The Middle Class ~~ Anaxarchos

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/08/19/the-middle-class

Capitalism does not elevate… it expropriates and impoverishes. Its urban slums and shanty towns are a step down from the rural, quasi-capitalist material it begins with. Worldwide, it expropriates wealth from the many instead of creating “prosperity”. 

The original American reference to a "middle class" probably comes from Britain. It referred, as on the continent, to the propertied but untitled yeomanry of the countryside, the rising burghers in the cities, and the mercantile classes as a whole. It was an accurate naming. Originally, what was to become the bourgeoisie really did stand between the aristocracy and the property-less classes.

The Middle Class in Great Britain and the Continent

The next stage in this evolution was the rise of the absolute monarchies with the former middle class becoming a major, and sometimes equal, pillar of the state, alongside the aristocracy (the "Third Estate" in France, as an example). In Britain, this evolution was stillborn in many ways because the British bourgeoisie came to power much earlier than in many other countries (in the Civil War of 1648). The English bourgeoisie followed regicide with a “restoration” of a slavish monarchy, and then merged the old aristocracy with itself. Large estates became alienable, titles could be bought and sold, and the monarchical institutions became largely ceremonial. In turn, the middle class "gentlemen" of the 18th century really were an income tier - possessing enough property to avoid the coarser trades but lacking the wherewithal to buy title and transcendence. The Americas were colonized by such... or at least the local power descended from such.

At this point, the meaning of middle-class diverges. On the Continent, the middle-class came to be a description of the mass of small property holders, owning their own means of production but typically employing only their own labor or perhaps a handful of others and even that, often seasonally. This is the infamous "petite-bourgeoisie" and it owed its infamy to its instability. Aspiring to raise itself within the ranks of the property owners on the one hand, it was continuously expropriated and diminished in numbers on the other. The story of the next 100 years of European history is precisely that story.

In Britain, a similar process transpired, but with two counteracting influences. Just as in Europe, the lands were "cleared" and the small holders were expropriated, but at the same time the British mercantile monopolies bore fruit. A worldwide colonial empire was transformed into the engine of capital accumulation and its essential product was the industrial revolution. In both cases, it was not just a vast army of proletarians who were created but also a sea of unusually skilled “labor aristocrats”, specialists, managers, colonial officials, minor civil servants, and professionals of every type and description. This was more a new social stratum than a class, but it echoed some of the perspectives of that which came before it, and it was dependent on and wedded to the social system of Empire. It was not so much that the proceeds of Indian labor went to London bank clerks, as it was that Indian banks were located in London… certainly their management and their hierarchy of favored positions was located in London. This is the genesis of the transformation of the British middle-class, from a continental to an Imperial definition.

That British middle-class, the source of endless political stability and social philistinism, lasted as long as the Empire and industrial ascendancy did. The bankruptcy of that Empire after WW2 and its rapid dismantling also ended the rein of middle-class politics. Politics, in turn, was just a reflection of the decomposition of the “class”, itself. While middle-class nostalgia was producing Thatcher Tories, the British standard of living was falling to the same level as that of Italy or Portugal. Today, few such illusions remain, although a “New” Britain has risen in the nexus of EU and American economics.

The American Middle Class

With this allegory in mind, it is possible to look at America. While, the origin of the term may be British, for most of its history, the American middle-class went by a Continental definition. America was a “middle-class” country from its inception… built on “free” land (in the dual sense… i.e. also “freed” from its former inhabitants). As late as the decades after the Civil War, 70% of the population owned their own means of production, even if it was modest in most cases. The subsequent transformation of that status was partly the operation of the very same forces as we have already described and partly the result of the flood of European immigrants, recently freed from their property. Daveparts has referred to the backwardness of rural America in the 1930s. On this, he is quite right. In approximately 60 years, the population of freeholders fell from 70% to less than 10%. It is less than 5% today, once the various tax schemes and contractor rackets are abstracted away. The story of America before the War is the story of The Grapes of Wrath and in no way could the U.S. be accurately described as a “middle-class country”.

So what has changed, since? Was it FDR, the New Deal, Democrats … a new “Enlightenment” perhaps? In fact, it was a positive outcome to the Second World War. What Britain lost, the U.S. inherited. And among that inheritance was a new definition for “middle-class”, adopted from the English. Social mobility, the movement up the division of labor, a certain level of prosperity, advancement through education… and all of it made possible from industrial ascendancy and the fact that Indian banks were now located in New York. The end of that era comes with globalization. It makes little difference whether the new era produces a new capitalist competition or whether the very success of American Empire relocates Indian banks to India. The inevitable result will be the decomposition of the American middle-class and there is not a single political perspective which promises otherwise. It is the division of misery in the decline that is in question.

I don’t agree ... that there is a shortage of physical material which prevents a generalization of middle-class prosperity worldwide. But, once past that disagreement, the argument is moot because he might as well be right. Capitalism does not elevate… it expropriates and impoverishes. Its urban slums and shanty towns are a step down from the rural, quasi-capitalist material it begins with. Worldwide, it expropriates wealth from the many instead of creating “prosperity”. It is only in microcosm that it appears otherwise.

On Populist Independent, there are some charts on postwar income in the U.S. They divide U.S. income into a hierarchy of 10 tiers, each representing 10% of the population, and then project that income forward from WW2. For something like 20 years, the top seven or eight of the ten reach upwards… until they stall in the 1960s and 70s. After that, one after another, the next highest tier stagnates… sometimes even falls… until only a couple of tiers continue to advance. Meanwhile, the “lifestyle” is temporarily maintained through two incomes, and then through huge debt and home equity loans, followed by the first general drop in home ownership and the first general reversal of “liquidity” in a generation. The story is straightforward.

All attempts to paint the existence of the middle-class as an aspect of “politics” or policy, positively or negatively, are simply wrong. The "middle-class" is a historically created, changing, and ultimately decomposing social structure which is no more a permanent part of America than Conestoga Wagons or the railroads.

What Life Means to Me ~~ Jack London

https://www.marxists.org/archive/london/revolution/ch13.htm

First introduced to me by an old friend.  This resonates to this day.

I was born in the working-class. Early I discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my child- life. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.

Above me towered the colossal edifice of society, and to my mind the only way out was up. Into this edifice I early resolved to climb. Up above, men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautiful gowns. Also, there were good things to eat, and there was plenty to eat. This much for the flesh. Then there were the things of the spirit. Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living. I knew all this because I read “Seaside Library” novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glorious deeds. In short, as I accepted the rising of the sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life, all that made life worth living and that remunerated one for his travail and misery.

But it is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working- class—especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and I was hard put to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of interest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into an understanding of the virtues and excellencies of that remarkable invention of man, compound interest. Further, I ascertained the current rates of wages for workers of all ages, and the cost of living. From all this data I concluded that if I began immediately and worked and saved until I was fifty years of age, I could then stop working and enter into participation in a fair portion of the delights and goodnesses that would then be open to me higher up in society. Of course, I resolutely determined not to marry, while I quite forgot to consider at all that great rock of disaster in the working-class world—sickness.

But the life that was in me demanded more than. a meagre existence of scraping and scrimping. Also, at ten years of age, I became a newsboy on the streets of a city, and found myself with a changed uplook. All about me were still the same sordidness and wretchedness, and up above me was still the same paradise waiting to be gained; but the ladder whereby to climb was a different one. It was now the ladder of business. Why save my earnings and invest in government bonds, when, by buying two newspapers for five cents, with a turn of the wrist I could sell them for ten cents and double my capital—The business ladder was the ladder for me, and I had a vision of myself becoming a baldheaded and successful merchant prince.

Alas for visions! When I was sixteen I had already earned the title of “prince.” But this title was given me by a gang of cut-throats and thieves, by whom I was called “The Prince of the Oyster Pirates.” And at that time I had climbed the first rung of the business ladder. I was a capitalist. I owned a boat and a complete oyster-pirating outfit. I had begun to exploit my fellow-creatures. I had a crew of one man. As captain and owner I took two-thirds of the spoils, and gave the crew one-third, though the crew worked just as hard as I did and risked just as much his life and liberty.

This one rung was the height I climbed up the business ladder. One night I went on a raid amongst the Chinese fishermen. Ropes and nets were worth dollars and cents. It was robbery, I grant, but it was precisely the spirit of capitalism. The capitalist takes away the possessions of his fellow-creatures by means of a rebate, or of a betrayal of trust, or by the purchase of senators and supreme-court judges. I was merely crude. That was the only difference. I used a gun.

But my crew that night was one of those inefficients against whom the capitalist is wont to fulminate, because, forsooth, such inefficients increase expenses and reduce dividends. My crew did both. What of his carelessness he set fire to the big mainsail and totally destroyed it. There weren't any dividends that night, and the Chinese fishermen were richer by the nets and ropes we did' not get. I was bankrupt, unable just then to pay sixty-five dollars for a new mainsail. I left my boat at anchor and went off on a bay-pirate boat on a raid up the Sacramento River. While away on this trip, another gang of bay pirates raided my boat. They stole everything, even the anchors; and later on, when I recovered the drifting hulk, I sold it for twenty dollars. I had slipped back the one rung I had climbed, and never again did I attempt the business ladder.

From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists. I had the muscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very indifferent living out of it. I was a sailor before the mast, a longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories, and laundries; I mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows. And I never got the full product of my toil. I looked at the daughter of the cannery owner, in her carriage, and knew that it was my muscle, in part, that helped drag along that carriage on its rubber tires. I looked at the son of the factory owner, going to college, and knew that it was my muscle that helped, in part, to pay for the wine and good fellowship he enjoyed.

But I did not resent this. It was all in the game. They were the strong. Very well, I was strong. I would carve my way to a place amongst them and make money out of the muscles of other men. I was not afraid of work. I loved hard- work. I would pitch in and work harder than ever and eventually become a pillar of society.

And just then, as luck would have it, I found an employer that was of the same mind. I was willing to work, and he was more than willing that I should work. I thought I was learning a trade. In reality, I had displaced two men. I thought he was making an electrician out of me; as a matter of fact, he was making fifty dollars per month out of me. The two men I had displaced had received forty dollars each per month; I was doing the work of both for thirty dollars per month.

This employer worked me nearly to death. A man may love oysters, but too many oysters will disincline him toward that particular diet. And so with me. Too much work sickened me. I did not wish ever to see work again. I fled from work. I became a tramp, begging my way from door to door, wandering over the United States and sweating bloody sweats in slums and prisons.

I had been born in the working-class, and I was now, at the age of eighteen, beneath the point at which I had started. I was down in the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery about which it is neither nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel-house of our civilization. This is the part of the edifice of society that society chooses to ignore. Lack of space compels me here to ignore it, and I shall say only that the things I there saw gave me a terrible scare.

I was scared into thinking. I saw the naked simplicities of the complicated civilization in which I lived. Life was a matter of food and shelter. In order to get food and shelter men sold things. The merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative of the people, with exceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly all sold their honor. Women, too, whether on the street or in the holy bond of wedlock, were prone to sell their flesh. All things were commodities, all people bought and sold. The one commodity that labor had to sell was muscle. The honor of labor had no price in the market-place. Labor had muscle, and muscle alone, to sell.

But there was a difference, a vital difference. Shoes and trust and honor had a way of renewing themselves. They were imperishable stocks. Muscle, on the other hand, did not renew. As the shoe merchant sold shoes, he continued to replenish his stock. But there was no way of replenishing the laborer's stock of muscle. The more he sold of his muscle, the less of it remained to him. It was his one commodity, and each day his stock of it diminished. In the end, if he did not die before, he sold out and put up his shutters. He was a muscle bankrupt, and nothing remained to him but to go down into the cellar of society and perish miserably.

I learned, further, that brain was likewise a commodity. It, too, was different from muscle. A brain seller was only at his prime when he was fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher prices than ever. But a laborer was worked out or broken down at forty-five or fifty. I had been in the cellar of society, and I did not like the place as a habitation. The pipes and drains were unsanitary, and the air was bad to breathe. If I could not live on the parlor floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true, the diet there was slim, but the air at least was pure. So I resolved to sell no more muscle, and to become a vender of brains.

Then began a frantic pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California and opened the books. While thus equipping, myself to become a brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thought and a vast deal more. I discovered that I was a socialist.

The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to build the society of the future. I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist. I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual revolutionists, and for the first time came into intellectual living. Here I found keen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong and alert-brained, withal horny- handed, members of the working-class; unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for any congregation of Mammon-worshippers; professors broken on the wheel of university subservience to the ruling class and flung out because they were quick with knowledge which they strove to apply to the affairs of mankind.

Here I found, also, warm faith in the human, glowing idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom—all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and alive. Here life rehabilitated itself, became wonderful and glorious; and I was glad to be alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at the last.

And I, poor foolish I, deemed all this to be a mere foretaste of the delights of living I should find higher above me in society. I had lost many illusions since the day I read “Seaside Library” novels on the California ranch. I was destined to lose many of the illusions I still retained.

As a brain merchant I was a success. Society opened its portals to me. I entered right in on the parlor floor, and my disillusionment proceeded rapidly. I sat down to dinner with the masters of society, and with the wives and daughters of the masters of society. The women were gowned beautifully, I admit; but to my naive surprise I discovered that they were of the same clay as all the rest of the women I had known down below in the cellar. “The colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady were sisters under their skins”—and gowns.

It was not this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked me. It is true, these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled sweet little ideals and dear little moralities; but in spite of their prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they were so sentimentally selfish ! They assisted in all kinds of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all the time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought out of dividends stained with the blood of child labor, and sweated labor, and of prostitution itself. When I mentioned such facts, expecting in my innocence that these sisters of Judy O'Grady would at once strip off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, they became excited and angry, and read me preachments about the lack of thrift, the drink, and the innate depravity that caused all the misery in society's cellar. When I mentioned that I couldn't quite see that it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O'Grady attacked my private life and called me an “agitator”—as though that, forsooth, settled the argument.

Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves. I had expected to find men who were clean, noble, and alive, whose ideals were clean, noble, and alive. I went about amongst the men who sat in the high places—the preachers, the politicians, the business men, the professors, and the editors. I ate meat with them, drank wine with them, automobiled with them, and studied them. It is true, I found many that were clean and noble; but with rare exceptions, they were not alive. I do verily believe I could count the exceptions on the fingers of my two hands. Where they were not alive with rottenness, quick with unclean life, they were merely the unburied dead—clean and. noble, like well- preserved mummies, but not alive. In this connection I may especially mention the professors I met, the men who live up to that decadent university ideal, “the passionless pursuit of passionless intelligence."

I met men who invoked the name of the Prince of Peace in their diatribes against war, and who put rifles in the hands of Pinkertons with which to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I met men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of prize-fighting, and who, at the same time, were parties to the adulteration of food that killed each year more babies than even red-handed Herod had killed.

I talked in hotels and clubs and homes and Pullmans and steamer- chairs with captains of industry, and marvelled at how little travelled they were in the realm of intellect. On the other hand, I discovered that their intellect, in the business sense, was abnormally developed. Also, I discovered that their morality, where business was concerned, was nil.

This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman, was a dummy director and a tool of corporations that secretly robbed widows and orphans. This gentleman, who collected fine editions and was an especial patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine advertisements and did not dare print the truth in his paper about said patent medicines for fear of losing the advertising, called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I told him that his political economy was antiquated and that his biology was contemporaneous with Pliny.

This senator was the tool and the slave, the little puppet of a gross, uneducated machine boss; so was this governor and this supreme court judge; and all three rode on railroad passes. This man, talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal. This man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to foreign missions, worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation wage and thereby directly encouraged prostitution. This man, who endowed chairs in universities, perjured himself in courts of law over a matter of dollars and cents. And this railroad magnate broke his word as a gentleman and a Christian when he granted a secret rebate to one of two captains of industry locked together in a struggle to the death.

It was the same everywhere, crime and betrayal, betrayal and crime—men who were alive, but who were neither clean nor noble, men who were clean and noble but who were not alive. Then there was a great, hopeless mass, neither noble nor alive, but merely clean. It did not sin positively nor deliberately; but it did sin passively and ignorantly by acquiescing in the current immorality and profiting by it. Had it been noble and alive it would not have been ignorant, and it would have refused to share in the profits of betrayal and crime.

I discovered that I did not like to live on the parlor floor of society. Intellectually I was bored. Morally and spiritually I was sickened. I remembered my intellectuals and idealists, my unfrocked preachers, broken professors, and clean-minded, class-conscious workingmen. I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.

So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and where I belonged. I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice of society above my head holds no delights for me. It is the foundation of the edifice that interests me. There I am content to labor, crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals, idealists, and class-conscious workingmen, getting a solid pry now and again and setting the whole edifice rocking. Some day, when we get a few more hands and crowbars to work, we'll topple it over, along with all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous selfishness and sodden materialism. Then we'll cleanse the cellar and build a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no parlor floor, in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and where the air that is breathed will be clean, noble, and alive.

Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progress upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-day, which is the incentive of the stomach. I retain my belief in the nobility and excellence of the human. I believe that spiritual sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-day. And last of all, my faith is in the working-class. As some Frenchman has said, “The stairway of time is ever echoing with the wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending."

NEWTON, IOWA, November, 1905.

Lenin on Social Class

https://mltoday.com/from-the-classics-lenin-on-social-classes/

From  A Great Beginning

June 28, 1919

And what does the “abolition of classes” mean? All those who call themselves socialists recognise this as the ultimate goal of socialism, but by no means all give thought to its significance.

Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.

Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely, it is not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, not enough to abolish their rights of ownership; it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to abolish the distinction between town and country, as well as the distinction between manual workers and brain workers. This requires a very long period of time. In order to achieve this an enormous step forward must be taken in developing the productive forces; it is necessary to overcome the resistance (frequently passive, which is particularly stubborn and particularly difficult to overcome) of the numerous survivals of small-scale production; it is necessary to overcome the enormous force of habit and conservatism which are connected with these survivals.

The assumption that all “working people” are equally capable of doing this work would be an empty phrase, or the illusion of an antediluvian, pre-Marxist socialist; for this ability does not come of itself, but grows historically, and grows only out of the material conditions of large-scale capitalist production. This ability, at the beginning of the road from capitalism to socialism, is possessed by the proletariat alone. It is capable of fulfilling the gigantic task that confronts it, first, because it is the strongest and most advanced class in civilised societies secondly, because in the most developed countries it constitutes the majority of the population, and thirdly, because in backward capitalist countries, like Russia, the majority of the population consists of semi-proletarians, i.e., of people who regularly live in a proletarian way part of the year, who regularly earn a part of their means of subsistence as wage-workers in capitalist enterprises.

Those who try to solve the problems involved in the transition from capitalism to socialism on the basis of general talk about liberty, equality, democracy in general, equality of labour democracy, etc. (as Kautsky, Martov and other heroes of the Berne yellow International do), thereby only reveal their petty-bourgeois, philistine nature and ideologically slavishly follow in the wake of the bourgeoisie. The correct solution of this problem can be found only in a concrete study of the specific relations between the specific class which has conquered political power, namely, the proletariat, and the whole non-proletarian, and also semi-proletarian, mass of the working population—relations which do not take shape in fantastically harmonious, “ideal” conditions, but in the real conditions of the frantic resistance of the bourgeoisie which assumes many and diverse forms.

The vast majority of the population—and all the more so of the working population—of any capitalist country, including Russia, have thousands of times experienced, themselves and through their kith and kin, the oppression of capital, the plunder and every sort of tyranny it perpetrates. The imperialist war, i.e., the slaughter of ten million people in order to decide whether British or German capital was to have supremacy in plundering the whole world, has greatly intensified these ordeals, has increased and deepened them, and has made the people realise their meaning. Hence the inevitable sympathy displayed by the vast majority of the population, particularly the working people, for the proletariat, because it is with heroic courage and revolutionary ruthlessness throwing off the yoke of capital, overthrowing the exploiters, suppressing their resistance, and shedding its blood to pave the road for the creation of the new society in which there will be no room for exploiters.

Great and inevitable as may be their petty-bourgeois vacillations and their tendency to go back to bourgeois “order”, under the “wing” of the bourgeoisie, the non-proletarian and semi-proletarian mass of the working population cannot but recognise the moral and political authority of the proletariat, who are not only overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but are building a new and higher social bond, a social discipline, the discipline of class-conscious and united working people, who know no yoke and no authority except the authority of their own unity, of their own, more class-conscious, bold, solid, revolutionary and steadfast vanguard.

In order to achieve victory, in order to build and consolidate socialism, the proletariat must fulfill a twofold or dual task: first, it must, by its supreme heroism in the revolutionary struggle against capital, win over the entire mass of the working and exploited people; it must win them over, organise them and lead them in the struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie and utterly suppress their resistance. Secondly, it must lead the whole mass of the working and exploited people, as well as all the petty-bourgeois groups, on to the road of new economic development, towards the creation of a new social bond, a new labour discipline, a new organisation of labour, which will combine the last word in science and capitalist technology with the mass association of class-conscious workers creating large-scale socialist industry.

The full text is at Marxist Internet Archive   <<marxists.org>>.

Only Class War Can Stop Climate Change ~~ PARIS MARX

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/class-war-climate-change-overpopulation-carbon

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

A new report shows that the world’s top 1 percent is responsible for double the emissions of the entire bottom half of the planet. The message is clear: to fight climate change, we have to fight the ruling class.

As fires rage in California, the permafrost melts in Siberia, heat waves strike Europe, and hurricanes and typhoons grow ever stronger, there is an urgent need for ambitious climate action. The question is what it will look like, and who will bear the burden of a transition to a more sustainable world.

For several decades now, the dominant environmental messaging to the public has been about individual action. We were told that to solve the climate crisis, we needed to change our light bulbs, switch to energy-efficient appliances, buy hybrid or electric vehicles, better insulate our homes, stop using plastic bags, and alter our personal consumption in other ways.

These things are undoubtedly positive changes, but they are not enough to address the scale of the crisis we face, and they can lead to perverse conclusions about where the blame for the climate crisis truly lies.

There is a growing argument that one of the driving forces of the climate crisis is the global population. The world is overpopulated, these people say, and that is why emissions are so high. This view is most commonly expressed by eco-fascists, who believe a genocide is needed to reduce the human population. But overpopulation has also been cited by leading liberal figures such as primatologist Jane Goodall and naturalist Sir David Attenborough, helping to fuel misleading and troubling conclusions about what is fueling climate change.

While focusing on personal consumption places the responsibility on all of us somewhat equally, focusing on population growth shifts the blame to countries in Africa and Asia where populations have continued growing in recent decades. Yet these people have among the lowest carbon footprints in the world, and when we look at which jurisdictions have emitted the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet, the answer is definitive: the United States and Europe.

But even blaming it wholly on Americans and Europeans is missing the bigger picture. A new Oxfam report finds that the richest 1 percent of people alone are responsible for double the emissions of the poorest 50 percent of the global population. That means that even if the working class of the Global North took all the individual actions that are recommended or we forced poor people in the Global South to stop having kids, that still wouldn’t solve the problem.

Our remaining carbon budget is being sacrificed so the global elite can keep their lavish lifestyles, while they take private jets to climate conferences so they can give the impression they care. Virgin founder Richard Branson has been a leader in this billionaire greenwashing, making climate pledges he didn’t follow through on while expanding his airline business. Similarly, Elon Musk claims to care about the climate to sell more automobiles, while criticizing public transit and trying to stop high-speed rail projects.

But maybe the most prominent of these billionaires who greenwash their unsustainable activities is Jeff Bezos. Earlier this year, the Amazon CEO was lauded in the press for his $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund — he even bought the rights to rename a Seattle stadium after his climate pledge! But no grants have yet been issued from the fund, while Amazon continues to help oil and gas companies more efficiently extract fossil fuels.

These billionaires assert that capitalism can solve the climate crisis, and their investments are helping to create a new form of “green capitalism” that will reduce emissions and usher in a sustainable future. Governments are also falling for this myth and putting it at the center of their pandemic recovery plans.

In July, the British government announced a £350 million recovery plan to put the country at the forefront of “green innovation” — a drop in the ocean of the investment needed. Predictably, it included no suggestion of taking on the emissions of the wealthy by reducing their wealth, banning private jets, or winding down the polluting industries from which they profit.

Meanwhile, in the United States, President Donald Trump doesn’t have a climate plan, but even Joe Biden focuses on renewables and electric cars, while promising new highways with charging stations and refusing to ban fracking. To their north, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent throne speech promised to make climate action a “cornerstone” of Canada’s pandemic recovery, while centering on electric vehicles, mining more components for them, and investing more in hydropower. He was silent on the environmental impacts of those initiatives.

Green capitalism will never facilitate the scale of action that is necessary to keep warming below 1.5ºC or even 2ºC because it refuses to take on the powerful people and industries that are fueling the climate crisis in the first place. It continues to ensure the benefits flow to the top while hollowing out the middle class and producing climate narratives that shift the burden of responsibility onto those who have little power to make the necessary changes: the public, if not the global poor.

The kind of climate action we need requires taking on the wealthy and organizing around a vision for a different kind of society. That means not just making the rich pay higher taxes, but actively dismantling the economic structures that facilitate their wealth accumulation, treat the planet as an unlimited bounty of free raw materials, and generate all the emissions warming the planet.

Either we take on capitalism and its victors, or we’ll be unable to stop runaway climate change, help the climate refugees it will create, or stop the eco-fascist myth of overpopulation that will surge as a result. Our choice is socialism or barbarism, as Rosa Luxemburg once said. Green capitalism won’t save us.

How Trump Is Privatizing the U.S. Immigration System. ~~ MAURIZIO GUERRERO

The administration is allowing industries to directly control guest worker programs.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/trump-visa-h2-immigration-system-privatization-labor-workers

Using the pan­dem­ic as an excuse, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has all but can­celed immi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States. But while the pres­i­dent cracked down on fam­i­lies seek­ing asy­lum from life-threat­en­ing con­di­tions, he’s still allowed big indus­tries to hire low-wage labor­ers from oth­er coun­tries. Under the H2 visa pro­gram, record num­bers are enter­ing the coun­try, recruit­ed direct­ly by indus­tries such as meat-pro­cess­ing and agri­cul­ture, which deter­mine who gets into the coun­try and for how long.

In prac­ti­cal terms, a part of the U.S. immi­gra­tion sys­tem has been pri­va­tized, says Rachel Mic­ah-Jones, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Cen­tro de los Dere­chos del Migrante, a civ­il group that advo­cates for Mex­i­can migrant labor­ers. ​“The guest work­er pro­grams are con­trolled by com­pa­nies and employ­ers. They decide who gets in the coun­try and who does­n’t,” she says. 

“There’s a tran­si­tion in the U.S.,” Mic­ah-Jones adds, which means an ever-expand­ing use by cor­po­ra­tions of the H2 pro­grams while avenues for immi­grants to apply for their own visas are shrink­ing. ​“That’s very con­cern­ing because we see in these pro­grams a tremen­dous amount of dis­crim­i­na­tion in terms of age, sex and coun­try of origin.”

Through the H2 pro­gram, labor­ers are bound by law to work only for the employ­er that recruits them; they can­not bring their fam­i­lies along or, even­tu­al­ly, apply for per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy. Cor­po­ra­tions in labor-inten­sive indus­tries such as farm­ing, forestry, food-pro­cess­ing, land­scap­ing, tourism and con­struc­tion even decide if a work­er can come back to the U.S. in the future.

And abuse by employ­ers is rife with­in the H2 pro­grams. An April 2020 sur­vey among 100 H2‑A visa hold­ers (agri­cul­tur­al labor­ers) detect­ed wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­tion, sex­u­al harass­ment, wage theft and health and safe­ty vio­la­tions by employ­ers. The sur­vey, con­duct­ed by Cen­tro de los Dere­chos del Migrante, found that all the work­ers expe­ri­enced at least one seri­ous legal vio­la­tion, and 94% suf­fered three or more. It is ​“star­tling,” con­clud­ed the report, the ​“lack of recourse” for guest labor­ers to denounce abuse.

Despite their well-doc­u­ment­ed exploita­tion, low-wage guest work­ers have nev­er been so cru­cial for the labor-inten­sive indus­tries in the Unit­ed States. 

More than 204,000 for­eign­ers obtained H2‑A visas in the fis­cal year 2019, a record num­ber. There are no lim­its on how many peo­ple can enter the Unit­ed States with this visa, and that num­ber has steadi­ly increased since at least 1992. The H2‑B visas, for low-wage work­ers in nona­gri­cul­tur­al indus­tries such as food-pro­cess­ing, also increased in 2019, to 97,623, its high­est num­ber in a decade.

Ben­i­to, an H2‑A visa hold­er, was recruit­ed in the state of Hidal­go, Mex­i­co to har­vest egg­plants, chiles, pep­pers and cucum­bers in Lake Park, Geor­gia for nine months. For six weeks in May and June, Ben­i­to (a pseu­do­nym used to pro­tect him from poten­tial reper­cus­sions from his employ­er) and some 100 Mex­i­cans har­vest­ed and packed veg­eta­bles dur­ing 16-hour shifts with­out over­time pay and only every oth­er Sun­day off. They are expect­ed to labor as intense­ly in Octo­ber and Novem­ber. The rest of their 9‑month peri­od, these crews work for 10 hours a day with some Sun­days off, says Ben­i­to in Span­ish over the phone. He has come three times to the Unit­ed States with an H2‑A visa. 

Ben­i­to has also seen dis­crim­i­na­tion in the hir­ing process first­hand. He was the only one hired from his home­town, although sev­er­al of his neigh­bors also applied for jobs. Some were reject­ed because of their age; oth­ers because ​“they did not work hard enough,” says Ben­i­to. He has learned that com­pa­nies black­list work­ers who do not ful­fill their expec­ta­tions — like work­ing with­out com­plain­ing for 16 hours a day for sev­er­al weeks. ​“Many appli­cants do not make the cut,” he explains. ​“It is because they do not sat­is­fy the boss­es’ requisites.”

Unlike U.S. cit­i­zens or even undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, guest work­ers (the vast major­i­ty of whom are enlist­ed in impov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties in Mex­i­co, fol­lowed by Jamaica, Guatemala and South Africa) do not enjoy the most fun­da­men­tal pro­tec­tion of a labor mar­ket in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety — the abil­i­ty to switch jobs if they are mistreated. 

“Guest work­ers have been com­pared to mod­ern-day inden­tured ser­vants,” states the Immi­grant Jus­tice Project of the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, a non­prof­it that com­bats dis­crim­i­na­tion and pro­motes human rights. ​“But unlike the inden­tured ser­vants of old, today’s guest work­ers have no prospect of becom­ing U.S. citizens.”

Pref­er­ence for exploitable workers

While the num­ber of guest work­ers under the H2 pro­grams is surg­ing, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has sus­pend­ed both employ­ment-based and fam­i­ly-based immi­grant visas, even for rel­a­tives of U.S. cit­i­zens. With the excuse of shield­ing the coun­try from the coro­n­avirus, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has also can­celed appli­ca­tions for non­im­mi­grant visas for vis­i­tors, stu­dents and skilled workers. 

The pan­dem­ic made trans­par­ent a trend that was already inten­si­fy­ing dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. The Unit­ed States issued 625,344 immi­grant visas in 2016 before Trump took office; last year, it grant­ed 462,422. In July 2017, it issued 42,550 immi­grant visas. As of July, that num­ber was down to 4,412. Mean­while, H2 visas are soaring.

The demand for H2‑B work­ers was so high even before the pan­dem­ic that the pro­gram reached its year­ly cap on Feb­ru­ary 18. The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty announced that it would grant 35,000 extra H2‑B visas but reversed course after anti-immi­grant groups’ criticisms. 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er, did make sub­stan­tive changes to the H2 pro­grams. Since April, it has allowed com­pa­nies to retain these labor­ers for longer than the three-year max­i­mum. The pur­port­ed objec­tive was to ​“main­tain the integri­ty in our food sup­ply” dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, despite the enor­mous health costs paid by work­ers, most of them peo­ple of color. 

As of July, 86 work­ers in meat and poul­try pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties had died of Covid-19, out of 16,233 cas­es in 239 facil­i­ties, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. Among cas­es where race and eth­nic­i­ty was report­ed, 87% were racial or eth­nic minori­ties. In some farms, all work­ers have con­tract­ed the coro­n­avirus. The sever­i­ty of Covid-19 among agri­cul­tur­al work­ers could be gross­ly under­count­ed. Ben­i­to has seen ​“five or six” of his co-work­ers with Covid-19 symp­toms being quar­an­tined and treat­ed in-house in Park Lake, with no wages. Sev­er­al more, he says, have con­tin­ued to work when sick to avoid los­ing income. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the wide use of these pro­grams depress­es the wages in the indus­tries that cap­i­tal­ize on them, con­tends the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. The pro­grams pro­vide com­pa­nies with lots of con­trol over the labor mar­ket. They also give the Trump admin­is­tra­tion the chance to restrict immi­gra­tion while assur­ing cheap labor for corporations.

“The admin­is­tra­tion has also used the Covid-19 out­break to pur­sue pol­i­cy changes that it has sought to imple­ment for many years,” accord­ing to a May report by the Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Coun­cil, a non-par­ti­san think tank. These changes include a near elim­i­na­tion of asy­lum at the south­ern bor­der and a reduc­tion of fam­i­ly-based immi­gra­tion. ​“While these pol­i­cy changes have been described as tem­po­rary in nature, they may remain in place into 2021,” stat­ed the report. 

These mea­sures have been cou­pled with a resump­tion of depor­ta­tions of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant work­ers, even amid the health emergency.

Mean­while, cor­po­ra­tions are pres­sur­ing both the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress to keep incre­ment­ing the num­ber of visas for guest work­ers. The agribusi­ness sec­tor, which includes a large vari­ety of sec­tors such as crop, live­stock and meat pro­duc­ers, tobac­co, food man­u­fac­tur­ers, and stores, spent $140 mil­lion in lob­by­ing efforts last year, spear­head­ed by more than 1,000, accord­ing to OpenSe​crets​.org, a non­par­ti­san non­prof­it that track mon­ey in pol­i­tics. The meat-pro­cess­ing indus­try spent $4.5 mil­lion.

Leg­is­la­tors’ aides told Mic­ah-Jones that pri­vate inter­ests are con­tin­u­al­ly pres­sur­ing them. ​“They hear every day from these com­pa­nies,” she recounts. With­out a voice in the Unit­ed States polit­i­cal sys­tem, guest work­ers depend on civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions to push for fair con­di­tions. These groups face ​“very well-resourced busi­ness asso­ci­a­tions and com­pa­nies who like the guest work­er pro­gram because it gives them the pow­er,” Mic­ah-Jones says. ​“It gives them a lot of con­trol over work­ers’ lives.”