty – excusing their fault with the plea of expecting advantage to follow faithfulness.’”