On the Meaning of “Middle Class” and the State of the Middle Class

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Dr. Nicholas Partyka

When politicians talk, one of the recurring themes about which they spew platitudes is the economy. It would be the subject of another essay to unpack what is meant by “the economy” when politicians and other capitalist elements use that term. This aside, in discussing the economy there is a phrase that politicians use with such alacrity that it has become trite. This phrase is, “middle class”. Politicians, pundits, and social commentators deploy this term in many contexts, but almost always appealing to its ubiquity of membership, critical role in democracy, and moral virtue in their speeches. These constant references to the middle class in the popular political discourse have rendered this term impenetrably vague. If we listen to politicians then one would be led to believe that most Americans are members of this middle class, whose health and prosperity the politicians never tire of proclaiming as their highest priority. Speeches are one thing, reality another. Let us interrogate this concept of the “middle class”, and see what to make of this notion that plays such a prominent role in American political discourse on the economy.

With an election year looming, and a Presidential election at that, with their seemingly always lengthening election cycle, the phrase “middle class” will only be heard more and more frequently from now until after November 2016. The President’s recent invocation of the phrase “middle class economics” is only the latest salvo between the two dominant capitalist political parties, as they try to position themselves in the public’s mind as the true defender of – the almost apotheosized- middle class. Candidates and their supporters will be arguing more and more vigorously about which party, or which policies, will do more to help this middle class. About the only thing that candidates from both parties will agree on is that the middle class is in trouble, and that economic policies should be designed which maximally promote the welfare of this class. The two major political parties in this country have divergent views about what kinds of policies best aid this alleged middle class. However, both parties are attempting to win votes by claiming to be champions of the middle class, a class with which a great many Americans still continue to identify themselves.

We’re going to explore two distinct, but interrelated questions in what follows. First, we’ll want to know, Who and how many, people are middle class? Second, we’ll want to ask, What does it mean to be middle class? The answers to these questions will likely have to be made relative to particular societies at particular times; though some generalization is possible. To begin we’ll look at what it has meant historically to be middle class. Then we’ll look more in depth into the meaning of being middle class in the contemporary American context. What we will find is a great deal more confusion and ambiguity about this notion of a “middle class”. So much so that we should start to wonder if this notion retains any usefulness.
The Middle Classes, Historically

For most of history being middle class simply meant occupying, however tenuously, a social status that was between that of a slave and that of a noble. Basically, the middle class was composed of everyone who was not technically a chattel slave, and lacking the noble pedigree of a true aristocrat. In most societies of the ancient world this simple definition would indeed make most people middle class. However, this understanding glosses over the highly variegated nature of socio-economic positions possible between technical chattel slavery and blue-blooded nobility. For instance, debt bondage and serfdom, both forms of un-free labour, would not cause one to be dropped from the middle class on this accounting. For example, in the ancient world slaves were often employed as overseers, that is in a management capacity. It would not have been uncommon for slave overseers to sometimes direct the labour of technically free men.

We can see in certain socio-political cleavages that splits have occurred in many contexts between the lower ranks of these middle classes and the higher elements of this class. Middle classes have struggled against entrenched aristocracy and nobility at many points in history for social advancement and political inclusion. However, almost always, in the critical moment, the higher elements of these middle classes would betray the interests of the lower elements, whose bodies, blood and ballots had been used to gain them inclusion. Marx would come to call these “higher elements” of the middle classes petit-bourgeoisie, signifying the much greater material, and indeed much more importantly, aspirational affinity with the bourgeoisie than the proletariat.

Two examples will suffice here. In ancient Greece we see the demos, or “the people” engaging in political struggle for inclusion in the political life of the polis. But who is this demos? First, Greeks used the word demos in two distinct ways. In one sense, we might call the wide sense, it meant the whole citizen body of city-state in general. In the narrow sense, on the other hand, the demos meant the ‘common people’, the ‘lower classes’, the aporoi, the propertyless. This group included a very wide range of socio-economic and political situations, and certainly contained an upper and lower group. The main cleavage within the ranks of the demos is between the better off elements and those struggling to get by. It goes without saying that slaves would not be counted among the demos. Those who are struggling are more, or in worst case entirely, dependent on others for their livelihood. The Greeks called Thetes and Banausoi. The former we might call day-labourers or wage earners, the latter we could translate loosely as artisans. These were the lowest two of Solon’s five social classes, and while not slaves, were subject to various kinds of forced labour. Though some artisans and merchants could be quite wealthy, most were not. Most merchants, as opposed to retailers, though were likely to be foreigners, and thus not eligible for citizenship.

When we focus on the internal political conflicts of the Greek polis of the Classical period (roughly the 5^th and 4^th centuries BC), what we see is a struggle over citizenship, that is over access to political participation in government. While the socio-economic and political realities of the ancient world are complex, in the main the conflicts were between an urban middle class of mainly artisans and middling farmers on the one hand, and the traditional land-owning oligarchy which monopolized political power on the other.[1] The political struggles over demokratia in this period revolved mainly around whether or not the banausoi and thetes should be given citizenship rights. Chiefly important among the rights of citizens were the right to vote in the Assembly, to hold public office, the serve as a juror in the dikasteria, to bring matters before the courts; at Athens in particular, citizens would be entitled to receive a share in any disbursement of the polis‘s dividends from the proceeds of the Laurium silver mines.

The demos was the main agent of social change in the ancient Greek polis, the traditional aristocracy certainly saw it this way. They saw “middle class” elements as being too politically ambitious, which is in part why they deploy the term pejoratively. By “middle class elements” the traditional aristocracy would have lumped together both very wealthy artisans, and much more humble enterprises, all of whom were united in not being aristocrats by blood lineage. Wealthy merchants and artisans might themselves employ slaves both for carrying out production, as well as the overseeing of this work, but they lacked the “best” kind of background. This made them unsuitable for political participation in the eyes of established elites. Smaller artisans and merchants, who didn’t have exorbitant wealth to recommend them, would have been thought only the more unsuited to political life.

All of the main institutions of Classical Greek demokratia were devices designed to help poor and working-class free men defend themselves from the depredations of their richer counterparts. Rule by majority vote in an Assembly, ekklesia, open to all citizens; freedom of speech, parrhesia, in the assembly; large popular courts of law, dikasteria, composed of fellow citizens; rule of law, isonomia, as passed by the Assembly and administered in the courts; the belief that political power should be scrutinized, subject to euthyna, are all practices that helped the aporoi defend their highly precarious social position from the predatory behavior of wealthy citizens. As one eminent scholar describes, “Since the majority of citizens everywhere owned little or no property, the propertied class complained that demokratia was the rule of demos in the narrower sense and in effect the domination of the poor over the rich.”[2]

In the ancient Greek polis political participation was usually restricted to those native adult men who could meet a certain property qualification. In the main, in order to be a citizen one had to possess enough wealth to afford to outfit themselves with the hoplite panopoly. This was the complete set of armaments associated with the heavy armed infantry. If one could afford to buy one’s own armor, and afford the leisure time to learn to fight as part of a phalanx formation, then one was considered worthy to participate in the political life of the polis. The idea being that if one was wealthy enough to afford the hoplite panopoly then one had enough of a stake in the success and survival of the polis to be entitled to a role in the government of the city-state. Those “old money” and nouveau riche aristocrats who were wealthy enough could afford to outfit themselves with horses as well as more ornate armor and weapons, and thus the traditional prestige associated with the cavalry. The question of democracy in the ancient Greek world, was thus a struggle over the inclusion of those who could not afford the traditional citizenship qualification based on the connection of wealth and military service, and who because they were not slaves could make legitimate claims to be entitled to such inclusion.

Renaissance Italy serves as another great example. In the rise of the classic northern Italian city-state podestaral form of communal government there was employed in the popular political discourse a term, the popolo. Loosely translated, it means the people. However, once again we’ll see that this notion of the people actually covers over a major divergence within between well-off members and working-class members. As one scholar claims, “When, therefore, the long and venomous struggle broke out between the popolo (the “people”) and the nobility, the popular movement drew its force and numbers from the middle classes, not from the poor, the day labourers, or the unskilled”.[3]

The political conflict in 13^th century northern Italian city-states was, much like in the ancient Greek world, fundamentally about participation. Beginning in the 12^th century, a political conflict between church and secular authorities saw the rise of communal governments in all the major Renaissance city-states in northern Italy. At the time, this form of government was identified with the self-government of local magnates and aristocrats instead of more alien authorities imposed by church leaders in Rome. In this early phase of commune government, “The nobility dominated the consulate, manipulated the general assembly, and ruled the city, except where the emperor successfully intervened, as at Vicenza, Siena, and Volterra, or where the political power of the Bishop persisted.”[4]

It was against this restricted form of government that the political forces of the popolo were arrayed in the 13^th century. By organizing for combat against the military forces of the nobility, the popolo was able to seize power in the commune and change the structure of commune government, in that it was able to secure more participation for those in its ranks; or more correctly, some of those in its ranks. The popolo, much like the demos, was a class composed of better off artisans, tradesman, merchants, et cetera. It was a class of persons who had to work for a living, that is they had to do physical labour themselves to achieve their subsistence. These people were free, in that they were not slaves or serfs, but were not aristocrats, they did not possess the right kind of lineage. Political participation was at this time still restricted to those who did have the proper kind of aristocratic genealogy.

Much as in the case of the ancient Greek world, the main political cleavage in the Renaissance northern Italian city-state between the popolo and nobilitas largely concerned the way individuals made a living. Nobles owned large landed estates, and derived their wealth and status from being able to control the labour of others, i.e. vassals and serfs. Those who were not aristocrats could be wealthy, could own land, but typically had to work themselves. That is, the typical member of the popolo could not control the labour of others to the same extent that a noble could. The political conflicts of the 13^th century were not simplistic conflicts between land owners and merchants, the reality was much more complicated than that.

Both popolo and nobilitas would be distinguished from a day-labourer in that they would be considered independent in the right sort of way, they would be considered the people who had real freedom. What distinguishes the position of the poorest classes is that they are dependent on others for their livelihood. Thus, for example, the serf is dependent on the lord, the tenant farmer on the land-owner, and the day-labourer on the employer who pays him. These kinds of people would have been considered not really free in the right way, especially politically. Though all God’s children would have been understood to be free, some were not considered free enough to be worthy of inclusion in government.

In what would become an unfortunate recurring tendency, once the leading – i.e. the wealthiest- elements in the “middle class”, the popolo, achieved inclusion in communal government, they allied with the old aristocracy and turned against the lower, more ‘middling’ elements in the popolo to suppress their continued agitations for further liberalization of political participation. Thus, as one scholar puts it,

“Up to about the middle of the thirteenth century, it was in the interest of bankers and -long-distance traders to batter the entrenched communal oligarchy with an eye to loosening the political monopoly of the old consular families, mostly of noble lineage… But after about 1250 or 1260, having fully achieved their aims and in fact now menaced by the political ambitions of the middle classes, they broke with the popolo, thereby dividing and undermining the popular movement”.[5]

With the erosion of nobility and its traditional privileges across Europe and North America from the 17^th century onward, as well as the formal abolition of chattel slavery in these societies, this traditional understanding of middle classes is not sufficient for the world we inhabit. Being neither a slave nor a noble will not help many locate their social position in contemporary societies, when these societies do not formally legally recognize slavery or nobility. As capitalism remade societies across western Europe and North America in this same period, it reshaped the nature of the classes that composed those societies. Thus, a new way to understand what the middle-class is will be needed.
The Idea of the Middle Class in Post-WWII America

There are some who are reluctant to define the middle class using income measurements. The alternative proposed by many of these critics is a more aspirational definition based on consumption. This definition is based on both the level and the kind of consumption desired by individuals who aspire to be middle-class, ie. who desire to live what is deemed a middle-class lifestyle. Most of the essential features of this conception of the middle class are derived from the experience of Americans post WWII. The vast pool of purchasing power accumulated by US citizens during the war led in the post-war period to rising standards of living for a wide swath of the population. The patterns of consumption, the norms and values, of what we today consider definitional of the middle class in America were originated to a large extent in this period.

It was in this period that the idea of the “American Dream”, as it is currently understood, originates. This post-war vision of increasingly wealthy Americans achieving higher material standards of living is the well-spring of many of the elements of middle-class-ness that we take for granted. The conception of middle-class-ness as consisting of things like widespread home ownership, ownership of a motor vehicle or vehicles, stable long-term employment, ability to send children to college, take a family vacation, et cetera, was born during this era.

If we try to understand the middle class this way, we should investigate what the patterns of consumption for a middle-class individual, or family, today requires in terms of income, and how many Americans actually possess the financial means to afford this lifestyle. According to one recent report, it was estimated that a middle-class “American dream” lifestyle would cost $130,000 a year for a family of four.[6] The median income for individual income-earners in the US in 2013 was around $52,000, not even half of that estimated cost. According to a 2010 study by the Commerce Department only a family with two income-earners in the 75th percentile or above could afford the middle-class lifestyle described in the previous report. [7] According to data from a 2014 report by the Congressional Research Service only around 20% of American household could afford this price tag of a “middle-class” lifestyle.

If one takes only the items listed as “essential” in the report cited in the previous paragraph the total cost of a middle-class lifestyle, which is still above the current median income. This accounting clearly leaves out other important expenses, like taxes, that one will incur, as well as makes impossible any expenditure on important items like savings, and recreation. Now, of course food prices change, and fuel prices change, and these effect how wealthy consumers feel, as decreases in food and fuel costs can be transferred to increase consumption of “extras” like college savings for children, or family vacations. One should also note that this report categorized cell phone and internet expenditure as an “extra”. In today’s world these things are properly considered more akin to utilities, they are essentials for living.

Clearly, the level of income needed for achievement of a characteristically middle-class, or “American dream”, lifestyle is out of reach for a great many individuals and families. This is likely part of why the percentage of those identifying themselves as lower-class, or lower-middle class in recent surveys has increased.[8] Indeed, even a family with two income-earners, in the 25th percentile only has an income about equivalent to the median. Meanwhile, as of 2010, an individual income-earner in the 50th percentile only made around $25,000. The rising costs of college, the continued stagnation of wages – especially at the lowest ends of the labour market – as well as the reductions in employer-based pension and benefit programs for most workers have a contributed to making the mid-twentieth century American vision of middle-class existence more and more out of reach for large swaths of Americans.

The post-war American experience, if put in proper context, is the product of a historically unprecedented epoch. According to the research presented by Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the middle part of the twentieth century was the only time in the last 300 years that his law of capital (r>g) was reversed.[9] This was a special period in which the growth rate exceeded the return to capital, and thus workers received increasing wages, and increasing purchasing power. It was in this historically unique period that the main expectations, norms, values, and status symbols of modern American “middle-class” lifestyle were born.

If we look the heyday of the American middle class in the 1950s and 1960s what we see is a transformation of American society born of a historical accident. Piketty’s research demonstrates that income inequality in the US basically plateaued over these decades, after decreasing sharply during the period from 1913-1945, that is the period of the World Wars and the Great Depression. What the French call “les trente glorieuses”, and others have called a pax Americana, was the direct result of the tumult of the wars and economic crises of the first half of the twentieth century. Workers in the western world generally experienced a boom, in that they experienced rising living standards, wages, and benefits. In Europe these benefits often took the form of national programs, while in America they were largely employer-based; healthcare and retirement are good examples. It was in this environment of rising levels of access to material consumption that the dominant aspects of the outlook of the middle class in America took shape.

Without the devastating effects of two world wars and an economic depression of immense scale, governments, especially in the US, would not have made the concessions that they did to workers, to organized labour in particular. The need to secure consistent, reliable production of vital war supplies, which might be disrupted by labour agitation, inclined the US government to enter the fray of industrial warfare on the side of workers during the First World War; at least to the extent required to ensure production for war. The Great Depression was an important cause of the establishment of the main pillars of the American welfare system in the 1930s. Labour unions achieved even greater privileges during the Second World War, as the leadership of organized labour organizations were increasingly co-opted by the corporate interests they were supposed to oppose. As a result of the need to take sometimes drastic measures to fight two wars and a titanic economic depression the US government enacted policies which resulted in a reduction in income inequality. This reduction in inequality combined with rising levels of material consumption, due to workers increased ability to bargain collectively with the support of the legal apparatus of the state, define this unprecedented period in economic history.
Middle Class Confusion

Clarification about the meaning of “middle class” is especially important because Americans seem to be confused about this notion of “middle class”, about who is in it, and what it means to be in it. It is a well-know and, much commented on, phenomenon in American political culture that almost everyone tends to perceive themselves as “middle-class”. What makes this fact interesting, and thus worthy of the decades of commentary and analysis it has received, is the startling economic inequality that coexists with this perception.

Though the rates of self-identification with being middle-class have varied over time, a healthy portion of Americans still identify as being middle class. Even now, after decades of erosion in the position of workers due to stagnating wages, reductions in benefits, cuts to social programs and education, increasing international competition, and the shifting of various kinds of work to the global south and other peripheral economies, as well as more recently the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, 44% of people surveyed in one recent survey self-identified as being middle-class. [10] Indeed this figure has fallen over the years of the Great Recession, self-identification as middle-class fell from 53% in 2008, to 49% in 2012, and then to 44% in 2014. Thus, even in bad times, as a great many people are still struggling, a great many people continue to perceive themselves as middle-class.

There is no one universally accepted way to define the middle-class. Perhaps this is part of the reason why politicians are able to make so much political hay with it. This is also part of how it is possible for a great many rather wealthy see themselves as middle-class at the same time as many of the working poor. It is also part of how many super-wealthy individuals come to perceive others less wealthy than themselves, though still obscenely wealthy, as ‘merely’ middle-class.[11] This lack of a consensus about a definition is certainly one of the reasons there is so much confusion about the middle-class, and who belongs to it, and how one belongs to it.

Conventionally, the middle is understood as everyone in the second, third, and fourth income quintiles. Basically, everyone who is not in the top-fifth or the bottom-fifth of income earners is defined as middle-class. In America today this definition of middle-class is roughly equivalent to those earning between $30,000 and $80,000 a year.[12] This is quite a large middle-class. One might think that it is rather too large. Indeed, how can one assimilate the experiences of an individual, or even more a family, living on $30,000 to one making $80,000? One could, I think quite properly, say that these two sets of experiences are so incommensurable materially as to make them awkward members of a common middle-class. Let us note in this connection that the federal government defines the poverty threshold for a family of four as a bit less than $24,000 a year. So, it would seem hard to think the experiences of family living on about 25% more than the poverty level would be anything like those of a family making more than two and a half times that amount.

That this conception is too wide to be very useful, and for the reasons I alluded to, is admitted by the fact that, at least colloquially, we have adopted the distinctions between ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ middle class. This distinction testifies to the difference in material position of individuals, or families, in the upper and lower ends of the middle. The lifestyle, the patterns of consumption, level of access to opportunity, and much else, varies so much between these groups that the distinction suggests itself, and is so patently apparent that no one questions its propriety.

Perhaps then we should narrow our definition of middle-class to only the third income quintile. This understanding of middle-class would include those making roughly $40,000 to $65,000. Even the top end of this range would still be half of what one estimate suggests a middle-class lifestyle would cost. Moreover, only about 15% of income earners would count as middle-class on this way of understanding the middle class. [13] This fact would certainly seem inconsistent with the widespread perception that the middle-class is the numerically largest class. Even if we expand back to our original range of $30-80,000, only about 40% of income earners would be middle-class. While this figure has the virtue of appearing to match up quite closely with the level of self-reported identification as being middle-class, it suffers from the vagueness we noted above. The upper limit of the 4^th income quintile is north of $100,000. I do not think it is a stretch to say the material circumstances of a “middle-class” family making anywhere from the median to the upper limit has much in common with those families earning closer to the lower threshold of “middle class”.

By several ways of trying to understand the middle class we come up with results that fall short of matching our expectations and common perceptions. We seem to end up with either an unhelpfully expansive notion of the middle-class that encompasses individuals and families with greatly divergent material circumstances. Or, one ends up with a more precise statistical conception of the middle class, but wherein fewer persons are understood to be middle-class than commonly report being so in surveys. Part of explaining this confusion about the middle-class is the fact that Americans are either unaware or deeply confused about the nature of the distribution of wealth in this country. Many people report feeling like they are middle-class, but only as a result of ignorance or confusion about the nature of wealth inequality in America. Indeed, it would be crazy to deny that part of one’s perception of class position is the relative position of others. Were more Americans aware of the real nature of the distribution of wealth they would likely feel less middle-class, and more lower-class. According to the results of one recent research study, a representative sample of Americans reported thinking that the share of total income possessed by the middle class in America, i.e. the second through fourth income quintiles, was just north of 40%. Respondents also reported thinking the third income quintile alone possesses over 10% of total national wealth. In fact, the real share possessed by the first through fourth income quintiles combined is less than 20%, and the third quintile alone possesses closer to 5% than greater than the 10% that was reported.[14]

Another important aspect of the explanation for why there is so much confusion about the middle class is the confusion individuals face given their precarious position in the socio-economic hierarchy. Given how much inequality has risen over the last few decades there has been an increase in the perception that the post-war American middle-class lifestyle is out of reach for a great many hard-working people. Rising inequality combined with the effects of a calamitous financial crises, followed by years of recession, caused many to report falling in social class. The youngest cohort especially was hard hit, with now 49% reporting being in the lower or lower-middle class. It also caused many who identify as middle-class to feel this status increasingly precarious. Indeed, according to a Pew Research study from 2014 almost as many Americans reported being lower-class as middle-class, and the spread between the two was a mere 4%.[15]
The Working Class

We have seen now that this notion of the “middle class” is highly problematic. When we attempt a rational accounting of it, what we find is that our social reality confounds many of the expectations that most Americans have when they talk about the middle class. We find that though many Americans report in surveys that they are middle-class, the middle class is small, and shrinking. Once we distinguish upper from lower in the middle class, the true middle is really a small part of the income spectrum. One cannot get too far below the median income for one to be more lower class than middle class, nor can one get too far above without becoming upper-middle, or even elite. For instance, $100,000 in income would put one at the upper limit of the fourth income quintile, while an income at or above $150,000 would place one among the top 10% of income-earners. One cannot thus get too far beyond the $80,000 average income of the fourth income quintile without ending up less middle class than upper class.

If we judge belonging to the middle class as a function of ability to consume, then again we find that the traditional middle-class lifestyle ideal is increasingly out of reach for large swaths of the American population. What we see now is that we need a new way to think about class, about the socio-economic positions that people occupy and how these are best described. Getting a handle on what class one belongs to is important, especially in these election cycles, as appeals for votes are made to members of the various social classes that compose the electorate. How is one to know which kind of candidate or policy to vote for if one does not know what candidates or policies will advance their interests? And how is one to know what will advance one’s interests if one does know have an accurate understanding of their own socio-economic reality?

Rather than muddle on with this vague notion of a middle class, we should substitute a new understanding of class and class relations. This understanding of class should emphasize the role that working conditions play in determining socio-economic position, or class. This understanding will of course have much overlap with the dominant income-based understanding. For indeed, working conditions and wage rates are often highly correlated in market economies, that is, typically the lower the pay the worse the working conditions (in one form or another) and vice versa. When we take the kinds of jobs people work into account, the picture that emerges is one which demonstrates the importance of thinking in terms of a working class rather than a middle class. When we start putting working conditions in the forefront of our conception of social class we gain a much accurate, and explanatory conception of class.

One example that helps demonstrate this need for an understanding of class based on working conditions is the practice of “flex-time”. In the upper end of the labour market this concept is instantiated by programs that allow workers to do their work on their own schedule, freeing workers of the need to always be in the office during the traditional working day. This allows workers to achieve a better work-life balance, by having more flexibility with the time they need to devote to work. On the lower end of the labour market flex-time typically takes the form of on-call forms of scheduling. This is an extension of the logic of the “just-in-time” inventory management systems that have come to dominate manufacturing industries, and applied to the labour force of a variety of businesses, but especially retail firms. The idea, in both cases, is to only have as much as it needed of both on hand at any one time, so as to free up capital from unnecessary investment in extra stock or extra labour.
Conclusion

Have middle classes existed in history, yes. Did a middle class exist in the US during the middle part of the twentieth century, yes. However, in both cases these answers must be qualified, if the nuance of reality is not to be lost. Yet, in appending these qualifications we change the nature of the answers, and thus must come to see the original answer as importantly flawed. In both cases we find the reality of the middle class(es) does not match up with our modern expectations and perceptions about the middle class. In the first case, one might be subject to various forms of un-free labour despite still being technically not a slave, and thus free but by no means rich, or even independent. In the latter case, we find that this ideal of the middle class was quite restricted, and the alleged golden age of its reign was certainly not seen as such by the many marginalized groups of that era. We also see that its very existence occurs because of the confluence of historical circumstances that would be near impossible to re-create.

The idea of being “middle class” is also a source of confusion when compared to modern thinking about the middle class, and its role in society. Indeed, much of the meaning of being “middle class” has always involved poor people, those who work for wages for a living, aping the consumption trends of their ‘social betters’. Thus, even while during the classic 19^th century hay-day of industrialization the middle class, ie. the petit bourgeoisie, was fairly small it nonetheless transmitted its social norms, consumption patterns, taste in art and décor, to those below them on the social ladder. It was not this middling class, but rather the working class, the proletariat, whose consumption, aping the middle class above them, drove the rise of a “middle class society”. This process of transmittal of social norms, values, and patterns of consumption is eloquently detailed by Thorsten Veblen in his Theory of the Leisure Class.

Today, this notion of the middle class, a remnant of the mid-century post-war Pax Americana, stands in the way of proper thinking about the role of class in society and the role of class in individuals’ lives. We need to be free of this notion if we’re going to able to correctly perceive how class works, and how it has changed. Remember that this notion of the middle class in post-war America was built on stable, long-term employment, with benefits, and pension plans, that paid enough to own a home, buy a car, household appliances, vacations, college educations, and more. In today’s economy these kinds of employment features of increasingly harder to come by for increasingly large segments of the labour market.

What one finds is that as automation increases, and as services increasingly dominate over production, more and more workers are forced into ever more precarious forms of employment. These tenuous relationships serve employers desire for flexibility, ie. ability to (re)move capital quickly, but increase burdens on working class people; especially on their time. Instead of thinking of themselves as “middle class”, these workers should more correctly perceive themselves to be part of what Guy Standing calls the Precariat[16]. The Precariat is already a class in-itself, but the ideology of the middle class in the US prevents it to a great extent from developing into a class for-itself. Opposed to this class is what Standing calls the Salariat, that is, the minority of a firms’ workers who are central to operations. These are core workers who typically earn a salary, have benefits, sick time, vacation days, and many of the other trappings of the fabled American middle class lifestyle.

Politicians will continue to talk in speeches, interviews, and the like about a middle class that supposedly exists in America, and how they will do the most to help it, typically by enacting the policies that will allow it to flourish. From what we have seen here working class people should no longer be duped into thinking that those politicians are addressing them. The rhetoric that dominates our politics simply does not match the reality of the contemporary economy, in particular the labour market. When we adopt a more appropriate view of class we see an economy characterized not by a broad-based and prosperous middle class, but rather by increasing inequality. We see a labour market where trends in job conditions and benefits very much resemble those in real wages. When we adopt a different view of class we see a very different answer to the question, Is there a middle class in America? No, not in a way that matches the mid-century American ideal.

Notes

[1] For a thorough analysis of the political and social conflict in the ancient Greek world see, G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. 1981. Cornell University Press, 1998.

[2] De Ste. Croix 1998, 284

[3] Martines, Lauro. Power and Imagination; City-States in Renaissance Italy. 1979. Vintage Books, 1980; 40.

[4] Martines 1980, 29.

[5] Martines 1980, 61

[6] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/07/04/american-dream/11122015/

[7] http://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/documents/migrated/Middle%20Class%20Report.pdf

[8] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/27/despite-recovery-fewer-americans-identify-as-middle-class/

[9] In Piketty’s equation (r) = after tax rate of return to capital, and (g) = the rate of growth of per capita income, a proxy for economic growth. For further information about Piketty’s research see my review of his book for The Hampton Institute.

[10] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/27/despite-recovery-fewer-americans-identify-as-middle-class/

[11] http://www.salon.com/2014/12/21/why_so_many_rich_americans_think_theyre_middle_class_partner/

[12] http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2014/04/24/what-it-means-to-be-middle-class-today

[13] http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS20811.pdf

[14] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

[15] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/27/despite-recovery-fewer-americans-identify-as-middle-class/

[16] See his book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury Academic; 2011.

Juxtaposing Anarchy: From Chaos to Cause

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Colin Jenkins

Source: The Hampton Institute

Anarchy is synonymous with chaos and disorder. It is a term that stands in direct contrast to the archetype of society we have become accustomed to: hierarchical, highly-structured, and authoritative. Because of this, it carries negative connotations. Merriam-Webster, the consensus source of meaning within the dominant paradigm, defines anarchy as: a situation of confusion and wild behavior in which the people in a country, group, organization, etc., are not controlled by rules or laws; or, a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority. The implications made in these definitions are clear – any absence of authority, structure, or control most surely amounts to confusion, wild behavior, and disorder. In other words, human beings are incapable of controlling themselves, maintaining order, and living peacefully amongst one another. So we are to believe.

Far removed from the general presentation of anarchy is anarchism, a political philosophy rich in intellectual and theoretical tradition. Again turning to Merriam-Webster, we are told that anarchism is: a political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups. Even from within the dominant paradigm, we see a wide range of divergence between anarchism, which is presented strictly as an idea, and anarchy, which is presented as the real and absolute consequence (though hypothetical) of transforming this idea to praxis. Juxtaposing these terms, injecting historical perspective to their meaning, and realizing the differences between their usage within the modern lexicon and their philosophical substance should be a worthy endeavor, especially for anyone who feels that future attempts at shaping a more just society will be fueled by ideas, both from the past and present.

While comparing and contrasting the various ways in which anarchy is deployed, we recognize three arenas: 1) Popular culture, which embraces and markets the association of chaos, wild behavior, and disorder; 2) Corporate politics, which uses the term as a pejorative, mostly to describe dominant right-wing platforms like the Tea Party and USAmerican libertarian movement; and 3) In activist and theoretical circles, where anarchism is understood as an authentic and legitimate political philosophy with roots firmly placed in the Enlightenment.

Pop Anarchy and Nihilism: Rebels without a Cause

The anti-authoritarian tendencies of anarchism are understandably attractive in a world that is overwhelmingly authoritative, intensely conformist, and socially restrictive. The conservative nature of American culture, which is notorious for repressing attitudes and beliefs that form outside of the dominant “white, Judeo-Christian” standard, begs for the existence of a thriving subculture that is based on rebellion, if only as an avenue of personal liberation and expression. The 1955 James Dean movie, Rebel without a Cause, offered a first glimpse into this nihilistic backlash against the deadening and soulless culture of conformity as it showcased the contradictory and often confusing nature of adolescence in white, middle-class suburbia.

On the heels of Dean was a baby-boomer revolution fueled by radical inquiry, hippie culture, bohemian lifestyles, and a “British Invasion.” For the better part of a decade, the counterculture movement in the US that came to be known quite simply as “the ’60s” boasted a wide array of meaningful causes, addressing everything from poverty to institutional racism and segregation to war. However, this brief period of revolutionary cause dissipated into a new and distinctly different counterculture through the 1970s and 80s, taking on a rebellious yet counterrevolutionary identity. In contrast to the existentialist nature of the 60s, which sought answers through philosophical exploration, the collective angst that developed in subsequent decades sought individual freedom through nihilism, self-destruction, and chronic apathy. Not giving a shit about detrimental traditions transformed into not giving a shit about anything. In turn, acts of defiance morphed from politically conscious and strategic opposition to oppressive structures to spiteful and self-destructive nothingness.

The revolutionary uprising of the 1960s, which had been stomped out by government suppression and maligned as an “excess of democracy,” was effectively replaced by a reactionary insurrection bankrupt of any constructive analysis or productive goal. This nothingness was embraced by a significant counterculture that developed alongside the punk rock music scene, which flirted with anarchist politics before descending into an egoistic and narrow identity based in privilege. What followed was a brand of “pop anarchy” devoid any meaning beyond contrived images. Acts of rebellion were central, but a cause was neither constructed nor needed. The anarchist and revolutionary symbolism that screamed for meaning was reduced to shallow marketing schemes as remnants of legitimate angst were redirected into childish rants against parents, teachers, “the man,” and “the system” – terms that often carried little meaning for those who used them. The exclusivity that developed made political organizing virtually impossible, and had an alienating effect on many. “Looking at the fact that most people who rear their heads at anarchist ‘movement’ events are roughly between 16-30 years old, with background influences of ‘punk’ or other ‘alternative’ persuasions,” explains one former anarchist from the punk scene, “it is easy to understand why such ‘movements’ tend to alienate most people than interest them.” A major problem that was exposed was demographics. “Punk primarily appealed to middle-class, straight white boys, who, thought they were ‘too smart’ for the rock music pushed by the corporations, still wanted to ‘rock out.’ It is also a culture that was associated with alienating oneself from the rest of society, often times in order to rebel against one’s privileged background or parents.” Because of this, “we have to admit that it was (and still is) exclusive.”

By contrasting US punk culture of this time with its British counterpart, one could see the development of a counterculture that lacked revolutionary meaning or class context. As Neil Eriksen explains:

“The distinctions between US and British punk rock are based solidly on differences in the audience. In the US the counter-cultural character of punk is evident in the primary emphasis on style of dress and posturing. ‘Middle class’ youth can copy the style of the British punks and are afforded the economic and ideological space to make it a whole lifestyle, similar to the way the hippies dropped out, turned on and tuned in. It is primarily those who do not have to work for a living who can afford the outrageous blue, green and orange punk hair styles and gold safety pins. The working class generally cannot choose to go to work with orange hair. In England punk is much more complex, especially given the history of other sub-cultures such as the Mods, Rockers and Skinheads. British punks find in their sub-cultural expressions of music and attitudes, as well as styles, more of an organic indication of their experiences as under- or unemployed youth. In the US, punk has few organic working class roots, and it thus functions as a broad counter-cultural milieu that does not indict the system for lack of jobs, but tends toward nihilism and mindlessness.”

The counterculture described above was a favorable, and almost inevitable, result of both appropriation from above and cooptation at the hands of capitalist profit. Revolutionary politics, in its authentic form, is not a profitable commodity. Instead, the radical roots of anarchist philosophy, which are briefly described in the definition of “anarchism” provided by Merriam-Webster, serve as a threat to any society that possesses extreme divisions of power and wealth. The United States – with its hierarchical governmental structure, no-holds-barred corporate landscape, and extreme divisions between the wealthy and everyone else (20% of the population owns 90% of the wealth) is no exception. For this reason, anarchism has (historically) been appropriated by the dominant culture (which is shaped by this 20%), diluted to anarchy, and served to the masses in the form of entertainment. This process has led to “gradual appearances in mainstream culture over the course of several years, at times far removed from its political origin (described by Situationists as ” recuperation“). These appearances typically connected it with anarchy and were intended as sensationalist marketing ploys, playing off the mainstream association of anarchy with chaos.”

The most recent form of this appropriation has come in the popular television series, Sons of Anarchy, which depicts a California biker gang inundated with drama, drug abuse, senseless murders, gun-running, and gang activity. Despite glimpses and a few mentions of the fictional founder’s manifesto, which included some scattered words by genuine anarchists like Emma Goldman and Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the show clearly chooses chaos and senseless, self-serving crime as its theme. The pinnacle of this appropriation, and ignorance of the rich history of philosophical anarchism, concludes with reviews that refer to one of the show’s main characters, a ruthless, murderous, and power-hungry leader by the name of Clay Morrow, as a ” true anarchist.”

Liberal Enablers and the Right’s Appropriation of Libertarianism

In the midst of the US government shutdown in October of 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to criticize the move. “We have a situation where we have a good day with the anarchists,” Reid said. “Why? Because the government is closed.” Reid’s comment was meant as a jab to the Republican Party, which was largely responsible for allowing the shutdown to take place, purely as a political ploy. A few days later, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren referred to “anarchist tirades” and “thinly veiled calls for anarchy in Washington” coming from Tea Party members in the House as the impetus for the shutdown. Warren even went as far as equating anarchists with “pessimists and ideologues whose motto is, ‘I’ve got mine, the rest of you are on your own,’ while ironically tying in neoliberal deregulation that “tolerates dangerous drugs, unsafe meat, dirty air, or toxic mortgages,” as an “anarchists’ dream.”

“Anarchy” has maintained its status as a pejorative in the modern American liberal lexicon, but not by choice. Borrowing from the nihilism of pop anarchy, it embraces misconceptions, ignores historical roots, and guts the term of genuine meaning. Considering that such rhetoric is coming from folks who have advanced degrees in political science, careers as political pundits, and a working knowledge of history, it can only be explained as calculated fear-mongering. The fact of the matter is that the Republican Party is just as “statist” as the Democratic Party, if only in different ways. And while the approach of political sects like the Tea Party and USAmerican “libertarian” movements present a less-statist platform than their counterparts from within the establishment, their philosophical make-ups (if you can even call them that) include a blatant disregard for the public at-large, an underlying racism that is dangerously oppressive, a love affair with capitalism, a childish refusal to recognize needs outside of privileged interests, a fanatical support for gun rights, and a narrow-minded obsession with protecting private property and personal wealth – beliefs that are more in line with the self-absorbed, reactionary nature of fascism than with the revolutionary, “cooperative individualism” of anarchism. Ultimately, the Tea Party, much like the USAmerican “libertarian” movement, is focused on one goal: protecting an embedded array of privilege and maintaining the status quo; and the means to their end (at least, theoretically) is the coercive power structure of the market, as opposed to that of the state. If and only when the market hierarchy is threatened by, say, a popular uprising, a workers strike, or a movement for civil rights, this brand of “libertarian” views the state – in the form of domestic police and military forces – as a necessary component. In other words, these so-called “anarchists” are really nothing of the sort. Instead, they are more than willing to use state power to uphold historically-based inequities related to wealth accumulation, racism, and class division.

If the cheap political jabs used by liberals were packed with historical context, they could be closer to the truth. However, this would defeat the purpose. Parts of the right-wing have, in fact, appropriated and twisted anarchist philosophy, mostly through a concerted effort to adopt an ahistorical version of “libertarianism.” In his “anarcho-capitalist” manifesto, Betrayal of the American Right, Murray Rothbard explained this intent:

“One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy. Other words, such as ‘liberal,’ had been originally identified with laissez-faire libertarians, but had been captured by left-wing statists, forcing us in the 1940s to call ourselves rather feebly ‘true’ or ‘classical’ liberals. ‘Libertarians,’ in contrast, had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchist; that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over, and more properly from the view of etymology; since we were proponents of individual liberty and therefore of the individual’s right to his property.”

Of course, like all others who claim this contradictory title of anarcho-capitalist, Rothbard either failed to recognize “how property results in similar social relations and restrictions in liberty as the state,” or simply believed that “liberty” was synonymous with feudalistic ideals. As one anarchist (of the authentic variety) writer laments, the thought process of this faux-anarchism is that a “capitalist or landlord restricting the freedom of their wage-workers and tenants” is ok, but any such restrictions from “the state” is not. “It’s an oddity that in the United States, the main current of libertarian thought has been twisted and inverted into a kind of monstrous stepchild,” explains Nathan Schneider. “Rather than seeking an end to all forms of oppression, our libertarians want to do away with only the government kind, leaving the rest of us vulnerable to the forces of corporate greed, racial discrimination, and environmental destruction.”

Since the Democratic Party’s use of the term borrows from the simplistic, nihilistic version of “pop anarchy,” rather than the complex, philosophical version of anarchism, it becomes useful within the modern political arena. The true right-wing appropriation of anarchism as noted by Rothbard, which is fabricated in its own right, becomes buried under the fear-mongering and falsely implied association by the likes of Reid and Warren. Historically, this same type of fear-mongering has allowed for fascist scapegoating (Reichstag Fire), capitalist scapegoating (Haymarket Affair), and unlawful state executions ( Sacco and Vanzetti), all designed to exploit widespread ignorance regarding anarchist beliefs and prevent authentic libertarian movements from spreading through the populace. “The figure of the anarchist has long dominated our national imagination,” explains Heather Gautney. “It’s a word that conjures up the lawless, the nihilistic and even the violent. It’s the image Senators Reid and Warren invoked in their talking points against the Republicans.” It’s also an image devoid any real meaning. By removing its substance and demonizing its association, the establishment wins.

Anarcho-Punk, Underground Hip Hop, and Conscious Chaos: Rebels with a Cause

While “pop anarchy” took over much of the American punk scene in the ’70s and ’80s, it was only part of the story. Punk culture still served what Henry Rollins once succinctly described as “the perfect expression of postmodern angst in a decadent society,” creating an outlet for rebellious urges seeping from the dominant culture. It also served as a catalyst for pockets of revolutionary politics. When done right, it was the perfect combination of expression and meaning. The hard, edgy, and chaotic sounds spilling from the music represented a form of liberation that was desperately needed, while the lyrics roared against the establishment and aimed at deadening conformity and the music industry’s increasingly corporatized and cookie-cutter production value. The UK provided an example of this perfection when it birthed anarcho-punk.

“From the numerous situationist slogans that graced the lyrics of early punk bands, to the proliferation of anarcho-punk bands such as Crass and Conflict in the early eighties, punk rock as a subculture has had a unique history of having a strong relationship with explicitly anarchist and anti-capitalist political content over the years,” explains an anonymous Colours of Resistance blogger . “Many anarchists today, including myself, are by-products of punk rock, where most become politicized from being exposed to angry, passionate lyrics of anarcho-punk bands, “do-it-yourself” zines, and countless other sources of information that are circulated within the underground punk distribution networks. Some are introduced to punk through the introduction to the anarchist social circles. Regardless of which comes first, the correlation between the punk scene and the anarchist scene is hard to miss, especially at most anarchist gatherings and conferences.”

Within the anarcho-punk movement, “the possibilities for advances in popular culture in the dissolution of capitalist hegemony and in building working class hegemony” began to surface. “The fact that punk rock validated political themes in popular music once again,” Eriksen suggests, “opened the field” for the left libertarian movements. As an example, punk initiatives like “Rock Against Racism were able to sponsor Carnivals with the Anti-Nazi League drawing thousands of people and many popular bands to rally against racism and fascism” and “openly socialist bands like the Gang of Four were taken seriously by mainstream rock critics and record companies, and thereby were able to reach a broad audience with progressive entertainment.”

Punk ideologies that arose from this era touched on concepts like anti-establishment, equality, freedom, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, direct action, free thought, and non-conformity – many ideas that are synonymous with historical-anarchist thought. This social consciousness naturally led to activism, and specifically, acts of direct action, protests, boycotts, and squatting. These elements represented authentic anarchist philosophy and served as a counter to nihilistic and empty “pop anarchy,” while politicizing many.

Another form of “rebellion with a cause” came from American hip-hop and rap. The rise of hip-hop in the US paralleled that of the punk scene, and shared many of the same revolutionary tendencies. While not explicitly anarchist, hip-hop took on an identity that mirrored authentic anarchist philosophy. Its anti-authoritarian nature was far from nihilistic, but rather survivalist; born in response to centuries of racial subjugation, economic strangulation, and violent oppression at the hands of domestic police forces. Hip-hop’s birthplace, the Bronx (NYC), characterized its development. “Heavily influenced by the economically and socially oppressed ghettoes, along with the echoes of the last generation’s movements for liberation and the street gangs that filled in the void they left,” Derek Ide tells us, “the South Bronx provided the perfect matrix in which marginalized youth could find a way to articulate the story of their own lives and the world around them. In this historically unique context, a culture would be created through an organic explosion of the pent-up, creative energies of America’s forgotten youth. It was a culture that would reach every corner of the world in only a couple decades..”

In the end, hip-hop and gangsta rap provided endless displays of socially-conscious and revolutionary tracks throughout the ’80s and ’90s, and combined with the punk scene to construct a form of “conscious chaos” that provided valuable social and cultural analyses as well as revolutionary goals that sought to establish a more just world. These counter-cultural movements represented an important about-turn from the contrived nihilism and “pop anarchy” that had surfaced in response to the “excess of democracy” in the ’60s, and displayed elements that echoed authentic anarchism, as a revolutionary libertarian philosophy.

Authentic Anarchism and Its Philosophical Roots

The roots of Anarchism, as a school of thought, are firmly placed in the Age of Enlightenment and, specifically, within two major themes stemming from that period: liberalism and socialism. In a sea of definitions, one of the most concise and encompassing is offered by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt in their 2009 book, “Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism.” In it, they describe anarchism as “a revolutionary and libertarian socialist doctrine” that “advocates individual freedom through a free society” and “aims to create a democratic, egalitarian, and stateless socialist order through an international and internationalist social revolution, abolishing capitalism, landlordism, and the state.” [1]

Anarchism’s roots in the Enlightenment are undeniable. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality” to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s “The Limits of State Action,” the libertarian strain born of this time served as the precursor to the anarchist thinkers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Their similarities are found in a philosophical examination of social inequities like personal wealth, private property, political power, and all forms of authority established within human societies – elements that are heavily scrutinized by anarchists. However, despite these roots, Schmidt and van der Walt tell us that anarchism should be considered “a relatively recent phenomenon” that emerged specifically “from the 1860s onward within the context of the modern working-class and socialist movement, within the womb of the First International.” [2] For this reason, anarchism can most aptly be described as “socialism from below.” In fact, the demarcation between enlightenment philosophy and anarchist thought is generally found in their distinct reactions to hierarchies created by systems of monarchy, feudalism, and theocracy (enlightenment) and hierarchies created by the exploitative nature of capitalism and the modern liberal, democratic state (anarchism).

The development and separation of anarchism from the Enlightenment was made clear by prominent anarchist thinkers at and around the turn of the 20 ^th century. In the years following the Paris Commune, Russian revolutionary anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, expressed his disgust with the idea of a “purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the rest,” and “the shabby and fictitious liberty extolled by the School of J-J Rousseau and the other schools of bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men, represented by the State which limits the rights of each – an idea that leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero.”[3] A few decades later, in a critique of liberalism, Peter Kropotkin denounced the aim of all so-called “superior civilizations,” which was “not to permit all members of the community to develop in a normal way,” but rather “to permit certain, better-endowed individuals fully to develop, even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence of the mass of mankind.” This separation had much to do with the newly developed social constraints stemming from capitalism. As Noam Chomsky explains, “It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association…” however, “on the same assumptions, capitalist relations of production, wage labor, competitiveness, and the ideology of ‘possessive individualism’ all must be regarded as fundamentally antihuman” as well. For this reason, he suggests, “libertarian socialism is properly regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment,” while it also embraces its own identity through the inclusion of a class analysis and critique of the coercive structures stemming from the capitalist hierarchy.[4]

The socialist nature of anarchism represents a fundamental current in both its thought and process, yet is often overlooked by many who claim to be anarchists, especially in the United States. This misunderstanding is caused by both pro-market (and even pro-capitalist) “libertarian” movements that are ahistorical and seemingly blind to the authoritative structures of modern, industrial capitalism, as well as by the abovementioned “pop anarchy” phenomenon and “liberal enabling” that falsely limit anarchism to a vague and unsophisticated “anti-government” stance. Superficial dualities that have captured consensus thought, most notably that of “collectivism vs. individualism,” are also largely responsible for this misinterpretation. Because of this, the virtual disappearance of class analysis from modern libertarian thought in the United States not only represents a significant departure from nearly two centuries of libertarianism, but also neglects to address a highly-authoritative and hierarchical private structure that has long surpassed its governmental counterpart. Schmidt and van der Walt explain the importance of rejecting “pop anarchy” stereotypes and maintaining this class analysis within anarchist thought:

“For anarchists, individual freedom is the highest good, and individuality is valuable in itself, but such freedom can only be achieved within and through a new type of society. Contending that a class system prevents the full development of individuality, anarchists advocate class struggle from below to create a better world. In this ideal new order, individual freedom will be harmonised with communal obligations through cooperation, democratic decision-making, and social and economic equality. Anarchism rejects the state as a centralised structure of domination and an instrument of class rule, not simply because it constrains the individual or because anarchists dislike regulations. On the contrary, anarchists believe rights arise from the fulfilment of obligations to society and that there is a place for a certain amount of legitimate coercive power, if derived from collective and democratic decision making.

The practice of defining anarchism simply as hostility to the state has a further consequence: that a range of quite different and often contradictory ideas and movements get conflated. By defining anarchism more narrowly, however, we are able to bring its key ideas into a sharper focus, lay the basis for our examination of the main debates in the broad anarchist tradition in subsequent chapters, and see what ideas are relevant to current struggles against neoliberalism.”[5]

When considering and rejecting both public and private forms of restriction, the most fundamental element of authentic anarchism clearly becomes cooperation. This theme was thoroughly established by Kropotkin in his 1902 classic, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in which he pointed to “the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle – has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race.” This theme was echoed by Rudolf Rocker in his 1938 treatise on Anarcho-Syndicalism. Said Rocker, “Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our time, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society” while calling on “a free association of all productive forces based upon cooperative labor” to replace “the present capitalistic economic order.”[6]

Why Does this Matter?

The importance of Anarchist theory lies in its critique of hierarchies and the uneven distribution of power emanating from such. This makes this school of thought an important component as we move forward in attempting to address the pervasive ills of society, whether coming from the state or corporate structures that tower over us. The mere questioning of these “authorities” is crucial in itself. As Chomsky tells us:

“… any structure of hierarchy and authority carries a heavy burden of justification, whether it involves personal relations or a large social order. If it cannot bear that burden – sometimes it can – then it is illegitimate and should be dismantled. When honestly posed and squarely faced, that challenge can rarely be sustained. Genuine libertarians have their work cut out for them.” <[7]

While many socialist-oriented strains incorporate this same analysis, some do not. Essentially, regarding the formation of class-consciousness, anarchist theory of all varieties (syndicalism, mutualism, communism, etc.) act as ideal compliments to historically strong currents of Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and Trotskyism, and should be included within all such theoretical considerations. When transforming theory to praxis, anarchism’s inclusion of worker collectivization in the form of labor or trade unions prove valuable in this regard. In his treatise on Syndicalism, Rocker made a compelling argument for the usefulness of this brand of anarchism as a component to working-class emancipation. For the Anarcho-Syndicalists,” says Rocker, “the trade union is by no means a mere transitory phenomenon bound up with the duration of capitalist society, it is the germ of the socialist economy of the future, the elementary school of socialism in general.” He continues, “Every new social structure makes organs for itself in the body of the old organism. Without this preliminary, any social evolution is unthinkable. Even revolutions can only develop and mature the germs which already exist and have made their way into the consciousness of men (and presumably, women); they cannot themselves create these germs or generate new worlds out of nothing.” [8]

Putting this philosophy into action is still of utmost importance. Creating a brand that is palatable and accessible to the working-class majority, without sacrificing its revolutionary tone and message, is also crucial. In his 2013 book, “Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street,” Mark Bray stresses the importance of deploying a practical anarchism which avoids the esoteric idealism that so many genuine and well-intentioned anarchists get bogged down in. This pragmatic approach is perhaps most important when attempting to relay information via short interviews and sound bites. Bray points to three specific lessons he learned while interacting with mainstream media during his time at Zuccotti Park:

“First, I learned the value of presenting my revolutionary ideas in an accessible format. How I dress, the words I choose, and how I articulate them affect how I am received, so if my primary goal is to convince people of what I am saying, then it’s often useful to shed my “inessential weirdness.” Second, I realized the usefulness of letting tangible examples sketch the outline of my ideas without encumbering them with explicit ideological baggage. Finally, I concluded that the importance that Americans place on the electoral system dictates that any systematic critique should start with the corporate nature of both parties. Like it or not, that’s where most people are at in terms of their political framework, so if you skip past the candidates to alternative institutions, for example, without convincing them of the bankrupt nature of the electoral system, you’ll lose them.” [9]

Essentially, anarchism is what democracy is supposed to be – self-governance. In this sense, anyone even remotely involved in the Occupy movement had the privilege, likely for the first time in their lives, to truly witness democracy (anarchism) in action. “This is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles – direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones – has cropped up in the US,” explains David Graeber. “The civil rights movement (at least, its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, the global justice movement … all took similar directions.” And, in a country where a large majority of citizens have given up on and/or no longer believe in their representatives, a little democracy may be exactly what we need, even if it’s not what our white, wealthy, slave-owning “founding fathers” wanted. “Most (of the founding fathers) defined ‘democracy’ as collective self-governance by popular assemblies, and as such, they were dead set against it, arguing it would be prejudicial against the interests of minorities (the particular minority that was had in mind here being the rich),” Graeber tells us. “They only came to redefine their own republic – modeled not on Athens, but on Rome – as a ‘democracy’ because ordinary Americans seemed to like the word so much.”

In our inevitable and necessary escape from the faux democracy of America’s colonists and founders, anarchist thought will undoubtedly play a role. It is, after all, the only school of thought that can be described as authentic, class-based libertarianism. Its foundation is the reasonable expectation that all structures of dominance, authority, and hierarchy must justify themselves; and, if they cannot, they must be dismantled.

This covers ALL coercive institutions – not only governments, the state, police, and military, but also cultural phenomena like patriarchy, racism, and white supremacy, and most importantly, economic systems like capitalism. Unlike modern forms of “libertarianism” in the US, which ignore racist structures and the historical formations behind them, and falsely view the labor-capital relationship inherent in capitalism as a “choice,” authentic Anarchism correctly views such elements as coercive and forced; and seeks to dismantle them in order to move forward with constructing a society based on free association, where all human beings have a healthy degree of control over their lives, families, and communities.

Contrary to consensus thought (propaganda), such as those rooted in “rugged individualism” and “American exceptionalism,” there is a collective and cooperative nature to true liberty. We simply cannot gain control over our lives until we learn to respect the lives of all others. This is the essence of community. And we cannot begin to do this until we deconstruct illegitimate hierarchies of wealth and power, which have been constructed through illegal and immoral means over the course of centuries. Recognizing these structures and realizing that they are NOT legitimate, and therefore do not deserve to exist, is the first step in this process. Embracing contributions from this school of thought is crucial in this regard.

Fundamentally, Anarchism is a working-class ideology. Occupy Wall Street was largely influenced by it. Workers’ co-ops are largely influenced by it. Any action that attempts to establish free association within society can learn much from it. Its foundational requirement of organic human cooperation and peaceful co-existence has been tried and tested throughout history – from hunter-gatherer societies across the world to Native American communities to the Paris Commune to revolutionary Catalonia to Chiapas. It provides a philosophical foundation – not a rigid blueprint – that allows for limitless potential in attempting to solve our problems, collectively, while trying to carve out a meaningful human experience for everyone. It may not provide all answers, or even most, but its foundation is worthy of building from, or at least considering. Its true value is found in its inclusion of historical formations as well as its role as a catalyst for new ideas and action – something we desperately need, moving forward.

Notes

[1] Schmidt, Michael & van der Walt, Lucien. Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. AK Press, 2009, p. 33

[2] Schmidt & van der Walt, p. 34

[3] Guerin, Daniel. “Anarchism: From Theory to Practice.” Monthly Review Press, 1970. Taken from the Preface by Noam Chomsky.

[4] Chomsky on Anarchism , selected and edited by Barry Pateman. AK Press: 2005, p. 122-123

[5] Schmidt and van der Walt, p. 33

[6] Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice, 6^th edition. AK Press, 2004. P. 1

[7] Chomsky on Anarchism , p. 192.

[8] Rocker, P. 59.

[9] Mark Bray, Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. Zero Books, 2013.

Zombie Apocalypse and the Politics of Artificial Scarcity

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Reid Mukai

By Colin Jenkins

Source: The Hampton Institute

Dystopian narratives have long been an alluring and thought-provoking form of entertainment, especially for those who take an interest in studying social and political structures. From classics like Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World to the current hit, The Hunger Games, these stories play on our fears while simultaneously serving as warning signs for the future.

Their attractiveness within American society is not surprising. Our lives are driven by fear. Fear leads us to spend and consume; fear leads us to withdraw from our communities; and fear leads us to apathy regarding our own social and political processes. This fear is conditioned as much as it is natural. The ruling-class handbook, Machiavelli’s The Prince, made it clear: “Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

The idea of apocalypse is a central tenet of human society. We’ve been taught about Armageddon, Kali Yuga, Judgement Day, Yawm ad-Dīn, nuclear holocaust, the end times, the four horsemen, and the Sermon of the Seven Suns. Hierarchical societal arrangements leave us feeling powerless. Exploitative systems like capitalism leave us feeling hopeless. And the widespread deployment of fear ultimately keeps us in our place, and out of the business of those who own our worlds.

The last half-century has brought us the zombie apocalypse – a fictional world where the human race has largely been transformed into a brainless, subhuman hoard of flesh-eaters, with only a few random survivors left to carve out any semblance of life they can find in a barren landscape. The emergence and immense popularity of the TV show The Walking Dead is the latest, and perhaps most influential, piece in a long line of narratives centered within themes of survival, human interaction, and scarcity.
Human Nature and Interaction

Behind all political battles, social critiques, and theoretical inquiries lies the most fundamental question: when left to our own accord, how will we interact with one another? How one answers this question usually goes a long way to how one perceives the world, and how issues are viewed and opinions are formed. To our dismay, potential answers are typically presented in dualities. Are we good or evil? Competitive or cooperative? Generous or greedy? Violent or peaceful?

A common theme among religion has been that human beings are “born into sin” and heavily influenced by “evil forces” to do harmful things. One who embraces this theme will tend to have less faith in humanity than one who does not. For, if we really are engaging in a daily struggle to resist the powers of evil, it is reasonable to assume that evil will take hold of many. How can we trust anyone who, at a moment’s notice, could potentially lose the ability to act on their own conscience? The common theme of our dominant economic system – capitalism – is that human beings are inherently competitive and self-centered. When combined, it is easy to see how such ideologies may create intensely authoritative and hierarchical systems. After all, people who are influenced by strong and evil metaphysical forces while also being drawn toward callous, self-interest certainly cannot be trusted with free will.

This lesson is drilled deep into our psyches with each episode of The Walking Dead, where the potential threat of flesh-eating zombie hoards become an afterthought to the clear and present danger of “evil” humans who are out to get one another. Whether it’s a sadistic governor charming an entire town with violent gladiator events, an outlaw gang with the obligatory pedophile, or a pack of hipster cannibals salivating at the thought of eating their next visitor, the intended theme is clear – human beings are not capable of co-existing, even in a world where they rarely interact.

But is this idea accurate? Are we really drawn toward conflict? Must we compete with one another to survive? Is it appropriate to apply Darwin’s evolutionary theories in a social sense where the “fit” are meant to gain wealth and power over the “weak”? Or are we, as Peter Kropotkin theorized in his classic Mutual Aid, more inclined to mimic most other species on Earth, which have been observed over the course of centuries to exhibit “Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution?”

There is ample evidence that we are drawn to cooperation. “Caring about others is part of our mammalian heritage, and humans take this ability to a high level,” explains neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt. “Helping other people seems to be our default approach, in the sense that we’re more likely to do it when we don’t have time to think a situation through before acting. After a conflict, we and other primates-including our famously aggressive relatives, the chimpanzees-have many ways to reconcile and repair relationships.” Studies have shown that in the first year of life, infants exhibit empathy toward others in distress. Evolutionary Anthropologist Michael Tomasello has put “the concept of cooperation as an evolutionary imperative to the test with very young children, to see if it holds for our nature and not just our nurture. Drop something in front of a two-year-old, he finds, and she is likely to pick it up for you. This is not just learned behavior, he argues. Young children are naturally cooperative.”

So, if we are truly inclined to cooperate with one another, why is there so much division and turmoil in the world? The answer to this question may be found by assessing not only the mechanisms of capitalism, but more importantly in the creation of artificial scarcity as a means to maintain hierarchies.
Capitalism and Artificial Scarcity

It is no secret that capitalism thrives off exploitation. It needs a large majority of people to be completely reliant on their labor power. It needs private property to be accessible to only a few, so that they may utilize it as a social relationship where the rented majority can labor and create value. It needs capital to be accessible to only a few, so that they may regenerate and reinvest said capital in a perpetual manner. And it needs a considerable population of the impoverished and unemployed – “a reserve army of labor,” as Marx put it – in order to create a “demand” for labor and thus make such exploitative positions “competitive” to those who need to partake in them to merely survive. It needs these things in order to stay intact – something that is desirable to the 85 richest people in the world who own more than half of the world’s entire population (3.6 billion people).

But wealth accumulation through alienation and exploitation is not enough in itself. The system also needs to create scarcity where it does not already exist. Even Marx admitted that capitalism has given us the productive capacity to provide all that is needed for the global population. In other words, capitalism has proven that scarcity does not exist. And, over the years, technology has confirmed this. But, in order for capitalism to survive, scarcity must exist, even if through artificial means. This is a necessary component on multiple fronts, including the pricing of commodities, the enhancement of wealth, and the need to inject a high degree of competition among people (who are naturally inclined to cooperation).

Since capitalism is based in the buying and selling of commodities, its lifeblood is production. And since production in a capitalist system is not based on need, but rather on demand, it has the tendency to produce more than it can sell. This is called overproduction. Michael Roberts explains:

Overproduction is when capitalists produce too much compared to the demand for things or services. Suddenly capitalists build up stocks of things they cannot sell, they have factories with too much capacity compared to demand and they have too many workers than they need. So they close down plant, slash the workforce and even just liquidate the whole business. That is a capitalist crisis.

When overproduction occurs, it must be addressed. There are multiple ways to do this. Marx addressed three options: “On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.” Another is through the destruction of excess capital and commodities. Whichever measure is taken, it is paramount that the economy must emerge from a starting point that is different from the ending point where the crisis began. This is accomplished through creating scarcity, whether in regards to labor, production capacity, or commodities and basic needs.

Maintaining scarcity is also necessary for wealth enhancement. It is not enough that accumulation flows to a very small section of the population, but more so that a considerable portion of the population is faced with the inherent struggles related to inaccessibility. For example, if millions of people are unable to access basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare, the commodification of those needs becomes all the more effective. On the flip side, the mere presence of accessibility – or wealth – which is enjoyed by the elite becomes all the more valuable because it is highly sought after.

In this sense, it is not the accumulation of personal wealth that creates advantageous positions on the socioeconomic ladder; it’s the impoverishment of the majority. Allowing human beings access to basic necessities would essentially destroy the allure (and thus, power) of wealth and the coercive nature of forced participation. This effect is maintained through artificial scarcity – the coordinated withholding of basic needs from the majority. These measures also seek to create a predatory landscape – something akin to a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled world where manufactured scarcity pits poor against poor and worker against worker, all the while pulling attention away from the zombie threat.
Control through Commodification

A crucial part of this process is commodification – the “transformation of goods and services, as well as ideas or other entities that normally may not be considered goods, into commodities” that can be bought, sold, used and discarded. The most important transformation is that of the working-class majority who, without the means to sustain on their own, are left with a choice between (1) laboring to create wealth for a small minority and accepting whatever “wages” are provided, or (2) starving.

In The Socioeconomic Guardians of Scarcity, Philip Richlin tells us that:

“When society deprives any community or individual of the necessities of life, there is a form of violence happening. When society commodifies the bare necessities of life, they are commodifying human beings, whose labor can be bought and sold. Underneath the pseudo-philosophical rationalizations for capitalism is a defense of wage slavery. For, if your labor is for sale, then you are for sale.”

We are for sale, and we sell ourselves everyday – in the hopes of acquiring a wage that allows us to eat, sleep, and feed our families. In the United States, the 46 million people living in poverty haven’t been so lucky. The 2.5 million who have defaulted on their student loans have been discarded. The 49 million who suffer from food insecurity have lost hope. The 3.5 million homeless are mocked by 18.6 million vacant homes. And the 22 million who are unemployed or underemployed have been deemed “unfit commodities” and relegated to the reserve army of labor.

The control aspect of the commodification of labor comes in its dehumanizing effect – an effect that was commonly recognized among 18th and 19th century thinkers. One of those thinkers, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, when referring to the role of a wage laborer, explained “as whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness, suggesting that “we may admire what he (the laborer) does, but we despise what he is,” because he is essentially not human.

The worker, in her or his role in the capital-labor relationship, exists in a position of constant degeneration. This is especially true with the onset of mass production lines and the division of labor – both of which are inevitable elements within this system. “As the division of labor increases, labor is simplified,” Marx tells us. “The special skill of the worker becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple, monotonous productive force that does not have to use intense bodily or intellectual faculties. His labor becomes a labor that anyone can perform.” As automation and technology progress, such specialized task-mastering even seeps into what was once considered “skilled” labor, thus broadening its reach.

In this role, workers are firmly placed into positions of control within a highly authoritative and hierarchical system.
A World beyond Profit

Dystopian narratives are no longer fiction. From birth, we are corralled into a system that scoffs at free will, stymies our creative and productive capacities, and leaves us little room to carve our own paths. The constructs directed from above are designed to strip us of our inclination to care and cooperate, and make us accept the need to step over one another to get ahead. This is not our nature. Whether we’re talking about Kropotkin’s studies in “the wild” or Tomasello’s experience with children, observable evidence tells us we’ve been duped.

Another world is not just possible; it is inevitable if we are to exist in the long-term. In Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Murray Bookchin offers a glimpse into this world not constructed on labor, profit, and artificial scarcity:

“It is easy to foresee a time, by no means remote, when a rationally organized economy could automatically manufacture small “packaged” factories without human labor; parts could be produced with so little effort that most maintenance tasks would be reduced to the simple act of removing a defective unit from a machine and replacing it by another-a job no more difficult than pulling out and putting in a tray. Machines would make and repair most of the machines required to maintain such a highly industrialized economy. Such a technology, oriented entirely toward human needs and freed from all consideration of profit and loss, would eliminate the pain of want and toil-the penalty, inflicted in the form of denial, suffering and inhumanity, exacted by a society based on scarcity and labor.”

The barren landscape for which we’ve been placed has a future beyond Hershel’s overrun farm, the confines of a prison, the Governor’s creepy town of Woodbury, and the trap known as Terminus. It has a future beyond the artificial constructs of capitalism and hierarchy. Human nature is talking to us… and we’re starting to listen.

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