Ethical Consumption in the Socialist Imaginary

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

Since its advent in the 1990s, globalization has transformed the world. One of its many notable effects was the further siloing of consumers from the labor that produced their goods and services. Increasingly complex global supply chains alongside deceptive advertising make it nearly impossible to uncover every step in a product’s production and distribution. Of course, strategic clarification of these processes would come to represent its own form of advertising, as the professed “social and environmental values of consumer products” became reliable selling points in and of themselves. This was mainly due to an increase in consumer consciousness — spurred by globalization’s poster child, the internet — that begged for opportunities to consume “ethically.”

Though such “ethical consumption” marked an improvement over previous consumptive practices, a socialist lens reveals its limitations. As socialists understand, capitalist production relies on the exploitation of workers by capital owners, meaning that no level of consciousness or self-awareness on the part of traditional companies can shed their fundamentally unethical character. Even in instances where a worker’s experience with their employer is satisfactory — as can happen when receiving a high salary or wage, robust benefits, or other perks — the company’s simultaneous profiteering is more than just a harmless manifestation of mutual benefit. The very act of turning a profit beyond that which would sufficiently refinance operating costs is one of theft, particularly of the value that the worker has produced via their labor. This surplus value is not returned to the worker nor does it serve operational ends. It instead comprises the millionaire salaries of executives and further grows the capital to which the company can now claim legal rights. In other words, as socialists often argue, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. However, when considering the ethics of capitalist consumption, the analysis cannot stop there.

It is not so much ethical consumption but rather ethical purity which is impossible under capitalism. Moreover, beneath such a threshold of ethical purity, there lie two spectra upon which one’s capitalist consumption can and should still be measured: that of ethics and, more importantly, that of the consumer. 

The spectrum of ethics — henceforth referred to as the ethical spectrum — is that which the deliberately advertised “social and environmental values of consumer products” implies. In other words, a hierarchy of ethics in consumption does exist just shy of ethical purity. And, most pressingly, that hierarchy is primarily highlighted by the aspects of a good or service’s production and distribution that can be observed, analyzed, and understood. Of course, such aspects are most often only made publicly available for observation, analysis, and understanding at the behest of their corporate manufacturers but they are empirical points of ethical reference nonetheless. Take the purchase of a shirt, for example. When a consumer purchases a shirt, the ethical spectrum offers a host of consumptive options based on the available social and environmental factors at hand, ones which, for the sake of argument, will be boiled down here into three outstanding choices.

The first choice, which will be the optimal form of ethical consumption in this scenario, is one in which it is known to the consumer that the shirt is both the product of union labor and produced in an environmentally conscious way, be that through the use of reusable materials, renewable energy, waste minimization, etc. The second choice, which will be the middle-of-the-road, intermediate form of ethical consumption in this scenario, is one in which the shirt is still the product of union labor but environmental considerations are not present, meaning labor exploitation is minimized through the presence of unionized production but the sustainable nature of the product is lacking. The third and final choice, which will be the worst and least preferable form of ethical consumption in this scenario, is one in which the production of the shirt lacks both union labor and environmental considerations, making it an ethically lackluster product regarding its accommodations for both labor exploitation and sustainability. It is in determining which of the three choices one should pursue, if any at all, that the second spectrum — that of the consumer — becomes relevant.

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The spectrum of the consumer — henceforth referred to as the consumer spectrum — is one which makes an even deeper distinction between consumptive practices than that of the ethical spectrum, as it precedes the question of ethics with the question of ability. To consider consumption under capitalism as an exercise of solely ethical dimensions is to neglect the vital reality underlying such a society: inequality is rampant, poverty is ever-worsening, and the material conditions of the masses only become more dire by the day. As such, it is often the case that for many consumers, ethical considerations are an aspect of capitalist consumption in which they simply do not have the socioeconomic capacity to engage. After all, who is to blame a working-class family for neglecting the exploitative or unsustainable aspects of a good or service they’ve consumed when their socioeconomic conditions may not even allow them to ensure their most basic needs?

The consumer spectrum acknowledges this disparity and ensures that the degree of ethical consideration a consumer engages in is proportional to their socioeconomic standing, one best represented by the consumer’s income. However, conditions beyond those of financial earnings can determine whether disposable income in particular will fluctuate over time, a trend that would then require the consumer’s ethical considerations to similarly shift. These outstanding conditions can take on many forms, incorporating factors such as working conditions — a greater likelihood of on-the-job injuries could decrease disposable income prospects due to evermore frequent medical bills — immigration status — undocumented workers have less access to social safety nets and unemployment benefits than their documented counterparts — and living conditions — crumbling infrastructure could gradually increase the financial burden of maintenance faced by tenants, decreasing their disposable income over time. As such, the consumer spectrum adjusts the ethical considerations incumbent upon a consumer based both on their income and on the potential for their disposable income to fluctuate. In turn, the consumer spectrum ensures two important outcomes.

On the one hand, it makes sure that socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals are not burdened with the task of considering ethics when making consumptive decisions to survive. On the other, it holds socioeconomically advantaged individuals to a higher standard of ethical consumption, one in which they would be remiss to not undergo the kind of ethical considerations previously outlined in the shirt exercise. Admittedly, the former assurance has become more widely accepted in discourse regarding working-class consumption. The latter, on the other hand, risks not achieving the same, as the maxim that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism can serve as low-hanging fruit for socioeconomically advantaged individuals to conveniently justify knowingly unethical consumption. The consumer spectrum seeks to account for such co-optation and counter it head-on.

This layout of consumptive spectra can be useful on the individual level of consumption. For those with the appropriate socioeconomic bandwidth, it offers bountiful considerations that can inform the consumption of a given good or service. However, the utility of the model is perhaps best understood on the macro level. Beyond the pressure that socialists must continue to exert on the existing system — uprooting the power of capital owners and corporations in the process — these spectra provide greater nuance to the socialist perspective on individual accountability and action. Through the ethics and consumer spectra, we can better envision the untapped potential of individualized proactivity in creating a less exploitative and more sustainable society, while also accommodating the diversity of lived experiences and forms of exploitation endured under the current economic system.

Thus, the notion of ethical consumption under capitalism should not simply culminate in an indisputable law of impossibility. Rather, it should be understood as a range of activity that can be engaged in — just shy of ethical purity — based on the ethical considerations at hand and, more pressingly, those which directly pertain to the socioeconomic capacities of the consumer. Only in considering this reality can we better understand the role of individual consumption in the broader socialist project of radical change and revolutionary transformation.

Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso is a Colombian Marxist. In his writing, he seeks to interrogate the nuances of socialist thought and praxis.

Three Lessons From the World’s Biggest Worker Uprising

By Arunima Azad

The Kisan Ekta Morcha (Farmers United Front) is a mass movement of 100,000+ farmers, youth, workers and allies from India and the diaspora. For the past 27 days, Satyagrahis have occupied all but one highway leading into Delhi, the capital of India. 1.5 million union members in Canada have declared solidarity with KAM. Protestors say that people of the country and world are with them. They are determined and equipped to occupy Delhi’s border roads until the government repeals three farm bills that were made into law in September 2020. The significance of this ultimatum by the country’s working-class peasantry is twofold: first, they are mounting an uncompromising opposition which is salient in an age of police violence forcefully suppressing anti-capitalism protests worldwide. Second, the farmers are publicly renouncing their faith in an elected ruling class whose actions do not display any care for their wellbeing.

The world’s largest general strike

On November 26, 2020 Indian workers organized the world’s largest general strike.(1)  Why did 250 million workers strike? Members of national trade unions struck from work to protest a number of the central government’s policies, such as the “dismantling [of] protective labour laws, refusal to negotiate an increase in minimum wages, [and] selling off several public sector units to private entities'' (Varma 2020). This government promises “empowerment” and keeps unilaterally passing laws to make extraction and exploitation easier for wealth-hoarding billionaires. How is the Kisan Ekta Morcha peasant uprising connected to the general strike? Peasant-farmers (at the time largely from neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh) called for a march to Delhi to show their solidarity with striking workers. As farmers approached, the police sealed border roads to try to prevent them from entering Delhi. The farmers overturned barricades and continued to march. They were injured by cops who assaulted them with tear gas and water cannons. It’s important to note that tear gas is internationally classified as a chemical weapon that is illegal to use in war as per Geneva Protocol 1925, yet nation-states continue to use tear gas domestically to harm and deter popular revolutions.

Farmers have strong precedent to believe that laws deregulating agricultural markets will create yet another profiteering mechanism for Modi’s capitalist friends.(1)(2) Narendra Modi has been the Prime Minister of India since 2014 and his party (BJP) currently has a majority in the Parliament. Despite the fact that the BJP’s dubious leadership has been sinking India into insecurity for the last 6 years, the party’s politics still have sympathetic right-wing, “anti-communist” supporters. However, KAM has also ignited many people across the world who were previously indecisive to BJP’s regime to proactively oppose its blend of economic incompetence, fascism, nationalism, and caste supremacy politics. What began as a kisan-mazdoor ekta (farmer-worker solidarity) day march on that day is now an ongoing occupation and mass movement challenging the legitimacy of harmful governance.

Down with capitalist monopolies

Modi’s collaborative relationships with India’s richest person Mukesh Ambani and with coal mining billionaire Adani are well known. Organizing unions say  The Bharatiya Janata Party says that replacing regulatory laws with “free markets” based on “freedom” and “choice” are the “revolutionary reforms” that will make “a new India”. Certainly, the claim that capitalism is the best/only structure for growth or “development” is propagated widely, and not just by the BJP, but largely by the very capitalists funding the political campaigns of all major parties. In reality, sympathizers of capitalist governance find it hard to explain why a single corporate overlord should be free to hoard billions of dollars. The middle classes say, “It’s his wealth, he earned it”-- forgetting that no wealth in the world can be created without laboring workers, farmers, and unpaid care-workers. Protestors say that increasing private monopolies instead of improving existing local structures (1) (2) is not only the opposite of balanced governance but so unethical that they will not stand it. There is now also an international campaign to boycott all products sold by Ambani and Adani’s companies (1) (2) in India and internationally. You can go to asovereignworld.com to find a developing list of their products, businesses, and investors.

The ethics this revolution works on

Even as climate change is accelerating, political elites continue to use public institutions to strengthen empires of capitalists. 2020 is the time for an ethics of care, a politics of support. However, since the prime minister’s government has refused to consider repealing the laws, despite a number of experts pointing out its flawed assumptions and the farmers’ case for its potential to harm. Farmers and youth are done watching modern empires try to pass off their destructive extraction [from People and Planet] as “goodness,” “growth” or “empowerment.” The farmers’ uprising is a non-partisan issue: the farmers are frustrated with slimy political elites writ large: they have prohibited any party’s politicians from taking the stage at their protests. Since a lot has been written and propagated about the farm laws, here I want to focus on the working-class politics of unity that are at the heart of the Kisan Ekta Morcha. Here are three key lessons about the ethics behind revolutionary actions that are fueling one of modernity’s most well sustained mass uprisings. I pay special attention to present practices of care and the power of working-class led collectives in bringing revolutionary theories to life.

1. Our love for all beings terrifies fascist mindsets.

“Love is the weapon of the oppressed. Revolution is carried through our embrace.”

- Nisha Sethi

Hand in hand with an ignorance of the structural barriers that prevent the working-poor from accessing capital and ownership of land/resources, pro-government stooges also steadfastly believe that some lives are of more value than others. On the other hand, the Sikh and Punjabi organizers of this agitation can be repeatedly heard leading with chants such as, “Nanak naam chardi kala, tere bhane sarbat da bhala!” This prayer approximately translates to “Nanak, with your name we stay in high spirits, with your blessings may all beings be well!” The first Guru (divine guide) of Sikhism was Guru Nanak Dev Ji, a legendary figure loved by Indians. At the age of 14, he repudiated his caste-privileged birth and refused to be marked as a Hindu Brahmin. Instead, he created a framework that is the 4th most-followed in the world today, a faith that tells its followers to eliminate social hierarchies. While forms of hierarchy still exist within Sikh communities, like all others, they also continue to collectivize radical protest practices like serving langar and creating free, open schools. Nobody at or near the border sites is going hungry. Since the occupation began, thousands of farmers have arrived with rations and cooking utensils. Volunteers doing langar seva (service) have been serving vegetarian food to everyone. You can eat as much as you like, and payment is not part of the equation. Langar is the Sikh practice of sitting down on the floor to eat in community. What makes KAM langars even more radical is that unhoused people and working-poor children who live nearby are regularly joining langar with protestors.

On the matter of schooling and education for all, protestors Navjot Kaur and Kawaljit Kaur were the first to initiate ‘Phulwari’ (lit: flower garden) when they noticed that young children at Singhu Border were not attending school. Navjot Kaur has a Bachelor’s in Education and believes that awareness is the cornerstone of revolution, so they began teaching them with the help of volunteers. Activists have also created libraries on-site with revolutionary texts in Punjabi and Hindi, two of the languages most spoken among protestors. Everyone is welcome to take books to read, and contribute books they want others to have. The ecosystems I’ve described that people power has created resemble what anarchist Murray Bookchin described as a free municipality. A comrade told me that the Delhi Government refused to respond to their appeals for more portable toilets, so they reached out to their own networks, and a friend’s family contributed suction trucks. Their capacity to safely manage the waste on-site has now increased. Despite the chilling cold and an uncaring regime, farmers and their comrades are well-prepared to eat, debate, sleep, dance, pray, sing, and read on these streets until their demand is respected.

2. Creating communities based on care, not hierarchy, is an ancestral commitment.

 I’m a community organizer who experiences life at the intersection of systematic advantages I was accorded through no goodness of my own and multiple systemic disadvantages. So when I began actively creating an ethic of care to bring into the spaces I was helping to build, I started to notice that it is not as an individual that you unlearn patriarchal, colonial, or capitalist tendencies. The process of taking responsibility for change around you happens in community with people who’ve cared for you, and those you care for. Revolutionizing social relations requires seeing those dominating ways that have lived within your community as house guests for so long that unless you look closely, you would not be able to tell where the hierarchies end and the furniture begins. The farmers uprising has reaffirmed something for me about creating post-capitalist visions for a life where we get respect and support instead of violations and terror. It’s that capitalist mindsets can’t swallow the realities of these protestors being friends, families. Singhu and Tikri Border are places of ancestral reverence, where protestors as young as 4 and as old as 90 reify their commitment to sharing love and building futures that prioritize well-being.

Predominant portrayals of modern protests in which working people occupy the streets to demand more life-affirming material conditions most often depict able-bodied men as the orchestrators of action. When farmers first reached borders and news of their agitation began circulating, women were said to be largely absent from the ranks of protestors. Hearing this, some organizers acted with a class and gender consciousness uncritically and began centering testimonies from women. Shergill writes that “according to Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (MAKAAM) [Women’s Farmers Rights Forum], 75 percent of all farm work is conducted by women yet they own only 12 percent of the land.” This land ownership statistic will prove even more harmful for women if these laws are not repealed. The only “choice” they will be left with to earn a living, will be contracting out their bodies to Ambani Agro and Adani Agri Logistics.

3. Opposing one unjust hierarchization means discarding all in/visible forms of hierarchy.

Punjab is the place of my birth and ancestry. Our communities are large-hearted, and they are also rife with caste, patriarchal, and land-based degradation. Radical love is less a theory to be explained and more the undeniable bond we form in fleeting moments, and shared connections with our comrades who persist, despite the despair of our times. Radical love can look like accompanying uncomfortable exchanges, such as when a young protestor shared an image she took of two men: a Hindu priest and a Sikh elder who were engaged in conducting a ritual together, despite being from different religious backgrounds. Her caption said, “I wonder if they know the kid watching them and taking this photo is bisexual.” People who create revolutions and uprisings from the ground up have not forgone all prejudices within themselves. But they have taken a monumental risk; the risk to arrive within a public where they may be faced with forms of difference that they cannot immediately resolve. It is by intimately and carefully accompanying the tendency to distance ourselves from our own prejudices that we begin to circulate an ethic of care, a more considerate way of relating than one’s will to harm or hurt.

Author’s notes:

If you’d like to track on-ground updates, I recommend the following:

1. Trolley Times Official (IG: @trolley_times_official) - the protest’s own newspaper!

2. Instagram: Sikh Expo

   To hear more testimonies from the agitation:

1. Youtube: Scoopwhoop Unscripted (English subtitles available)

2. Videos: Aljazeera English’s coverage on the basics, including Shergill’s piece.

3. Web reportage: Newsclick.in, especially this (half-satirical but fact based) piece.

4. Kisan Ekta Morcha: the unions’ official handle on all social media platforms.

For thoughtful analyses of the farm laws:

1. P. Sainath, agricultural expert, for the Tribune, Newsclick, and the Wire.

2. Dr. Sudha Narayanan for the India Forum.

"Forcible Hindrances": On the Structural Violence of Capitalism and How People Respond To It

By Yanis Iqbal

In his 1845 book “The Condition of the Working Class in England”, Friedrich Engels wrote:

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another, such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessities of life, places them in conditions in which they cannot live,—forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence—knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual.”

Engel’s abovementioned remarks remain as pertinent today as they were when he wrote them. The Poverty and Shared Prosperity Report 2020 (PSPR2020) estimates that Covid-19 will likely push between 88 and 115 million people into extreme poverty i.e. those living under $1.90 a day. It is important to remember that the International Poverty Line (IPL) of $1.90 a day is ridiculously low — in 2011 in the US, $1.90 would have just been sufficient to buy a cup of coffee. Therefore, the magnitude of the process of existential erosion unleashed by the pandemic is likely greater than those being predicted by various financial institutions. The impoverishment of the majority is not solely due to the negative effects of the pandemic. It is closely linked to the brutal logic of neoliberalism capitalism which has instituted austerity-ravaged health infrastructures, precarized the everyday lives of workers through “flexible” jobs and detached itself from productive economic sectors through frenzied financialization. While innumerable people get mired in the vortex of poverty and endless suffering, billionaires are amassing unprecedented amounts of wealth, creating lagoons of affluence and privilege surrounded by oceans of mass misery.

What is happening today because of the fusion of epidemiological and economic crises is merely a stark manifestation of the endless murders being committed by capitalism for hundreds of years. Through accelerated capital accumulation and expanded exploitation, capitalism has cold-bloodedly reduced the state of existence to a process of rotting whose final destination is a harrowing death. This “structural violence” of capitalism is not an inadvertent byproduct of a perfectly functioning economic regime; it is an inseparable internal mechanism with the help of which capital satisfies its insatiable reproductive needs. Under neoliberalism, capital’s economic exigencies have displayed themselves in ever more acute forms like permanent unemployment, job insecurity, cuts in public spending and dispossession as a socially ravaged system desperately attempts to stave off economic crises. 

When confronted by the massive structural violence of capitalism, the subalterns inevitably search for alternative ways of living which would shield them from the ruination wreaked by the existing system. This conscious experience of the objective oppressiveness of capitalism leads to social conflicts between classes generated by antagonistic relations of production. These instances of class struggle act as subjective interventions in the structural conflict between forces and relations of production. As the forces of production develop, the relations of production, which once had facilitated their expansion, slowly began to impede further development. Through the direct action of subaltern subjects, the contradiction between the centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor is finally solved, leading to a revolution.

Understanding Bourgeois Democracy

While a revolution need not necessarily be violent, historical circumstances under capitalism have operated in such a way as to render violence the only viable method to overthrow the ruling class. Even after the establishment of parliamentary institutions and a “democratic” state, revolutionary violence has continued to act as a last resort for those who are the victims of globalization and necropolitical neoliberalism. In an 1878 article written by Karl Marx on the Anti-Socialist Law in Germany, we can find rough explanations regarding the conflictual presence of revolutionary violence and bourgeois democracy:

“An historical development can remain “peaceful” only so long as no forcible hindrances are placed in its path by those holding power in society at the time…the peaceful movement could become a "violent" one on encountering the resistance of those interested in the old state of affairs…In fact the government tries to crush by force development which is inimical to it although legally invulnerable.”

The “forcible hindrances” are constituted by the state under capitalism. The capitalist state is not an autonomous entity working outside the logic of accumulation; it a highly complex terrain of class struggle embodying the conflict between accumulation and legitimacy. On the one hand, the political power of state is incapable of independently organizing production — property is private and the productive sectors of the economy are in the hands of private companies to whose activities the state has to continually react. In so far as the state is unable to construct a self-supporting productive base and depends on revenues from surplus extraction, its capacities are indirectly determined through private productivity and profitability. This means that politicians and officials have to strengthen capital accumulation to be able to exist within the state. On the other hand, the ruling dispensation brought to power through electoral means has to maintain hegemony within the citizenry if it does not want a crisis of legitimacy to destabilize its tenure.

The conflict between accumulation and legitimacy is maintained and balanced by using coercive power against those political forces which raise issues that cannot be structurally accommodated within the limits of capitalistic democracy that only allows for insufficient and gradual changes. When the subalterns become cognizant of this structural limitation of bourgeois democracy, they are compelled to utilize revolutionary violence to regain agency and put forth their demands in a visible way.

In the current conjuncture, the internal disjunctions of bourgeois democracy are increasingly coming under stress under as the subalterns articulate new demands which are opposed to the murderous mechanisms of capitalism. In the US, for example, the George Floyd uprising — one of the largest movement in US history — highlighted the racist veins of capitalism and explicitly foregrounded the structural violence of capitalism. Since the American rebellion expressed demands which transcended the delimited area of bourgeois democracy, it was met with heavy state repression. Apart from the US, sustained protests have also occurred in Colombia where the concentrated anger of the subalterns against neoliberalism coalesced around the issue of police brutality — identified as one of the constitutive components of a wider picture of injustice. Like the Black rebellion in America, the Colombian protests, too, were violently subdued through the sheer use of force.

Revolutionary Violence: The Ethical Dimension

As class struggle continues to intensify across the world, a theory of revolutionary violence which is able to build the foundations of politico-ethical hegemony for the Left will likely form. If a coherent theory of revolutionary violence is formed, leftist forces worldwide will get access to a tool which is capable of breaking the cycle of parliamentary violence and consolidating a new constellation of social forces. The application of revolutionary violence against class enemies has always acted as an addendum to politics and has historically been invariably interwoven with and subordinated to careful efforts aimed at forming ideological bases of counter-hegemony within the womb of capitalist society.

In the last instance, revolutionary ideology acts as the primary factor behind the overthrow of capitalism. To use the words of Fidel Castro,

“Just ideas have greater power than all the reactionary forces put together… ideas are and always will be the most important weapon of all…There is no weapon more powerful than a profound conviction and clear idea of what must be done. It is with these kinds of weapons, which do not require enormous sums of money, but only the capacity to create and transmit just ideas and values, that our people will be increasingly armed. The world will be conquered by ideas, not by force”.

While giving a speech to the Hanover Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1899, Rosa Luxemburg had remarked that the proponents of revolution “are the last to take up violent means, the last to wish a brutal, violent revolution on ourselves…such matters do not depend on us, they depend on our opponents”. Violence, therefore, has been a tactical necessity forced upon the proletariat by counter-revolutionary offensives throughout modern history. And while violence has certainly been one functional aspect of revolution, it is also a mode of struggle having ethical ramifications i.e. it is itself constitutive of the new humans that emerge from the revolutionary process. In so far that revolutionary violence has an ethical dimension, a moral framework has often been provided for its exercise. The basic structure of this moral framework can be outlined through two points.

Firstly, revolutionary violence has been performed strictly in keeping with the moral goal of destroying capitalism and correspondingly cleansing the world of structural violence and gratuitous deaths. This means that violence itself is ethically molded by the goal of revolution and is exercised to prevent further violence. In the concluding sentences of his essay “Tactics and Ethics”, Georg Lukacs had expressed this point eloquently: “only he who acknowledges unflinchingly and without any reservations that murder is under no circumstances to be sanctioned can commit the murderous deed that is truly - and tragically - moral.” From this statement, it is quite clear that revolutionary violence can be carried out only when individuals realize that the brutalization and degradation of human life under capitalism has to end. When revolutionary violence is conceived as such, it becomes an endeavor to replace moral narcissism —preservation of the purity of one’s soul at the expense of humanity as a whole — with a collectivist struggle for the destruction of a social order which constantly violates the right to life of an individual.

Secondly, since revolutionary violence has been guided and regulated by the moral ideals of socialism, it also has an internal code of ethics which balances the ends (socialism) with the means (violence). The unification of means and ends has been necessary in so far that revolutionary violence has a direct bearing on the subjectivities of the individuals produced through class struggle. Furthermore, if violence is not mediated by ethical codes consonant with the goals of socialism, the process of struggle is emptied of its political meaning and deforms the goal itself. As Herbert Marcuse has said:

“No matter how rationally one may justify revolutionary means in terms of the demonstrable chance of obtaining freedom and happiness for future generations, and thereby justify violating existing rights and liberties and life itself, there are forms of violence and suppression which no revolutionary situation can justify because they negate the very end for which the revolution is a means. Such are arbitrary violence, cruelty, and indiscriminate terror.”

In order to understand the historical, ethical edifice of revolutionary violence, we need to differentiate between specific types of destruction. In Albert Camus’ play “The Just Assassins”, a leading character, Dora, asserts: “even in destruction there is a right way and a wrong way – and there are limits”. The right way is constituted by prefigurative methods of violence which act as embryonic expressions of the future. Through these prefigurative practices, a politico-ethical fabric of hegemony is woven which allows the subalterns to struggle in the present and at the same time experience the socialist future. Slavoj Zizek accurately outlines the contours of such a prefigurative struggle:

“Revolution is experienced not as a hardship over which the future happiness and freedom already cast their shadow – in it, we are already free even as we fight for freedom; we are already happy even as we fight for happiness, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Revolution is…its own ontological proof, an immediate index of its own truth.”

According to Norman Geras, ethical practices within the field of revolutionary violence comprise primarily of (1) the distinction between direct agents of class oppression and everybody else and (2) a notion of minimum force: “one's weapons must be capable of stopping enemy combatants, which in the given circumstances involves killing them; but they should not, beyond this, seek gratuitously to accentuate suffering.” Camilo Guevara — Che Guevara’s son — reiterates similar points and writes that “revolutionaries, even if they are being massacred sadistically, should invoke the use of force only when absolutely necessary, and even then, should never accompany it with cruelty. This idea is directly proportional to the condition of being a revolutionary”. When these kinds of ethical arrangements are integrated into revolutionary violence, a form of class struggle is produced which contributes towards the development of a subjectively enriching process of socialist humanization.

With the exacerbation of material conditions and rising subaltern resistance, the legitimacy of bourgeois democracy is constantly coming under threat. This tense period of disequilibrium is similar to past times, when revolution through the politically circumscribed use of violence has been one among the many tactics of revolution. The rationale behind the tactical use of violence was explained by Marx as thus: “the governments are opposed to us: we must answer them with all the means that are at our disposal…We must declare to the governments: we will proceed against you peaceably where it is possible and by force of arms when it may be necessary.” While revolutionary violence is underway in many parts of the world, it has not typically made its way into the imperial core. However, as capitalism’s contradictions come to a head, we are seeing more and more people flooding the streets, even within the US. Though revolutionary violence has historically functioned as a tactic, it also has moral aspects which need to be ethically structured to construct socialist hegemony among the subaltern classes. In the contemporary period, if it is to come about organically in response to capitalism’s structural violence, it can be visceral in nature (and thus misplaced at times) or ethically-informed, and thus utilized as a part of a broader organized movement to replace capitalism with socialism.