Yesterday’s packed event was the first in Occupy Philadelphia‘s ten-part educational series “Dissecting Capitalism.”  It was audio and video recorded, the audio is already online HERE.  Listen in!

[update 2/13: and here is the video of the talk, in two parts!]

Part 2:

Below is the outline I created for my talk (downloadable HERE). I tried to bring a holistic analysis of the system that could be understandable by the average person, but still contain a nuanced perspective of all the ways capitalism has screwed us over and screwed over our planet.  I’ll be fleshing this out over the next several days to revamp the “What is Capitalism?” section of the website. [alex]

What is Capitalism?

“Know Your Enemy” – Rage Against the Machine

2/1/2012 – LAVA

Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com

1. Capitalism is a Global System of Abuse
   1. Common Sense Radicalism – speak to the core issue in a way everyone can emotionally understand
   2. How does it feel to live in a capitalist system? Like an abusive relationship.
      1. “The problem that has no name.”
   3. Social and ecological trauma
   4. BP Oil Disaster demonstrates system’s logic: profit over all, total lack of accountability

2. Power, Abuse, Resistance
   1. Power-Over and Power-With
   2. Internalized Oppression vs. Inherent Need for Self-determination
   3. Systems of Abuse/Oppression: Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Class
   4. Some Features of Class Societies:
      1. Inequality – the few benefit at the expense of the many
      2. Economic production disconnected from human need
      3. Forced labor – slavery, wage slavery
      4. State violence – punishment, repression
      5. Warfare, Conquest
      6. Propaganda
      7. Unsustainable ecological abuse
      8. Popular resistance
   5. Capitalism is the most advanced Class Society

3. Capitalism: Pyramid of Accumulation
   1. Financial Speculation
   2. Commodity Trading, Commodities
   3. Wage Labor, Wage Labor, Wage Labor
   4. Enclosures: the largest, but invisible part of the iceberg
      1. any energy, resources or labor taken by force or without just compensation

4. Stages of Capitalism: 1492 – Present
   1. Mercantile Capitalism (1492-1793)
      1. Land Enclosures – displacement of European small farmers
      2. Colonization, Genocide
      3. Slavery
      4. Witch Hunts – attack on women
   2. Industrial Capitalism (1793-1971)
      1. Fossil fuel
      2. Mechanized production – Richard Arkwright’s steam-powered factories
      3. World War
      4. Welfare state – rising living standards in the Global North
   3. Neoliberalism (1971-2008)
      1. Globalization – industry moves to the Global South, elimination of all trade barriers
      2. Privatization/Deregulation – attack on welfare, rise of nonprofit industrial complex, prison industrial complex, “Structural Adjustment”
      3. Computerization – extreme isolation of the individual
      4. Astronomical Debt – rise of credit card industry, student loans, housing bubble
   4. Zombie Capitalism? (2008-Present)
      1. Neoliberalism is dead. Yet it walks amongst us?
      2. Bailouts are life support to the tune of $12 Trillion
      3. Austerity = cannibalism – foreclosures, unemployment, cutting services, wages, benefits, retirement, etc. destroy the basis for the massive consumption propping up the global economy

5. The Addiction Dilemma
   1. “Leave it with me and it will kill me. Take it from me and I will die.”
   2. Self-Hatred is the psychological norm under capitalism
   3. Addiction is a response to Trauma – stress, abuse, deprivation and displacement
   4. A social disease, not a personal failing
   5. Self-destruction vs. self-sufficiency

6. The Need for Growth
   1. The system’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness
   2. Inevitability of Crisis – the Shark
   3. The Profit Motive and the necessity of a return

7. The End of Capitalism
   1. Ecological Limits to Growth: peak oil, peak uranium, peak water, peak food, peak transport, etc.
   2. Social Limits: resistance of everyday people, everywhere. Arab Spring, Occupy, Chinese workers.
   3. Recovery, Relapse, or Revolution?

Recommended Readings:

• Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia 2004.
• Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1967.
• Heinberg, Richard. The End of Growth. New Society 2011.
• Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 2007.
• Maté, Gabor. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. 2008.
• Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. Zed Books 1986.
• Turbulence. “Life in Limbo?” Vol. 5, December 2009. www.turbulence.org.uk

Alex Knight is the editor of endofcapitalism.com and is writing the coincidentally named book “The End of Capitalism,” which argues that the global capitalist system is breaking down due to ecological and social limits to growth, and we are transitioning to a noncapitalist future. Alex was active in the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 2006-2009, and now spends most of his time organizing with the wonderful people of Occupy Philadelphia.

they’re mostly Christmas/holiday tunes transformed into Occu-Carols, with a couple others thrown in as well. my favorite is #6 “Do You Hear What I Hear?”

let’s be a movement that sings!
alex

image by Larry Swetman

OCCUPY PHILLY SONGBOOK

1. WE WISH FOR A REVOLUTION
(by Alex Knight to the tune of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”)

We wish for a revolution
We wish for a revolution
We wish for a revolution
In the coming New Year!

Tunisia was first
Egypt heard the call
Then Occupy Wall St.
Inspired us all.

(Chorus)

In Chile and Greece
Now Russia we see
The people are rising
For democracy.

(Chorus)

Now Philly has joined
We’re ready to rock
We’re just getting started
And we’ll never stop!

We wish for a revolution
We wish for a revolution
We wish for a revolution
In the coming New Year!

2. THE TWELVE DAYS OF OCCUPY
(inspired by other versions, including one by Gina Botel)

On the first day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
A tent and a community.

On the second day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Two woolen blankets and…

On the third day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Three warm meals…

On the fourth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Four clarifying questions…

On the fifth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
FIVE LONG GA’s…

On the sixth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Six working groups…

On the seventh day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Seven drummers drumming…

On the eighth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Eight signs a-painting…

On the ninth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Nine marchers marching…

On the tenth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Ten locked arms…

On the eleventh day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Eleven cops a-raiding…

On the twelfth day of Occupy, my new friends gave to me
Twelve new encampments…

3. DECK CITY HALL
(by Alex Knight, inspired by other versions)

De-eck City Hall with tents
Fa La La La La, La La La La
‘Tis the time to start a movement
Fa La La La La, La La La La
October 6th we came together
Fa La La, La La La, La La La
But this movement lasts forever
Fa La La La La, La La La La

Dilworth Plaza sits before us
Fa La La La La, La La La La
Make a sign and join the chorus
Fa La La La La, La La La La
Follow us and take a chance
Fa La La, La La La, La La La
Grab a drum and let’s all dance
Fa La La La La, La La La La

Direct democracy’s our creed
Fa La La La La, La La La La
Helping those in times of need
Fa La La La La, La La La La
One thing that this movement knows
Fa La La, La La La, La La La
Capitalism has no clothes!
Fa La La La La, La La La La

Fa La La La La, La La La Laaaa!

4. OCCUPY
(by Alex Knight to the tune of “Jingle Bells”)

Occupy, Occupy,
We have come to say
Oh! what fun it is to fight
For a better world today!

(repeat)

Setting up our tents
We are here to stay
O’er the weeks we go
Laughing all the way (Ha ha ha!)

Drums are pounding loud
Keeping spirits bright
What fun it is to occupy
Our city squares tonight!

Oh! Occupy, Occupy,
We have come to say
Oh! what fun it is to fight
For a better world today!

(repeat)

Feeding all for free
And a place to lay
Medics standing by
Meetings all the day!

Our government has failed
To do what we all say
That is why we’ve come to build
Democracy our way!

(repeat chorus)

5. ORGANIZING WORKERS IN THIS LAND
(based on a version by Kelly Karjola to the tune of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”)

CEO’s…
Are you listening?
On respect we’re insisting
In each industry
Our plan’s gonna be
Organizing workers in this land

All you rich politicians
Unions want recognition
You’d better see this,
We’re raising our fists
And organizing workers in this land

We all share a new vision
Occupy has a mission
One day “working poor”
Will be never more
We’ll have a living wage in every town!

So let’s join those committees
Time to build Union Cities
It’s a beautiful sight
When we all unite
Organizing workers in this land!

6. DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?
(based on a version by Gina Botel)

Said the police to Mayor Nutter,
Do you see what I see, do you see what I see?
Way down in the streets, Mayor Nutter,
Do you see what I see, do you see what I see?
A Crowd, a Crowd
Marching in the streets
Waving signs out there for all to see
Waving signs for all to see!

Said Mayor Nutter to the Media,
Do you hear what I hear, do you hear what I hear?
Ringing through the town, Media
Do you hear what I hear, do you hear what I hear?
A Chant, a Chant
The popping up of tents
Saying we are the 99 percent
We are the 99 percent!

Said the Media to the Mighty Banks,
Do you know what I know, do you know what I know?
In your fortress walls, Mighty Banks
Do you know what I know, do you know what I know?
The People, the People
The People of this town
They will come, occupy and shut you down
They will come, occupy and shut you down!

7. O’ DAMN YE WALL ST. GENTLEMEN
(to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”)

O Damn Ye Wall Street Gentlemen,
You bastards made us pay
For all the debt you piled up
And then you walked away.
You handed out fat bonus checks
And sneered at our dismay.

O, you Swindlers and Liars and Frauds (x2)

O, Damn Ye Wall Street Gentlemen
For we are unemployed.
Our homes are in foreclosure
And our bank accounts destroyed.
You robbed us of our future
For the profits you enjoyed.

O, you Swindlers and Liars and Frauds (x2)

O, Damn Ye Wall Street Gentlemen
You paid off Uncle Sam,
For regulation of the Banks
Is nothing but a sham.
And no one went to prison
For this trillion dollar scam.

O, you Swindlers and Liars and Frauds (x2)

O, Damn Ye Wall Street Gentlemen,
If you do not repent
Prepare for occupation by the 99 percent.
The times are changing once again
And we will not relent.

O, you Swindlers and Liars and Frauds (x2)

8. SOLIDARITY FOREVER
(updated by Alex Knight)

When the movement’s inspiration through the 99 has run,
There shall be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun.
But what force on earth is weaker
Than the feeble strength of one?
For the movement makes us strong!

Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever, for the movement makes us strong!

It is we who worked our butts off,
Building all the stuff they trade.
Paved the highways, fed the children,
Endless gigs of websites made.
Now we stand outcast and jobless
‘Midst the wonders we have made.
But the movement makes us strong!

Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever, for the movement makes us strong!

They have taken untold millions
That they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle,
Not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their fragile power
Gain our freedom when we learn,
That the movement makes us strong!

Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever, for the movement makes us strong!

9. RUDOLPH THE BROWN-NOSED BANKER
(based on a version by Loretta Callahan)

Rudolph the Brown-Nosed Banker
Got a very big bailout
He didn’t have to worry
Cause he was “too big to fail”

All of the other banksters
Jealous of his fat cat ways
Cranked up your interest payments
Now they’re really makin’ hay

Then one frantic autumn day
To Rudolph’s great dismay
He’d robbed so many 401k’s
All the markets went away!

Now all the people hate banks
And they’re shouting out angry
We’re gonna stop this nonsense
You’ll go down in history!

10. O’ ONE PERCENT!
(written by Michael Shultz to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree”)

O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
The times they are a-changin;
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
The times they are a-changin;
You foreclose when Summer’s here,
Keep empty homes through Winter’s drear.
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
The times they are a-changin.

O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
No treasure can you give me;
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
No pleasure can you give me;
For me to prop your system up,
While me and mine go belly up.
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
No treasure can you give me.

O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
Your spokespeople lie daily;
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
Your spokespeople lie daily;
The corporations fill our ears,
With things to buy and baseless fears.
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
Your spokespeople lie daily.

O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
You are not our master;
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
You are not our master;
Through Unity we’ll overcome,
Let’s bridge divisions everyone!
O’ One Percent! O’ One Percent!
You are not our master.

11. OCCUPY IS COMING TO TOWN
(adapted from other versions)

You better watch out
You better not lie
You better shape up I’m telling you why
Occupy is coming to town!

You’re cooking the books
We’re checking them twice
We’re gonna find out who’s naughty or nice
Occupy is coming to town!

We see you when you’re cheating
We know when you’re a snake
We know when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake

Oh, you better watch out
You better not spy
You better not steal I’m telling you why
Occupy is coming to town!

We see you when you’re speaking
We know when you’re a fake
We know when you’ve been doing wrong
So do good for goodness sake

We’re speaking out loud
We’re taking the streets
The 99% cannot be beat
Occupy is coming to town!

12. WE OCCUPY!
(by Dave Marley of Occupy Philly)

We Occupy
It’s what we do
And what we do
We do for you
And also for us
Because we must
We Occupy…
We Occupy

We Occupy
Wherever we go
Wherever we go
Is our new home
And our new home
Is your new home
We Occupy…
We Occupy

We Occupy
Whatever we eat
Whatever we eat
Is Yours to eat
Come have a seat
And tell us why
You Occupy…
We Occupy

We Occupy
Wherever we stand
Wherever we stand
Is occupied land
Come take our hands
And raise them high
We Occupy…
We Occupy

We Occupy
Victoriously
Victoriously
We now are free
So shall we be
Until we die
We Occupy…
We Occupy

We Occupy
We Occupy
We Occupy
We Occupy
We Occupy
We Occupy
We Occupy…
We Occupy!

Whiteness and the 99%
By Joel Olson

Originally published by Bring the Ruckus, 10/20/11.  A printable PDF of this piece is available for download here, and a readable PDF is available here.

Occupy Wall Street and the hundreds of occupations it has sparked nationwide are among the most inspiring events in the U.S. in the 21st century. The occupations have brought together people to talk, occupy, and organize in new and exciting ways. The convergence of so many people with so many concerns has naturally created tensions within the occupation movement. One of the most significant tensions has been over race. This is not unusual, given the racial history of the United States. But this tension is particularly dangerous, for unless it is confronted, we cannot build the 99%. The key obstacle to building the 99% is left colorblindness, and the key to overcoming it is to put the struggles of communities of color at the center of this movement. It is the difference between a free world and the continued dominance of the 1%.

Left colorblindess is the enemy

Left colorblindness is the belief that race is a “divisive” issue among the 99%, so we should instead focus on problems that “everyone” shares. According to this argument, the movement is for everyone, and people of color should join it rather than attack it.

Left colorblindness claims to be inclusive, but it is actually just another way to keep whites’ interests at the forefront. It tells people of color to join “our” struggle (who makes up this “our,” anyway?) but warns them not to bring their “special” concerns into it. It enables white people to decide which issues are for the 99% and which ones are “too narrow.” It’s another way for whites to expect and insist on favored treatment, even in a democratic movement.

As long as left colorblindness dominates our movement, there will be no 99%. There will instead be a handful of whites claiming to speak for everyone. When people of color have to enter a movement on white people’s terms rather than their own, that’s not the 99%. That’s white democracy.

The white democracy

Biologically speaking, there’s no such thing as race. As hard as they’ve tried, scientists have never been able to define it. That’s because race is a human creation, not a fact of nature. Like money, it only exists because people accept it as “real.” Races exist because humans invented them.

Why would people invent race? Race was created in America in the late 1600s in order to preserve the land and power of the wealthy. Rich planters in Virginia feared what might happen if indigenous tribes, slaves, and indentured servants united and overthrew them. So, they cut a deal with the poor English colonists. The planters gave the English poor certain rights and privileges denied to all persons of African and Native American descent: the right to never be enslaved, to free speech and assembly, to move about without a pass, to marry without upper-class permission, to change jobs, to acquire property, and to bear arms. In exchange, the English poor agreed to respect the property of the rich, help them seize indigenous lands, and enforce slavery.

This cross-class alliance between the rich and the English poor came to be known as the “white race.” By accepting preferential treatment in an economic system that exploited their labor, too, the white working class tied their wagon to the elite rather than the rest of humanity. This devil’s bargain has undermined freedom and democracy in the U.S. ever since.

The cross-class alliance that makes up the white race.

As this white race expanded to include other European ethnicities, the result was a very curious political system: the white democracy. The white democracy has two contradictory aspects to it. On the one hand, all whites are considered equal (even as the poor are subordinated to the rich and women are subordinated to men). On the other, every white person is considered superior to every person of color. It’s democracy for white folks, but tyranny for everyone else.

In this system, whites praised freedom, equal opportunity, and hard work, while at the same time insisting on higher wages, access to the best jobs, to be the first hired and the last fired at the workplace, full enjoyment of civil rights, the right to send their kids to the best schools, to live in the nicest neighborhoods, and to enjoy decent treatment by the police. In exchange for these “public and psychological wages,” as W.E.B. Du Bois called them, whites agreed to enforce slavery, segregation, reservation, genocide, and other forms of discrimination. The tragedy of the white democracy is that it oppressed working class whites as well as people of color, because with the working class bitterly divided, the elites could rule easily.

The white democracy exists today. Take any social indicator—rates for college graduation, homeownership, median family wealth, incarceration, life expectancy, infant mortality, cancer, unemployment, median family debt, etc.—and you’ll find the same thing: whites as a group are significantly better off than any other racial group. Of course there are individual exceptions, but as a group whites enjoy more wealth, less debt, more education, less imprisonment, more health care, less illness, more safety, less crime, better treatment by the police, and less police brutality than any other group. Some whisper that this is because whites have a better work ethic. But history tells us that the white democracy, born in the 1600s, lives on.

The distorted white mindset

No one is opposed to good schools, safe neighborhoods, healthy communities, and economic security for whites. The problem is that in the white democracy, whites often enjoy these at the expense of communities of color. This creates a distorted mindset among many whites: they praise freedom yet support a system that clearly favors the rich, even at the expense of poor whites. (Tea Party, I’m talking to you.)

The roots of left colorblindness lie in the white democracy and the distorted mindset it creates. It encourages whites to think that their issues are “universal” while those of people of color are “specific.” But that is exactly backwards. The struggles of people of color are the problems that everyone shares. Anyone in the occupy movement who has been treated brutally by the police has to know that Black communities are terrorized by cops every day. Anyone who is unemployed has to know that Black unemployment rates are always at least double that of whites, and Native American unemployment rates are far higher. Anyone who is sick and lacks healthcare has to know that people of color are the least likely to be insured (regardless of their income) and have the highest infant mortality and cancer rates and the lowest life expectancy rates. Anyone who is drowning in debt should know that the median net wealth of Black households is twenty times less than that of white households. Only left colorblindness can lead us to ignore these facts.

This is the sinister impact of white democracy on our movements. It encourages a mindset that insists that racial issues are “divisive” when they are at the absolute center of everything we are fighting for.

To defeat left colorblindness and the distorted white mindset, we must come to see any form of favoritism toward whites (whether explicit or implicit) as an evil attempt to perpetuate the cross-class alliance rather than build the 99%.

The only thing that can stop us is us

Throughout American history, attacking the white democracy has always opened up radical possibilities for all people. The abolitionist movement not only overthrew slavery, it kicked off the women’s rights and labor movements. The civil rights struggle not only overthrew legal segregation, it kicked off the women’s rights, free speech, student, queer, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and American Indian movements. When the pillars of the white democracy tremble, everything is possible.

The only thing that can stop us is us. What prevents the 99% from organizing the world as we see fit is not the 1%. The 1% cannot hold on to power if we decide they shouldn’t. What keeps us from building the new world in our hearts are the divisions among us.

Our diversity is our strength. But left colorblindness is a rejection of diversity. It is an effort to keep white interests at the center of the movement even as the movement claims to be open to all. Urging us to “get over” so-called “divisive” issues like race sound inclusive, but they are really efforts to maintain the white democracy. It’s like Wall Street executives telling us to “get beyond” “divisive” issues like their unfair profits because if you work hard enough, you too can get a job on Wall Street someday!

Creating a 99% requires putting the struggles of people of color at the center of our conversations and demands rather than relegating them to the margins. To fight against school segregation, colonization, redlining, and anti-immigrant attacks is to fight against everything Wall Street stands for, everything the Tea Party stands for, everything this government stands for. It is to fight against the white democracy, which stands at the path to a free society like a troll at the bridge.

Occupy everything, attack the white democracy

While no pamphlet can capture everything a nationwide movement can or should do to undermine the white democracy and left colorblindness, below is a short list of questions people might consider asking in movement debates. These questions were developed from actual debates in occupations throughout the U.S.

1. Do speakers urge us “get beyond” race? Are they defensive and dismissive of demands for racial justice?
2. If speakers urge developing “close working relationships with the police,” do they consider how police terrorize Black, Latino, Native, and undocumented communities? Do they consider how police have attacked occupation encampments?
3. If speakers urge us to hold banks accountable, do they encourage us to focus on redlining, predatory lending, and subprime mortgages, which have decimated Black and Latino neighborhoods?
4. If speakers urge the cancellation of debts, do they mean for things like electric and heating bills as well as home mortgages and college loans?
5. If speakers urge the halting of foreclosures, do they acknowledge that they take place primarily in segregated neighborhoods, and do they propose to start there?
6. If speakers urge the creation of more jobs, do they acknowledge that many communities of color have already been in chronic “recessions” for decades, and do they propose to start from there?

Joel Olson is a member of Bring the Ruckus.

A Therapist Talks About the Occupy Wall Street Events

Occupy Philly General Assembly, October 6, 2011

By Lane Arye

Originally published by In Front and Center.

Last night I was talking with a group of activists/organizers from around the country about their impressions of the OWS movement. They were curious how the insights of a therapist and conflict facilitator schooled in Worldwork (which was developed by Arnold Mindell) might be useful to folks in the movement. After our teleconference, the activists encouraged me to write this.

First off, OWS is surrounded by a host of critics, from long-time social change organizers to mainstream media.  (Much of the media criticism has been debriefed, so I’m focusing on internal criticisms I have heard.)

We can learn from critics in at least two ways. They can help us improve by pointing out what we genuinely need to change. Paradoxically, they may be criticizing us for something we actually need to do more congruently. Seen from this angle, critics may be highlighting strengths we don’t yet know we have.

Take one criticism: The General Assemblies lead to a kind of individualism of people wanting to be heard and contribute, unaware of the impact on the thousand people listening.  In one recent GA, a small group of frustrated men hijacked the meeting, cursing and physically threatening the entire assembly.  Even in less dramatic situations, most GA’s are filled with judgment, fracturing statements, and individuals repeating each other just so they can get themselves heard.

From one point of view, the criticism is valid. Yes, Western individualism can be very problematic and it is always a good time to learn to become communitarian.  But perhaps there is also something beautiful about this individualism. People have the sense that they can finally speak up about the economy, that their voice is important, that they do not have to shut up and listen to talking heads who supposedly know better.

It can be useful to think about this in terms of roles. (Just as an actor plays many different roles, we all play different roles in our lives, sometimes without awareness.) Individuals wanting to be heard at a General Assembly might be in the role of someone who wants attention. “Pay attention to me! I have something to say!”  For years our “democratic” system has ignored these voices.  They have been excluded by money, a political system that merely offers citizens a chance to vote, and a financial system bent on inequality. But now this role is finding a public voice.

This role is talking to another role that does not listen. Many bankers, politicians, media and others are part of the role of “not listening.”  In essence the voice says: “Shut up! I am not listening to you!”  (Though they have learned to be more subtle: ”I wish the protestors had a single message.”)

There must be a third role here – the listener, who holds the space and receives what someone is offering.

Making this useful: Perhaps facilitators, organizers and activists could benefit from knowing that these three roles are around. For example, when someone is talking a lot at a General Assembly, the facilitator could echo back what the speaker is saying, getting to the essence of it so the speaker knows she/he is heard, and perhaps so the person knows what she/he is trying to say.

I have seen this work around the world. During a forum for reconciliation in the Balkans soon after the war there, a Bosnian Croat would not stop speaking, holding a virtual filibuster, despite the impassioned pleas of his fellow participants. When I echoed back what I thought he was trying to say, he thanked me and sat down. When people feel heard, they stop demanding the time to speak, because filling the missing role of the listener is relieving to the one who has something to say.

Of course, doing this can be challenging. Everyone wants to speak, but who can really listen? In Worldwork we say thatthe elder is the person who can listen to all voices, who supports everyone to speak and be heard, who wants the best for all sides of a given conflict. OWS, like the rest of the world, needs more elders.

Another way to make this useful is to think that probably everyone needs to be heard, and everyone needs to cultivate the listener. Having large groups move into pairs or groups of three people who can actively listen to one another about a given topic might be one way to incorporate this important need.  Occupy Minneapolis used this with huge success during a consensus process that had been routinely blocked. After pair-sharing, the group was able to move forward.  Or Aussie facilitator Holly Hammond has found value in “asking people to raise their hands in response to some questions e.g., ‘Raise your hand if this is your first General Assembly’ (very useful information!); ‘Raise your hand if you camped at City Square’; ‘Raise your hand if you were present at the eviction’, etc.”  Both methods gave people the sense that someone was listening to them, interested in them, and that they were an important part of what was happening.

This is one reason, by the way, that the spokescouncil model can be effective.  In that model there are affinity groups — embedded small groups so everyone can speak — and they each send representatives who sit at the spokescouncil, like spokes of a wheel.  Each spoke can consult with its affinity group and the whole process is done in public so it marries transparent representation and participation.

Similar to the listener is the appreciator. At some GA’s people are attacked when they step into new roles of leadership. How much more exciting it could be if these brave souls were cheered when they took the risk to lead. One OWS activists came up with a different solution: put up a large chart where people can leave anonymous (or signed) messages of appreciation for people in the camp.  It’s another way to model that people are hearing!

The one who wants attention is related to the role of the one who wants to contribute. Even long-time organizers may find themselves not knowing how to contribute to this movement that has its own culture, that may not seem to them to be strategic or sustainable. They might feel disempowered as well, and feel they have to adapt to the General Assembly culture and the rules that have been set up by the OWS organizers. And those who anticipate that the long history of oppression will be repeated yet again may feel that their voices and contributions will not be as welcomed.

When we notice the companion role, the one who receives someone’s contribution, then we find ways to work with this dynamic. For instance, facilitators might again try getting people into small groups, and having folks take turns saying what they personally feel they have to contribute to this movement. The other people in the small group can draw them out, and encourage them to find ways to bring their unique gifts. Many people want to contribute, but do not know how. It is important to support people to find their strengths and fulfill their need to contribute. This can prevent people from feeling discouraged or disempowered (and thus prevent harmful consequences like deciding not to return, or discouraging others from engaging with the movement). It also breathes new life into a movement by bringing new ideas and energy from the grassroots.

When I mentioned this point to the social change organizers, they put it to immediate use. One young woman of color from New York was talking about her frustration that, while People of Color have shown up, their contributions have often been minimized. She felt that OWS needs just the opposite- to value and prioritize these contributions in order to continue expanding and diversifying the movement. Another Philly organizer of color drew her out, asking how she imagined making a difference. Her initial hesitancy was transformed into excitement as he appreciated and received her great ideas. Then he asked if she would like coaching on one point, which she welcomed. A week later she facilitated a 100 person POC meeting, as well as a media training for POC/women, teaching them to better find their voice, initiate interviews, and speak up in the media. She also had other projects/contributions in the pipeline. As she wrote, “My mind and my heart are a-whirlin.”

Here was one great example of what I imagine are a multitude of potential contributions that could be supported to come forward if we notice and fill the various roles in the field.

Let’s not forget that the man who wanted to hear her ideas also made a contribution of his own. Filling the role of the receiver was itself a contribution!

He had been one of those experienced organizers who had not found a way to be of use to the OWS movement. He had at various times tried to give advice to OWS facilitators about how to have better GA’s and create a more sustainable movement, without having had much impact. Now he realized he had been stuck in the role of the one who speaks (one of the many well-meaning people who turn into advice givers) rather than being an elder. That’s when he decided to try something different. (It is important to note that after listening to her, he asked if she wanted coaching, then waited for her feedback before offering his own ideas.)

Another way to look at all of this is through the lens of a criticism that has been leveled by the mainstream media at the OWS movement – that it has so many heads and no unified message. Rather than looking at the truth or falsehood of this criticism, let’s see if there is something good about it! If OWS is creature with many heads, then anyone can be the head. When so many heads are singing beautiful songs, it is up to each of us to both listen, and to sing our own song. The most beautiful and compelling ones will be heard. (Writing this article after listening deeply to those activists is my own attempt to contribute a song. Perhaps someone will hear it.) From this perspective, we are all potential leaders of this movement.

According to Mindell’s idea of Deep Democracy, when all voices and roles have a chance to be heard and interact, the wisdom of a group or community can arise. Perhaps the many-headed creature that is OWS needs our particular song, our particular direction. The world is trying to express itself. It is using us. By believing in our own voice, in our own special part, and by actively listening to our peers, we can help the wisdom and power of the movement to develop.

Whether the occupation on Lower Manhattan lasts, or grows, or dies in the coming weeks, the global upheaval will continue and become an ever-present feature of the 21st Century. Our theory is that capitalism has entered a crisis from which it will never recover. The youth can feel it, we know we have no future within the existing system. The only question is, what alternative models can we move to, when everything feels so bleak?

The Wall St. occupiers have followed the examples of Egypt, Greece, and Spain in using the direct democratic process of the “general assembly.” This means thousands of young people are having their first exhilarating taste of their voice being part of the actual exercise of power – participating in a movement.  In truth, this is our best hope, so spread it and bring that exhilaration to your friends and family.

If we have a general assembly in every town, every workplace, every school, then capitalism is over for real. [alex]

“Occupy Wall St. Rediscovers the Radical Imagination”

by David Graeber

Originally published the The Guardian UK, September 25, 2011.

Youth of the multiracial working class - always at the front of things. Police arrested over 80 people during this 9/24 march, and pepper sprayed more. Photo by davids camera craft

The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future.

Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation – despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA?

There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates.

Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?

Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.

But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world’s financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.

Everything we’d been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like “Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?”

It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an “economy” is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they’d been before.

Perhaps, it’s not surprising. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we’re all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.

What we’ve learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the “third world debt crisis”. But the global south fought back. The “alter-globalisation movement”, was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of “austerity”.

The form of resistance that has emerged looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below. What’s different is largely the target: where in 2000, it was directed at the power of unprecedented new planetary bureaucracies (the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Nafta), institutions with no democratic accountability, which existed only to serve the interests of transnational capital; now, it is at the entire political classes of countries like Greece, Spain and, now, the US – for exactly the same reason. This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged.

When the history is finally written, though, it’s likely all of this tumult – beginning with the Arab Spring – will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it’s clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side.

We might do well to consider the collapse of the European colonial empires. It certainly did not lead to the rich successfully grabbing all the cookies, but to the creation of the modern welfare state. We don’t know precisely what will come out of this round. But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table – and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.

Why Marxism Has Failed, and Why Zombie-Marxism Cannot Die
Or My Rocky Relationship with Grampa Karl

by Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com
Part 3.1 – September 19, 2011
This is part of an essay critiquing the philosophy of Karl Marx for its relevance to 21st century anti-capitalism. The main thrust of the essay is to encourage living common-sense radicalism, as opposed to the automatic reproduction of zombie ideas which have lost connection to current reality. Karl Marx was no prophet. But neither can we reject him. We have to go beyond him, and bring him with us. I believe it is only on such a basis, with a critical appraisal of Marx, that the Left can become ideologically relevant to today’s rapidly evolving political circumstances. [Click here for Part 1 and Part 2.]

What Marx Got Wrong

“Marxism has ceased to be applicable to our time not because it is too visionary or revolutionary, but because it is not visionary or revolutionary enough” – Murray Bookchin, “Listen, Marxist!”

Although Karl Marx provided us crucial and brilliant anti-capitalist critiques as explored in Part 2, he also contributed several key theoretical errors which continue to haunt the Left. Instead of mindlessly reproducing these dead ideas into contexts where they no longer make sense, we must expose the decay and separate it from the parts of Marx’s thought which are still alive and relevant.

I have narrowed down my objections to five core problems: 1. Linear March of History, 2. Europe as Liberator, 3. Mysticism of the Proletariat, 4. The State, and 5. A Secular Dogma.

I submit that Marx’s foremost shortcoming was his theory of history as a linear progression of higher and higher stages of human society, culminating in the utopia of communism. According to Marx, this “progress” was manifest in the “development of productive forces,” or the ability of humans to remake the world in their own image. The danger of this idea is that it wrongly ascribes an “advance” to the growth of class society. In particular, capitalism is seen as a “necessary” precursor to socialism. This logic implicitly justifies not only the domination of nature by humanity, but the dominance of men over women, and the dominance of Europeans over people of other cultures.

Marx’s elevation of the “proletariat” as the agent of history also created a narrow vision for human emancipation, locating the terrain of liberation within the workplace, rather than outside of it. This, combined with a naive and problematic understanding of the State, only dispensed more theoretical fog that has clouded the thinking of revolutionary strategy for more than a century. Finally, by binding the hopes and dreams of the world into a deterministic formula of economic law, Marx inadvertently created the potential for tragic dogmatism and sectarianism, his followers fighting over who possessed the “correct” interpretation of historical forces.

(These mistakes have become especially apparent with hindsight, after Marxists have attempted to put these ideas into practice over the last 150 years. The goal here is not to fault Marx for failing to see the future, but rather to fault what he actually said, which was wrong in his own time, and is disastrous in ours. In this section I will limit my criticisms to Marx’s ideas only, and deal with the monstrous legacy of “actually existing” Marxism in Part 4.)

Capitalism is "advancing" us right off a cliff.

1. Linear March of History

“Rooted in early industrialization and a teleological materialism that assumed progress towards communism was inevitable, traditional Marxist historiography grossly oversimplified real history into a series of linear steps and straightforward transitions, with more advanced stages inexorably supplanting more backward ones. Nowadays we know better. History is wildly contingent and unpredictable. Many alternate paths leave from the current moment, as they have from every previous moment too” – Chris Carlsson, Nowtopia (41).

Much of what is wrong in Marx stems from a deterministic conception of historical development, which imagines that the advance and concentration of economic power is necessarily progressive. According to this view, human liberation, which Marx calls communism, can only exist atop the immense productivity and industrial might of capitalism. All of human history, therefore, is nothing but “progressive epochs in the economic formation of society,” as Marx calls it in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859):

“In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production… the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism [communism].”

The idea that history marches forwards along a linear path was not an original of Marx’s – as Bookchin writes in The Ecology of Freedom, it stems from “Victorian prejudices” that “identify ‘progress’ with increasing control of external and internal nature. Historical development is cast within an image of an increasingly disciplined humanity that is extricating itself from a brutish, unruly, mute natural history” (272).

Marx absorbed this framework through Hegel, who theorized a pseudo-spiritual development of humanity towards the idealization of “Absolute Knowledge,” or God. The underlying logic of this divine movement is the attainment of higher levels of “Reason” – the human mind is increasingly able to detach itself from both the human body and from nature, and thereby exist “for itself.” In this way Hegel imagined that civilization had been evolving in a long dialectical process whereby humanity had become increasingly capable of conceptualizing freedom, and through events such as the French Revolution, was realizing that freedom in actuality.

Encoded in the word “teleology,” the linear march of history is a simplistic storyline whereby human history has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Along the way, the plot progresses and advances rationally through successive stages, inevitably reaching its predetermined destination. The famous “end of history” that Francis Fukuyama claimed had been achieved in 1989 with the downfall of the Soviet Union and the global dominance of Western capitalism was a distinctly Hegelian proposition. “Rational” capitalism had proven itself superior to “irrational” communism. The End.

Marx, like Fukuyama, inherited this Hegelian logic and succumbed to its tantalizing promise of unfolding destiny.¹ However, Marx’s teleology was not concerned with the advance of philosophy or ideas, but was only meaningfully realized in the emancipation of humanity from class oppression. According to Marx, humanity becomes “for itself” through the advance of economic forces, which will free humans from “material want” and thereby eliminate the need for the division of society into rich and poor. Communism is forecast as the final stage of the storyline, when humanity will achieve its end in classlessness and material abundance. In his “Critique of Hegel’s Dialectic and General Philosophy” (1844), Marx explains this end:

“[Atheism and communism] are not an impoverished return to unnatural, primitive simplicity. They are rather the first real emergence, the genuine actualization, of man’s nature as something real” (Bottomore 213).

The core problem is Marx’s understanding of human liberation, which is posited as dependent on economic development. Instead of humanity possessing an innate and natural capacity for freedom, Marx delays “the first real emergence of man’s nature” to the end of history. Concerning himself with the “material conditions” for freedom, Marx fails to appreciate that people are constantly producing these conditions themselves in their own communities (taking care of one another, creating tools to accomplish work more efficiently, etc.), and that class systems like capitalism exist by leeching off those efforts, or impeding them to eliminate competition for institutionalized solutions. The development of massive industrialization and the emergence of powerful States do not bring with them the potential for liberation, but are that which humans must be liberated from.

This is not a question of technology, but of power. I fundamentally do not believe that liberation can be built on a foundation of oppression. Power must not be concentrated, but dispersed. Contrary to Marx, the imposition of class society does not enable progress, it obstructs progress.

Marx Against Nature

Marx’s mistaken logic is repeatedly manifest in his ambivalent attitude towards capitalism. Not understanding capitalism’s constant need to perpetuate terrible violence against the planet, and as Silvia Federici adds (below), against women, Marx assigns a beneficial and essential role to capitalism in his grand storyline. Although terrible for its social injustice, the system is simultaneously hailed as a necessary “advance” by virtue of its unprecedented “development of productive forces.” In Capital, Vol. 3 (unpublished at his death), Marx argues:

“It is one of the civilizing aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus labour in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations, and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the preceding forms of slavery, serfdom, etc.” (Marx-Engels Reader 440).

Today we know that capitalism threatens the very survival of the human species, and perhaps of the Earth itself. The billions of commodities pumped out by capital’s factories for rapid consumption and waste correspond directly to unprecedented damage to the world’s ecosystems. The clear-cutting of forests, the collapse of the ocean’s fisheries, the creation and spillage of toxic chemicals, the exhaustion of the fresh water supply, and the immense pollution of the atmosphere with greenhouse gases – with its corresponding destabilization of the climate – all call our attention to the ecological violence carried out by overdevelopment. Simply put, human economy is exploiting the world’s resources at a drastically unsustainable rate. In this context, any talk of capitalism today as a “higher stage” of development is simply ecocidal.

In Marx’s era, ecology as a science did not exist, and his comments on nature were few and far between. Obviously he could not have foreseen the predicament we are in today. However, there is a dangerous anti-ecological sentiment built into Marx’s linear march of history, which we reproduce at our own peril. It is not simply an academic question of “what Marx really believed.” If freedom is conceived of and built by extending capitalism’s “progress,” Marxists will (have and are) seek to further industrialize and “develop,” at the expense of the planet. Achieving a sustainable economy means not only breaking with capitalism for its mass production and industry, but breaking with a Marxist teleology that ignores humanity’s place in the larger web of life.

Opposing this view is an increasing push by some Marxists to discover an ecological wisdom in Marx. As I was writing this essay, I received an email by the Marxist magazine The Monthly Review, telling me that a new book is coming out by John Bellamy Foster, author of numerous books on this subject, including Marx’s Ecology. The aim of Foster’s writings, and others of the same thought, seems to be to locate any and all passages in Marx and Engels’ huge body of work that suggest at least an ambiguous or vaguely positive view of nature, then weave them together to create a picture of environmentalism. I find this endeavor unconvincing for several reasons – the comments cited by Foster and others are typically tangential to Marx’s main arguments and are often vague in content. On the contrary, Marx’s core argument about historical development is based on directly anti-ecological assumptions, which can only be explained away by performing intellectual gymnastics.

The key issue regards economic growth, or in Marx’s phrase, “the development of productive forces.” In “Wage Labour and Capital” (1847), Marx speaks of production as “action on nature,” revealing his awareness of the ecological basis for human economic activity (M-ER 207). However, rather than speaking of the need to transform economic activity so as to benefit humanity and nature together, Marx speaks simply in terms of quantity of production, to take as much as possible from the Earth. He repeatedly claims that what is needed is to develop the “modern means of production,” the industrial technology and centralization of capitalism.

“Only under [capital’s] rule does the proletariat… create the modern means of production, which become just so many means of its revolutionary emancipation. Only its rule tears up the material roots of feudal society and levels the ground on which alone a proletarian revolution is possible” (588, “The Class Struggles in France” 1850).

This celebration of the advance of industry reflects Marx’s belief that communism will be more capable of rapid industrialization than capitalism. Capitalism is expected to develop the “productive forces” too fast for its own good, leading to crises when production is “fettered” by the irrational organization of “bourgeois property.” From the “Communist Manifesto” (1848):

“The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society… The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them” (478).

Communism is supposed to replace capitalism because its greater rationality will allow it to fully develop the means of production. Therefore, Marx’s historic mission for the proletariat is to seize control of the economy, not to slow down or decentralize industrialization; instead industrial growth is precisely the goal. The “Communist Manifesto” delivers one of Marx’s most important strategic statements:

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible (emphasis added)” (490).

The key phrase “increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible” reveals much, but could be misinterpreted due to its vague character. Luckily, the same document fleshes this statement out a bit. Marx’s immediate goals for “the most advanced countries” (i.e. Europe) include, “Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State,” “Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands,” and “Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture” (490).

The idea that industrialization will bring freedom is laid bare here. Apparently Marx was not aware of, or concerned with, the destruction industrial agriculture would inevitably reap on so-called “waste-lands,” which today we know as the marshes and flood-plains that sustain some of the most diverse ecosystems on land. Protecting precisely these areas from “development” has been one of the primary aims of environmentalism.

In Capital, Vol. 3, Marx makes plain his “Victorian prejudices.” The purpose of developing industry “as rapidly as possible,” is for humanity to succeed in what he sees as its battle with a hostile Nature:

“Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man… Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature” (M-ER 441).²

Friedrich Engels, Marx’s lifelong friend and collaborator, was even more blunt on the matter. Engels’ 1880 pamphlet “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” was one of the most important works for popularizing Marx’s theory. The pamphlet was published while Marx was still alive and even included an introduction by Marx, so it is very unlikely that Marx did not give his personal approval to its representation of the pair’s views. The essay explains the view that historical development is a process wherein humanity is liberated from Nature and comes to dominate it. It reaches a climax in this passage explaining the significance of “the seizing of the means of production” and the emergence of communism:

“[F]or the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature… It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom” (Marx-Engels Reader 715-6).³

Marx and Engel’s communist utopia, to the extent that they elaborated it, is conceived as a highly developed industrial paradise, where machines produce massive outputs of goods and services with the least amount of labor. Standing atop this virtually unlimited material abundance, humans should theoretically have no reason for competition or division into classes. They will stop acting like “animals” and start behaving “rationally.” Social peace is to be achieved through a cooperative war against nature. As Murray Bookchin summarizes, “In this dialectic of social development, according to Marx, man passes on from the domination of man by nature, to the domination of man by man, and finally to the domination of nature by man.”

Ecology is based on the fact that humans are just as much a part of the fabric of life as any other animal or life-form, and therefore the interests of humanity and nature are not in opposition, but the same. Marx and Engels’ “lord of Nature” statements are not exceptions to their overall theory of social development, but its inevitable end. A linear march of history, whereby “progress” is narrowly understood as stemming from economic growth, cannot be compatible with an ecological perspective.

One may rise to the defense of Marx and Engels and point out the terrible social misery and poverty of 19th century Europe, which would justify the demand for economic growth. In fact, this echoes the thinking of much of the American Left today, living in the most affluent economy that has ever existed, but which still de-prioritizes ecology in favor of the short-sighted demand for investment to “create jobs.” The error of this logic is not that it calls attention to the need for economic resources, but that it places such need in opposition to the needs of the planet. Instead of downscaling and decentralizing the economy so that people can meet their material needs in an ecologically balanced way, capitalism is understood as “necessary” precisely for its immense centralized structures of production and distribution. Critiquing only the distribution and not the production, shallow Leftist politics seek to give more resources to the poor by exploiting the planet to a greater degree.

Now that industrialism threatens to destroy the Earth’s biosphere itself, the bankruptcy of this position should be obvious. One hundred and fifty years after Marx wrote his masterwork Capital, we can now see quite viscerally that capitalism is “advancing” us off a cliff.

Capitalism: A Historic Setback

Marx’s linear march of history not only leads to a dead end, it confuses its beginnings. Specifically, Marx fails to give full weight to the terribly violent origins of capitalism and ultimately justifies these horrors as necessary to reach a “higher stage” of development. However, as Silvia Federici points out, capitalism did not bring social progress with its emergence. On the contrary, it is better understood as a global system of abuse, which for the last 500 years has perpetuated itself through violence against the poor, women, people of color, rural communities, and the planet itself. In this view, “It is impossible to associate capitalism with any form of liberation” (Federici 17). Capitalism is better understood as a historic setback, from which we must recover not by “expropriating” it, but by abolishing it.

Marx does devote space in Capital (1867) to the brutal violence that created the landless European proletariat and launched the capitalist system into dominance over Europe. He refers to these violent beginnings as “primitive accumulation,” or the “historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production” (Marx-Engels Reader 432). What this meant in lay-men’s terms was primarily the driving of Europe’s small farmers and peasants from their land and homes, and forcing people into the wage labor market. In contrast to the “bourgeois historians” who wash over these “enclosures” as merely a matter of “freeing” the workers from serfdom, Marx points out,

“[T]hese new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire” (433).

Only by eliminating the self-sufficient communities which made up Europe’s working class during the 14th and 15th centuries could capitalism take shape, because it is precisely the existence of a class of laborers who have nowhere to go and no way to provide for themselves asides from working for a wage that distinguishes capitalism from other systems of domination.

Marx also notes the “extirpation” of the American Indians, as well as the enslavement of millions of Africans, as necessary building blocks in the process of primitive accumulation for bringing immense wealth to the emerging European capitalist elite. He concludes: “capital comes [into the world] dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt” (435).

However, none of this shocking horror prompts Marx to rethink his linear march of history paradigm. Capital, Vol. I ends with a weak and abstract justification for how displacement, slavery and genocide could be compatible with historical progress. For this, Marx returns to Hegel, and suggests that capitalism’s “expropriation” of the world’s population is only paving the way for is negation, communism:

“But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation… the expropriators are expropriated” (438).

Discrediting these meaningless phrases, Silvia Federici – Italian autonomist and feminist – boldly asserts: “Marx could never have presumed that capitalism paves the way to human liberation had he looked at its history from the viewpoint of women (emphasis added)” (12).

Federici has done a great service by making visible the hidden history of “primitive accumulation” through her book Caliban and the Witch. The value of this book is not only that it fills in huge gaps in our knowledge of the origins and continuing bloody nature of capitalism; it also specifically illuminates the attacks on women, queer and trans people necessary for the creation and propagation of this social system.

Caliban and the Witch focuses on the long-ignored topic of the Great Witch Hunt. From the 15th to 17th centuries, being female in Europe was a risky proposition. If someone didn’t like you they could denounce you as a witch, and there was a real chance you would be rounded up by the authorities, accused of copulating with the devil, casting evil spells, consorting at Sabbats after dark, etc. You would most likely be tortured, then executed in the public square in front of relatives and children. Witch-hunting spanned both Catholic and Protestant nations, and the practice was carried out primarily at the hands of Church and State, not by the common person in the street.

The sheer scale and scope of this horror leads Federici to conclude that it was not accidental, but instead locates it as a key form of primitive accumulation:

“Hundreds of thousands of women were burned, hanged, and tortured in less than two centuries. It should have seemed significant that the witch-hunt occurred simultaneously with the colonization and extermination of the populations of the New World, the English enclosures, [and] the beginning of the slave trade” (164-5).

The identities of the women targeted by the witch hunts reveals much about the purpose of this campaign of murder. In most cases, their “crimes” were of a sexual or economic nature. The most common offenses were infanticide, abortion, inability or unwillingness to get pregnant, the sterility of a husband or other male, cheating on a spouse, sex of an “unproductive” nature (i.e. non-missionary), as well as theft, the death of livestock, or other misfortunes.

“[T]he 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. Thus, in the witchcraft trials, ‘ill repute’ was evidence of guilt. The witch was also the rebel woman who talked back, argued, swore, and did not cry under torture” (184).

In short, the witch hunt was primarily a war against female sexuality and female economic independence. Whereas before capitalism, many European women had enough independence to support themselves as healers, midwives, herbalists, gardeners, prostitutes, fortune tellers, etc., the witch hunts eliminated most of these opportunities. By the 17th century most European women had become restricted to the roles of housewife and mother (24-5). As this work of taking care of men and children, which Federici calls “reproductive labor,” was unpaid, while males could hold waged jobs and earn an income, a “new sexual division of labor” was constructed whereby women became dependent on men for economic survival (170).

Another hidden aspect of this history is that the witch hunt also targeted homosexuality and gender non-conformity. Silvia Federici reminds us that among the “unproductive sex” demonized during this time was any sex other than that between one male and one female. Across much of Europe up to that point, homosexuality had been accepted and even celebrated. In the town of Florence, for example, Federici asserts,

“[H]omosexuality was an important part of the social fabric ‘attracting males of all ages, matrimonial conditions and social rank.’ So popular was homosexuality in Florence that prostitutes used to wear male clothes to attract their customers” (58-9).

In the new patriarchal order of capitalist Europe, which was obsessed with controlling reproduction, non-conformity of gender or sexuality were seen as threats to monogamous marriage. An unknown number of queer and trans people lost their lives in the witch burnings, but Federici points out that the word “faggot” remains in our language as a reminder of the terror that converted human beings into kindling for the flame (197).

Silvia Federici’s argument is not that feudalism was a wonderful or idyllic system either – it was still a class society. Instead, she points to the enormous peasant movements and heretical movements active in Europe during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries as indications that in the breakdown of the feudal system, other worlds were possible. In place of Marx’s deterministic formula for “progressive epochs in the economic formation of society,” we can understand that human beings make their own history, either by submitting to systems of oppression and authority, or by working together for collective liberation. There is a constant struggle between those in power and those against it, and the future can go in any direction as that struggle shifts, moves, and evolves.

In this light, Federici argues the “transition” from feudalism to capitalism was not an “evolutionary development” of economic forces, but rather a brutal “counter-revolution” carried out by the old feudal elites and emerging merchant class (21).⁴ Most of the Crusades, as well as the Inquisition, were levied against Europe’s internal enemies: the poor and working classes. The goal of the repression was to stop the social revolution that was spreading out of control, and spilling over into “national liberation” struggles such as the Peasant’s War of Germany or the Hussite rebellion in what is now the Czech Republic. Recovering the hidden history of these epic clashes embarrasses the view of capitalism as an “advance,” showing that it has only “advanced” over hundreds of thousands of dead peasants and proletarians, destroying their rebellious attempts to create a non-feudal, non-capitalist world.

In the face of this bloody history, it seems no longer morally acceptable to justify the violence of “primitive accumulation” as necessary for historical development. Capitalism did not move us forwards, but backwards. Federici concludes that the creation of capitalism not only reduced human beings to landless proletarians, but introduced new sexual, gender, and racial hierarchies to divide the working class and make revolution significantly more difficult.

“[Primitive accumulation] required the transformation of the body into a work-machine, and the subjugation of women to the reproduction of the work-force. Most of all, it required the destruction of the power of women which, in Europe as in America, was achieved through the extermination of the ‘witches.’ Primitive accumulation, then, was not simply an accumulation and concentration of exploitable workers and capital. It was also an accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class, whereby hierarchies built upon gender, as well as ‘race’ and age, became constitutive of class rule and the formation of the modern proletariat. We cannot, therefore, identify capitalist accumulation with the liberation of the worker, female or male, as many Marxists (among others) have done, or see the advent of capitalism as a moment of historical progress. On the contrary, capitalism has created more brutal and insidious forms of enslavement, as it has planted into the body of the proletariat deep divisions that have served to intensify and conceal exploitation. It is in great part because of these imposed divisions – especially those between women and men – that capitalist accumulation continues to devastate life in every corner of the planet” (63-4).

Women, queer and trans people, and other oppressed groups in the Global North have all made tremendous strides towards equality and recognition in recent decades. However, Silvia Federici reminds us that “primitive accumulation” did not just launch capitalism, it has accompanied the spread of capitalist relations across the world. At the same time that Northern society has opened up for women and minorities, capitalism has exported more vicious patriarchal violence to much of the Global South, devastating the social fabric. Today we can see it most horrifically in the mass rapes, child slavery and ethnic cleansing of the Congo, where various factions and government armies fight over access to minerals like coltan. The global market for minerals used in laptops, video games and cell phones relies on the cheapening of these resources, and also the cheapening of African lives. With arms money pouring in, some five million Congolese have died in the last eight years. The despair of the Congolese is not natural – it is being manufactured through brutal capitalist enclosures on their self-sufficient ways of life.

In order to uphold Marx’s linear march of history, we would have to ignore, deny, or rationalize these realities of social and ecological trauma. By shelving all “pre-capitalist” cultures as “lower” forms of social development, Marx unfortunately justified the violent imposition of capitalism on his European ancestors (and the rest of the world as I will explain in the next section). As Silvia Federici makes visible, this campaign was directed especially against women, homosexuals and gender non-conformists through the witch hunts. While Marx himself was apparently unaware of the sexual nature of “primitive accumulation,” such ignorance is much harder to justify in our current age of global information.

Postmodernism was largely a response to the failure of Marx’s deterministic narrative. It argued that there is no one single narrative – a thousand ways of understanding the same events are all valid. We don’t have to follow this backlash to its extreme and declare, as some do, that big-picture narratives as such are oppressive. Instead, critiquing the linear Marxist narrative provides an opportunity to generate a more liberating narrative of human history.

A liberating narrative would be one that sees, for example, the autonomous nature of human freedom, being something that people create in their own communities, on an egalitarian basis, in communion with nature and not against it. Class, the State, patriarchy, and all oppressive systems would have to be cast aside as fundamentally destructive, and the impossibility of achieving liberation through the advancement of these forces should be clearly stated. The fortunes of the movement(s) for human emancipation would be understood to go through ups and downs, and although the capitalist epoch has been the most destructive towards humanity and the planet, its end opens up a wide range of possibilities for alternative systems of production and reproduction. As Chris Carlsson pointed out in the quote at the start of this section, there is no single path to liberation, and we cannot demand the entire world follow one.

Because capitalism’s continued assault on the world has proven Marx’s linear march of history untenable, many clear-thinking Marxists have abandoned this theory and are specifically incorporating ecological and feminist wisdom into their politics of class struggle. However, undead notions of “progress” and “development” remain in the muddled thinking of many, reproducing outdated and destructive politics which continue to damage the relevance and moral character of the Left.

In 2010, certainly the worst case of such developmentalist logic shuffles along in the Chinese Communist Party, which in Marx’s name is turning China into a mega-producing and mega-consuming industrial capitalist powerhouse – with dire consequences for the ecosystems of China and the planet as a whole. China is now the second-largest consumer of oil in the world behind the United States, and at Copenhagen last year allied with the U.S. to sabotage a meaningful climate agreement. Now as the Cancun climate talks approach, China’s Zombie-Marxism will likely continue to play a disastrous role, preventing the world leaders from seriously tackling global warming.

Here is an outline of the entire [unfinished] essay.

• Introduction
• My Encounter with Grampa Karl
• What Marx Got Right
  1. Class Analysis
  2. Base and Superstructure
  3. Alienation of Labor
  4. Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis
  5. A Counter-Hegemonic World-view
• What Marx Got Wrong
  1. Linear March of History
  2. Europe as Liberator
  3. Mysticism of the Proletariat
  4. The State
  5. A Secular Dogma
• Hegemony over the Left
• Zombie-Marxism and its Discontents
• Conclusion: Beyond Marx, But Not Without Him

Footnotes

1. Engels summarized the value he and Marx found in Hegel’s “gradual march” of history in his 1880 pamphlet, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”:“In [the Hegelian] system – and herein is its great merit – for the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development. From this point of view the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgement-seat of mature philosophical reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself. It was now the task of the intellect to follow the gradual march of this process through all its devious ways, and to trace out the inner law running through all its apparently accidental phenomena” (M-ER 697).

2. This domination of nature theme was expounded further in an article Marx wrote for the New York Tribune in 1853: “The bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world [including] the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies (emphasis added). Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth. When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.”

3. Engels goes further when he writes, “[If] division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces… The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself (emphasis added)” (M-ER 714-5).

4. Here is Federici’s full quote: “Only if we evoke these struggles [of the European medieval proletariat], with their rich cargo of demands, social and political aspirations, and antagonistic practices, can we understand the role that women had in the crisis of feudalism, and why their power had to be destroyed for capitalism to develop, as it was by the three-century-long persecution of the witches. From the vantage point of this struggle, we can also see that capitalism was not the product of an evolutionary development bringing forth economic forces that were maturing in the womb of the older order. Capitalism was the response of the feudal lords, the patrician merchants, the bishops and popes, to a centuries-long social conflict that, in the end, shook their power, and truly gave ‘all the world a jolt.’ 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. This much must be stressed, for the belief that capitalism ‘evolved’ from feudalism and represents a higher form of social life has not yet been dispelled” (Federici 21-22).

Each video is about 10 minutes. I learned a lot from all three interviews, and I’m sure you will too.  Enjoy!

Malalai Joya is an Afghan activist, author, and former politician. She served as an elected member of the 2003 Loya Jirga and was a parliamentary member of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, until she was expelled for denouncing other members as warlords and war criminals.

She has been a vocal critic of both the US/NATO occupation and the Karzai government, as well as the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalists. After surviving four assassination attempts she currently lives underground in Afghanistan, continuing her work from safe houses. After the release of her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, she recently concluded a US speaking tour. She sat down for an interview with David Zlutnick while in San Francisco on April 9, 2011.

Charles Bowden is an author and journalist whose work has largely focused on the US/Mexico Border region. His writing has especially centered on the Mexican Drug War and Ciudad Juárez, the border city known as the epicenter of Mexican drug violence. His critically acclaimed book, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields, was published in 2010 by Nation Books. His latest work, edited along with Molly Molloy, is El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin and was just released, also by Nation Books.

On June 30, 2011 Bowden sat down for a video interview with David Zlutnick while in San Francisco for a speaking engagement. In his responses he argues the extreme violence seen in Mexico is a sign of a deeper societal disintegration resulting from governmental corruption, failed economic policies, and the War on Drugs.

George Katsiaficas is a professor, sociologist, author, and activist. He teaches at the Wentworth Institute of Technology and specializes in social movements, Asian politics, U.S. foreign policy, and comparative and historical studies. He has written extensively on popular social uprisings in various regions and historical moments.

In these selections from an interview with David Zlutnick filmed on on March 27, 2011 in Berkeley, CA, he discusses the recent wave of demonstrations and rebellions throughout the Middle East and North Africa, placing them in a greater context of social transformation.

flyer by Ivan

On March 3 and 4, 2011, acclaimed radical feminist theorist Silvia Federici gave two talks in Philadelphia. On the 3rd, she spoke at the Wooden Shoe anarchist bookstore about her book, Caliban and the Witch, on “The True Nature of Capitalism.” That event literally overflowed with an audience eager to connect the pieces of the historical violence against women, and the ongoing crisis of capitalism.

The next night, on March 4, Silvia spoke at Studio 34 Yoga in West Philly to another packed crowd, on the subject of “Our Struggles, Ourselves: Rethinking Healing Work.”  This was a more personal, and in many ways a much deeper talk, which touched on a multitude of subjects from capitalism’s attacks on humanity and the Earth, to how to build self-reproducing movements that avoid the mistakes of past generations.

Today I am posting the audio recording from that amazing event!

One of Silvia’s most powerful insights that continues to work its way through my brain was the distinction between “suffering,” which may be necessary in movement work, and “sacrifice,” which ultimately harms the movement because it harms us as individuals.  She makes it clear that there should be no place for sacrifice in a movement for our liberation:

“What do we mean when we say sacrifice? Because, it’s very true, in many ways, when we say, ‘I’m not going to go into this career, and instead I’ll do the struggle. I’ll be poor, but eh!’ It may sound like sacrifice. But I would like to say that it’s not!

[Sacrifice] means that I’m taking away something vital from my life, something that I need, and then give it up for the struggle…

It doesn’t mean that the struggle does not make you suffer. But suffering is not sacrifice. It’s really different. There may be pain that comes too. But maybe it’s a pain that is better than the pain you would have if you didn’t struggle.

Maybe it’s a pain that prevents you from dying. Because we can die from numbness, irrelevance, wasting your life in triviality, despair, inertia, passivity, from giving up whatever creativity you have in yourself. So, sometimes it’s worth suffering not to see that in yourself. But i wouldn’t call that sacrifice.”

I am very proud to post this inspiring discussion, including the Question and Answer period, which we recorded in audio format.  There are 2 video recordings which were also made, 1 of each of the talks, and I look forward to making those videos available in the near future.  For now, please enjoy the audio!

Silvia Federici MP3

This is a 2-hour recording, so you might want to download it and put it on your mp3 player or computer.  There is a LOT here, so it may not be possible to get through it all in one sitting!

Also, here I’ll post some notes I’ve taken while re-listening to Silvia’s talk:

At 4 minutes – How can we build movements of resistance without destroying ourselves? How can we build self-reproducing movements?

5:15 – Thesis: We cannot liberate our individual selves without changing the world. At the same time, we cannot change the world without liberating ourselves.

6:30 – Capitalism has not asserted its hegemony simply through economic and military violence, but also by a massive process of disempowerment, by destroying many of our historical, social and natural powers.

Capitalism’s two-fold process of disempowerment:

1. Separation of humanity from nature, “de-naturalization” of the body.
2. Destruction of human communities and relationships with one another, “de-socialization” of society.

Capitalism has destroyed a vast range of knowledges, resistances, needs, desires, in a far more severe way than any other system that preceded it.

13:30 – Our bodies need to encounter the wind, sun, seas, land, plants, etc.

16:00 – Capitalism has broken the patterns of the sun and seasons, and trapped us working indoors in artificial light all year round, without even windows.  This is “a daily torture that is part of a whole sea of unhappiness.”

20:30 – Pre-capitalist society: “most activities were collective activities.” Talks about women giving birth, surrounded by other women.  A very social experience, in which women were empowered and in control of the process.

21:30 – “There is no returning to the past, there is no idealizing of the past, because in many cases those collective structures were not egalitarian structures.” Nevertheless, it is important to be aware that humans have lived drastically different ways throughout history.  We can learn from the past.

27:00 – Most of the important experiences in our lives we now confront alone – birth, death, disease – the situations where we most need to feel connected to other people, are now isolated individual experiences.

31:10 – Many people are even coming to the conclusion that they should be ashamed for experiencing pain and loss.

32:40 – We are losing our sense of ourselves as part of a collective body, a broader community.  Along with the loss of connection with the natural world, this helps explain why there is so much unhappiness and anxiety in today’s world.

36:00 – Two pitfalls in organizing:

1) The idea of political work as a form of self-sacrifice, when you subordinate your own desires, needs, energies, creativity, to the realization of a goal that is outside of you.  This is what much of political work has traditionally been.

2) When you separate political work from your own day-to-day reproduction. This tends to exclude people from the movement who have illnesses, disabilities, or various traumas, who feel that they can’t keep up.

40:30 – Discussion of the amazing success of ACT UP in combating homophobia and AIDS.

43:00 – “We need to rethink what it means to do political work. We cannot do political work, unless, at the same time, as part of it, we also begin to provide, to take into account the very basic reproductive needs that we have individually, collectively, in our communities.”

46:15 – Q+A begins

50:30 – On self-sacrificing organizing: “The worst thing you can do to yourself is to be alienated in the very process that is supposed to liberate you.”

55:15 – Discussion of the “reproductive commons” – the home, how do we create a different way of reproduction that does not turn us into atomized family units, like a kind of prison?  Historically, the home has been the prison where women have been enclosed.

1:01:30 – We need to challenge the dominant ideology that “you have to be self-reliant”, and this whole notion that you cannot depend on others to survive, and to need others is something that degrades you.

1:04:45 – There’s been a growing attack on care work.  Cuts to nursing, aides, etc. by the state.  Most care workers don’t even have time to have a short conversation with the people they are serving – cannot have a human relationship with them, “even though they are probably desperately alone and needing that more than anything else.”

1:07:15 – “The general devaluation of reproductive work”: Reproductive work is supposed to be strictly functional, subordinate to the process of production for the market, functional of making people capable to market-oriented work and cutting the cost of labor.

1:11:30 – Each of us has to understand where we can contribute best – where you’re most drawn to because of the experiences you have.   There is a broad range of struggle.  What we are missing today is the connection between different struggles – to go beyond the Enclosures that separate us into different segments of single-issue politics.  This is the challenge!

1:17:45 – Discussion of the amazing work of Mujeres Creando, in Bolivia.

1:22:30 – “The scam that is microcredits.” Instead of being an instrument to lift women out of poverty, its an instrument of enslavement because it traps women in debt, and many have committed suicide.  Banks humiliate women publicly if they fall into debt.

1:27:00 – “What do we mean when we say sacrifice? Because, it’s very true, in many ways, when we say, ‘I’m not going to go into this career, and instead I’ll do the struggle. I’ll be poor, but eh!’ It may sound like sacrifice. But I would like to say that it’s not! [Sacrifice] means that I’m taking away something vital from my life, something that I need, and then give it up for the struggle.

To me, the struggle is a healing process.  If the struggle itself is not a healing process, it’s not worth it!  There’s something wrong with it. You struggle because you need to liberate yourself.  If the struggle does not liberate you, if it doesnt carry that hope, why bother?

It doesn’t mean that the struggle does not make you suffer. But suffering is not sacrifice. It’s really different. There may be pain that comes too. But maybe it’s a pain that is better than the pain you would have if you didn’t struggle. Maybe it’s a pain that prevents you from dying. Because we can die from numbness, irrelevance, wasting your life in triviality, despair, inertia, passivity, from giving up whatever creativity you have in yourself. So, sometimes it’s worth suffering not to see that in yourself. But i wouldn’t call that sacrifice.”

1:29:30 – As a rule, the struggle must be in itself a reward.  Otherwise you need to rethink it.  Maybe you’re doing something wrong.  I’ve gone through periods in my life where one more meeting and i would have cried.  And i paid a price for it.

1:35:30 – Many younger women now are rethinking feminism, which they first rejected because it was institutionalized and for what it has become.  Many are now discovering in their own lives some dynamics of sexism, but without the broad networks of support and discussion that existed in the 70s. What does feminism mean today?

1:43:40 – The struggle around student debt, education, teaching – the closing of schools, funding, the attack on teachers, is a “major attack on reproduction”.  This is an attack on the future.  Student debt is a form of slavery, a tremendous discipline that shapes the decisions people make about their careers and lives.

1:48:00 – Discussion of the accomplishments of the anti-globalization movement of the early 2000s.

1:50:45 – On electoral politics: The movement periodically gives up its power to electoral campaigns, to the state.  We have a continuous ritual of disaccumulation of knowledge, energies, possibilities, and revolutionary potential every time an election comes around.  We had a lot of energy in the end of the Bush era, which seems to have dissipated now.

1:51:55 – On historical memory: It’s absolutely necessary for us to hand down our stories to the next generations of organizers.

Thanks for listening / reading!  Thanks to scott for uploading, and sarah for recording.

alex

As the following interview of Ben Dangl highlights, leftist states such as Venezuela are not by themselves particularly revolutionary, and in fact often play a counter-revolutionary role. Democratic, participatory, grassroots social movements have always been the real engine of change. Political leaders can choose to follow those movements (“lead by obeying” in Zapatista language), or they can choose to be largely a facade for neoliberalism and reaction.  The question is not the quality of the leader, but the quality of the movement holding that leader’s feet to the fire.

This is the reason President Obama has been largely a flop.  As FDR said to labor organizers in 1932, “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”  Real leadership comes from below.

Let’s hope we can follow the examples of Bolivia, Egypt, and Madison, WI and continue to work towards a global movement for justice. [alex]

Dancing with Dynamite in Latin America

by Nikolas Kozloff
Originally published by Huffington Post.
February 11, 2011.

Recently, I sat down with Benjamin Dangl, author of the recently released Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America, for an interview.

NK: You’ve written an extremely ambitious book which takes the reader all across South America. One of the most impressive things about the work is that it is largely based on your own personal interviews with political participants at the grassroots as opposed to mere secondary research. How long did it take to research and what was the most fascinating country that you worked in?

BD: The book is the result of over eight years of research, traveling and interviewing across Latin America. This period of time coincided with the rise to power of most of the region’s current leftist leaders, and so the interviews I draw from in the book reflect a lot of the initial hope and subsequent disappointment among many social movements. The most interesting place I’ve worked in is definitely Bolivia, where the power of the grassroots movements is the strongest, and the impressive relationship between these movements and the government of Evo Morales is constantly changing.

NK: It can be tough in many ways to conduct research in South America. What prompted your interest in the subject matter and what were some of the obstacles that you encountered along the way?

BD: The main things that drew me to writing about politics and social issues in Latin America were the impact US foreign policy and corporate activity had on the region, and the hopeful and relatively under-reported social struggles going on. On the one hand, the connection to the US in the so-called war on drugs, and the corporate looting of natural resources, were all issues I thought more readers of English-based media in the US should know about. And the sophisticated organizing tactics, grassroots strategies and victories of social movements in the region were stories I wanted to help amplify and spread in the US, for the sake of awareness, solidarity and lessons to be learned. The main obstacle in doing this research is the actual cost of the traveling. I’ve worked all kinds of odd jobs over the years, in construction, farming, and various kinds of manual labor, to pay for the plane tickets to get to Latin America in order to conduct research and writing on the ground.

NK: Here in the U.S., many on the left idealize Chávez and the like, yet you suggest that many ostensibly leftist regimes may sap the energy of today’s social movements. How has this happened, and could one say, therefore, that “Pink Tide” regimes may ultimately exert a counter-productive or even pernicious effect upon local politics in their respective countries?

BD: The way this relationship has played out is different in each country. Some Latin American presidents, upon taking power, have been more willing and able than others to collaborate with the social movements that help bring them into office. The relationships in Venezuela and Bolivia are probably the healthiest in this sense. In other countries, such as Brazil with President Lula and the Landless Farmers Movements, the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa and the indigenous movements there, the relationship has been more difficult, with the governments repressing, criminalizing and demobilizing movements when possible. Dancing with Dynamite looks at how this relationship, this dance, has played out in seven different countries. It tells a story beyond what the presidents and major politicians have been doing or saying, and focuses more on the history of the past decade from the perspective of the grassroots. And this view from below is something I think more people in the US left would benefit from focusing on, if anything to understand the full picture of what’s been driving these momentous changes over the past ten years.

NK: Of all the South American countries you describe, Bolivia seems to have the most revolutionary potential. Why is this so, and what new radical developments can we expect from Bolivia in the coming years?

BD: I think this potential comes in part from the legacy and strength of indigenous movements in the country. Over 60% of Bolivians self-identify themselves as indigenous, and this identity has manifested itself in powerful ways in key mobilizations over access to natural resources and making politics in the country more participatory and accessible. The rich history of labor, student, farmer and other activist movements have also contributed to today’s grassroots dynamics. Many people in Bolivia, which is the poorest country in South America, also have to turn to political activism and social organizing to survive; in many communities fighting for access to water, ousting a corrupt mayor, defending rights to grow coca crops, these are parts of everyday life. This capacity to mobilize translates into a diversity of movements that are ready to take action when necessary, whether it’s to hold Evo Morales’ feet to the flames, or mobilize against the right and foreign corporations. Because of this dynamic and often-changing landscape, it is difficult to say what will happen in the coming years.

NK: From a political and economic perspective, Brazil dwarfs all other South American countries. Recently, Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s protégé in the Workers’ Party, won Brazil’s presidential election. That is good news for Correa, Morales and Chávez since Rousseff is unlikely to harass leftist regimes in wider South America. Yet, as you point out Brazil has become an agribusiness juggernaut, displacing poor peasants both within and outside its borders through its soybean industry. How can the more radical bloc of Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador seek to contest Brazilian geopolitical hegemony in the region?

BD: The sad reality is that destructive agribusinesses, particularly soy, which displace poor farmers, destroy the environment and use toxic pesticides, are rapidly expanding across Latin America. Brazil is one part of this expansion. Soy crops are all over many parts of Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina. There has not been a lot of political will on the part of the region’s left of center leaders to confront this trend. As far as Brazil’s power in the region, I think Lula helped pave the way for many progressive regional initiatives and diplomatic approaches. I think that Rousseff will likely continue in this tradition. If Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador seek to contest Brazil’s power, they will likely do so together, cooperatively against Brazil, rather than on their own against this imperial neighbor.

NK: Social movements in South America have not invested a great deal of energy in pushing for a more revolutionary foreign policy, preferring instead to concentrate on bread and butter issues at home. Should they advocate more loudly for a different sort of foreign policy, and if so what should it look like?

BD: Well, I think social movements have pushed for more revolutionary foreign policy. The grassroots, continent-wide push against Bush’s Free Trade Area of the Americas was historic. The anti-imperialist stance of many of the region’s new and recent presidents is largely a response to grassroots pressure against US-militarization of the war on drugs, against US military bases, against meddling from Washington, against foreign domination of natural resources and the economy. If there has been any lack of mobilizing for a more progressive foreign policy, I think it’s because many movements are relatively content with the policies of their presidents in this respect. The landless movement in Brazil, for example, applauded Lula’s foreign relations, but criticized his weak land reform. One of the most progressive aspects of Correa’s administration in Ecuador has been his foreign policy. That said, I think a further strengthening of regional independence from the US will remain a key goal of social movements in the region.

NK: As you point out, some leftist leaders have conducted anti-environmental policies. In their adherence to resource nationalism, they’re harking back to a rather outdated twentieth century model of development, one which has been contested as of late by the region’s rising environmental parties. In Brazil, Marina Silva of the Green Party netted a whopping 19% of the vote in the nation’s first round of presidential voting. What kind of a political impact do you expect green politics will have on the wider region, and how can social movements take advantage of growing environmental consciousness to bring about revolutionary change?

BD: Many social movements have been critical of the environmentally destructive extractive industries pushed by leftist governments, particularly in mining, gas and oil industries. While this will likely remain an area of contention between socialistic governments and the movements effected by these industries, there is a growing trend among leaders to address the causes of climate change and environmental devastation across the globe. The Evo Morales’ government demonstrated this in its participation in climate change talks and conferences. Sustainable policies based on the concept of Buen Vivir (Living Well) advocated by the region’s indigenous provides a fitting model for all nations and people to follow

NK: You seem to be particularly speaking to and addressing U.S. activists in your book, and one of your more intriguing chapters discusses the connections between South American and U.S. social movements. You cite the case of Chicago workers who were influenced by their Argentine counterparts as they took over a factory in 2008. Yet, you yourself concede that applying the South American experience to the U.S. may not work as both societies have very different histories and political cultures. If that’s true, then what can the U.S. left learn, concretely, from radical politics south of the border?

BD: I think a lot of activists in the US can learn from movements based in Latin America. As I discuss in the book, there a few key movements and actions in the US that drew from tactics and strategies of the landless movement in Brazil and water rights activists in Bolivia, for example. One major tactic is not allowing a fear of empowering the right dictate all actions as activists. I think that is particularly useful to people in the US right now. In Brazil, the landless movement continues to support the lesser of two evils in elections while also occupying unused land and working it for survival, regardless of the slow pace of land reform pushed by the government. Social movements in Bolivia have been able to both defend the progressive policies of the Morales government while radicalizing his policies by pressuring him from below. Translating these tactics, which I outline in the book, in the US, will be different for each community. The past ten years in Latin America have seen a historic shift to the left in the halls of government power and the streets, so it makes sense that people in the US need to learn from these examples if we are to break out of the stranglehold of our stagnant political culture.

NK: Thanks very much for your time!

BD: Thank you!

David is a British radical who goes to Spain to fight the Fascists, and discovers the reality of revolution, counter-revolution, and love.  The film does an excellent job portraying the political debates, struggles and betrayals between the various factions (Fascist, Communist, Anti-Stalinist Marxists, and Anarchists). The entire film is available in one video on youtube (109 min). It is directed by Ken Loach, and is in English and Spanish. Highly recommended!

Our audience has been growing rapidly as the crisis has deepened and more and more people are searching for answers. However, the website needs to grow along with this attention. Therefore, endofcapitalism.com is undergoing a total re-design! (See below for a rough draft prototype of the re-design.)

We need to upgrade our appearance. How could this be complete without a logo?

Here’s where you come in. Submit the best logo and win the prizes detailed below.

"sad broker #19"

Style

You can use “sad broker #19″ as a starting point. I really like this image. However, if you have a better idea, that’s fine too.

What I love about the sad broker image is that it 1) exemplifies the failing of the capitalist system, 1a) has a downward graph in the background that evokes the death of the stock market, and 2) is campy and light-hearted.

This reflects my basic message that global capitalism is on its last legs, and that that’s a very good thing – an opportunity, not an apocalypse. So I want the logo to be fun and inviting, NOT scary or dark.

It needs to say The End of Capitalism on it.

In terms of colors, I like light ones. Blues, greens, whites. Nature. The idea again is to inspire hope, renewal, joy, not fear.

Logistics

Click for full size re-design prototype

I’m not sure I can provide a strict requirement for the dimensions of the image, but it needs to be pretty big, and about 2 or 3 times as wide as it is high. If you’re a graphic designer, maybe you can suggest a good size. If it fits at the top of this re-design prototype, that would be good.

It would also be ideal if it could be easily adapted to Facebook, T-shirts*, and other outlets.

.png file, please.

Send questions and final products to alex@endofcapitalism.com. You can submit more than one design.

The deadline for submissions is one month from today — January 15, 2011.

Prizes!

The top 3 logos will be posted on the website when the contest is complete. The “Chosen One” will be displayed on the website in perpetuity, which should fill the winning designer with boundless pride. Your artwork will be forever immortalized and seen by millions of people.

Also, the winning designer will be listed on the new website’s footer – “Logo designed by ____ [link to your website].”

And as an extra special cherry on top, the winner will receive a FREE End of Capitalism T-shirt,* featuring your logo!

Good luck, and happy holidays!

Alex Knight

* T-shirts to happen whenever we get our act together and start making them.

A little fun while I take a short break from the Zombie-Marxism series. [alex]

Origins of English Words and Class!

Originally published in shorter form, September 1, 2008

by Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com

Would you rather receive a hearty welcome or a cordial reception?

Notice the imagery and feelings evoked by the two phrases. The first has a Germanic origin, the second, French. The English language is split along class lines — a reflection of the Norman invasion of England, almost 1000 years ago. German-derived English words carry with them a working class connotation, and French-derived words come off sounding aristocratic and slightly repulsive.

Even though cordial literally means “of the heart” in French (cor is Latin for heart), the picture that comes to my mind is a royal douchebag entering a hall of power amidst classical music and overdressed patrons and nobility. The image I get from hearty welcome is the extreme opposite: a single peasant reaching out to hug me and get me into their little hovel, out of the weather. Class is deeply embedded within our language, each word having its own unique history.

Wikipedia teaches many fun facts. The English language derives mainly from:

1. Old German — the Angles and Saxons (from Saxony) conquered Britain in the 5th century, mixing with Scandinavians and developing Old English.
2. Old French — the Normans (from Normandy) conquered England in 1066.

William the Conqueror, first Norman king of England, as depicted on the famous Bayeux Tapestry. His royal descendents would speak French until Henry V, 350 years later.

After the Norman invasion, England was dominated by a small French aristocracy, ruling over a much larger German working class. For more than three centuries, the rulers of England spoke French, while the common person spoke a Germanic language (Old English).

The two cultural groups began to intermarry after the Black Death of the 1340s wiped out half of the population, and over time the languages slowly merged, greatly simplifying the grammar of English, but also leaving a huge combined vocabulary.

The really interesting thing is that a lot of words in English carry a class connotation, based on whether they derive from French or from German. Words that mean basically the same thing will have either a formal, fancy, academic, upper-class connotation, or a casual, down-to-earth, gut-level, working-class feeling depending on the origin of the word.

Check out this list of synonyms!

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Notice that the Germanic words are usually shorter, more concrete and direct, while the French words are more elaborate, more abstract and indirect. What kind of person do you imagine speaking the words in the left column vs. the right column?

It’s interesting to me that nature and children are described by the French-derived English words as somehow negative or hostile, as with savage and juvenile. To me this reflects the hatred on the part of the wealthy and powerful for that which is untamed and free.

The medical-industrial complex also uses almost exclusively Latin and French-derived words, to sound more technical. This has the effect of making the body seem lifeless and mechanical, as with abdomen.

Plus, meat words are almost all French-derived, which reflects that while the Anglo-Saxon working class was responsible for hunting/shepherding the animals, it was only the Norman nobility who could actually afford to eat meat.

.

Chicken and fish are the exceptions here, most likely because these meats were less expensive and more available for peasants and workers.

Finally, most of our government/state words are all French: court, judge, jury, indict, appeal, traitor, prison, military, representative, parliament, Congress, president, and marriage.

I notice that when I use the French-derived words, I experience a slight feeling of discomfort, as if I’m trying to impress people with my big words. This is precisely how academia functions, which is why if you attend a university or graduate school, you will be inundated with French and Latin-derived vocabulary, to distinguish you from the uneducated masses with their street language.

Might all of this explain why American conceptions of the French are as snooty, pompous, pretentious, easily-hate-able snobs? In occupied England, THEY WERE!

And for anyone interested in working class revolution, the best way not to talk down to people: stick with the more common Germanic words instead of bureaucratese.

Towards freedom! (not mere liberty)

p.s. George Orwell wrote an awesome essay called Politics of the English Language, where he breaks down how abstract, complex language is a tool for those who seek to confuse the populace, and he outlines how to make use of concrete, plain English to actually reach people. A highly recommended essay for anyone who wants to write.

Why Marxism Has Failed, and Why Zombie-Marxism Cannot Die
Or My Rocky Relationship with Grampa Karl

by Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com
Part 2 – November 4, 2010
This is part of an essay critiquing the philosophy of Karl Marx for its relevance to 21st century anti-capitalism. The main thrust of the essay is to encourage living common-sense radicalism, as opposed to the automatic reproduction of zombie ideas which have lost connection to current reality. Karl Marx was no prophet. But neither can we reject him. We have to go beyond him, and bring him with us. I believe it is only on such a basis, with a critical appraisal of Marx, that the Left can become ideologically relevant to today’s rapidly evolving political circumstances. [Click here for Part 1.]

A brilliant, critical mind in his own time. Not infallible.

What Marx Got Right

Boiling down all of Karl Marx’s writings into a handful of key contributions is fated to produce an incomplete list, but here are the 5 that immediately come to my mind: 1. Class Analysis, 2. Base and Superstructure, 3. Alienation of Labor, 4. Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis, and 5. A Counter-Hegemonic World-view.

(It must be noted that many of these insights were not the unique inspiration of Marx’s brain, but were ideas bubbling up in the European working class movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, which was the political context that educated Marx. Further, Marx’s lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels, undoubtedly contributed significantly to Marx’s ideas, although Marx remained the primary theorist.)

1. Class Analysis

In the opening lines of the “Communist Manifesto” (1848), Marx thunders, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

In other words, as long as society has been divided into rich and poor, ruler and enslaved, oppressor and oppressed, capitalist and worker, there have been relentless efforts amongst the powerful to maintain and increase their power, and correspondingly, constant struggles from the poor and oppressed to escape their bondage. This insight appears to be common sense, but it is systematically hidden from mainstream society. People do not choose to be poor or oppressed, although the rich would like us to believe otherwise. The powerless are kept that way by those in power. And they are struggling to end that poverty and oppression, to the best of their individual and collective ability.

The Manifesto elaborates Marx’s class framework under capitalism:

“Our epoch… possesses this distinctive feature: it has simplified class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps…: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx-Engels Reader 474).

Marx relayed the words “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat” directly from the French working class movement he encountered in his 1844 exile in Paris, when he briefly ran with the likes of “anarchist” theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Marx himself reminds us, “No credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them.” Class analysis pre-dated Marx by many decades. Yet he articulated the class divisions of capitalist society quite clearly.

The “bourgeoisie” are those who own and control the “means of production,” or basically, the land, factories and machines that make up the economy. Today we know them as the Donald Trumps, the Warren Buffets, etc., although most of the ruling class tries to avoid public scrutiny. In short, the ruling class in capitalism are the wealthy elite, who exert control over society (and government) through their dollars.

Opposing them is the “proletariat,” which Marx defines as “the modern working class – a class of labourers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital” (479). The working class for Marx is everybody who has to work for a wage and sell their labor in order to survive.

The divide between the bourgeoisie and proletariat as seen by Marx impacts society in deep and rarely understood ways. However, it is clear that as the rich rule society, they design it for their own benefit through politics, the media, the school system, etc. Inevitably, through “trickle up” economics, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As the class conflict worsens, for Marx there can only be one solution — revolution:

“This revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew” (193, “The German Ideology” 1845).

How could it happen? Marx rightly answers, “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.”

This proclamation comes from the Preamble (1864) of the International Workingmen’s Association, also known as the First International. The International, which Marx helped found, was an organization made up of workers and their allies from across Europe, and a few from outside it. The International’s goal was the solidarity of workers across national boundaries, becoming united and empowered to lay siege to the capitalist system. Through “class consciousness,” the workers would become aware of their “historic mission,” and through organization, they would build the means to accomplish it.

The key is that Marx believed that change would come from below. It was impossible to decree communism from above. This explains Marx’s slogan, still just as relevant today if not for the gendered language, “Working men of all countries, Unite!”

Today, workers in China are perhaps the most successful practitioners of Marx’s class analysis. As China has opened itself up to Western corporations to take advantage of extremely low wages, China over the last 20 years has transformed itself into the sweatshop of the world. Workers make just a few cents per hour, work up to 12-15 hours per day, and are often forbidden from taking bathroom breaks. With literally nothing to lose, class struggle must appear to be a viable option for these exploited millions. And they have seized the opportunity. Organizing independently of the Communist Party’s official labor union, Chinese workers have self-organized thousands of massive strikes in the past few years. In the words of Johann Hari, “Wildcat unions have sprung up, organized by text message, demanding higher wages, a humane work environment, and the right to organize freely. Millions of young workers across the country are blockading their factories and chanting ‘there are no human rights here!’ and ‘we want freedom!’”

What if working men and women of the United States were to join in solidarity with the Chinese workers currently rebelling against totalitarian abuse? What if the primary consuming nation and the primary producing nation had to contend with a united, powerful anti-capitalist movement? It could create a force with the power to bring the entire capitalist system to its knees.

2. Base and Superstructure

“High on my own list of Marx’s important insights was the understanding that economics cannot be separated from politics.” – Roger Baker, “Is Marx Still Relevant?“

Marx locates economics as the motive force of history. Marx called this the “materialist conception of history,” as opposed to the idealist conception of history as articulated by the earlier German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. Marx, who had been a member of the “Young Hegelians” while attending university, famously “stood Hegel on his head.” Instead of the material world being an extension of the ideas in people’s heads, Marx saw ideas as reflections of material reality, chiefly the economic “relations of production.”

History, for Marx, can best be explained in the context of the evolution and development of human economy. In an early letter (1846), he explains:

“Assume a particular state of development in the productive faculties of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption. Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social constitution, a corresponding organisation of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society” (Marx-Engels Reader 136-7).

Marx therefore separates the economic “base” (or “foundation”) from a social, political, and ideological “superstructure” built on top of it. He elaborated this more fully in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859):

“The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

Debates over the extent of Marx’s economic determinism have raged since his death, but Engels clarified his and Marx’s framework in an 1890 letter:

“According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure: political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas, also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form…
We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions (emphasis added). Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one” (Marx-Engels Reader 760-2).¹

The core of Marx and Engels’ argument appears self-evident. Agricultural societies worship crop-related gods, and create social structures such that divide people into Lord and peasant. Industrial societies worship technology and money, and create classes such as financier and worker. What good would it have done for an Egyptian pharaoh to attempt to create something like the Internet, if the economic means (microchips, factories, wage labor, international banking) didn’t exist? Or, more precisely, how would the pharaoh have conceived of the Internet without these material conditions existing in front of him?

The concept of base and superstructure has many useful applications. For example, Marx articulated in his essay “The German Ideology”, that those in power materially can also exert ideological control over the rest of society. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (M-ER 172). Today we know this as propaganda and brainwashing.

Building off these ideas, later Marxists such as Antonio Gramsci developed a critique of “hegemony” – the dominance of one group of people, or one ideology, based on consent and persuasion, rather than by brute force. In other words, hegemony means the oppressed accept their oppression, internalizing and perhaps even outwardly arguing for the mythology of their rulers. People are much easier to rule if they believe it is for their own good.

Hegemony is a highly relevant idea to our situation today, especially in the United States where the population is thoroughly indoctrinated with the mythology of capitalism – seeing the system as positive and liberating, rather than violent and destructive as it actually is.

However, if the base of the American economy continues to deteriorate as it has, Marx would suggest the superstructure is sure to follow, and revolutionary change is perhaps not far around the corner.

3. Alienation of Labor

At the core of Karl Marx’s extensive critique of capitalism is his critique of the alienation of labor.

Marx used to spend weeks on end at the library, thoroughly researching the findings of the major economic theorists of capitalism. One of his important discoveries was Adam Smith’s “labor theory of value,” which posits that the value of a commodity is proportional to the quantity of human labor used to create it. A highly complex product, such as a space shuttle, is valuable (or expensive) in part because of the thousands of work-hours spent by hundreds of workers in the construction of its parts and their assembly. Whereas constructing a wheel-barrow is significantly less labor-intensive, it is therefore worth less money.

Marx extrapolated from this theory, showing that because labor produces everything of value (along with what nature provides), the entire system of capitalist accumulation is sustained by profiting off the backs of workers.

The focal argument of Capital, Volume 1 (1867), is that there would be no capital if not for the exploitation of labor. Marx coins the phrase “surplus value” to show that workers produce a higher value of goods for their bosses than they receive for themselves in wages. In effect, the worker only gets paid for working half a day, which is the amount of pay needed to keep him or her alive, yet he or she works a full day. What they produce in the second half of the day is therefore pure profit for their employer. “The rate of surplus-value is an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power by capital, or of the labourer by the capitalist” (Chapter IX).

Marx hereby creates the fascinating distinction between the worker’s “living labor,” and the machines, commodities and wealth (capital) created by that living labor, called “accumulated labor” or “dead labor.” While the worker produces surplus value for capital, giving the capitalist an incentive to keep the worker hard at work, the worker’s life diminishes in direct proportion to the work performed. This exploitation is the basis of the entire system: “[W]hat is the growth of productive capital? Growth of the power of accumulated labour over living labour. Growth of the domination of the bourgeoisie over the working class” (Marx-Engels Reader 210).

I believe “Alienated Labour,” written as part of the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” is Marx’s most enduring and relevant essay. It originally went unpublished and was only re-discovered in the 20th century, influencing the “New Left” of the 1960s, which was largely concerned with the pervasive alienation of modern consumer capitalism.

In the essay, Marx elaborates on the distinction between the worker’s active labor and the product of his or her labor:

“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity” (M-ER 71).

The alienation of labor therefore emerges from the reality that under capitalism, human beings are reduced to commodities, whose value is expressed through wage labor. For most of us, survival is impossible without pimping ourselves out to the highest bidding employer. Unfortunately, when we sell ourselves for a wage, we also give up power over what we do with our time. What we produce is not under our control or discretion. Our work activity and its product are therefore alien to us.

“[T]he worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own” (72).

Because the wage worker is disempowered in the process of work, their labor gives birth not to a world in their own, human, image but to a world in the image of capital. It is an alien world, full of meaningless commodities, but very little humanity. Humanity has been conscripted into the wage labor process, against its will. Workers themselves are ever being produced, as humans who have lost touch with their “intrinsic nature.”

The essay’s climax is prompted by Marx’s question, “What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor?”

“First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself… His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague…
Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another… As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal“ (74).

This is Marx at his most human, and therefore his most relevant. This passage resonates because it speaks directly to our concrete needs, which are not only economic, but mental, emotional, and spiritual. Marx is articulating something core here – the work we do for our bosses creates their profits, but it makes us miserable in the process. We create commodities and services which are not our own, which are not designed for our concrete needs but based solely on the demands of the market, and as a result, we are alienated from our own humanity. If we did not need wages to survive, we could just as easily quit our worthless, meaningless jobs. Unfortunately, the joke is on us. With each hour of work that deadens our souls, we give more life and power to the very “alien world of objects” that oppresses us.²

The phrase “Work sucks” therefore becomes literal. Our lives are sucked out of us by the vampire of capital.

4. Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis

Why does work have to suck in a capitalist society? For the simple reason of the profit motive. By exploiting workers, the system creates profit, and therefore grows. Growth is capitalism’s raison d’etre — reason for being. Without growth, capitalism would wither and die.

In Capital Vol. 1, Marx lays out his “General Formula of Capital”: M—C—M’. M=money, C=commodities, M’=more money (Marx Engels Reader 336).

The formula indicates that on the micro level, capital is nothing but the movement of money into a larger amount of money, producing profit. Marx explains this endless movement of money as the inner workings of the system:

“Value… becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital. It comes out of circulation, enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within its circuit, comes back out of it with expanded bulk, and begins the same round ever afresh” (335).

Thus, capital is like a shark – it must keep moving in order to breathe. If it were to sit still, it would quickly suffocate. Only by constantly finding and exploiting investment opportunities can capital accumulate, and thereby, survive. This ever-present need to grow therefore compels each individual capitalist to maximize profit.

“The expansion of value, which is the objective basis or main-spring of the circulation M—C—M, becomes [the capitalist’s] subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will (emphasis added)… The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at” (334).

Here Marx explains that capital’s need for growth determines the actions of each individual capitalist, such as a wealthy financier, or the modern example, a multinational corporation. In Marx’s brilliant language we can therefore understand Wal-Mart or Sony as “capital personified.” Their one and only motive is to profit, to grow. All other considerations, ecological or social, are essentially irrelevant.

Suppose a capitalist/corporation failed to create growth, either mistakenly, or somehow purposely abdicated their role in the system. What would happen? Very simply, capital would work its way around them. Another capitalist would come along, a competitor, to take advantage of the situation, and inevitably put the first capitalist out of business. Marx names this competition between capitalists “the industrial battlefield.”³

This war of competition makes it impossible to simply blame BP, British Petroleum, for its shoddy safety standards which led to the poisoning of the Gulf. If BP prioritized safety over profit, the company would lose a competitive edge to its rivals, Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco. It is only by obeying the command of capital to constantly grow or die, that a capitalist survives. The entire system must be indicted — “hate the game, not the player.”

As each capitalist serves his master and performs the ritual of profit-making, the system as a whole also necessarily expands “on an ever more gigantic scale” (214). This systemic expansion is famously described in the Communist Manifesto:

“The need for a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere… The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls… It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production” (476-7).

As each capitalist battles for resources, labor, and markets for its goods, every community, every nation, and eventually the entire planet itself, is consumed. Capital therefore creates a global system, organized by the incessant requirement of accumulation. The entire system must grow.

Should capitalism ever cease growing, a crisis would necessarily develop. Investors would cease making investments for fear that they would not get a return. Businesses would cut back, laying off workers, which has the effect of reducing consumer demand. Without a friendly investment environment, things can rapidly enter a downward spiral. And as Marx emphasized, this happens over and over again, through “the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society” (478).

As Marxist professor David Harvey likes to quote, Marx states in the “Grundrisse” (1857) that capital cannot “abide” limits. Any limit which would stand in the system’s path must be transcended or circumvented in some way to keep the accumulation of capital alive and well. Can this accumulation continue forever? Clearly it cannot. Because we live on a finite planet, the idea of an ever-increasing system of production and consumption is absurd on its face. At some point the limits to growth will be reached.

Marx seemed to sense these limits instinctively in “Wage Labour and Capital” (1847):

“Finally, as the capitalists are compelled… to exploit the already existing gigantic means of production on a larger scale and to set in motion all the mainsprings of credit to this end, there is a corresponding increase in industrial earthquakes… [Crises] become more frequent and more violent, if only because, as the mass of production, and consequently the need for extended markets, grows, the world market becomes more and more contracted, fewer and fewer markets remain available for exploitation (emphasis added), since every preceding crisis has subjected to world trade a market hitherto unconquered or only superficially exploited” (217).

When will capitalism hit the limits to growth? The answer is, in my opinion, quite soon. As David Harvey states dispassionately, “There are abundant signs that capital accumulation is at an historical inflexion point where sustaining a compound rate of growth is becoming increasingly problematic.”

Speaking directly to this question, I propose the End of Capitalism Theory to suggest that at this moment in history, no great new sources of wealth remain to be conquered. We are near or at the global peak of oil production, and the planet is having increased difficulty sustaining the ecological damage produced by capitalist production and waste. These ecological limits are joined by the social limits to growth, manifest in people’s resistance to capitalism all over the world. The aforementioned Chinese workers’ movement is only the most dramatic example. From Bolivia to Greece to the schools of California, more and more people are rejecting the alienating and dehumanizing roles that capitalism forces them into, and by standing up for themselves are placing limits on the ability of the system to increase its power over them — to grow.

It is natural to try to make sense of the extremely broad and deep crisis we are living through. As the crisis has dragged on over the last few years, sales of Marx’s Capital have skyrocketed. I suspect people are looking for an explanation for why capitalism has failed. The End of Capitalism Theory is one attempt at an explanation. I encourage others to come forward.

5. A Counter-Hegemonic World-view

The name of Karl Marx endures to this day as virtually synonymous with anti-capitalism. In contrast to the hegemonic world-view of capitalism, which sees itself as essentially a meritocracy where people are rewarded for hard work and receive what they deserve, Marx outlined a theory of capitalism that was grounded in exploitation and destruction. This critique formed the basis of an entirely new narrative, a new story about ourselves and our world.

While the core elements of Marx’s narrative were largely spelled out by the working class movement of Europe he immersed himself in, Marx was the transcriber. He put the story of European workers on paper, and adding his own philosophical learnings, deepened and elaborated the story so that these workers’ struggle became emblematic of the dilemma of capitalist development as a whole.

Marx’s “scientific socialism” was distinguished from the approach of other European socialists by his reaching for the big picture. It wasn’t enough to criticize capitalism, Marx felt it was necessary to describe, with as much precision as possible, the conditions that enabled it to exist and which would enable its destruction. In so doing, Marx constructed a counter-hegemonic world-view, a way of seeing the world which was complete enough in itself that it could seriously rival the dominant capitalist explanation of reality.

I want to highlight three aspects of Marx’s world-view that make it so enduring. First, his story gives us meaning and a place in history. Second, it gives us direction and purpose. Third, it is brilliantly told, with poetic and even mystical language weaved alongside the densest of political economic writing.

Meaning

Every good story reveals to us something about ourselves. The really great stories — the ones which captivate people for centuries or even millennia — are the ones that provide answers to life’s most fundamental questions: “Who are we?” and “Why are we here?”

Marx’s philosophical education with the Young Hegelians gave him the drive to search for answers to these fundamental questions, as well as the critical tools to deconstruct the popular narratives of the day. He pursued fellow German philosopher Feuerbach in discarding the Christian narrative that predominated in his time, asserting that God was not the creator of humanity, but rather that the inverse was true. Humanity had created God, projecting him into the heavens from our own hopes and fears.

“In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process… Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life” (Marx-Engels Reader 154-5, “The German Ideology”).

For Marx, then, we lead our own lives as earthly beings. However, we do not start with a blank slate, because we are also historical beings, the inheritors of the past. This past is brought down to us not only in terms of stories and myths, but especially in terms of material activity.

“History is nothing but the succession of the separate generations, each of which exploits the materials, the capital funds, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations, and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity” (172).

Who we are, according to Marx, is the descendants of thousands of generations of human-kind and the care-takers of that living legacy, which for Marx is especially an economic (or “productive”) legacy.⁴ What can be accomplished by the current generation is necessarily a function of the machines, tools, social structures, etc. that our ancestors leave us.

Marx adds an interesting plot-twist when he specifies that in this era of capitalism we are living in unique circumstances which distinguish our present era from all human history. From the “Communist Manifesto”:

“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?” (477).

Given that our generation sits atop this dramatic expansion of ‘productive forces,’ it now falls to us to decide what to do with such historic power. Marx makes clear that we have a special responsibility to fulfill.

Purpose

In the Marxist narrative, life’s purpose is encapsulated as “class struggle.”  As mentioned earlier, Marx sees history as a centuries-long battle to overcome class divisions:

“In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs… The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones” (474, “Communist Manifesto”).

Our capitalist era is special not only because of the massive growth of the economy, but also because of the unique and unparalleled class inequality between “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat.” In particular, the proletarians are the protagonists of Marx’s story, who carry within them the seed of a new world.

“A class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness” (192-3, “The German Ideology”).

Marx assigns the proletarians the role of liberating not only themselves as a class, but of putting an end to class as such. This is accomplished first through the “ever-expanding union of the workers,” who wage an economic struggle against the capitalists and build their power, and finally through communist revolution. According to Marx, this revolution fulfills the proletarians’ “historic role.”

“[The communist revolution] does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc., within present society” (193).

Now the narrative reaches its climax. After thousands of years of bondage, the opportunity to put an end to human oppression once and for all is now approaching. Due to the twin emergence of highly developed “productive forces” which offer the possibility of abolishing “material want,” alongside a massive and desperate proletariat, the conditions are ripe, for the first time, for the final victory of the working class. And if the workers are able to liberate themselves, they will likewise liberate all of humanity.

“In the place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (491).

A communist society would be established to provide for each individual, each community, and each nation, to develop themselves freely, rather than being slaves to the market. And this is how Marx’s story ends:

“[Communism] is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be this solution” (Bottomore 155, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844″).

Poetry

The strength of Marx’s narrative is not only that it gives us a meaning that transcends our individual lives to include our common, human, legacy. Nor is limited to providing us with a purpose and mission, so that we can see ourselves as historical actors. The final piece of the puzzle for Marx’s successful story is his poetry, as reflected in passages such as this:

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (500).

For a writer of philosophy and political economy, which is typically the densest and most technical prose, Marx consistently displays a poetic sensibility. His words often have a beauty and an art; they conjure up images that help the reader appreciate the fantastic nature of the story Marx is weaving. Here is one of his most famous sections from the “Communist Manifesto”:

“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations… are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life” (476).

Much of Marx’s poetry takes the form of dialectics. Dialectics, which formed much of Hegel’s thought and interest, are a way of thinking about contradicting forces opposing one another within a larger whole, whose contradictions transform that larger whole into something different. These transformations occur through “negations,” as opposites overtake one another. Dialectical thought can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, and is embedded in much Eastern philosophy and religion as well. For example, the Yin and Yang of Taoism represents a whole which contains opposites in contradiction.

Marx was fascinated by the complexity of dialectical thought. Turning to a random page, I can pick many passages to display his interest. Here is another from the “Communist Manifesto”:

“In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality” (485).

In this excerpt, Marx expounds two dialectics: the past vs. the present, both of which exist together in the now, and capital vs. the living person, both of which strive for independence.

The darkness and mystery which surround dialectical ideas grab hold of our imagination, making the impossible appear possible. There is a mystical quality to these ideas. Like television, Marx’s writing both disturbs and fascinates – the complexity of thought pushes the reader away at the same time that its dynamism draws them in.

Here is one of Marx’s most brilliant and memorable uses of dialectics, his attack on the division of labor and specialization:

“[A]s long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic” (160, “The German Ideology”).

Poetry takes Marx’s narrative to its most important destination – the human heart. Readers are drawn in by the language and internalize this story as their own – seeing themselves for the first time in relation to the historic moment in which we live, and the historic mission with which Marx presents us. This power to reach hearts and minds is the reason Marx’s world-view was able to become counter-hegemonic, and actually challenge the capitalist claim on reality.

However, with this power there is also a danger. As reality is ever-changing, a world-view can either continue to develop and remain relevant, or it can become static and outdated by failing to adapt. The very fascination that a narrative wields can also distract its adherents from asking difficult questions that would breathe new life into the framework. By defending its weaknesses, one facilitates the narrative remaining hegemonic, but saps it of the potential to evolve and incorporate new, critical perspectives. In the short-term, the narrative survives, but in the long-term, it decays.

The Marxist world-view has fallen victim to this very dynamic. As organs of the narrative have lost circulation with reality and gangrened, they have not been amputated, but allowed to persist as parasites on the elements of Marx’s ideas that remain alive.

Yet, responsibility for today’s Zombie-Marxism cannot be placed entirely on the shoulders of his followers; we must trace the origins of this horror back to the misconceptions in Karl Marx’s writings. The next section of the essay will explore those misconceptions.

Here is an outline of the entire essay. Check back soon for more!

• Introduction
• My Encounter with Grampa Karl
• What Marx Got Right
  1. Class Analysis
  2. Base and Superstructure
  3. Alienation of Labor
  4. Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis
  5. A Counter-Hegemonic World-view
• What Marx Got Wrong
  1. Linear March of History
  2. Europe as Liberator
  3. Mysticism of the Proletariat
  4. The State
  5. A Secular Dogma
• Hegemony over the Left
• Zombie-Marxism and its Discontents
• Conclusion: Beyond Marx, But Not Without Him

Footnotes
1. Engels adds this interesting note to the discussion of economic determinism: “Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principles vis-a-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights… And I cannot exempt many of the more recent ‘Marxists’ from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too” (Marx-Engels Reader 760-2).
2. In “Wage Labour and Capital” (a speech delivered to German workers in 1847), Marx brilliantly expanded on the alienation of labor in terms of the division of labor caused by the development of machine industry. “The greater division of labour enables one worker to do the work of five, ten, or twenty; it therefore multiplies competition among the workers fivefold, tenfold and twentyfold. The workers do not only compete by one selling himself cheaper than another; they compete by one doing the work of five, ten, twenty… Further, as the division of labour increases, labour is simplified. The special skill of the worker becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple, monotonous productive force… His labour becomes a labour that anyone can perform. Hence, competitors crowd upon him on all sides, and besides we remind the reader that the more simple and easily learned the labour is, the lower the cost of production needed to master it, the lower do wages sink, for, like the price of every other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production.
Therefore, as labour becomes more unsatisfying, more repulsive, competition increases and wages decrease. The worker tries to keep up the amount of his wages by working more, whether by working longer hours or by producing more in one hour. Driven by want, therefore, he still further increases the evil effects of the division of labour. The result is that the more he works the less wages he receives, and for the simple reason that he competes to that extent with his fellow workers, hence makes them into so many competitors who offer themselves on just the same bad terms as he does himself, and therefore, in the last resort he competes with himself, with himself as a member of the working class.” (214-5).
3. Also in “Wage Labour and Capital,” Marx explains the strategy of this “industrial war of the capitalists among themselves”: produce ever-growing quantities of increasingly cheap commodities. “One capitalist can drive another from the field and capture his capital only by selling more cheaply. In order to be able to sell more cheaply without ruining himself, he must produce more cheaply, that is, raise the productive power of labour as much as possible. But the productive power of labour is raised, above all, by a greater division of labour, by a more universal introduction and continual improvement of machinery. The greater the labour army among whom labour is divided, the more gigantic the scale on which machinery is introduced, the more does the cost of production proportionately decrease, the more fruitful is labour [for the capitalist]. Hence, a general rivalry arises among the capitalists to increase the division of labour and machinery and to exploit them on the greatest possible scale.
The more powerful and costly means of production that he has called into life enable him to sell his commodities more cheaply, they compel him, however, at the same time to sell more commodities, to conquer a much larger market for his commodities.” (211-2).
Noting that profit for the capitalists is inversely proportional to the wages paid out to workers, he adds, “this war has the peculiarity that its battles are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of labour. The generals, the capitalists, compete with one another as to who can discharge the most soldiers of industry” (215).
4. In a similar passage from an 1846 letter to one P.V. Annenkov, Marx explains: “Every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of the productive forces acquired by the previous generation, which serve it as the raw material for new production, a coherence arises in human history (emphasis added), a history of humanity takes shape which is all the more a history of humanity as the productive forces of man” (137).

Why Marxism Has Failed, and Why Zombie-Marxism Cannot Die
Or My Rocky Relationship with Grampa Karl

Image by Germ Ross, artnoise.net

by Alex Knight, endofcapitalism.com
Part 1 – October 29, 2010

[Click to see Part 2]

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” – Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852

“Once again the dead are walking in our midst – ironically, draped in the name of Marx, the man who tried to bury the dead of the nineteenth century.” – Murray Bookchin, Listen, Marxist!, 1969

A specter is haunting the Left, the specter of Karl Marx.

In June, my friend Joanna and I presented a workshop at the 2010 US Social Forum, an enormous convergence of progressive social movements from across the United States. The USSF is “more than a conference”, it’s a gathering of movements and thinkers to assess our historic moment of economic and ecological crisis, and generate strategies for moving towards “Another World”.

Our workshop, entitled “The End of Capitalism? At the Crossroads of Crisis and Sustainability”, was packed. A surprising number of people were both intrigued and supportive of our presentation that global capitalism is in a deep crisis because it faces ecological and social limits to growth, from peak oil to popular resistance around the wold. Participants eagerly discussed the proposal that the U.S. is approaching a crossroads with two paths out: one through neo-fascist attempts to restore the myth of the “American Dream” with attacks on Muslims, immigrants and other marginalized groups; the other, a path of realizing and deepening the core values of freedom, democracy, justice, sustainability and love.

Despite the lively audience, I knew that somewhere lurking in that cramped, overheated classroom was the unquestionable presence of Zombie-Marxism.¹ And I knew it was only a matter of time until it showed itself and hungrily charged at our fresh anti-capitalist analysis in the name of Karl Marx’s high authority on the subject.

It happened during the question and answer period. A visibly agitated member of one of the dozens of small Marxist sectarian groups swarming these sorts of gatherings raised his hand to speak. I hesitated to call on him. I knew he wasn’t going to ask a question, but instead to speechify, to roll out a pre-rehearsed statement from his Party line. I called on others first, but his hand stayed in the air, sweat permeating his brow. Perhaps by mistake or perhaps from a feeling of guilt I gave him the nod to release what was incessantly welling up in his throat.

“I don’t agree with this stuff about ecological limits to growth. Marx wrote in Capital that the system faces crisis because of fundamental cycles of stagnation that cause the falling rate of profit…”

With the resurrection of Marx’s ancient wisdom, a dangerous infection was released into the discussion. Clear, rational thought, based on evaluating current circumstances and real-life issues in all their fluid complexities and contradictions, was threatened by an antiquated and stagnant dogma that single-mindedly sees all situations as excuses to reproduce itself in the minds of the young and vital.

Marx didn’t articulate his ideas because they appeared true in his time and place. No. The ideas are true because Marx said them. Such is the logic. If I didn’t act fast, the workshop could surrender the search for truth – to the search for brains.

I would have to cut this guy off and call on someone else. I knew better than to try to respond to his “question” – it would only tighten his grip on decades of certainty and derail the real conversation. Unfortunately, there is no way to slay a zombie. Regardless of the accuracy or firepower in your logic, zombie ideas will just keep coming. The only way out of an encounter with the undead is to escape.

I motioned my hand to signal ‘enough’ and tried to raise my voice over his. “Thank you. OK, THANK you! Yes. Marx was a very smart dude. OK, next?”

Karl Marx was without a doubt one of the greatest European philosophers of the 19th century. In a context of rapid industrialization and growing inequality between rich and poor, Marx pinpointed capitalism as the source of this misery and spelled out his theory of historical materialism, which endures today as deeply relevant for understanding human society. He emphasized that capitalism arose from certain economic and social conditions, and therefore it will inevitably be made obsolete by a new way of life.

For me, what makes Marx’s work so powerful is that he told a compelling story about humanity and our purpose. It was a big-picture narrative of economy and society, oppression and liberation, set on a global stage. Marx constructed a new way of understanding the world – a new world-view – which gave meaning and direction to those disenchanted with the dominant capitalist belief system. And in crafting this world-view, Marx happened to do a pretty good job wielding the tools of philosophy, political economy and science, aiming to deconstruct how capitalism functions and disclose its contradictions, so that we might overcome it and create a better future.

Brilliant ideas flowed from this effort, including his analysis of class inequality, the concepts of “base” and “superstructure”, and the liberating theory of “alienated labor.” Marx also showed that the inner workings of capital live off economic growth, and if this growth is limited, crisis will ensue and throw the entire social order into jeopardy. For all these reasons, Marxist politics – the Marxist story – remains popular and relevant today.

But due to serious errors and ambiguities in Marx’s analysis, Marxism has failed to provide an accessible, coherent, and accurate theoretical framework to free the world of capitalist tyranny.

I believe Marx’s foremost error was his propagation of the older philosopher Hegel’s linear march of history. This theory characterizes human society as constantly evolving to higher stages of development, such that each successive epoch is supposedly more “ideal” or “rational” than what came before. Marx’s carrying forward this deterministic narrative into the anti-capitalist struggle created the confusion that capitalism, although terrible, is a necessary “advance” that will create the conditions for a free society by the “development of productive forces.” This mistaken conception often put Marx, and his uncritical descendants, on the wrong side of history – arguing that in order to achieve the ideal of socialism or communism, countries first had to follow the Western European model of becoming capitalist first.

Hegel’s framework of linear progression blinded Marx to non-European, feminist, and ecological critiques of capital’s violent conquest of the world. Without this knowledge, Marx charted a flawed strategy for radical social change that missed the core of what human freedom is all about. Instead of vocally, unambiguously opposing European colonialism and the displacement of small farmers from their land, Marx construed the proletarianization of the world as a matter of capitalism “producing its own grave-diggers.” Focusing narrowly on the economic “misery” of capitalism and upholding the proletariat as the agent of history, Marx simplified the aims of the anti-capitalist project to a matter of the working class seizing state power to “increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible” (Marx-Engels Reader 490).

This mechanical focus on the hardships of workers led Marx to overlook the many other ways that capitalism threatens life on this planet, and therefore also the resistance coming from those outside his framework: peasants, indigenous cultures, women, youth, queer and trans people, students and intellectuals, immigrants, people of color, artists, and more.

Perhaps most urgently for our moment of climate meltdown, Marx’s view of capitalism as an “advance” blinded him to the ecological destruction that capitalism reaps on our planet, from deforestation to the extinction of species and so much more. Preoccupied with the “development of productive forces,” Marx predicted that communism would come about due to capitalism placing “fetters” on economic growth. Growth itself was perceived as inherently good, and the rational proletariat would advance it further than capital ever could. Following this logic to its conclusion, Marx praised industrialization as creating the material conditions for the “scientific domination of natural agencies.”

Afflicted with these blindspots, the Marxist narrative was defenseless against repeated manipulations, and mutated into ideological cover for “Socialist” and “Communist” tyrants who have been chief enemies of human liberation. Where Marx’s doctrine didn’t fit the reality of social struggle, as in Russia, China, and every other country that has experienced a “Marxist” revolution, his disciples attempted to transcend reality in order to fit Marx’s doctrine, instead of transcending Marx’s ideas in order to fit reality. The results have been nothing short of nightmarish.

A zombie idea is an idea that has been demonstrably proven false by reality, which has expired in its usefulness, but which continues to reproduce itself by preying on real-live hopes and fears. A zombie idea cannot adapt to new conditions, it only decays. It lacks moral purpose, but will continue to lumber on, propelled by an insatiable hunger for as long as it can find unfortunate victims.

Sadly, disturbingly, much of Marxist thought today finds itself in such a state. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monstrosity of “actually existing” Marxism spectacularly failed to bury capitalism. Quite the contrary, it was shocked to find itself swept into the “dustbin of history.” Proven wrong, this dogma hasn’t stayed dead. Now a mockery of the living philosophy Marxism once was (and for some still is), Zombie-Marxism has continued to weigh heavy on the collective mind of the Left, for the simple reason that we haven’t turned a critical eye to Karl Marx’s body of work itself.

This essay is not meant to be an attack on any particular Marxist, or even on sectarian groups as a species of organization, but rather on a mindset, which uncritically carries forward Marx’s ideas into present circumstances where they no longer fit. Too often, Marx is invoked as an authority on subjects of which he was totally silent on. When Marx did make a statement related to a current issue, it is viewed as confirmation of his wisdom, rather than evaluated for the relative clarity or obscurity which it throws on our understanding of capitalism and revolutionary practice today.

We need to carry out an autopsy on the old man. There is much to be gained by reading Marx. But when we look to him for all the answers we transform him into a prophet and transform ourselves into a mindless herd. One hundred and fifty years after Marx’s major writings, it is beyond time to ask ourselves: What did Marx get right?, What did he get wrong?, and Why has Marxism failed in practice? Finally, how can we integrate Marx’s brilliance alongside the insights of many other necessary thinkers, to create a common-sense radical analysis, based not on ideological blueprints of the past, but on our lived conditions in 21st century late capitalism?

I was once infected with Zombie-Marxist ideas myself. I overcame this infection and freed my mind of such undead ideas, so I know it can be done. Of course, I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to raise these questions and attempt a critique of Marx. For example, in this essay I will draw from the feminist critique of Silvia Federici, the anti-Eurocentrism critiques of Edward Said and Russell Means, the ecological critique of Murray Bookchin, the anti-statist critiques of Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman, the anti-dogmatic critique of Cornelius Castoriadis, and others. I offer my own perspective on the Marxist tradition in the hope that others find it useful, and to spark conversation on the need to constantly re-examine our assumptions. Marx himself wrote:

“The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past” (M-ER 597).

In this era of capitalist crisis, when the entire system threatens to implode, new challenges, and new opportunities, are springing to life. To be relevant to our own century requires shedding the dead superstitions of the past, and facing the future with critical consciousness.

In this essay, I will first recount how I became a follower of “Grampa Karl”, and why I was eventually disillusioned. In the two following sections I will lay out my critique of Marx, limited to what I see as Marx’s five most enduring contributions and his five most debilitating mistakes. In the remaining parts of the essay I will explain how these theoretical failures led to “actually existing” Marxism – a monstrous dogma which dominated the revolutionary left for a century, and still perpetuates itself as an undead ideology even after mortifying two decades ago. Finally I will attempt to rescue Marx from the zombies haunting his legacy and situate him in what I call a common-sense radical perspective of living anti-capitalist politics, incorporating newer theoretical developments such as “de-growth,” “reproductive labor” and “transformative justice.”

My Encounter with Grampa Karl

When I was 18, I read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The book famously declares “there’s shit in the meat.” Fast Food Nation exposes how factory farms, which produce the vast majority of meat for US consumption, are hell-holes where unsanitary and unsafe practices not only carry out unspeakable animal cruelty, not only endanger and exploit their workers (who are mostly undocumented immigrants), but also pump out enormous quantities of excrement-laden and potentially dangerous meat, which has even killed children with E.coli. And this is to say nothing about the “normal” health effects of ingesting fast food. The fast food industry is also directly responsible for the clear-cutting of the Amazon rainforest, as huge areas of the world’s most diverse ecosystem are burned down and replaced with ranches raising cattle for Americans’ burgers.

As Schlosser documents, the meat industry is well aware of their socially and ecologically destructive practices, but persists in them for the simple and undeniable reason of maximizing profit. The ongoing disaster has nothing to do with evil or immoral people – the system itself is responsible. Capitalism is feeding us shit and we’re “lovin’ it.”

Facing this truth was too much for my teenage apathy to withstand. My dispassionate ignorance of the world – cultivated by years of television and video games – was suddenly shattered on the grim rocks of reality. As my world-view lay in jagged pieces, I found myself overwhelmed with questions. “Is capitalism killing our planet?” “Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” “If they know, why don’t they ever talk about it?” “Is it wrong to think this way?” “Am I a Communist for asking these questions?”

I sank below waves of uncertainty and anguish. I thrashed about for any explanation of how this terrible reality could make sense. I clamored to know what I could do about it. Drowning in questions, I longed for answers.

Karl Marx presented me with the first solid ideas I could stand on. I read “Alienated Labor” and it gave me a name for the anguish I was experiencing. My hatred for my job did not mean there was something wrong with me, but that I was responding correctly to an alienating and exploitative situation. I wasn’t wrong; the system was wrong.

Feeling validated by the old man, I rapidly developed a strong affinity for his teachings. I read “The Communist Manifesto,” “The Civil War in France,” even “The Grundrisse.” Although the language was thick and foreign, I slowly waded through because my efforts were occasionally rewarded with profound nuggets of insight into my own world. I discovered a long and complex history of Marxist anti-capitalism.

I felt as though I had been mentally rescued. I had found an ideological home, from which I could launch criticisms of the capitalist system and encounter others who desired revolution. Marx was our guide, my guide. His story of class struggle gave me meaning and purpose, which is what I had been seeking.

In mainstream American society, Karl Marx is like an estranged grandfather who no one brings up in polite conversation. A long time ago there was a bitter falling out over politics and he stopped being invited to family functions – all the better because he wouldn’t be caught dead at those “bourgeois” ceremonies. If the subject of Grampa Karl ever does come up, it’s usually in the context of a ghost story meant to frighten and silence unpatriotic sentiments. For example, Glenn Beck says Marx is controlling our president and destroying the country. On the other hand, Grampa Karl does get some favorable mentions in the university, where the facade of liberal education is more important than any minor disturbance that the introduction of students to Marx’s obscure rantings is likely to produce.

When I became a follower of Grampa Karl, I knew I was distancing myself from the mainstream. If people realized I was consorting with that rabble-rouser they might have thought I was crazy or stupid, or both. I had no problem with that. Rather, I had such contempt for the dominant culture as it exists, that I relished the identity of outsider and rebel. Moreover, the old man had promised me it was only a matter of time before capitalism collapsed due to its internal contradictions. Time was on our side. I cherished my secret Marxist hope and laughed behind the back of bourgeois society.

But as time went on, Marx’s warts began to show. First, I noticed his almost-total silence on issues of ecology. Being motivated largely by my concern for capitalism’s apocalyptic approach to life on this planet, I strained to find even the slightest clues of environmental consciousness in Marx’s writings. Instead, I was confronted with the faulty notion of a linear development of history, with liberation equated with human domination of nature. It became increasingly apparent that Marx didn’t have all the answers for me. His analysis was trapped in another century, when industrialization still seemed like a good idea to people.

Nevertheless, I was not ready to abandon my political home just because I had such doubts. On the contrary, I clung all the more desperately to my mentor, seeking to prove him right and his critics, perhaps even myself, wrong. Looking back, I can locate in myself the attitude of one afflicted with Zombie-Marxism. If I didn’t understand what Marx was saying, it was because he was speaking to a higher truth that I couldn’t grasp. If Marx’s ideas were questionable, I hastened to silence the questions. Instead, I sought to dispose of them by returning to Marx’s writings and scouring for quotes or passages, no matter how tangential, which could be used to clobber those who dared to doubt the wisdom of Grampa Karl. I felt close to Marx as to a guardian – he had pulled me from confusion and provided me with clarity. Through him, the world made sense. Or at least I thought it did.

My questions didn’t ebb. I became disturbed by the company Marx was keeping. Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, and more, all swarming around him and treating his every word as gospel. Worse, they seemed to spend more energy feuding with each other than building the kind of movement we need to overturn capitalism. I attended the 2006 Left Forum in New York City and despaired at seeing the horde of Marxist sectarian grouplets denouncing one-another over petty ideological questions that had been irrelevant decades ago. Were these people engaged in the same project that Marx had given me?

My disappointment grew, so that when the anarchist critique finally reached me, I was ready to listen. Although it was plainly apparent to me that people like Lenin and Stalin had entirely distorted the liberatory potential in Marx and created something horrifying, the anarchists pointed to the errors of Marx’s ideology and method which paved the way for those distortions. No matter how smart someone is, they are bound to make mistakes, so labeling yourself an “ist” of someone’s name is to engage in the worship of an individual, which can only detour you from trusting your own feelings and thoughts. How could someone know better than yourself what is hurting you and what you need to heal?

I saw this cult of personality in Venezuela, where I could not walk down the street, turn on the television, visit the beach or the mountains without seeing President Chavez’s name or face everywhere. This essay is no place to critique the policies of the Chavez government, which are complex and contain both positive and negative aspects, but the omnipresence of an uncritical Chavismo made me cringe on an emotional level, even if I firmly supported his government against the right-wing U.S.-funded opposition.

I felt betrayed by Marx. He should have known, and stated clearly, that politicians, no matter how progressive, cannot make revolution. It has to come from the bottom – from everyday people organized in social movements – fighting for their liberation. Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat” suddenly appeared to me as a pathetic joke. How did he not see how such an absurd idea would be exploited by opportunists? Disillusioned in Venezuela, I read Emma Goldman’s My Disillusionment in Russia and parted ways with Marxism.

Even though Grampa Karl and I are no longer close comrades, Marx continues to influence my politics because there is much to value in his writings. A full recounting of his genius would be too difficult, but I will explore 5 key contributions of Marx that I believe remain relevant and useful insights today, during capitalism’s global crisis. Then I will follow this with what I see as the 5 most urgent failures in Marx’s analysis, from which spawned the Zombie-Marxism lurking in our midst today.

Karl Marx was no prophet. But neither can we reject him. We have to go beyond him, and bring him with us.² I believe it is only on such a basis, with a critical appraisal of Marx, that the Left can become ideologically relevant to today’s rapidly evolving political circumstances.

Here is an outline of the entire essay. Check back soon for more!

• Introduction
• My Encounter with Grampa Karl
• What Marx Got Right
  1. Class Analysis
  2. Base and Superstructure
  3. Alienation of Labor
  4. Need for Growth, Inevitability of Crisis
  5. A Counter-Hegemonic World-view
• What Marx Got Wrong
  1. Linear March of History
  2. Europe as Liberator
  3. Mysticism of the Proletariat
  4. The State
  5. A Secular Dogma
• Hegemony over the Left
• Zombie-Marxism and its Discontents
• Conclusion: Beyond Marx, But Not Without Him

Footnotes
1. The idea of a zombie ideology was transmitted to me from Turbulence magazine and the “zombie-liberalism” they discuss as taking the place of neo-liberalism in the wonderful article “Life in Limbo?”
2. This framing comes to me through Ashanti Alston, the “Anarchist Panther,” and his excellent essay “Beyond Nationalism, But Not Without It.”