Link: The Skinny – Crisis And Class War, April 2020

 

Crisis And Class War

 

Disaster Capitalism and Economic Segregation

While obviously the coronavirus threat is by no means over and there is always the chance that stacking bodies as high as skyscrapers in American cities will force a course correction, I think at this point it’s safe to draw at least two conclusions from the collective response to the crisis in the United States and the Pig Empire as a whole.

First and foremost, it now seems one hundred percent clear to me that the coronavirus crisis is going to launch the most fundamentally transformative and overarching era of socialism in Pig Empire history and indeed the crisis is already forcing governments to adopt elements of Modern Monetary Theory; or at least a form of hyper-Keynesian economic policy that dwarfs FDR’s New Deal. Yes, indeed the coronavirus crisis has objectively forced neoliberalism to accept significant portions of current left wing economic theory as indisputable fact and standard practice going forward.

The second and only slightly less obvious conclusion one must reach after examining the coronavirus relief measures our leaders are currently enacting, is that the rich people and corporations who truly own our various governments absolutely do not give a flying f*ck whether or not people in the labor class live or die; in fact, most of them seem to perceive some sort of culling as a preferable alternative to abandoning fossil fuels or wealth redistribution of any kind.

Naturally, these two conclusions may appear contradictory at first glance but if you step back and look at what the coronavirus induced round of corporate-bailouts and keystroke money funneled into propping up the markets actually represents, it’s objectively a massive transfer of wealth (created out of thin air, by issuing debt) from the public to the private sector; or a type of socialism – for the rich.

By contrast, at least in America, the labor class has been offered some degree of unemployment insurance, a one time cash subsidy of twelve-hundred dollars that might take four months to arrive, free coronavirus testing (the availability of which varies widely by state) and sporadic promises to delay but not absolve the payments of some rents. The picture is even more grim for prisoners, folks living in old age homes and of course, the homeless for whom there is no relief at all; each of these groups have largely been abandoned to their fate in the clutches of the “does coronavirus actually kill you” lottery.

All of which fairly neatly adds up to “sod off and die” to anyone who understands what happens to the consumer economy when everyone loses their jobs at the exact same time; if current projections continue to unfold as expected, this situation is going to make thirty percent unemployment rates in the Great Depression look like a children’s tea party. Even the petite bourgeoisie are not immune as this massive corporate welfare and bailout program appears to be purposely excluding the merchant class and America’s vaunted Main Street – it’s a state-sanctioned corporate takeover.

At this point there seems very little reason in asking why this is happening or how the corporate class intends to get away with all of this in a legal sense; we live in a corrupt oligarchy and the mechanisms of our various states are wholly subservient to elite capital. There is really no other explanation required. Some of you with rudimentary backgrounds in economics however, are likely to be asking yourself how the ruling classes intend to sustain an economy in the long term like this; if nobody is working, there’s nobody to buy products and if nobody is buying products, we’re all doomed right? Unfortunately, this presumption quickly runs into two harsh realities of real world economics that they won’t ever teach you in a university textbook.

First and foremost is the reality that there is no such thing as long-term planning in modern corporate ideology and practice; business in America has become about satisfying the markets, collecting massive executive payouts and jumping clear of the ship before any short term profit taking turns into a long term problem. The immediate demands of banks, high-rolling investors and massive predatory pools of capital dictate corporate behavior, not the idea of building a lasting institution or a multi-generational enterprise.

This myopic “me and now” type of operational procedure can most easily be seen in the world of corporate takeovers, where efficiently-run businesses that have accumulated significant capital assets and have failed to accumulate debt are considered a prime target for vulture capital firms. Using vast pools of capital to acquire favorable bank rates, these firms and investors will indeed often borrow money against the assets of the company they’re trying to take over, to accomplish the deed. Unless they take on huge debts to fight off the takeover, these successful companies will quickly be stripped of assets, which are sold off by the vulture capitalists and then the company will be purposely allowed to fail – often taking the debt acquired during the takeover process to the grave with it. In other words, within the confines of a financialized, hyper-capitalist Western economy, caring about the future of your business instead of immediate profits has become an unforgivable sin.

This culture of raiding the piggy bank and let the consequences be damned also seems to dovetail perfectly with corporate elite attitudes about the coming rise of automated labor, the (largely overblown) problem of global overpopulation and bizarrely enough, numerous paranoid post-apocalyptic crash scenarios that seem to naturally attract the interest of the truly ultra wealthy. See: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity & https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich & https://www.salon.com/2018/07/16/we-asked-psychologists-why-so-many-rich-people-think-the-apocalypse-is-coming/ & https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/03/coronavirus-survivalist-bunker

Ok, so the ruling classes really don’t give a f*ck about us and they might actually be trying to kill off a certain portion of the population as some bizarre form of social engineering; fine, but the joke is still on them right? The real world economic impacts of none of us being able to buy consumer goods are still going to turn all their dreams to dust, eventually, right?

Not so fast because this brings us back to the financialization of our economy and the creation of keystroke money out of thin air by having the government issue debt. What if I told you that it is no longer clear that making and buying things is the keystone of the American economy? What if after decades of deregulation and bailouts, the investor class has created its own, separate economy based on transaction fees, asset trading and pure hog at the barrel appropriation of public monies? Do the ruling classes actually need labor anymore, or perhaps more importantly – do the rich sociopaths at the wheel of our society actually *believe* they need the labor class anymore?

The simple truth is that the ruling classes do not actually care where their profits come from and indeed, it’s much easier to simply tap the public coffers directly by pushing around completely in-pocket governments than attempting to satisfy customers or predict the whims of an ever-shifting consumer goods market. Nor do the rich particularly care if the public has income to tax, as they’ve discovered they can just force the government to issue debt and flee to more stable climates if that causes the nation itself to implode. Ironically, this means the ruling classes have in effect openly embraced some aspects of socialism and Modern Monetary Theory – albeit, only for themselves. Sure, we might *eventually* scratch our way to slave-wage levels of Universal Basic Income, but the real social safety net here is for the rich and their corporations.

In other words, with the rise of the western (primarily Wall Street in America, and The City in the UK) financial sector to complete market dominance the rich are clearly betting that they don’t *actually* need us to even just buy things anymore; just as they sure as sh*t realized they don’t need to pay us to make products already, a long time ago. The coronavirus crisis relief efforts are merely a convenient vehicle to help finish off this project of economic segregation embarked on decades ago throughout the Pig Empire.

Is this a horrifying gamble? Sure, it is – you would have to presume that eventually the money and credit is going to run out and everything will implode. The simple truth however is that neither our leaders, or the vampire scions of elite capital who pull their strings, really give a damn; much like in the case of climate catastrophe, the Masters of our Universe are pretty sure everyone else is going to suffer more from the Morlock-ification of our economy than they do.

And unless something changes soon – they’re probably right.

 

There is No American Left but the Labor Class American Left

Personally I think it’s pretty unfortunate that a lot of American soft-left political observers have decided that the formation of a “progressive” alliance with professional class and even elite liberals represents the only way forward for what has, up until now, self-identified as the Bernie Sanders or democratic socialist movement. Furthermore, my disappointment stems from more than just my personal distaste for both the (bloodless) term progressive and the individual politicians and influencers who comprise what passes for the American political aristocracy. Indeed, I believe that such a “progressive” alliance would essentially signal the silent crib-death of this self-same nascent American left wing movement.

If that sounds a little melodramatic to you, I suspect it’s because you still naively believe that the horrifying dystopia we currently live in is a result of ignorance and not a well oiled machine, dedicated to restoring, maintaining and protecting (by force if necessary) ruling class power. If you were to accept that it is highly unlikely we’re living in a neofeudal society by accident however, you would also be forced to accept that it is equally unlikely existing class power is going to ally with you to dismantle existing class power and create a more humane, people-orientated world – no matter how eloquent, correct and morally upstanding your arguments, policies and programs may be.

In other words, in order to obtain the kind of society those of us in the labor class or otherwise on the left dream off, we’re talking about literally destroying the current socioeconomic order and replacing it with a completely different one – ending, at least, the absolute rule of capital and transferring real power (political or otherwise) from the monied classes, to the common people.

Of course at this exact moment we do have some disagreements across the broadest possible definition of “the American Left” in terms of what that new social order will ultimately look like; the alliance between the anti-capitalist radical left and the largely pro-capitalist, but anti-exploitation social democrats (who often mistakenly self identify as democratic socialists) is in and of itself, a somewhat uneasy one. Mostly however if we take a “leftest common denominator” approach to assessing the broad goals of the political left in America, we’re primarily talking about a shift from a society based on competition and extractivist capitalism to society that embraces the concept of mutual aid and only allows a type of firewall capitalism where necessities of life will automatically be removed from the free market and cease to be commodities at all – things like healthcare, or maybe housing for example.

With that understood, it also behooves us to admit right up front that no matter how this change is accomplished, that process of totally overhauling not just how our society works, but also why it works and for whom, will constitute a revolution; even if not a single shot is fired on the way to paradise. We also have to accept that the nature of modern globalized capital means that we’re not just talking about changing the Pig Empire either, because the Americanized form of capitalism is basically a world scourge and the ease of capital flight will make it impossible to achieve our goals unless the labor class adopts a more globalist perspective and maintains solidarity across international lines. In other words, this isn’t a simple as winning a single election in a rigged political process; changing the world is hard to do and it’s a pretty massive project that has already consumed lifetimes before you or I ever came along to think “things are pretty sh*t and these rich people are the source of the problem.”

Okay so if we’re already in an undeclared class war, you can’t rely on establishment power to help you dismantle establishment power and the open rejection of even rudimentary left wing political ideas by the (currently) ruling “liberal” establishment makes allying with either the Democratic Party itself, or the professional class at large pretty pointless, how do we win?

Well, studying the history of both left wing revolutionary struggles and successful democratic socialist political movements in other countries, I can say with some certainty that the only successful formula for a revolution (of any kind) is banding together all of the folks at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid holding up our capitalist society, against the far less numerous wealthy elites who reside at the top of that same pyramid.

Indeed, this holds true whether we’re talking about an actual militant armed struggle that leads to revolution, such as in Cuba, a broadly-based political takeover conducted through electoral politics, such as in the Pink Tide elections across Latin America, the type of general strikes that gave birth to Scandinavian socialism, or even a movement built around passive, non-violent resistance like the one that ended British rule in India. In every instance the movements that got anywhere, the lefties that won any significant struggle against ruthless power, all the times that true justice for the common people prevailed; our empowerment movements were organized around class.

By maintained solidarity among the labor class and in opposition to the ruling class, the so-called “masses” were able to maintain a vast and terrifying numerical superiority over their “betters” and crucially, we threatened to use it – as this history demonstrates, sometimes the system actually does give up without a real life shooting war, but capitalism and the vampire greedbag sh*tlords who benefit from it have *never* granted the poor or otherwise oppressed even one single inch, until they were actively afraid of “the masses.”

This is of course why any successful organizing we do to overturn the neoliberal or rather, neofeudalist social order today, is absolutely going to have to be fundamentally based around class and why any “progressive” alliance with the liberal establishment is doomed to fail; because such an alliance cannot by definition be built around the concept of class.

Organizing left wing and anti-capitalist activism (political, or otherwise) around the concept of class is the only way to obtain the crushing numerical superiority required to overcome the ruling class in a corrupt oligarchy with Calvinball rules and rigged elections. You and I are not going to reinvent the wheel here – the American left needs to do what has always worked for us at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid; stop talking about the class war and start behaving like we’re actually fighting one.

Naturally, this fundamental need to focus on class-based organizing, activism and election strategies is also why the term “progressive” is less than useless; it’s detrimental to the broader left wing cause and adopting it has been actively harmful for the labor class left.

This is because “progressive” doesn’t actually mean anything in particular by itself when used in American politics; it functions as a catch-all word used to define a collection of “all good left wing things” that specifically writes class and even economics out of the discussion. As a term progressive can be defined by anyone, as nearly anything; its ephemeral because again it’s just a lose collection of vaguely left wing “good things” – the word leaves it up to you to interpret as you like; this is why Nancy Pelosi, Tom Perez and even Hillary Clinton have at times called themselves progressive. If for example you’re not a racist, you sincerely cherish the LGBT community’s right to get legally married and you recycle twice a week – congrats, you’re a progressive and nobody can say otherwise because the term literally doesn’t f*cking mean anything specific; never mind that you oppose medicare for all, you hate poor people with the passion of a thousand suns and you think “union bully power” is a thing that even exists.

Personally, I would also posit that this is no accident because use and abuse of the term progressive combined with active mainstream liberal attempts to associate class-based organizing with racism, sexism or otherwise reactionary behavior, have already allowed the bougie professional class “left” far too much (largely negative) influence in shaping the existing US demsoc/socdem movement for anyone’s good. Indeed, it is in my opinion this influence on the Sanders campaign in particular currently finds us staring down the barrel of a second term Trump presidency instead of preparing to elect a self-styled democratic socialist president this fall.

Of course the liars, propagandists and grifters who comprise the mainstream liberal intelligentsia (such as it is) in American society will paint such a class-based formulation as inherently racist, sexist or discriminatory but this bit of sophistry is only accomplished by falsely separating class and capitalist exploitation from the societal scourges of racism, sexism and marginalization. Indeed this false separation of class and economics from marginalization, bigotry and exploitation is a necessary deception for the very concept of a “progressive” movement that works across class lines to exist – at least in a world where ruthless establishment power isn’t going to help you dismantle ruthless establishment power; so, reality.

All of this is of course absurd because it is this very same exploitation, justified by white supremacy and other hierarchical mythologies in our society, that forces marginalized people into the labor class and towards the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid in the first place. Only by separating class and economics from race, gender and other forms of marginalization can the affluent center pretend to support a “left wing agenda” while simultaneously actively fighting *against* the type of economic reforms necessary to actually address these problems. There really is no such thing as a white working class and the American left is not, nor has it ever been a bunch of spoiled white college kids living in their moms basement; if your definition of the labor class ends with white faces in hardhats on the factory floor and doesn’t include the millions of marginalized people working in the service industry (for just one example) you’re no leftist and you’re of no use to a labor class left wing movement at all.

The simple truth is that there is no real separation between our need to build class power and our need to build a broad-based coalition; the labor class has been purposely atomized by the ruling classes into numerous fractions of the whole for precisely the purpose of preventing a broad coalition of labor class power from ever forming in our society. If we’re going to win, and this remains true no matter which of the four previously successful paths we’re ultimately forced to take in the face of the oligarchy’s reaction to our attempts to change the world – we’re going to have to organize around class; and if we do that, the establishment, including its bougie professional minions among the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party and the corporate “liberal” media, will declare all out war on us; as a matter of self-preservation, if nothing else.

In other words there is no scenario where hugging it out with the center and their lapdogs in the professional managerial class, gets the goods for the labor class. This is it, this is the road we’ve got to walk and building labor class power is the tactic we have to adopt. Nobody asks to live in interesting times. Nobody asks to fight a class war they didn’t even declare. But if we in the labor class want to win a fight the rich have already brought to our doorstep and against our collective will, this is the only option we have left on the table.

If nothing else, the past fifty years of global neoliberalization (and a globalized super virus) have demonstrated conclusively that trying to convince the affluent that killing poor people for profit is monstrous and wrong isn’t a pragmatic choice for the left, it’s objectively suicidal; maybe if Americans cracked a book once in a while, they’d realize that on their own…

No war but class war.

 

Who Even Cares About the Democratic Party Primaries Anymore?

Despite the fact that literally no amount of myopic, self-defeating behavior by the American “liberal” establishment should surprise me after they responded to punting a winnable election against a billionaire reality TV show fascist crook by firing precisely nobody and blaming the whole thing on Russian facebook memes – I’m still from time to time utterly shocked at the brazen self-interest on display whenever these people open their pie holes.

Take for example the vociferous and increasingly ferocious calls for Bernie Sanders to drop out of the Democratic Party 2020 nomination contest; despite the reality that he’s running against a desiccating mummy who can’t tell his wife from his sister and just got hit with a credible allegation of sexual assault from a former aide. Oh, have I mentioned that we’re in the middle of a global pandemic that everyone knows Biden’s policies would do absolutely nothing to solve? Finally, let’s just put the cherry on top by noting that some liberal influencers in the mainstream media are so certain this nomination contest is already over and Biden’s got it in the bag that they’re… actively talking about replacing him with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; at the same time as this same establishment is demanding Sanders drop out immediately to preserve party unity.

I mean let’s cut the crap here; the fact that Bernie Sanders is inexplicably still participating in this goddamn farce is literally the only thing still giving the Democratic Party primary process any legitimacy at all. Indeed, the very fact that there is a loud lively discussion about why Bernie should drop out in the corporate liberal media right now, but there is almost *no* discussion whatsoever about why the f*ck the Democratic Party is even holding plague-watch primaries that are now *totally* compromised and have zero integrity anyway – says everything you need to know about the motivations behind the establishment’s desire to force Sanders out in the middle of global pandemic and a serious campaign crisis for Joe Biden.

Frankly between the clusterf*ck that was the Iowa primary and the macabre joke-ass “Deathmatch 2020” primaries in Illinois and Florida that basically broke down inside the Democraticy Party’s own internal headassery – these folks really do have a lot of nerve pretending like anyone who has been paying attention to the race has literally any faith in this process at this point anyway. I for example, really couldn’t give two sh*ts if Bernie drops out of a rigged nomination contest that has already demonstrated that the Democratic Party will murder old people and throw a second election to Downmarket Mussolini before they’ll move even a smidgen to the left – even in the face of popular polling that demonstrates their base is broadly supportive of left wing policies and programs.

Furthermore that conclusion comes without even digging under the surface to find out precisely *how* rigged this whole Potemkin primary process has actually been. I didn’t mention the weighted delegate allocations, or the closed polling stations in economically disadvantaged areas that overwhelmingly went for Bernie, or targeted voter suppression in the form of seven hour lines at colleges, party roll purges and signature challenges that always went against the left. Nor did I talk about the curious and open alliance between the entire corporate media establishment and the centrist faction in the Democratic Party that has resulted in a seemingly relentless smear and propaganda campaign against both Sanders and the larger American left; at the point that you’re calling broke fast food workers who’re agitating for a $15 an hour minimum wage literal f*cking Russian spies, you have clearly lost the bloody plot. Hell, I didn’t even mention the fact that black box voting means we wouldn’t know if the party literally rigged the machines these nomination contests are counted on anyways; or the fact that all of this is literally one hundred percent legal because for reasons only a federal judge can explain, the Democratic Party primaries aren’t legally “elections” at all.

I could have talked about these things of course; they’re all reasons why the voting public knows the Democratic Party nomination contest is fugazi as hell and thus, have zero faith in these guys to actually deliver a win against Trump in the fall when trying to rig the process becomes a felony – but I really don’t have to even mention those things; between letting Mayo Pete rig a primary contest with a sham phone app, and literally murdering seniors to run skeleton primaries in Illinois and Florida (with Wisconsin up next), any idiot can see that the credibility of this entire process is gone regardless – and that is almost certainly going to have consequences in the fall, and beyond.

I mean folks, this is the party that literally had polling stations handing out ballots that won’t be counted to students in California and simply left a huge number of polling stations closed on election day in Illinois and Florida because they couldn’t rope enough senior citizen volunteers into working during a plague that’s significantly more dangerous for the elderly – these primaries are already a joke even without examining the staggering amount of open evidence the establishment cheated. In the eyes of all but the most naive observer this is forever going to be the year that Democrats both certified a primary their own officials admitted was corrupted, broken and wrong *and* murdered a bunch of old people volunteering at polling stations, just to force Joe Biden’s coronation before voters found out he was a rapist. That isn’t going away. Good luck winning elections after folks finally process that sh*t – ever.

As far as I’m concerned, Bernie can keep running, he can drop out, he can show up on TV dressed as the Queen of Spain for all I give a damn – this whole process is all dogsh*t already; these primaries are already illegitimate, the Democratic Party is a joke and these chucklef*cks are about to deliver us into the arms of idiot crook fascists – again.

 

• Nina Illingworth