Encoding Anti-Blackness: Castration In the Digital Age

By Kahlil Martin

Like the Senegalese street vendors that sell heart pins imprinted with all the common Spanish names, El Negro de WhatsApp has become available for any cause. Like the cards aisle at Safeway, better yet, you can customize him yourself. A single Google images search will provide you with a daily ration of his infinite reconfigurations. When the meme first emerged, I belonged to several WhatsApp groups (classmates, football team, etc.), in which I was usually the only non-Spaniard, and always the only person who claimed any Black ancestry. It began as a Bait and Switch prank; you receive an innocent URL pertaining to something of interest (the bait), then as soon you bite, the link redirects you to El Negro de WhatsApp (the switch).  The bait could also be an image, cropped in such a way that he is hidden until you scroll down. In the original prank, he stands before a dirt road in front of several crumbling cinder block structures. His wiry frame supports only three articles of clothing: a plaid bucket hat that shadows his eyes, a blue towel draped over his shoulders and a green fishnet tank top. His left hand is supporting his 18-inch, flaccid, veiny penis. In fact, the penis is not his at all, it was created thanks to photoshop, a quality of the image that is often overlooked. From coffee mug to Christmas cheer, El Negro de WhatsApp outgrew the category of prank before its first birthday to become “the biggest meme produced by social media culture in our country” [1].

One street vendor’s name was Ousmane. Like so many other Senegalese men, he sent money home to his family, whom he only saw once every several years. As he is the prototypical African immigrant in Spain, it is not a stretch to suggest a representational correspondence between Ousmane and El Negro de WhatsApp, cached in the phones of so many Spaniards. Might we ask; Who is the true butt of the joke, the Spaniard who takes the bait? Or the object of humor, standing before the recipient with a basket full of trinkets and a fake smile? Ousmane’s inventory ranged from lighters and chewing gum to exotic keepsakes such as carved elephants and cowry shell jewelry.  He always said “perfecto” when asked “como estás?”. It would appear that the Spaniards who pass him by are trafficking a keepsake of their own; the photoshopped African body.

When this image startles the pranked individual, a scramble ensues to exit the page - the circumstances hardly provide time for reflection. Whether or not it’s real is beside the point. As far as Fanon’s prelogical thought is concerned, The Negro of WhatsApp stands for the African immigrant, invader from the south, an external threat to Spanish national integrity. Hordes of young Africans are swimming north, across the Strait of Gibraltar. Mothers hide their daughters, bishops cross themselves, the newspapers cry rape. The province I was living in at the time is glorified as the place where the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula began. This, as well as its being the only region not conquered by the Moors, is a source of great micronationalistic pride for the local Asturians. “Asturias es España, lo demás es tierra conquistada” [Asturias is Spain, the rest is conquered land] goes the saying. They even claim celtic ancestry, along with lighter hair and eyes, than their lazy southern counterparts. It is said that Rey Pelayo, blessed by the Our Lady of Covadonga, started throwing rocks at the Moors in 718 ad. Pelayo remains one of the most common names in Asturias to this day. He might have to start throwing rocks again.

Upon my return to the United States a parallel fantasy was waiting for me, only differing from El Negro in that it was molded to North American representations of Blackness. You may know him as Wood Sitting on a Bed, or Huge Penis Guy. Vice Magazine describes him as “The Man Bigger than the Meme”[2]. The big Black American athlete, three hundred pounds of muscle staring at you, legs open. Dubbed the “hero of the pandemic” by Know-Your-Meme[3]. This time, the bait was often an irresistible yet unbelievable coronavirus update. The man in the image is the late Wardy G. Joubert III, now available on Covid-19 masks and Christmas socks.

The meme, in this case a symbolic instrument of white culture, exists for only a fraction of a second on the viewer’s screen. By its very ephemeral nature it defies contextualization, but white people didn’t start collecting Black nudes today. A chronology was needed to rescue these memes from the retrograde amnesia of cyberspace. How do you anchor something in time if most people only see it for half a second?  The first two chapters of David Marriott’s treatise On Black Men offer themselves as an eclectic meditation on the history of Black male genitalia in photography. A macabre genealogy threaded through three seemingly isolated events; the use of kodaks at the lynching scene, the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, and the souvenirs of Jeffery Dahmer’s homoerotic, cannablist, murderous exploits.  Sufficiently eclectic to beckon the meme.

Marriott links these events by suggesting that “looking is a form of incorporation, of taking something inside”[4],  and draws from Otto Fenichel’s psychoanalytic interpretation of the ocular system; “‘the eye’ Fenichel writes, ‘is conceived as an organ that robs and bites’”[5]. I intend to stretch this reading to include El Negro and Wood, symbols which are too crudely phallic to refrain from dabbling in the itineraries of classic psychoanalysis. Having agreed to humor this aspect of Marriott’s work, my intention is not so much to directly entertain psychoanalysis as to engage with said interpretation as a guiding metaphor, or ancestry test of sorts, in order to contextualize these memes. My reluctance to rely or dwell on the shock value of On Black Men’s content should also be admitted. In any case I hope the blood splatter will speckle the ahistorical and humorous scaffolds of the meme, as you will see it is not I who has worked the initial connection between art and assault, but Marriott himself.

Insofar as El Negro and Wood, prior to the incisions of Adobe Photoshop, were photographs, and as such, faithful to certain constricts of the real, it is only fitting to touch ground with the first turn-of-the-century mass-produced roll-film camera. In this regard, the ubiquity of Kodaks at the lynching scene attests to the predilection of the camera for the ravaged Black body. ”The photograph is there to be gazed at, and fingered, over and over again: Look at me, I was there”[6] infers Marriott, who italicizes the lynching scene as a site of castration; “White men, and women, demand a keepsake, a memento mori: toes, fingers, or - most highly prized - a black penis”[7]. The tradition of collecting these keepsakes, mutilated and transformed, has weathered the test of time. Lest we forget that El Negro de WhatsApp is the handiwork of a skilled digital surgeon. But why collect these keepsakes at all? Marriott meditates on the function that looking upon the Black body in such a way has for the white psyche as he likens the camera lens to a prosthetic organ - a peculiar means of self-fashioning by embedding oneself in the flesh.

Now we turn from the gala of the lynching scene to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the year is 1989. You stand before Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio, a photograph of “a man, clad in leather, urinating into the mouth of another man” disrupts your field of vision[8]. Next you are confronted with images of a “trussed-up, lacerated scrotum and penis”[9]. Finally, you come across Mapplethorpe’s Black male nudes. “Sullen and heavy like the trunk of an elephant” muses a critic[10], as he describes Man in Polyester Suit; a photograph of a man’s waist, the Black penis “hanging, ‘veiny and pulpy’” from the pant zipper[11]. “So exotically weird” ...” inhuman, like some parasite species that has managed to graft itself on to the human form... The penis looks like an elephant's trunk, not really human at all, certainly not civilized.” writes a different observer[12]. These descriptions share an uncanny resemblance with those of El Negro de WhatsApp, whose fictitious genitalia were also dubbed elephantine - “un pene elefantiásico”- by El Confidencial[13]. The Museum goer (and prank recipient) suddenly finds that repulsion and attraction are not mutually exclusive. “How do you start to tell the difference between the two?” asks Marriott of the spectator struggling to separate disgust from desire[14].

This interplay is reminiscent of the pranked Spaniards and (white) Americans attempting to reconcile their homophobic values with a deep curiosity and intrigue in the Black body. How do we account for heterosexual men in two deeply homophobic cultures obsessing over artificially enlarged male genitalia? El Negro and Wood, two of the most circulated visual tropes today, happen to be stimuli few would admit to wanting to see. Does the recipient exit the page? Or does he inspect the goods? For Marriott, gazing intensely at an object implies an element of castration; “to incorporate, to eat, through the eyes; to want to look, and look again, in the name of appreciating and destroying, loving and hating.” are all part of the same process[15]. Exploiting this analogy to its fullest permits an interpretation of the photograph as the site at which this process of devouring and spitting out is recorded. The question that I intend to revisit is: what does this particular interpretation connote for software with the capacity to imperceptibly edit an image? But for now, what of Mapplethorpe “as a (white) man who cuts up bodies in the name of art”[16]? And of these photoshop specialists (presumably white) who cut up Black bodies in the name of humor? In this regard, On Black Men calls forth the violent history of the Black body and film; “‘the camera cuts away’” writes Marriott,” ‘like a knife, allowing the spectator to inspect the goods’”[17]. The reader cannot help but be reminded of the lynching spectator, to whom the camera offers itself as a means to cut something away and save it for later.

From this point on, whatever stood between figurative devouring of human flesh and actual cannibalism is thoroughly shaken, as the (white) serial killer, rapist, cannibal, and photographer Jeffery Dahmer is incorporated into our genealogy, an addition that Marriot admits, may appear to be outrageous. When a cache of Polaroids hidden in a drawer depicting “bodies naked and abed, ripped open and dismembered”, “images of scattered remains -- lungs, intestines, penises, livers and hearts”  was discovered by the Milwaukie Police Department of Wisconsin, it took the officers at hand several moments to conclude that the images were, in fact, real[18]. Dahmer’s surgical expertise in both photography and human anatomy, which he acquired in the military, lent a deeply unsettling, meticulous quality to his ineffably revolting obsession with the Black body. Marriott notes how his “bizarre ‘enshrinement and desecration’ also marks the aura of photographic memorabilia at lynching scenes” and, in considering the photographed bodies as “sliced open to the cruel yet determined gaze of a man”, he pushes us to consider how the perpetrator’s hands were no more guilty than his eyes[19]. “But was the best way of killing them to take their pictures; or the best way of picturing them to see them dead?”[20]. 

The chronicle of events developed by Marriott is somewhat at odds with Sadiya Hartman’s inclination to “illuminate the terror of the mundane and quotidian rather than exploit the shocking spectacle”[21]. While these distinct emphases are not incompatible, it would nonetheless appear that targeting an everyday artifact of internet culture aligns itself with a quotidian-oriented approach. In light of this concession it would be Marriott’s inclusion of Robert Mapplethorpe’s art that warrants any cross examination (or jumps) from his genealogy to our objects of concern. On this subject I should add that my account of On Black Men cannot possibly have done justice to Marriott’s synthesis of art, lynch mobs and serial killers. The point not to be missed here is that in all the events in which we have centered the Black man, the same organ is under siege, in much the same way.

The Well-Endowed Man and El Negro de WhatsApp images were first posted by the accounts misterflyy and aquastorm427, respectively. Assuming that the individuals behind these accounts are also the creators and editors of the original image, what can we say, for example, of aquastorm427 as they sat before the unedited original photo, freshly imported into Adobe Photoshop, mouse in hand, ready to cut and slice? Or of misterflyy, gazing, full of ideas at the original image with Photoshop’s surgical tool kit, prepared to sever and disfigure? As I asked before, where do these cyberspace anonymities laboring under the guise of humor, stand in comparison to Mapplethorpe as a man who slices bodies to produce art? If the camera is analogous to the eye, insofar as it “robs and bites and cuts into people” and the photograph to a relic on which this process is inscribed, then anatomically to which organs do we link Photoshop[22]?  Perhaps the mouth and hands that disembowel, transform and redetermine? The creation of these memes requires that the original image be castrated, the penis traced and staked out, then removed from the body and set aside in order to be enlarged and manipulated. The Black groin, in an act that reaches back centuries, is digitally castrated and helplessly returned, oversexed and rapacious, to the public eye, as fact.

It should be repeated that after the original bait and switch pranks began to circulate massively, the images have been subject to even more modifications and edits. In other words, the inflated Black penis, has since been extirpated from the already edited meme and inserted into an innumerable, and ever growing, amount of spin-off memes, similar pranks and merchandise. In this sense, the oversexed phallus of the captive body, now doubly castrated, has undergone a continuous process of distillation and abstraction. Fanon’s critique of Michel Cournot could equally have been meant for El Negro de WhatsApp. ”No longer do we see the black man; we see the penis: the black man has been occulted” he wrote[23]. Recalling how the bucket hat eclipses El Negro’s face, we see the Black man occulted once more.

“The object status of Blackness means that it can be placed and displaced with limitless frequency and across untold territories”[24]. Wood and El Negro are radio waves, bouncing off satellites just to make you squirm. I believe this has something to do with what Afropessimists have coined the fungibility of the Black; while being “substitutively dead”, it is also “passionately enabling”[25]. This helps to explain how the caricatured Black penis, now understood as “property of enjoyment”[26],  can be used to feel so many things; be it in its capacity to enable the avant-garde spectator of Mapplethorpe’s photography to be artistically pushed out of their comfort zone, to permitting Jeffery Dahmer to feel “oddly and humanly loved and alive.”[27], or to shock a friend with a text. In this line of thought, Matamoros-Fernández comments on how the “black male body in this meme is often transformed to humorously convey different emotions in everyday conversations on WhatsApp. White people can photoshop “El Negro de WhatsApp” with a shrunken penis and share the meme to express that the weather is cold, or commodify the same black body as an exaggerated reaction to the latest breaking news”[28]. Accordingly, the “limitless frequency” and “untold territories” that Wilderson writes of are even more relevant when we factor in the nature of cyberspace and the intensity with which these images are being modified and circulated. By anyone with a computer, they can be edited, cut, captioned and projected through space at light speed, eternally cached in the vast repository of the internet. “Liberated from time and space, belonging nowhere and to no one, simply there for the taking”[29].

To suggest that the operations, or mental behavior, that discern honesty from everything else occur at more than one level of consciousness bespeaks no allegiance to psychoanalysis. Photography presents itself as “preeminently a world of fact, not of dispute about facts or of conclusions to be drawn from them”[30]. The medium appears not to have been meddled with, an attribute that editing software subverts.  Assuming that a select few will consciously recognize these images as edits, it would be unwise to allege this recognition to all levels of consciousness. Afterall, how does fictitious photography fit into our previous representational schemata? The skilled Photoshop technician harnesses the polarized distinction between fictitious fabrication and photographic evidence. I find it timely to add that these two memes were not confirmed as edits until their metadata was run through Fotoforensics and their originals tracked down. In other words, there are no remnants of the operation that betray Wood or El Negro’s claim to the darkroom of evidence. Such software has the potential to be a smuggling route for dreams to enter the social imaginary as fact, a means to hide the creative process.  This sleight of hand universally disguises fantasies with unparalleled sophistication. After centuries of refining the act of disfiguring the Black man’s groin, European and American culture can sew him back together without leaving a trace of deadly fetishistic investment and compulsive fascination in, and with, the rhythm of Black physiology that lurks beneath the innocent facade of meticulously rearranged pixels. This helps to illuminate the violent element inherent to distorted representations in other mediums. When Black masculinity is hypersexualized by the orator, the writer, or the painter, the Black body still passes through the meat processor of cultural fantasy as these attributes are grafted onto the captive body. Here however, in the case of photoshop, this step is far more tangible as it is easily observed on the screen. 

The consequences for Black men of a rendezvous with a phobic image of themselves has as of yet been largely ignored, a question that sits as the primary concern of the introduction to On Black Men. Here Marriott engages at length with Baldwin and Fanon to remind us of how the Black man at grasp with these pranks is “both victim and spectator- spectator as victim” and signals the perils of surrendering to the screen[31]. If we pay heed to Fanon’s depiction of the Black psyche as “violently intruded upon and displaced by racial hatred and phobia” when considering the pranked Black individual[32], the situation of violent intrusion garners an additional layer. His guard is down, intrusion is then both literal (on the screen), and psychic. The reasons for which I have delayed addressing the dangers of the screen for Black people, as forewarned by Baldwin, is that said critique is primarily concerned with cinema, suffice to say a public viewing space. It is worth pointing out that while cyberspace offers a platform unprecedented in its capacity to harbor and disperse material of any kind, most Black people have no means of accessing, never mind negotiating, the content of non-Black chat rooms, or (WhatsApp) group chats.  Insofar as I have considered the ubiquitous utility of these memes a manifestation of fungibility, Frank Wilderson III comments on how “There is nothing real Black people can do to either check or direct this process”[33]. This could be aptly used to reflect on the safe-from-scrutiny quality of non-Black virtual spaces. This would make el Negro and Wood slightly more akin to an inside joke than a publicly displayed stereotype of white culture, a distinction that in no way intends to disregard the experiences of the many Black people who have been (and will be) ambushed by the switch.

Yet another question laid down by Fanon is nabbingly relevant; “Is the Negro’s [sexual superiority] real? Everyone knows that it is not. But that is not what matters. The prelogical thought of the phobic has decided that such is the case”[34]. The capacity of editing software to refurbish rumor as fact renders Fanon’s argument somewhat dated, as he does not factor in (nor could he have) the malleability of the digital. His reflections on representations of Black men describe a time when the imago was reproduced through folklore, oral tradition, literature and cinema. Today the genital power of the Black man, “out of reach of morals and taboos”[35], is perjured by distorted pixels, sustained by photographic documentation, no longer relegated to the plane of prelogical phobia. 

While these pranks do point to the imperative of implementing regulatory, internal, digital platform policies, it would be nothing other than disrespectful to thinkers such as Fanon and Wilderson to suggest that the sexual demonization of Black men could be curtailed through a gesture as abstract as coded policy. Nonetheless, understanding how these representations are molded to the limitations and possibilities imposed by technology aids in paying heed to the “tremendous capacity for reconfiguration in the service of continued dominance” of anti-Blackness[36].  The bulk of the literature made use of here to examine these images operates within the premise that the libidinal economy of non-Black life and the biological vilification of the Black man are inextricable. Acknowledging an endorsement of the demise, however fabled it may be, of American and European culture as we know it is the only scenario that permits a meaningful condemnation of these particular representations, while still faithfully engaging with the aforementioned authors.

Notes

[1] AS, Por fin sabemos de dónde surgió el “Negro del Whatsapp.” (May 15th, 2019), https://as.com/epik/2019/05/15/portada/1557912221_652932.html, (accessed August 20, 2020).

[2] Zaragoza, A. (2020b, June 9). The Untold Story of Wood, the Well-Endowed Man From Those Coronavirus Texts. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxeywy/the-untold-story-of-wood-the-well-endowed-man-from-those-coronavirus-texts,

[3] Know Your Meme, Bait and Switch Videos / Pictures. (August 17th, 2020), https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bait-and-switch-videos-pictures, (accessed August 20, 2020).

[4] David Marriott, On Black Men, 1st ed., Vol. 1, (Columbia University Press, 2000b), 25.

[5] Ibid, 27

[6] Ibid, 9

[7] Ibid, 9

[8] Ibid, 23

[9] Ibid, 23

[10] Ibid, 25

[11] Ibid, 25

[12] Ibid, 25

[13] Antonio Villarreal, La auténtica historia del “negro de WhatsApp.” (El Confidencial, December 31st, 2019) https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2019-05-10/meme-negro-whatsapp-historia-nsfw-123_1991262/#:%7E:text=En%20Italia%20circula%20el%20bulo,de%20WhatsApp’%20es%20John%20Umweto

[14] Marriott, On Black Men, 27

[15] Ibid, 27

[16] Ibid, 24

[17] Ibid, 28

[18] Ibid, 35

[19] Ibid, 36

[20] Ibid, 36

 [21] Sadiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Race and American Culture), 1st ed., (Oxford University Press, 1997), 4

[22] Marriott, On Black Men, 27

[23] Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, Revised ed., Vol. 1. (Grove Press, 1952), 147.

[24] Frank B. Wilderson III, Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, 1st ed., (Duke University Press Books, 2010), 235.

[25] Ibid, 234

[26] Ibid, 89

[27] Marriott, On Black Men, 39

[28] Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, ’El Negro de WhatsApp’ meme, digital blackface, and racism on social media. First Monday, 25(12), 2020 https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v25i12.10420 (accessed August, 8th, 2020).

[29] Wilderson III, Red, White & Black, 235.

[30] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, (Penguin Group, 1985), 73.

[31] Marriott, On Black Men, 4.

[32] Ibid, 10

[33] Wilderson III, Red, White & Black, 235.

[34] Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks,137.

[35] Ibid., 154

[36] Jared Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes, 1st ed., (Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2008), 133.

A Modest Proposal for Global Egalitarianism

By Hank Pellissier

Editor’s Note: The ideas and proposals expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Hampton Institute.

Walking under the freeway past the homeless encampment, you hear a voice, “I need 50 cents.” Ignoring the beseecher, you scan the news on your smartphone: Jeff Bezos now has $300 billion. Ahead, you see a struggling woman forced into an ICE van, next to signs promoting two candidates you despise but realize will control your future.

Does society have to be like this?

No. This essay will present an option, grounded in justice and liberty.

Global Egalitarianism is a political philosophy structured on the moral ideal of truly establishing all human beings as equals. 

We believe that concept, don’t we? All humans are equal in importance. This maxim inspired American and French revolutions, abolition of slavery, the women’s suffragette movement, gay rights, and every effort to overthrow a tyranny. 

All People Are Equal is the compassionate principle of modern, democratic civilization - we embrace this belief and expect others to react with anger if this ethos is violated. 

Earth should be an Egalitarian Planet. But it isn’t. 

Equality is distant dream today due to economic, social, and political institutions that divide rich and poor, powerful and powerless, bordered nations from bordered nations. 

In our 2020 world, people aren’t equal. The power of a rural, single mother in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is insignificant compared to a man addressing his cabinet at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. 

• The richest 1% earn 26.3 times more than the bottom 99%.

• There are 2,095 billionaires, but 71% of people live on less than $10 a day.

• There are more slaves on Earth than ever before.

• One person has visited every nation on Earth but millions have never been out of their village.

• 750 million people would emigrate, if they could.

• 52% of people are dissatisfied with their democracy, and 71 nations aren’t democratic.

• 4.5 million Americans have PhDs, but 775 million people in the world are illiterate.

Let us obsolete these depressing statistics and establish global egalitarianism instead, using the tools of Wealth Redistribution, Open Borders, and Pure Democracy. 

WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION

Robin Hood is an egalitarian champion because he ‘robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.’ Many others - like Juraj Janosik (Slovak folk hero), Phoolan Devi (‘Bandit Queen’ of India), and Jose Mujica (President of Uruguay) conducted illegal philanthropy similar to the fictitious yeoman of Sherwood Forest. Today the most laudable proponent of wealth redistribution might be Kshama Sawant of Seattle; she spearheaded the movement for $15/hour minimum wage and she’s presently seeking to nationalize Amazon.

“Redistribution” evokes fear and rage in the upper class; clutching their pearls they hiss, “I worked hard for my money” despite 60% of US wealth being inherited. Most middle income people also bristle when ‘leveling’ is considered - it’s derided as communist thievery to support ‘lazy people.’

Truth is, economic history is a long tragedy of powerful entities enriching themselves by stealing from the poor and middle class. Ethical people are appalled that peasants worked 4 unpaid days a week for their landlord, but today’s situation, where Warren Buffett ($82.47 billion) pays less taxes than his secretary is identically unjust.

The rich don’t need all their money; they just buy unnecessary toys with it, like 169 cars, or giraffes ($40,000 - $80,000) and platinum Arowana fish ($300,000), or a kitchen remodel every three years. I know a man living alone in a $40 million house; his beach town has 147 homeless people. Money doesn’t even ‘buy happiness’ - researchers discovered that more wealth simply creates more want. 

The “Happy Nations” list exhibits the smallest divide between rich and poor. Happy Nations have a smaller ratio between CEO & worker salaries - in #1 Finland the average CEO salary is $99,515 - in #18 USA it is $820,616.

How rich or poor would everyone be if wealth was divided equally, amongst the world’s inhabitants? What’s the PPP per capita? The answer is $17,110 - similar to China and Costa Rica. Plus - if the world had ‘open borders’ - economists estimate global wealth would elevate 50%—150%. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just double the first figure, for $34,220 - a digit between the economy of delightful Slovenia and popular Portugal. 

This figure would lift 2.7 billion people out of their present-day poverty, and of course, lower spoiled others to a more modest standard of living. Solid gold toilets would lose their customers - egads!

How can money be redistributed? Multiple methods exist; let’s quickly discuss a few:

Reparations - Fairness requires that assets stolen from a region are returned, in full, even if the assets were stolen many years ago. Unpaid labor should also be recompensed. It’s evident that Africans and Diasporans of African descent deserve retribution for the enslavement, exploitation, and colonization of their continent. India also deserves to be paid back ($45 trillion?) for the precious treasures the British overlords robbed during colonization, plus the 15-29 million Bengalis who starved to death in the World War II era famine, due to food diverted by Winston Churchill. Similarly, the Dalits (untouchables) deserve compensation from their oppressors for the subjugation they’ve endured. 

Armenians and Greeks deserve reparations from Turks; Congolese deserve reparations from Belgium (King Leopold enslaved the populace on rubber plantations and killed 10 million); South Africans deserve reparations for apartheid; Native Americans deserve reparations from European invaders; Jamaica deserves reparations from Britain; South Korea deserves reparations from Japan; Vietnam deserves reparations from the USA; Serbia deserves reparations from NATO, and Haiti deserves reparations from France. 

Land Reform - Property is overly-owned by the already-prosperous, who enrich themselves further via rentals and extracting resources. Revolts are launched to distribute land fairly, but not often enough and they aren’t always successful. (Model land reforms occurred in Cuba and South Korea.) Oftentimes, land reform is stymied by foreign powers who want to continue gorging themselves with the status quo. Guatemalan and Chilean leaders, for example, wanted land reform but were overthrown by USA-instigated coups. 

Land could be distributed equally, globally. The figures on this are fantastic. If 7.8 billion people divided all the habitable land on Earth, there’d be 2.3 acres per person, claims a University of Texas study.

The Federal Land Dividend strategy of Zoltan Istvan is also worth considering. His idea is to lease USA public land (the government owns 40% of USA acreage, worth $150+ trillion) to provide $1,000 month dividends to citizens. This proposal is a fusion of UBI, Nationalization, and Land Reform tactics. 

Nationalization - Public ownership of a region’s resources and industries is a sure-fire way to equitably distribute profit. Norway’s nationalization of its North Sea oil serves as an exemplary example; the profits guarantee the citizenry with free health care, free education, and pensions. Similar situations are evidenced elsewhere: Bolivia nationalized gas, petroleum, hydroelectricity, and lithium - the latter move led to Evo Morales’s ousting in a coup engineered by US shenanigans. Cuba nationalized all private businesses and factories, including 36 US-owned sugar mills; this led to its decades-long pariah status. Chile nationalized copper; Mexico and Venezuela nationalized oil; Pakistan nationalized steel mills; Quebec province in Canada nationalized hydroelectric; Sri Lanka nationalized tea, rubber, and cocoa; Italy nationalized Italia airlines; India nationalized banks, etc. 

Nationalization exists worldwide, but still, only a small fraction of resources are publicly owned. Far more could be done. The Socialist Alternative party has an egalitarian agenda: they want the 500 biggest corporations in the USA to be publicly owned. Nationalization is fairer than today’s system where products are created by billionaires who pay workers demoralizing salaries. (Apple workers in China work 60 hour weeks for low pay in unsafe conditions). 

Taxation - Progressive income tax, wealth tax, property tax, inheritance tax, sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), and other levies can be used to encourage wealth redistribution. The USA rich were taxed up to 91% in the 1950’s, an era with far better economic equity than today. French economist Thomas Piketty believes “billionaires should be taxed out of existence”; his viewpoint is supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “No billionaires”, in my opinion, is a very permissive limitation. I personally think no one needs more than $10 million - this easily guarantees you ‘never have to worry about money again.’

Wages - Minimum wage and maximum wages policies can be used to level the financial field. Luxembourg has the highest minimum wage in the world per nation - $14.12 an hour - but in the USA, that’s topped in at least 17 cities that offer $15/hour or more. If personal wealth, globally, was capped at $34,220 annually, as I previously suggested, $20/hour in a 36-hour work week would be sufficient. Maximum wages only exist in Cuba - this strategy was voted on in Switzerland in 2013 but it failed to pass, receiving just 34.7% of the vote. An obviously target for maximum wage limits is the USA, where corporate CEOs are paid 361 times more than workers.

Universal Basic Income - UBI has accelerated quickly from ‘crazy idea’ to ‘practical solution.’ Early implementations in Canada, Namibia, Finland, Alaska and Stockton, California, suggested its potential. Andrew Yang campaigned for President with UBI as his signature goal. 20th century proponents like Martin Luther King Jr. and Richard Nixon suggest UBI’s major party appeal; Libertarians also appreciate its ability to reduce welfare bureaucracy. UBI guarantees citizenry - either all or selected segments - a monthly check to spend as they please. The Covid-19 pandemic sharply increased interest in UBI; by September 2020 policies were planned for Spain and 20-30 USA cities. 

Corporate Sharing & Worker Power - Germany gives workers significant representation in management, with 50% of the supervisory board of directors elected by labor. Their seat at the table guarantees they won’t be mistreated, like warehouse workers at Amazon, who are automatized and “treated like robots” - or at Tesla, oft-accused of racial hostility and discrimination. Strong unions also provide “higher wages, better benefits, increased economic mobility, and reduced poverty.”

Communes & Cooperatives - Numerous egalitarian communities exist, where members live and work together, sharing labor and profit from their enterprises. Examples include Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia, Hutterite colonies in Canadian and US prairie states, and kibbutzim in Israel. Cooperatives and collectives also thrive worldwide, with research indicating they are more productive than hierarchal companies. Spain has more than 18,000 co-operatives, a legacy from the anarcho-syndicalist movement that preceded the Spanish Civil War. 

OPEN BORDERS

Open Borders are essential in creating Global Egalitarianism. Allowing free and easy immigration to every corner of the planet will deliver these benefits:

• People with specific job skills can relocate to an area where their potential can be maximized.

• People seeking education in their field of interest can move to receive the training they want.

• Commercial items can be transported easily without punitive tariffs and inspections.

• Economists claim Open Borders would elevate global wealth by 50% - 150%. This seems obvious: today millions are unable to produce their potential because they live in environments unsuitable to their skills.

• People with an aversion or disinterest in the culture of their homeland can relocate easily to other cultures where they can intellectually and emotionally thrive.

• People trapped in an overpopulated region or an area ‘going underwater’ due to climate change, can settle smoothly into a safer or less-crowded geography.

• Dangerous mindsets like patriotism, nationalism, and xenophobia will be avoided if everyone can relocate internationally, establishing cordial relationships across the globe.

• War between hostile nations will become increasingly rare if individuals see themselves as global citizens, instead of warriors for a single state.

• Understanding and empathy for all humanity will be elevated if borders are eliminated. Today’s demarcation of WE vs. THEM promotes dehumanization and suspicion of the ‘other.’

• 10. Cultural forms and intellectual ideas will flourish if access is enhanced.

Arguments against Open Borders are listed below, with rebuttals. 

Criminals will escape their homelands and invade unsuspecting neighboring nations!

   — Easily preventable. Access to international travel can be denied to those with a criminal record.

Immigrants from impoverished lands will migrate and seize all the best jobs in foreign lands.

   — Studies indicate most people choose not to move. Example: residents from the impoverished state of West Virginia ($24,774 per capita) seldom relocate 500 miles to the wealthy state of Connecticut ($76,456 per capita). This objection also lacks the morality that global egalitarianism requires. Is it ethical to deprive someone of livelihood because they didn’t grow up as your neighbor? Should their value be lessened because they’re categorized with the subhuman label of ‘alien’? Thirdly, immigrants are generally hired in employment niches the natives lack sufficient numbers to fill. Example: USA needs computer engineers, who are subsequently hired from China, India, Russia, etc. 

Local Culture will be destroyed. 

   — This is the weakest argument of all, as anyone who has eaten a juicy fish taco in Minnesota can testify. Culture survives because it provides joy and speaks to the human condition. Ghanaians celebrate both Christian and Muslim holidays, because they’re all fun. Music, art, cinema, literature and cuisine always borrow across borders: Cubism was inspired by West African masks; the violin (invented in Italy) is instrumental in Chinese concerts; spicy peppers, originating in Peru, are essential in Korean cooking; Nobel Prize novels and Oscar-winning films are applauded everywhere. 

PURE DEMOCRACY

Global Egalitarianism requires huge improvement in politics so all people are truly equal. Most democracies in the world are terrifically flawed; many have been re-classified as ‘oligarchies’ - rule by the rich. Pure Democracy is a goal no nation has yet attained, or is even close to. Achieving this has to be done incrementally. Below are suggestions in approximate order:

• Abolish Anti-Democratic Institutions. Many systems today subvert the will of the majority. These institutions need to be eliminated, or drastically reformed. In the USA this initial step requires abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College, electing Supreme Court justices, and transferring commander-in-chief powers from the President to the House of Representatives.

• Campaign Finance Reform. Political contests need to be publicly-financed - no outside money at all. Candidates abusing this must be disqualified.

• Abolish Lobbyists. Politicians cannot accept funding or favors from corporations and special interest groups; this obviously influences their votes. Washington DC needs to cleanse itself from all potential bribery.

• Ranked Choice Voting. This helps select politicians the majority can at least tolerate, and it eliminates the need to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils.’

• Adopt the Parliamentary System. Presidential government (adopted by 52 nations) is far less democratic than the Parliamentary system, enjoyed in 102 nations. The Parliamentary system enables smaller party representation, it reduces the power of the Executive branch, and it encourages multi-party collaboration.

• Encourage Secessions. Individual political power is elevated if the citizen belongs to a smaller group. A voice is more likely to be heard if it is one voice out of 100,000 - 10,000,000 instead of one voice out of 300,000,000 - 1,300,000,000. Eight of the Top Ten “Most Democratic Nations” have 10 million people or less, and none has more than 35 million people. To guide the world towards this, support separatist groups in Catalonia, Galicia, Flanders, Scotland, Chiapas, California, Texas, and Darfur - and support the desire of Berbers, Kurds, Yakuts, Batwa, Canarians, Balinese, Karenni, Assamese, Uygurs, Punjabi, Rwenzururu, and dozens of other ethnicities to govern themself.

• Demand Initiatives and Referendums (also known as Proposition or Plebiscites). “R & I’s’ provide ballot measures to the citizenry, so they can directly vote on reforms advanced by other citizens. (Surprisingly, 24 states do not even offer this option) Switzerland and Ireland offer the most referendums in Europe. In Asia, The Philippines is prolific with plebiscites.

• Poli Sci Education Required? Fear of ‘mob rule by idiots’ is often just elitism, but it would be alleviated if citizens has to pass information and logic tests for the right to vote.

• Abolish Politicians. Representative democracy is flawed because politicians are often narcissistic, authoritarian, and corrupt. If direct democracy referendums are in place, there’s no need for conniving intermediaries.

• Emulate Rojava Communalism - Rojava - the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria - governs itself with a ‘communalist’ structure, designed by American political philosopher Murray Bookchin. Rojavans enjoy enormous power at the community level; its ‘bottom-up system’ provides a voice to everyone. The long-term goal of communalists is to organize Earth’s inhabitants into thousands of self-governing communities that are intrinsically linked into non-competitive, ever-large confederacies.

CONCLUSION

Do you find these utopian ideas preposterous? Science fictional? A wonky, cringe-inducing re-write of John Lennon’s “Imagine’?

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Disillusionment with the status quo, twinned with social media, can create rapid change.

Global Egalitarianism is the future we need.

References

Introduction

Jeff Bezos - $300 billion https://www.ccn.com/jeff-bezos-300-billion-amazon-becomes-worlds-8th-largest-economy

Global Egalitarianism https://globalegalitarianism.wordpress.com/about/ https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_96 https://simoncaney.weebly.com/global-egalitarianism.html

equality inspires revolutions, etc. https://www.nps.gov/revwar/unfinished_revolution/01_all_men_are_created_equal.html

richest 1% earn 26.3 times more than bottom 99% https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/07/29/5-mind-blowing-statistics-about-the-richest-1.aspx

2,095 billionaires https://indianewengland.com/2020/04/forbes-releases-34th-annual-list-of-global-billionaires-includes-several-indians-and-indian-americans/

71% of people live on less than $10 a day https://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/economy/global-low-income/index.html

more slaves on Earth than ever before https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/slaves-time-human-history-article-1.3506975

One person has visited every nation on Earth https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/man-has-visited-every-country-in-the-world/

750 million people would emigrate, if they could https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-worldwide-migrate.aspx

52% of people are dissatisfied with their democracy https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/02/27/satisfaction-with-democracy/

71 nations aren’t democratic https://www.reference.com/world-view/countries-democracy-8f9e05f7d96a76e7

775 million adults are illiterate https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/global-rate-of-adult-literacy-84-per-cent-but-775-million-people-still-cant-read/article4528932/#:~:text=There%20are%20775%20million%20people%20in%20the%20world,in%20their%20footsteps%20because%20they%20aren%27t%20attending%20school

Wealth Distribution

Juraj Janosik (Slovak folk hero) https://www.slavorum.org/juraj-janosik-legendary-slovak-thief-turned-hero/

Phoolan Devi (‘Bandit Queen’ of India) https://www.britannica.com/biography/Phoolan-Devi https://medium.com/@mishra18tanvi/phoolan-devi-the-real-bandit-queen-of-india-2fb09b35d17f

Jose Mujica (eventual President of Uruguay) https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/jos%C3%A9-mujica-uruguays-robin-hood-guerrillas-9066

Kshama Sawant of Seattle - $15/hour minimum wage https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/05/kshama-sawant-seattle-socialist.html

nationalize Amazon https://theoutline.com/post/6587/nationalize-amazon-make-bezos-our-bitch?zd=1&zi=ys72jrku

60% of US wealth inherited https://evonomics.com/americans-get-rich-stay-rich/

peasants had to work 4 days a week unpaid for their landlord http://www.lordsandladies.org/serfs.htm#:~:text=The%20daily%20life%20of%20a%20serf%20was%20dictated,the%20lord%27s%20mill%2C%20and%20pay%20the%20customary%20charge.

Warren Buffett pays less in taxes than his secretary is identically unjust https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/338189

unnecessary toys… like 169 cars https://www.thethings.com/priciest-cars-jay-leno-owns-and-cheapest/

giraffes ($40,000 - $80,000) https://www.exoticanimalsforsale.net/giraffe-for-sale.asp

Asian Arowana fish ($300,000) https://nypost.com/2016/06/05/this-fish-is-worth-300000/

beach town has 147 homeless people https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/news/story/2019-10-01/aliso-viejo-denounces-federal-judges-statement-alleging-it-dumped-homeless-in-laguna-beach-shelter

more wealth simply creates more want https://www.livescience.com/10881-global-study-money-buy-happiness.html

“Happiest Nations” https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/#29f843517850

#1 Finland the average CEO salary is $99,515 https://www.payscale.com/research/FI/Job=Chief_Executive_Officer_(CEO)/Salary

#18 USA it is $820,616 https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/chief-executive-officer-salary

per capita income - $17,110 - similar to China and Costa Rica https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/

Open Borders - global wealth would elevate 50% - 150% https://openborders.info/utilitarian/#:~:text=Utilitarian%20justifications%20for%20open%20borders%20hinge%20on%20the,economic%20production%20%28see%20our%20double%20world%20GDP%20page%29

Reparations

Africans deserve reparations https://nehandaradio.com/2020/05/25/tafi-mhaka-europe-should-pay-reparations-for-colonising-africa/

India deserves reparations https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33618621

Dalits (untouchables) deserve compensation https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india-dalits-reservation-representation-suraj-yengde-6523483/

Armenians deserve reparations from Turks https://ahvalnews.com/armenians-turkey/turkey-may-face-reparation-demands-after-us-recognises-armenian-genocide-turkish

Greeks reparation from Germany https://breakingnewsturkey.com/world/greece-demands-germany-pays-war-reparations

Congolese reparations from Belgium https://www.africanexponent.com/post/9792-will-belgium-ever-apologize-to-drc-and-pay-reparations

South Africans reparations for apartheid https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/south-africa-reparations-for-aparthied

Native Americans reparations from European imperialists https://study.com/academy/lesson/native-american-reparations.html

Jamaica reparations from Britain https://moguldom.com/189262/jamaica-wants-britain-to-pay-billions-in-reparations-for-slavery/

South Korea reparations from Japan https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-08-17/japan-korea-and-the-tquestion-of-how-to-pay-for-historic-wrongs

Vietnam reparations from the USA https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/18/opinion/the-forgotten-debt-to-vietnam.html

Serbia reparations from NATO https://europediplomatic.com/2019/09/15/moscow-suggests-us-reparations-for-yugoslavia-bombings/

Haiti reparations from France https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/haiti-reparations-france-slavery-colonialism-debt/

Land Reform

Cuba land reform https://cubaplatform.org/land-reform

South Korea land reform https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/12/for-asia-the-path-to-prosperity-starts-with-land-reform https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/opinion/sa-could-model-its-land-reform-on-the-success-achieved-in-south-korea-10450729#:~:text=South%20Korea%E2%80%99s%20land%20reform%20is%20regarded%20as%20one,impact%20on%20agricultural%20productivity%2C%20which%20later%20sustained%20poverty-reduction

Guatemalan coup https://www.umbc.edu/che/tahlessons/pdf/historylabs/Guatemalan_Coup_student:RS01.pdf

Chilean coup https://foodfirst.org/publication/agrarian-reform-and-counter-reform-in-chile/

7.0 billion people divide Earth - 2.3 acres each https://foodfirst.org/publication/agrarian-reform-and-counter-reform-in-chile/

The Federal Land Dividend - Zoltan Istvan https://www.businessinsider.com/basic-income-with-federal-land-dividend-2017-7

Nationalization

Norway nationalization https://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-08-oil-together-now-nationalisation-lessons-from-norway/

Bolivia nationalization https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/bolivias-nationalization-oil-and-gas https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bolivia-power-nationalization-idUSTRE64013020100501

Bolivia coup engineered by US for lithium https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/morales-claims-orchestrated-coup-tap-bolivia-lithium-191225053622809.html

Cuba nationalizes 36 US-owned sugar mills http://en.cubadebate.cu/news/2015/08/10/cuba-nationalizes-us-companies/

Chile nationalized copper https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Chilean_nationalization_of_copper.html

Mexico and Venezuela nationalized oil https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-venezuela-mexico-three-ways-nationalize-oil-150004780.html

Pakistan nationalized steel mills https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/pakistans-nationalized-steel-mills

Quebec nationalized hydroelectric https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/hydro-qubec-why-nationalize-the-electricity-sector

Sri Lanka nationalized tea, rubber, and cocoa http://teasrilanka.org/history

Italy nationalized Italia airlines https://www.businessinsider.com/alitalia-nationalized-by-italy-history-2020-3

India nationalized banks https://www.oneindia.com/feature/full-list-of-nationalised-banks-in-india-2718000.html

Socialist Alternative wants the 500 biggest corporations in the USA to be publicly owned https://www.socialistalternative.org/about/

Apple workers in China work 60 hour weeks for low pay in unsafe conditions https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/electronics/9174900/Apples-Chinese-staff-work-60-hours-a-week-independent-audit-finds.html

Taxation

US rich were taxed up to 91% in the 1950’s https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-taxing-wealthy-americans/

Thomas Piketty “billionaires should be taxed out of existence” https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html

‘no billionaires’ - Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/politics/bernie-sanders-ultra-wealth-tax-billionaires/index.html https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/02/aoc-billionaires-should-not-exist/

$10 million - ‘never have to worry about money again.’ https://www.getrichslowly.org/is-10-million-enough/ 

Wages

Luxembourg minimum wage - $14.12 an hour https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-countries-with-the-highest-minimum-wages.html

USA 17 cities with at least $15/hour minimum wage https://time.com/3969977/minimum-wage/

vote in Switzerland 2013 failed, receiving 34.7% of the vote https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/24/switzerland-votes-against-cap-executive-pay

USA CEOs are paid 361 times more than workers https://popularresistance.org/why-are-ceos-paid-361-times-more-than-their-average-employees/

Universal Basic Income

UBI in Canada https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/mincone-experiment-in-dauphine-manitoba

UBI Namibia https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/ubi-in-nambia

UBI Finland https://basicincome.org/news/2019/04/finland-further-results-from-the-famous-finnish-ubi-experiment-published/

UBI Alaska https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/alaskaubi

UBI Stockton, California https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-extends-its-universal-basic-income-pilot

UBI Martin Luther King Jr. https://www.egalitarianplanet.org/martin-luther-king-jr

UBI Richard Nixon https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/

Libertarians UBI https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income

UBI Spain https://www.businessinsider.com/spain-universal-basic-income-coronavirus-yang-ubi-permanent-first-europe-2020-4

UBI 20-30 USA cities https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/08/universal-basic-income-gains-momentum-in-america

Corporate Sharing and Worker Power

Germany worker representation - 50% of the supervisory board of directors https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-08-24/why-german-corporate-boards-include-workers-for-co-determination#:~:text=Wherever%20on%20that%20spectrum%20your%20views%20lie%2C%20it,or%20require%20some%20such%20form%20of%20employee%20%E2%80%9Cco-determination.%E2%80%9D

Amazon workers “treated like robots” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse

Tesla accused of racial hostility and discrimination https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-12/tesla-workers-claim-racial-bias-and-abuse-at-electric-car-factory

Union benefits https://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/economy/reports/2016/06/09/139074/unions-help-the-middle-class-no-matter-the-measure/

Communes and Cooperatives

Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia https://www.twinoaks.org/

Hutterite colonies http://www.hutterites.org/

Kibbutzim https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-the-kibbutz-movement

collectives more productive than hierarchal companies https://cccd.coop/news/%EF%BB%BF-worker-cooperatives-are-more-productive-normal-companies

Spain 18,000 co-operatives https://www.theguardian.com/social-enterprise-network/2012/mar/12/cooperatives-spain-mondragon

Open Borders

Open Borders General Info https://openborders.info

Open Borders elevate global wealth 50% 150% https://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

USA imports computer scientists   https://www.prb.org/usforeignbornstem/

Cubism inspired by West African masks https://www.pablopicasso.org/africanperiod.jsp

Pure Democracy

Abolish Anti-Democratic Institutions https://hankpellissier.com/sixteen-reforms-to-improve-usa-democracy

Ranked Choice Voting https://www.fairvote.org/rcvbenefits#:~:text=%20Benefits%20of%20Ranked%20Choice%20Voting%20%201,more%20voices%20are%20heard.%20Often%2C%20to...%20More%20

Superiority of the Parliamentary System https://lebassy.blogspot.com/2006/07/superiority-of-parliamentary-system.html

“Most Democratic Nations” https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries

Separatist and Secessionist groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession

24 states do not have Referendums and Initiatives https://ballotpedia.org/States_without_initiative_or_referendum

Switzerland and Ireland offer the most referendums in Europe https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/switzerland-held-9-referendums-already-2016-11727#:~:text=Switzerland%20has%20been%20holding%20referendums%20since%20the%2018th,to%20the%20polls%20more%20often%20than%20the%20UK.

Rojava Communalism https://itsgoingdown.org/the-communes-of-rojava-a-model-in-societal-self-direction/ https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2020/08/20/the-two-faces-of-kurdistan/ https://roarmag.org/essays/communalism-bookchin-direct-democracy/

Murray Bookchin https://www.britannica.com/biography/Murray-Bookchin

Blood, Breastmilk, and Dirt: Silvia Federici and Feminist Materialism in International Law

By Miriam Bak McKenna

Republished from Legal Form: A Forum for Marxist Analysis of Law

If the politics of gender have been dragged front and centre into public discourse of late, this shift seems to have evaded international legal scholarship, or legal scholarship for that matter. Outside feminist literature, discussions of gender continue to be as welcome as a fart in a phonebox among broader academic circles. Unfortunately, Marxist and historical materialist scholarship fare little better. Despite periods in the 1960s and early 70s when their shared belief in the transformative potential of emancipatory politics flourished, Heidi Hartman had by 1979 assumed the mantle of academic marriage counselor, declaring that attempts to combine Marxist and feminist analysis had produced an “unhappy marriage”. [1] Women’s interests had been sidelined, she argued, so that “either we need a healthier marriage, or we need a divorce”. [2] Feminists pursued the latter option and the so-called “cultural turn”–a move coinciding with the move away from the “modernist” agenda of early second-wave feminism towards postmodern perspectives.

Not all feminists, however, took the cultural turn or wholeheartedly embraced postmodernism. Many continued to work within broadly materialist frameworks. Silvia Federici, known prominently for her advocacy of the 1970s Wages for Housework demand, continued the Marxist feminist momentum in her advocacy and scholarship by overseeing a revision or perhaps even reinvention of materialist feminism, especially in the United States. Federici’s work on social reproduction and gender and primitive accumulation, alongside a small but active group of materialist feminists (particularly Wally Seccombe, Maria Mies and Paddy Quick), brought a new energy to materialist feminism, making the capitalist exploitation of labour and the function of the wage in the creation of divisions within the working class (starting with the relation between women and men) a central question for anti-capitalist debate. Drawing on anti-colonial struggles and analyses to make visible the gendered and racialized dimensions of a global division of labour, Federici has sought to reveal the hierarchies and divisions engendered by a system that depends upon the devaluation of human activity and the exploitation of labour in its unpaid and low-paid dimensions in order to impose its rule.

In this post, I argue that Federici’s work offers a rich resource for redressing the conspicuous absence of a gendered perspective within academic scholarship on materialist approaches to international law. Materialist analyses of systematic inequalities within the international legal field are as relevant now as they ever were, yet the sidelining of gender and feminism within both traditional and new materialism has long been cause for concern. A gendered materialism in international law, which casts light on the logic of capitalist socialization and which affords the social reproductive sphere equal analytical status, allows us to access a clearer picture of the links between global and local exploitation at the intersections of gender, race, and nationality, and provides new conceptual tools to understand the emergence and function of international legal mechanisms as strategies of dominance, expansion, and accumulation.

A Brief Portrait of a Troubled Union

In 1903 the leading German SPD activist Clara Zetkin wrote: “[Marx’s] materialist concept of history has not supplied us with any ready-made formulas concerning the women’s question, yet it has done something much more important: It has given us the correct, unerring method to explore and comprehend that question.” [3] In many respects this statement still rings true. While Marxism supplied means for arguing that women’s subordination had a history, rather than being a permanent, natural, or inevitable feature of human relations, it was quickly criticized for marginalizing many feminist (and other intersectional) concerns. Feminist scholars in particular called attention to the failure of some forms of Marxism to address the non-economic causes of female subordination by reducing all social, political, cultural, and economic antagonisms to class, and the tendency among many traditional Marxist scholars to omit any significant discussions of race, gender, or sexuality from their work.

Marxist feminists (as well as critical race scholars and postcolonial theorists) have attempted to correct these omissions with varying degrees of success. The wave of radical feminist scholarship in the 1960s produced a number of theories of women’s domestic, sexual, reproductive, and cultural exploitation and subordination. Patriarchy (the “manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general” [4]) emerged as a key concept that unified broader dynamics of female subordination, while gender emerged as a technique of social control in the service of capitalist accumulation. Within this logic some proposed a “dual-system theory” wherein capitalism and patriarchy were distinct systems that coincided in the pre-industrial era to create the system of class and gender exploitation that characterizes the contemporary world. [5] Others developed a “single-system theory” in which patriarchy and capitalism “are not autonomous, nor even interconnected systems, but the same system”. [6]

During the 1970s, discussions turned in particular to the issue of women’s unpaid work within the home. The ensuing “domestic labour debate” sought to make women’s work in the home visible in Marxist terms, not as a private sphere opposed to or outside of capitalism but rather as a very specific link in the chain of production and accumulation. By exploring its strategic importance and its implications for the capitalist economy on a global scale, this analysis helped show that other forms of unpaid work, particularly by third world peasants and homeworkers, are an integral part of the international economy, central to the processes of capital accumulation. However, the Wages for Housework Campaign was criticized for failing to engage with broader social causes and effects of patriarchal oppression, as well as for essentializing and homogenizing the women it discussed. [7] These criticisms contributed to deep divisions between feminist thinkers on the left. A majority were to follow the lead of those like Hartman, arguing that Marx’s failure explicitly to examine domestic labour, coupled with the “sex-blind” analysis of most Marxist theorists, had prevented Marxism from adequately addressing women’s working conditions. Describing this period, Sue Ferguson noted that the “festering (and ultimately unresolved) issue” fueling socialist feminist thought was the place of Marxist analysis. [8] This shift, meanwhile, was overtaken by the cultural turn in social theory and the question of “how women are produced as a category” as the key to explaining their social subordination, in which materialist issues such as the debate over domestic labour were largely discarded. [9]

WWF: Wages, Witches, and Fanon

Among the Marxist feminist scholars who stayed the course during the broader scholarly shift towards structuralism, a small group of materialist feminists, including Silvia Federici, began to expand the debates over the relationship between patriarchy and capital by integrating the complexities of various forms of reproductive labour into their work. Led by such notable figures as Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, Leopoldina Fortunati, Maria Mies, Ariel Salleh, and Federici herself, their work on the sphere of social reproduction, which had largely been neglected in Marxist accounts, brought new energy to the materialist debate. In particular, responding to the above-mentioned critiques, they shifted their perspectives to develop situated accounts of the role of women in the global geopolitical economy that incorporated overlapping issues of imperialism, race, gender, class, and nationality.

The arc of Federici’s scholarship mirrors to a large extent the broader shifts within late-twentieth century Marxist feminism. Inspired to pursue a PhD in the United States after witnessing the limitations placed upon her mother, a 1950s housewife, her arrival coincided with an upswing of feminist activity in U.S. universities. Federici’s first publication, titled Wages Against Houseworkand released in 1975, situated itself within the domestic labour debate, drawing on Dalla Costa and James’ arguments that various forms of coerced labour (particularly non-capitalist forms) and generalized violence, particularly the sexual division of labour and unpaid work, play a central function in the process of capitalist accumulation. This structural dependence upon the unwaged labour of women, noted Maria Mies, meant that social reproduction is “structurally necessary super-exploitation”–exploitation to which all women are subjected, but which affects women of colour and women from the global South in particularly violent ways. [10]

In Wages Against Housework, Federici expanded these social reproduction insights into a theory of “value transfer”, focusing on the dependence of capital on invisible, devalued, and naturalized labour. Contrary to the prevailing ideology of capitalism, she argues, which largely depicts labour as waged, freely undertaken, and discrete, the reality is that–especially where women are concerned–labour is often coerced, constant, proliferating, and uncompensated. “We know that the working day for capital does not necessarily produce a paycheck and does not begin and end at the factory gates”, she explains together with Nicole Cox in “Counterplanning from the Kitchen”. [11] Capitalism infiltrates and becomes dependent upon the very realm that it constructs as separate: the private life of the individual outside of waged work.

Central to Federici’s thesis is the need to analyze capitalism from the perspective of both commodity production and social reproduction in order to expand beyond traditional spaces of labour exploitation and consider all of the spaces in which the conditions of labour are secured. As Federici argues in Caliban and the Witch, traditional Marxist categories are inadequate for understanding fully processes of primitive accumulation. [12] She notes that “the Marxian identification of capitalism with the advent of wage labor and the ‘free’ laborer…hide[s] and naturalize[s] the sphere of reproduction”, and further observes that “in order to understand the history of women’s transition from feudalism to capitalism, we must analyze the changes that capitalism has introduced in the process of social reproduction and, especially, the reproduction of labor power”. [13] Thus, “the reorganization of housework, family life, child-raising, sexuality, male-female relations, and the relation between production and reproduction” are not separate from the capitalist mode of organization, but rather central to it. [14] The conflation and blurring of the lines between the spaces of production of value (points of production) and the spaces for reproduction of labour power, between “social factory” and “private sphere”, work and non-work, which supports and maintains the means of production is illustrated through her analysis of the household. Housework, Federici declares (and I am sure many would agree here) is “the most pervasive manipulation, and the subtlest violence that capitalism has ever perpetrated against any section of the working class”. [15] Housework here is not merely domestic labour but its biological dimension (motherhood, sex, love), which is naturalized through domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, and most insidiously through “blackmail whereby our need to give and receive attention is turned against as a work duty”. [16] For Federici, the situation of “enslaved women … most explicitly reveals the truth of the logic of capitalist accumulation”. [17] “Capital”, she writes,

Has made and makes money off our cooking, smiling, fucking”. [18]

In Federici’s historical analysis of primitive accumulation and the logic of capitalist expansion, both race and gender assume a prominent position. For Federici, both social reproductive feminism and Marxist anticolonialism allow historical materialism to escape the traditional neglect of unwaged labour in the reproduction of the class relation and the structure of the commodity. As Ashley Bohrer has explored, Federici, like many other Italian Marxist feminists, has drawn explicitly on the work of post-colonial scholars, most prominently Frantz Fanon [19], in developing their theories of gendered oppression. [20] In the introduction to Revolution at Point Zero, Federici explains how she and others drew on Fanon’s heterodox economics in expanding their analyses beyond the scope of the traditional capitalist spaces:

It was through but also against the categories articulated by these [civil rights, student, and operaist/workerist] movements that our analysis of the “women’s question” turned into an analysis of housework as the crucial factor in the definition of the exploitation of women in capitalism … As best expressed in the works of Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank and Frantz Fanon, the anticolonial movement taught us to expand the Marxian analysis of unwaged labour beyond the confines of the factory and, therefore, to see the home and housework as the foundations of the factory system, rather than its “other”. From it we also learned to seek the protagonists of class struggle not only among the male industrial proletariat but, most importantly, among the enslaved, the colonized, the world of wageless workers marginalized by the annals of the communist tradition to whom we could now add the figure of the proletarian housewife, reconceptualized as the subject of the (re)production of the workforce. [21]

Just as Fanon recasts the colonial subject as the buttress for material expansion among European states, so Federici and others argue that women’s labour in the home creates the surplus value by which capitalism maintains its power. [22] Federici contends that this dependence, along with the accentuation of differences and hierarchies within the working classes for ensuring that reproduction of working populations continues without disruption, has been a mainstay of the development and expansion of capitalism over the last few centuries, as well as in state social policy. Colonization and patriarchy emerge in this optic as twin tools of (western, white, male) capital accumulation.

Expanding upon Fanon’s insights about the emergence of capitalism as a much more temporally and geographically extended process, Federici regards the transition as a centuries-long process encompassing not only the entirety of Europe but the New World as well, and entailing not only enclosures, land privatization, and the witch hunts, but also colonialism, the second serfdom, and slavery. In Caliban and the Witch, she presents a compelling case for the gendered nature of early primitive accumulation, by excavating the history of capital’s centuries-long attack on women and the body both within Europe and in its colonial margins. For Federici, the transition was “not simply an accumulation and concentration of exploitable workers and capital. It was also an accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class, whereby hierarchies built upon gender, as well as ‘race’ and age, became constitutive of class rule and the formation of the modern proletariat”. [23] According to Federici, the production of the female subject is the result of a historical shift of economic imperative (which was subsequently enforced by those who benefited from such economic arrangements), which set its focus on women, whose bodies were responsible for the reproduction of the working population. [24] The goal was to require a “transformation of the body into a work-machine, and the subjugation of women to the reproduction of the work-force” [25], and the means “was the destruction of the power of women which, in Europe as in America, was achieved through the extermination of the ‘witches’”. [26] The witch–commonly midwives or wise women, traditionally the depository of women’s reproductive knowledge and control [27]–were targeted precisely due to their reproductive control and other methods of resistance. The continued subjectification of women and the mechanization of their bodies, then, can be understood as an ongoing process of primitive accumulation, as it continues to adapt to changing economic and social imperatives.

While a rich and engaging tradition of feminist approaches to international law has emerged over the past few decades, it has shown a marked tendency to sideline the long and multifaceted tradition of feminist historical-materialist thought. Similarly, within both traditional and new materialist approaches to international law, there has been a conspicuous sidelining of gender and feminism, along with issues of race and ethnicity. The argument for historical materialism in the context of international legal studies is not, as some critics have claimed, that women’s oppression ought to be reduced to class. Rather, the argument is that women’s experiences only make sense in the explanatory context of the dynamics of particular modes of production. However, this requires an adequate theory of social relations, particularly of social production, reproduction, and oppression, in order to sustain a materialist analysis that “make[s] visible the various, overlapping forms of subjugation of women’s lives”. [28]

It is my contention that Federici’s social-reproductive and intersectional theory of capitalism provides a path toward a more nuanced and sustained critique of the logic and structure of capitalism within the international legal field. This approach foregrounds the social–that is, social structures, relations, and practices. But it does not reduce all social structures, relations, and practices to capitalism. Nor does it depict the social order as a seamless, monolithic entity. Moving beyond traditional class-reductionist variants of historical materialism, capitalism emerges here as one part of a complex and multifaceted system of domination in which patriarchy, racism, and imperialism are fundamental, constitutive elements, which interact in unpredictable and contradictory ways.

As Federici’s scholarship has stressed, the importance of foregrounding social reproduction as part of the dynamic of capitalist accumulation, as facilitated by states and international institutions, is essential to any materialist analysis, including one of the international legal field. This is necessary for exploring women’s specific forms of oppression under capitalism, particularly as they are facilitated by the family and the state. For example, Federici’s insights into the domain of unpaid social reproduction and care work are useful for understanding women’s subordinated incorporation into labour markets, especially in the global South and in states affected by structural adjustment. Indeed, while the state largely facilitates women’s entry into the workforce, their categorization as “secondary” workers–“naturally” suited to care work and the fulfillment of physical and emotional needs, and “naturally” dependent upon men–has continually been reproduced to the detriment of their labour situation. [29]

While Federici’s social reproduction theory begins with women’s work in the home, she demonstrates that capitalism’s structural dependence upon unwaged and reproductive labour extends to regimes of domination predicated upon social control on the global plane (from slavery through the exploitation of immigrant workers to the genocide of indigenous peoples). In her account of primitive accumulation, power relations sustained through the construction of categories of gender, race, sex, and sexuality facilitate the creation of subjects predicated upon capitalism’s systemic needs. While the heterosexual family unit is one of the more visible ways in which this domination is socially reproduced, the relationship, Federici argues, is reproduced in many settings. The transformations of the neoliberal era–particularly the global reorganization of work fueled by the drive to impose the commodity form in ways that seek to harness and exploit labour in its unpaid and low-paid dimensions–are characteristic of this dynamic. Federici has also emphasized the fact that domestic workers and service providers have consistently been devalued as workers. [30] In doing so, she highlights one of the rhetorical gaps in the contemporary feminist movement: when women enter the waged work-force, they often enter into an exploitative relationship with other women (and men) with less social power. It is the latter’s labour, bodies, and time that provide the means for access to better conditions within the labour market.

This relation of exploitation is also prevalent in neocolonial forms of exploitation–called “the new enclosures” by Federici–which ensure that the affluent North benefits from social and economic conditions prevailing in the global South (for example, through transnational corporations’ access to cheap land, mineral, and labour resources). Capitalism, Federici argues, depends not only on unwaged housework, but on a global strategy of underdevelopment in the global South, one that relies upon the stratification of and constructed division between otherwise common interests. “Wagelessness and underdevelopment”, she argues, “are essential elements of capitalist planning nationally and internationally. They are powerful means to make … us believe that our interests are different and contradictory.” [31]

Federici’s depiction of patriarchy, the state, and capitalism as interacting forces, together with her focus on relational, overlapping regimes of domination and their attendant systems of control, points the way toward a new way of understanding intertwined techniques and discourses of power in the international legal field. Capitalism’s reliance upon multiple types of exploitation, multiple forms of dispossession, and multiple kinds of subjects is visible in broader themes of international law. It is, for instance, visible in the overlapping dynamics of control that mark the history of colonial expansion, as well as the emergence in the nineteenth century of sovereign hierarchies and various legal mechanisms that ensure patterns of dominance, expansion, and accumulation in the international sphere.

An examination of the historical and contemporary role of international law in perpetuating these dynamics of oppression prompts us to address the specific processes whereby these categories are produced and reproduced in international law. Examples include norms surrounding marriage and the family, the production of the category of the temporary worker, and the illegal immigrant whose disenfranchisement is the necessary condition of their exploitation. Much the same can be said for trade, property, taxation policy, welfare and social security provision, inheritance rights, maternity benefits, and support for childcare (or the lack thereof). In the context of the gendered dynamics of globalization, we can examine the manner in which the devaluation of female labour has been facilitated by international institutions, notably the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and through development initiatives such as micro-finance and poverty reduction strategies. Federici has also revealed the complicity of ostensibly neutral (and neutralizing) discourses such as development, especially when pursued with the stated objective of “female empowerment”, in glossing over the systemic nature of poverty and gendered oppression. These dynamics are ultimately predicated upon law’s power to create, sustain, and reproduce certain categories.

Usefully, Federici’s relational theory of subjectivity-formation also allows us to move beyond gender and race as fixed, stable categories, encouraging a new understanding that helps us detect more surreptitious gendered tropes and imaginaries in the structure of international legal practice and argumentation. One example is the set of narratives that surround humanitarian intervention. Indeed, as Konstantina Tzouvala has suggested, one of the glaring deficiencies in the socialist feminism proposed by B. S. Chimni is the absence of an explanation of how gender, race, class, and international law form an inter-related argumentative practice. [32]

Conclusion

Writing some ten years after David Schweickart lamented that analytical Marxism “remains a discourse of the brotherhood” [33], Iris Marion Young noted that,

[O]ur nascent historical research coupled with our feminist intuition tells us that the labor of women occupies a central place in any system of production, that the gender division is a basic axis of social structuration in all hitherto existing social formations, and that gender hierarchy serves as a pivotal element in most systems of social domination. If traditional Marxism has no theoretical place for such hypothesis, it is not merely an inadequate theory of women’s oppression, but also an inadequate theory of social relations, relations of production, and domination. [34]

Young’s defense of a “thoroughly feminist historical materialism” [35] is as relevant today as ever. While great in-roads have been made within materialist approaches to various disciplines, including international law, the continued tendency to marginalize issues of gender (along with issues of race and sexuality) greatly undermines the soundness of such critiques. In pointing to issues of social reproduction, racism, sexual control, servitude, imperialism, and control over women’s bodies and reproductive power in her account of primitive accumulation, Silvia Federici highlights issues that must occupy a prominent place in any materialist treatment of international law.

Miriam Bak McKenna is Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in International Law at Lund University.

Notes

1. Heidi Hartman, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” [1979], in Lynn Sargent (ed.) Women and Revolution: The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism–A Debate on Class and Patriarchy (London: Pluto, 1981) 1.

2. Ibid., 2.

3. Clara Zetkin, “What the Women Owe to Karl Marx” [1903], trans. Kai Shoenhals, in Frank Meklenburg and Manfred Stassen (eds) German Essays on Socialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Continuum, 1990) 237, at 237.

4. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 239.

5. Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong, “Class Is a Feminist Issue”, in Althea Prince, Susan Silvia-Wayne, and Christian Vernon (eds), Feminisms and Womanisms: A Women’s Studies Reader (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1986) 317. See, for example, Hartman, “Unhappy Marriage”; and also Sylvia Walby, Gender Segregation at Work (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988).

6. See, for example, Lise Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women: Toward a Unitary Theory (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1983); Iris Marion Young, “Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of Dual Systems Theory”, in Lydia Sargent (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981) 43.

7. See Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1981).

8. Sue Ferguson, “Building on the Strengths of the Socialist Feminist Tradition”, 25 (1999) Critical Sociology 1, at 2.

9. See, for example, Rosalind Coward and John Ellis, Language and Materialism (London: Routledge, 1977) and Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).

10. Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour, 1st edition (London: Zed Books, 1986).

11. Nicole Cox and Silvia Federici, Counterplanning from the Kitchen: Wages for Housework–A Perspective on Capital and the Left (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1975), 4.

12. Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (New York: Autonomedia, 2004), 8.

13. Ibid., 8–9.

14. Ibid., 9.

15. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), 16.

16. Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1975), 20.

17. Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 89.

18. Federici, Wages Against Housework, 19.

19. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove, 2004 [1961]).

20. Ashley Bohrer, “Fanon and Feminism”, 17 (2015) Interventions 378.

21. Federici, Revolution at Point Zero, 6–7 (original emphasis).

22. Ibid., 7.

23. Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 64 (original emphasis).

24. Ibid., 145.

25. Ibid., 63.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., 183.

28. Chandra Talpade Mohanthy, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 28.

29. Daniela Tepe-Belfrage, Jill Steans, et al., “The New Materialism: Re-Claiming a Debate from a Feminist Perspective”, 40 (2016) Capital & Class 305, at 324.

30. Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), 65–115.

31. Ibid., 36.

32. Konstantina Tzouvala, “Reading Chimni’s International Law and World Order: The Question of Feminism”, EJIL: Talk! (28 December 2017).

33. David Schweickart, “Book Review of John Roemer, Analytical Marxism“, 97 (1987) Ethics 869, at 870

34. Iris Marion Young, “Socialist Feminism and the Limits of the Dual Systems Theory”, in Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham (eds), Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference and Women’s Lives (New York: Routledge, 1997) 95, at 102.

35. Ibid (original emphasis).

Women and Capitalism: Revisiting Silvia Federici's 'Caliban and the Witch'

By Natasha Heenan

Republished from Progress in Political Economy.

In high school, like many young women, my friends and I developed a fascination with witches. Years before we knew what feminism was, a sense of foreboding had developed among us, about our place in the world and our power relative to adults and to our male peers. As ambitious teen girls wary of how we were perceived in the adult world, we sought solace in the idea that we could harness a secret and subversive power to change things. After school we concocted potions, conducted rituals and created secret languages. For a time we believed in magic.

Unknown to us, in her ground-breaking book, Caliban and The Witch, Silvia Federici argues that the witch hunts of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries served to create and enforce a newly established role in society for women, who were consigned to unpaid reproductive labour to satisfy the needs of an ascendant capitalist order. Published in 2004 and based on a research project started in the 1970s with Italian feminist Leopoldina Fortunati, Federici draws upon an eclectic mix of historical sources, re-reading the transition to capitalism from a Marxist-feminist viewpoint.

Federici presents a close reading of the European witch-hunts, in order to re-appraise the function and nature of primitive accumulation in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Her most important contribution in this regard is to reveal the mechanisms by which production was separated from reproduction, and how the resulting sexual division of labour had to be created and enforced through extreme violence. This account of primitive accumulation challenges Marx and other subsequent interpretations of the transition to capitalism as a progressive and necessary shift in social relations. Federici foregrounds the experience of women (painted as witches) and colonised people (the metaphorical Caliban, from Shakespheare’s Tempest) to show that this was in no way a progressive moment in changing social relations and that at every stage of capitalist expansion, new rounds of primitive accumulation involving violence and expropriation of land can be observed.

One of the most devastating parts about reading Caliban and the Witch is the recognition of everything that women lost in terms of social power in the transition to capitalism. Witches embodied everything “that capitalism had to destroy: the heretic, the healer, the disobedient wife, the woman who dared to live alone, the obeah woman who poisoned the master’s food and inspired the slaves to revolt” (p. 11). Federici documents the changes in women’s social status, how they were encouraged not to walk alone on the streets or sit outside their homes, how ale-brewing (traditionally women’s work) came to be seen as men’s work, how the word gossip shifted its meaning from ‘friend’ to acquire a negative connotation (also see Hanna Black who has written more about the etymology of the word gossip in this context here). This all formed a part of the “intense process of social degradation” women were forced to undergo, in order to be remade in the image of capital (p. 100).

One revelation of this book is that in numerous ways, women refused to take their place in the emerging capitalist reordering of society, just as they refused the reconstitution of the body as a machine. Women tore down hedges and fences and reclaimed the commons, they engaged in non-reproductive sex and led peasant revolts. They met at night on hilltops, around bonfires, stole food and clothing, and they gossiped. Federici argues that the witch hunts, rather than representing the last dying breaths of feudal order and the attendant superstitions of feudal societies, were a tool to discipline and shape the emerging working class and hence were integral to the transition to capitalism. Federici concludes that only by ignoring the experience of women, slaves and indigenous people in the transition to capitalism can primitive accumulation be viewed as progressive. The women singled out for public burning were often poor peasants accused by their landlords or other wealthy community members of witchcraft, which Federici links to documented instances of poor women begging for or stealing food. As Federici notes, “the witch-hunt grew in a social environment where the ‘better sorts’ were living in constant fear of the ‘lower classes’” and their potential for insubordination (p. 173).

Throughout the book Federici shifts between centuries, sometimes bringing us all the way to the present, in order to show how this violence continues in the form of structural adjustment programs and in new rounds of land enclosures in developing countries. In seeking to uncover a “hidden history that needs to be made visible” Federici foregrounds the “secret” of capitalism, women’s unpaid reproductive work, slavery and colonisation (p. 13). The use of violence in the witch hunts, allowed the state to establish a level of control over women’s bodies and lives that was unprecedented, as seen in the rise of census taking and population monitoring, and the demonising of abortion and contraceptives. Federici further argues that “the persecution of the witches was the climax of the state intervention against the proletarian body in the modern era” and that the “human body… was the first machine invented by capitalism” (pp. 143, 146). That the violence of slavery and colonisation in the New World was parallel to the patriarchal violence of Europe is a difficult argument to make and is one of the more unconvincing parts of Federici’s book. The relation between early capitalism and slavery and genocide is an area well explored by historians and critical race scholars, which could have been better utilised to extend the appraisal of primitive accumulation from the point of view of colonised people and slaves.

The members of this semester’s Past & Present Reading Group had diverse reactions to Caliban and the Witch. The book stimulated lively and important discussions about feminist re-readings of history, questions about the nature of feudal life, and critiques of Federici’s comparison between patriarchal oppression and white supremacy. Most of all Federici inspired a desire to question many other theories of history, to take her analysis even further back in time and trace developments in ideologies of racism, white supremacy, misogyny and witch hunting prior to early capitalism. The group ultimately received the book as it was given, that is, as a ‘sketch’ of a theory, needing further exploration and refinement, but powerful nonetheless.

The horrifying scale and brutality of the witch hunts is difficult to comprehend, especially given their status as “one of the most understudied phenomena in European history” (p. 163). In an ironic twist of fate (and clearly inspired by Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch), my friends and I embraced the idea of magic without fear that the charge of witchcraft would lead to our torture and death. Perhaps this is because today women’s unpaid reproductive labour is so immutable, capitalists no longer perceive witchcraft to be a threat to the sexual division of labour within firmly capitalist social relations of production. However, this does not mean that new, if at times more subtle forms of subordination and control of women aren’t apparent. On the contrary, renewed attacks on reproductive rights and rights to bodily autonomy, the violation of livelihood rights by mining and agricultural companies in developing countries, and the daily assault by the state on indigenous lives in Australia and black lives in the U.S, all work in different ways to reaffirm the marginalised status of women and people of colour (Alicia Garza, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, has written powerfully on this subject and others here).

Caliban and the Witch is a reminder that it is the task of feminists and Marxists alike to demand that the sphere of reproduction and continuing forms of colonialism be seen as key sources of value for capitalism and therefore as key sites of struggle against it.

Five Finger Death Punch: A Case Study in Performative Working Class Aesthetics

By Matt Nguyen-Ngo

A common sentiment on the left is that many American working-class whites, largely made up of reactionaries, undermine their own best interests by adopting right-wing politics. It’s not hard to determine why; through its influence over American culture and education over the course of history, the owner class has managed to redefine “capitalism as freedom” and “socialism as slavery.” Of course, determining the “how” is just as important as determining the “why.” This article seeks to uncover the methods by which the owner class manipulates culture and aesthetics to reinforce capitalist ideology in the American white working class, using the metal band Five Finger Death Punch as a case study.

What is Class?

With the language of class struggle becoming increasingly relevant in the political landscape of the United States, it becomes necessary to clarify the delineations between socioeconomic classes. The dominant concept of class in the US is the liberal one, which bases class distinctions largely on income level. This concept divides people into lower, middle, and upper income classes. If we are to define class in this way, then what are the cutoff points that differentiate these three classes from each other? At what amount of annual income would someone transition from “lower” to “middle” class in this framework? Any answer to this question is by definition arbitrary. On the other hand, in the context of class struggle described by Marx as the conflict between opposing economic interests of the bourgeoisie (owner class) and the proletariat (working class)[1], it makes infinitely more sense to construct class lines based not on one’s fluid income level, but instead on one’s concrete relationship to capital. This article rejects the liberal class framework in favor of the Marxian.

However, regardless of which economic measurements we base our class delineations upon, these lines won’t always match up with class identity as perceived by the general public. In any given culture, an individual’s class is perceived according to their aesthetic choices, such as clothing, speech, activities and affiliations. In the modern US, a “lower class” or “working class” person might wear camouflaged cargo pants and a sports jersey, or a tradesman’s uniform when on the job. A “middle class” or “upper class” person might wear slacks and a button-up shirt, or a business suit and watch instead. In late Victorian England, a politician might wear a frock coat and top hat to convey their sophistication to voters, or a tweed suit and cloth cap to break social conventions and show commonality with the average citizen.[2] Regardless of cultural context, class identification is a performance.

In the United States there is a recurring phenomenon where members of the owner class perform as members of the working class by adopting working-class aesthetics. This can take the form of politicians like Lindsey Graham wearing a cowboy hat to evoke the ranchers of the “Old West,” or New York real estate investor and US President Donald Trump using laypeople’s language to appeal to the rural white working class. It can take the form of wealthy capitalists electing to drive luxury pickup trucks that are never taken off a paved road, instead of a high-end sedan or exotic sports car. And, more salient to the subject of this article, it can take the form of a heavy metal band like Five Finger Death Punch – made up of reactionary capitalists – wearing the cultural markers of the American working class to relate to them as a fanbase. Like all aesthetic choices made by all people, these are all deliberate performances of group identity: in this case, a working-class identity that does not line up with material (economic) reality. By superficially identifying themselves with the working class, the “everyman,” these capitalists perform working-class aesthetics to create a false sense of solidarity with the proletariat, reinforcing the dominant ideology that grants them their power and influence.

Working-Class Performance

One of the most elucidating examples of this phenomenon, which I call “working-class performance,” is the work of celebrity Mike Rowe, made famous by his reality television show Dirty Jobs. As the host of Dirty Jobs, Rowe travels to different businesses around the United States putting himself in the shoes of their employees. He performs these unpleasant, menial jobs as a spectacle for more advantaged viewers to vicariously experience the struggles of the less fortunate. In one episode of Dirty Jobs, Rowe visits a pig farm in Las Vegas that turns food waste into slop to feed the pigs. Despite claiming to showcase the experiences of the “everyman,” the star of the show (other than Rowe himself) is the farm’s owner Robert Combs, who walks Rowe through the slop production process. Combs mentions an employee by name – a man named Jose – but no employees are ever shown on screen. This is a recurring theme in Dirty Jobs and other reality television shows like it. While they supposedly celebrate the working class as essential people who do the jobs “we” are unwilling to do, they actually “push the human beings whose labor they nominally valorize to the margins,” opting instead to tell the stories of capitalists through a “ventriloquized working class.”[3]

Despite his portrayal as an “everyman,” Mike Rowe has a net worth of $30 million largely made from television and being a company spokesman, appearing in high-profile advertisements for automobile and pharmaceutical companies.[4] In his advertisements for Ford’s F-150 pickup truck, Rowe (who has no real-life construction or automobile expertise) appears on a construction site amongst a backdrop of workers on the job, explaining why the F-150 is superior to other trucks and the working class viewer should buy it over the competition.[5] In other words, Rowe uses this working-class performance to sell you something.

So too does Five Finger Death Punch. Like Rowe, Five Finger Death Punch uses working-class performance to sell their audience something. This “something” can be music, concert tickets and merchandise of course, but I am referring to something more intangible. One of the most commercially successful American metal bands in the 21st Century, Five Finger Death Punch has carefully crafted their brand to appeal to millions of common Americans, predominantly conservative, white, working-class men. In this case study, I will deconstruct the band’s hyper-American “everyman” image to demonstrate how they sell the promise of the “American Dream,” ultimately serving the interests of capital. It is my hope that this will help illuminate the impact of working-class performance on American class relations and class consciousness.

Who is Five Finger Death Punch?

Five Finger Death Punch, or “5FDP,” is an American metal band based in Las Vegas, Nevada that hails from the groove metal, thrash, and arena rock traditions of bands like Pantera, Metallica, and W.A.S.P. With albums like 2009’s War is the Answer and 2011’s American Capitalist, 5FDP has deliberately created a provocative, hyper-American, hyper-capitalist image. In the words of their rhythm guitarist and marketing mastermind Zoltan Bathory:

“We [the band] like to press buttons. When everyone was on the streets with signs saying ‘war is not the answer,’ [in reference to the war in Iraq] we released War is the Answer. When Occupy Wall Street was going on and socialism was growing in America, we brought out American Capitalist. That’s all intentional.”[6]

Despite their exaggerated all-American image in the most stereotypical sense of the phrase, many of their members are immigrants – including Bathory. Bathory immigrated to the US from Hungary shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, and loves to tell stories of how he arrived in the States with “a bag of clothes, a guitar, and a few bucks in my pocket,” with no English skills.[7] His is a familiar, tired story of dragging himself by his own bootstraps out of “grey communist squalor” to seize his own emancipation in “the freest and fairest political and economic system” of American free-market capitalism, enabling him to live a life of “unchecked excesses.”[8] It is a story that has been told time and time again by the families of exiled Cuban slaveowners and the like. It is a story that affirms the belief that the US is a golden place of unlimited opportunity for social mobility, and purports that those who do not get ahead are merely lazy and unworthy of success. After all, the story goes, if an immigrant like Bathory could do it, why can’t you? In addition to Bathory, the band’s longtime lead guitarist Jason Hook is Canadian, and Hook’s replacement Andy James hails from Norfolk, UK.

Of course, I do not deny that immigrants belong to their new countries just as much as the native born. However, why this exaggerated display of American uber-patriotism from a band that is 40% foreign-born? Speaking from personal experience as a member of the Vietnamese-American diaspora, I know that immigrants and/or minorities often perform exaggerated “Americanness” to fit in, to prove that one “belongs” in the country. Additionally, Bathory’s life story – no doubt curated for the metal news interviews – is the perfect origin story for a band that promotes “bootstraps” ideology and American jingoism so zealously.

Unsurprisingly, the band aggressively advocates for the US military and law enforcement. They believe these groups are exploited and underappreciated by an ungrateful public and unscrupulous government. This message is succinctly captured in the lyrics to “No One Gets Left Behind.”

Politicians banking in their greed

No idea on how to be all they can be

…

Play your war games with other people’s lives

It should be you on the front line

In another interview, Zoltan Bathory shows his disdain for how the public treats US soldiers, in his view.

“They’re [the soldiers] merely just doing their jobs… just like when the guys came back from Vietnam [after the end of the US-Vietnam War in 1975], they had to put up with all kinds of shit [from citizens].”[9]

Setting aside Bathory’s comments about public treatment of soldiers returning from Vietnam (which was hardly universal), and setting aside the American atrocities that would have provoked such animosity, 5FDP’s narrative that US soldiers are exploited is correct to a certain extent. US soldiers, often working-class men with limited economic options, are indeed sent to die by social elites who benefit from war. But 5FDP’s analysis is missing one critical element: the reason these elites are sending these soldiers to die. Politicians do not merely send soldiers to war for some nebulous, aimless greed. What are these politicians greedy for? Perhaps we can find our answer by asking the military arms and logistics companies that profit from American imperialism, and their political partners in Washington like Dick Cheney, former US Vice President and CEO of defense contractor Halliburton.[10] Indeed, despite seeming to rail against war profiteering in “No One Gets Left Behind,” 5FDP’s very next album is the aforementioned War is the Answer, which conveys the exact opposite message.

Despite their message that clearly advances the interests of capital, Five Finger Death Punch presents themselves as the quintessential American working-class band. Their image and music speak to the people who are often pejoratively labeled “rednecks”: the white, predominantly rural American working class.

Take, for example, their music video for “The Pride” off of American Capitalist, a list-form song that namedrops companies like Facebook and Coca Cola, in which vocalist Ivan Moody proclaims the band is “not selling out,” but “buying in.”[11] Moody is presumably “buying in” to capitalism itself, not just the specific companies he names in the song. The music video depicts the band playing in front of a wall of television screens, flashing an endless stream of advertisements that light up the stage. The band members all wear NASCAR-style jerseys proudly emblazoned with the logos of corporate sponsors. It is important to pay attention to the stylistic choices being made here, as well as the specific companies 5FDP chooses to advertise. NASCAR, or The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, is an auto sports organization that is commonly associated with American working-class whites. The companies flashing on the television screens include Monster Energy and Fox Racing, both brands with similar associations. This melding of working-class aesthetics with the valorization of capital jives will with the band’s political philosophy, which contends that its own commercial success is proof that capitalism provides freedom and prosperity. This image is crucial to the band’s success; if they were to simply sing songs praising capitalism and the military without adopting this “everyman” aesthetic, it’s doubtful their audience would relate to their music so powerfully.

Five Finger Death Punch’s Central Message

We can synthesize all that was previously discussed into one concise sentence: Five Finger Death Punch’s central narrative is that they – the band – started out just like you – the audience – so if they were able to achieve fame and fortune in the capitalist system, you can too. True American Capitalists, 5FDP is selling the “American Dream” itself.

This is nothing new in marketing. Take, for example, this 1990 advertisement for a perfume named Heaven Sent, depicting the fragrance user bathing in celebrity status, coddled by servers and paparazzi as she steps out of a limousine onto the red carpet.[12]

The woman is the winner of a sweepstakes in which the grand prize is a one-day celebrity experience. Instead of merely selling fragrance, the perfume company is quite literally selling upward mobility.[13] It is useful to note that this advertisement was published well after the “Great U-Turn” in the mid-1970’s which saw a dramatic increase in wealth inequality and decrease in social mobility that continues to this day.[14]

Like the Heaven Sent perfume advertisement, Five Finger Death Punch’s “The Pride” is selling the promise of upward mobility to their working-class audience in the only way that seems attainable in the modern age: celebrity status. By “buying in” to the American capitalist system, so the band promises, you too can live large like Five Finger Death Punch: the monster truck driving, Monster Energy chugging guys you can rock out with now, and have a beer with later.

This narrative is, of course, inaccurate. Like I previously discussed, the band’s beloved American capitalism does not provide the freedom and opportunity that they claim it does. If “social mobility” ever even existed at all for the vast majority of people, the “Great U-Turn” killed it a long time ago. This is to say nothing of the economic exploitation inherent to the owner-worker relationship that defines capitalism, as described in Marx’s Capital.[15] Additionally, while 5FDP is right to mistrust the US government, they do so for the wrong reasons. The US government sends soldiers to die in war on behalf of the capitalists that 5FDP spends so much time praising. Regardless of whether or not the band intends to do so, or is even aware that they’re doing it, 5FDP’s message ultimately serves the interests of capital and sows false consciousness among the working class.

Alternative Narratives

Since Five Finger Death Punch’s music appeals to so-called “rednecks,” it may be prudent to examine the origins of that word. The term “redneck” was coined to describe white coal miners during the West Virginia Mine War, who wore red bandanas around their necks to show their allegiance to the miners’ union.[16]

The West Virginia Mine War was an armed conflict that took place in the early 1920’s between striking miners and the mine “operators” (companies) that exploited their labor in the Appalachian coal mines, and controlled every aspect of their lives in the company towns. After the miners in the independent town of Matewan unionized, the coal companies retaliated by sending in the Baldwin-Felts, private mercenaries that violently cracked down on the strikers. The miners took up arms against these corporate mercenaries, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain. The miners called upon the US Federal Government for assistance, but were unpleasantly surprised when the federal troops took the companies’ side instead. It is an oft-forgotten, but crucial piece of American working class history that demonstrates how the state works on behalf of capital – not against it.[17]

So, the rural white working class indeed has a history of resisting oppression and authoritarianism. But it is not the nebulous, aimless authoritarianism that Five Finger Death Punch describes in their music video “Living the Dream,” which argues that mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic are a slippery slope to tyranny.[18] It is actually capitalist authoritarianism, and government oppression on behalf of capital. Five Finger Death Punch’s narrative is a distortion of history that was expertly crafted by the capitalists before them, making the working class complicit in its own subjugation.

Conclusion

If socialists are to create class consciousness among American working-class whites, it is necessary to understand why their false consciousness exists in the first place so that it may be counteracted. By understanding Five Finger Death Punch’s working-class performance, we can understand the forces at play that sow false consciousness among the American proletariat. By advancing narratives that, using white working-class history, contradict 5FDP’s capital-serving message, we can obstruct the flow of false consciousness and promote true class consciousness for all working people.

Notes

[1] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.

[2] Marcus Morris, “Class, Performance and Socialist Politics: The Political Campaigns of Early Labour Leaders,” in Politics, Performance and Popular Culture, edited by Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newey and Jeffrey Richards, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 259-275

[3] Gabriel Winant, “Dirty Jobs, Done Dirt Cheap: Working in Reality Television,” New Labor Forum 23, no. 3 (Fall 2014): pp. 66-71.

[4] Celebrity Net Worth, “Mike Rowe Net Worth.” https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/actors/mike-rowe-net-worth/

[5] https://youtu.be/mDQpo23vfLw

[6] Zoltan Bathory, “When I Say That Nothing is Impossible, I Truly Believe It,” interview by Sam Law, Kerrang Magazine, March 30th, 2020.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Zoltan Bathory, “Interview: Five Finger Death Punch – Zoltan Bathory; Oslo, 2011,” interview by Guest, Musicalypse, January 10th, 2011.

[10] Jonathan Turley, “Big Money Behind War: The Military-Industrial Complex,” Al Jazeera, Jan 11th 2014. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/1/11/big-money-behind-war-the-military-industrial-complex/

[11] Five Finger Death Punch, “The Pride.” https://youtu.be/zuQGx1H1Qh8

[12] Erika L. Paulson and Thomas C. O’Guinn, “Working-Class Cast: Images of the Working Class in Advertising,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 644 (Nov 2012): pp. 50-69.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone, The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America, New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988.

[15] Karl Marx, “Part Three: The Production of Absolute Surplus Value,” Capital: Volume 1, 1867.

[16] Wilma Lee Steele, “Do You Know Where the Word ‘Redneck’ Comes From? Mine Wars Museum Opens, Revives Lost Labor History,” interview by Roxy Todd, Inside Appalachia, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, May 18th, 2015.

[17] Brandon Nida, “Demystifying the Hidden Hand: Capital and the State at Blair Mountain,” Historical Archaeology 47, no. 3 (2013): pp. 52-68.

[18] Five Finger Death Punch, “Living the Dream.” https://youtu.be/eOkkWIOkWl8

We're All Living in a Future Created by Slavery

[Art by Alex Williamson]

By Ameer Hasan Loggins

This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, composed of 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems — and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

When I was 19 years old, I was arrested.

Instead of a dungeon, I was held in an overcrowded holding cell. Instead of being shackled and transported across the ocean on a floating prison, I was handcuffed, sitting shoulder to shoulder with another young Black male being hauled across the county on a prison bus.

During intake, I was stripped of my clothes, forced to stand naked as officers stripped me of both my pride and my dignity. I tried to cover my genitals. It was my last grasp at holding onto my humanity. I was commanded by officers to remove my hands. They had guns. I had nothing. I complied. The officer barked, “Lift up your nut sack.” I had no choice. I was ordered to “squat down and cough.” When I was finally handed a pair of state-issued boxer shorts, I was so desperate to have on anything to cover my exposed body that I did not give a damn that the underwear had been passed down, circulated among others who had been stripped naked before me.

Author and scholar Saidiya Hartman once wrote, “I, too, live in the time of slavery, by which I mean I am living in the future created by it. It is the ongoing crisis of citizenship.” I echo her pain as I think about — and live through — the ongoing crisis of carcerality and those affected most by its existence.

I think about the African diaspora. I think about my family. I think about myself.

In the summer of 2017, I visited the continent of Africa. While there, I basked in the beauty of the lively Ramadan nights in Morocco. I stood in the searing sun of Egypt. I took pictures with the great pyramids as my backdrop, mimicking Malcolm X during his visit in 1964. When I made it to Ghana, I visited the final resting place of Kwame Nkrumah. While standing at his tomb, I thought about Nkrumah writing, “All people of African descent whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean or in any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African Nation.” I stood there thinking about the divide between being identified as African and being of African descent. I was in the homeland of my ancestors, and yet I knew none of their names or faces.

But I did know why they were forced to leave. I had reached a point where I could not return home to the United States without experiencing the carceral castles on Ghana’s Gold Coast.

My feet were firmly planted, affixed to the weather-beaten ground of the Castle of St. George in Elmina. I stood in front of a cell, designated for incarcerated Ashanti, Mandinka, Hausa, Wolof, Fula, and Susu from various kingdoms who had been deemed as deserving of death because they fought to live in freedom. I stood there in front of a thick black wooden door hauntingly marked by a human skull and a set of crossbones carved into stone.

Behind that door was a darkness I never experienced.

In the 7x10 prison cell, there was a total absence of light. There was also an abject emotional darkness that came with knowing folks, wrapped in the same skin that I’m in, were left there to starve and rot in death.

The captives imprisoned at the Castle of St. George were a part of what I call the carceral class. I am a member of this class.

The carceral class is made up of persons of African descent who are systematically stigmatized as unfit for freedom and deserving of the dehumanization that comes with being incarcerated. It is essential to the idea of Black people being framed as the locus of crime and Blackness as being synonymous with criminality. As a classification, the carceral class denotes that, at any given time, your freedom can be ripped from underneath your feet. That you can be torn away from the people you love and the places you love to be.

Although he didn’t name it, Malcolm X knew about the carceral class too.

The carceral class is made up of persons of African descent. It denotes that, at any given time, your freedom can be systemically ripped from underneath your feet. That you can be torn away from the people you love and the places you love to be.

In Malcolm X’s blistering 1963 speech, “Message to the Grassroots,” he spoke of the systemic condemnation of Black folks in the United States. He lasered in on the uncomfortable common bond of being Black in America. Malcolm made it plain and uncompromising. “We are all Black people, so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, ex-slaves,” he said. “You are nothing but a ex-slave. You don’t like to be told that. But what else are you? You are ex-slaves. You didn’t come here on the Mayflower. You came here on a slave ship — in chains, like a horse, or a cow, or a chicken.”

I wrestle with what Brother Malcolm said. Not because I disagree with the troublesome truths that he spoke, but because I feel his analysis can be built upon.

His words still ring in my mind on a loop.

“You are nothing but a ex-slave.”

You are nothing but a slave.

You are nothing.

You are a thing.

Malcom’s speech takes me back to Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony. In it, Mbembe lays bare his views on what it means to be branded, burned with the mark of being a slave. He viewed slave as the “forename” one must “give to a man or woman whose body can be degraded, whose life can be mutilated, and whose work and resources can be squandered — with impunity.”

I think about a time before enslavement. Before Africans were ensnared in the wretchedness of having both their labor and their lives exploited from can’t see in the morning to can’t see in the evening, they were prisoners of a particular kind.

Those who were captured and eventually enslaved were regular folks: commoners, farmers, wage workers, domestic servants, and artisans who worked with their hands. Two-thirds of those held captive were young African men. As Marcus Rediker recounts in The Slave Ship: A Human History, slave raiders targeted “‘the roughest and most hardy,’ and avoided the privileged ‘smooth negroes.’” The class-based vulnerability of the common folks figured centrally in their capture and confinement. Rediker continues:

Second to war as a source of slaves were the judicial processes in and through which African societies convicted people of crimes ranging from murder to theft, adultery, witchcraft, and debt; condemned them to slavery; and sold them to African traders or directly to the slave-ship captains… Many Africans and (abolitionist) Europeans felt that judicial processes in West Africa had been corrupted and that thousands had been falsely accused and convicted in order to produce as many tradeworthy bodies as possible.

A judicial system of injustice had waged war on African commoners, criminalizing them into a world of carcerality.

Malcolm’s raspy tone echoes again in my mind. I hear him saying, “You didn’t come here on the Mayflower. You came here on a slave ship — in chains, like a horse, or a cow, or a chicken.”

And again, Brother Malcolm was correct.

We did not willingly travel to the Americas on the Mayflower. We were forced here on the White Lion and the Clotilda. It is not hyperbole to suggest that the slave ship was an aquatic prison. Its European captain was the warden. Its European crew were the prison guards. And in handcuffs and leg shackles were the formerly free Africans, eaten alive, buried in the belly of vessels of mass incarceration.

The largest wave of forced African diasporic movement was anchored to punishment and carcerality. Everywhere the descendants of the Middle Passage were forced to find footing, carceral-class status and the struggle for liberation followed.

Malcolm knew the global connectedness of Black folks’ oppression. He knew that in the West, the African diaspora’s carceral-class status is still branded to our being.

Forty percent of the 10 million incarcerated Africans brought to the Americas and sold into chattel slavery ended up in Brazil. Today, it is estimated that 75% of Brazil’s prison population are Brazilians of African descent. In the country’s capital Brasília, Afro-Brazilians make up 82% of those incarcerated. Although only 11% of the country’s total population is between eight and 24 years of age, this age group represents approximately one-third of those imprisoned.

In the United States, Black adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated than white adults. As of 2001, one out of every three Black boys born in that year could expect to go to prison in his lifetime. While 14% of all youth under 18 in the United States are Black, 42% of boys and 35% of girls in juvenile detention facilities are Black. Among Black trans folks, 47% have been incarcerated at some point in their lives.

The criminalization of Black folks in the United States is both a pathologizing and totalizing practice. No group is spared. No group is left unvictimized. These are progeny of the commoners, prisoners of war, and freedom fighters who made up the original carceral class.

Malcolm also knew that as a Muslim, “There is nothing in our book, the Quran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully.”

On Christmas Day in 1522, 20 enslaved Muslims, wielding machetes, attacked their Christian masters on the island of Hispaniola. It was the first recorded enslaved African revolt in the Western Hemisphere.

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the slave ship was an aquatic prison. Its European captain was the warden. Its European crew were the prison guards. And in handcuffs and leg shackles were the formerly free Africans, eaten alive, buried in the belly of vessels of mass incarceration.

Four years later, enslaved African Muslims rebelled against the Spanish on the coast of present-day South Carolina. It was the first rebellion by enslaved folks in the history of North America.

In 1729, Granny Nanny, a self-liberated African Muslim leader and warrior, led her army of Maroons in Jamaica into the battle with the British — and crushed them in combat. On August 14, 1791, an enslaved African Muslim named Dutty Boukman led other enslaved folks in an uprising against the French. This rebellion and the death of Boukman are marked as being one of the sparks that lead to the Haitian Revolution. On the 27th night of Ramadan in January 1835, a group of enslaved African Muslims in Salvador of Bahía, Brazil, organized one of the largest slave rebellions in the history of the Americas. After being forced aboard on June 28, 1839, Sengbe Pieh, an enslaved African Muslim, led the aquatic revolt on the Amistad.

For members of the carceral class, resistance is in our blood. Resistance is a binding component of our collective experience. Resistance is in our history. This is the history of Black folks like Safiya Bukhari, Iya Fulani Sunni-Ali, Kamau Sadiki, Jamil Al-Amin, Mutulu Shakur, and Russell “Maroon” Shoatz.

This is why we resist to this day.

In the end, I return to where I started, thinking about Saidiya Hartman’s words. We live in a time created by the original mass incarceration — the transatlantic slave trade. The “peculiar institution” that is rooted in carcerality. Malcolm X knew this. Political prisoners in the United States today, who need to be freed, know this. I, too, know this. There has not been a point in my life where I have not been intimately impacted by the carceral state. We know this because we have all been subject to and subjugated by the carceral state. It is this experience of knowing that informs my fight to abolish the carceral state.

Socialism's Increasing Popularity Doesn't Bring Media Out of McCarthy Era

By Joshua Cho

Republished from FAIR.

Ever since the Great Recession in 2008, and accelerating with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, there has been a resurgence of popularity and interest in socialism in the US, and an increasing skepticism of capitalism. A 2019 Pew poll (6/25/19) reported that 42% of respondents had a favorable view of socialism, with particular sympathy shown among people who are Black (65%), Latino (52%), have family incomes below $30,000 (50%) or are between the ages of 18-29 (50%). In a 2019 Gallup survey (12/18/19), 38% saw socialism positively—more than the 34% who identify as conservatives (Gallup, 7/27/20). Gallup (11/25/19) noted that Millennials were especially attracted to socialism, with slightly more viewing socialism positively than capitalism.

Democrats across the country view socialism more positively than capitalism, with a large majority willing to vote for a socialist as president. Despite questions of what the term “socialism” means to Americans, this growing interest has provoked articles decrying the “problem” that socialism doesn’t freak out Democratic voters the way it does other Americans (Slate, 2/24/20). The Columbia Journalism Review (5/8/18) noticed that while “the radical left in the U.S. has felt invigorated in recent years,” it still hasn’t “earned left-wing voices column inches in most mainstream outlets,” with coverage limited to being “about those voices, rather than by them.”

Looking at the representation of socialism among the hundreds of pundits in corporate media, one can be forgiven for almost thinking socialist pundits don’t exist.

The New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig appears to be the only pundit employed by corporate media who both explicitly identifies as a “socialist” and makes arguments for some form of socialism in the U.S. (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

Laurence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s Last Word, identifies as a “practical European socialist,” and argues that “we’re all socialists now,” because even Bill O’Reilly is in favor of “socialist programs” like Social Security and Medicare. The MSNBC host claims to “embrace” the label in order to “counterbalance” the excessive influence of McCarthyism in the U.S. (LA Times, 3/16/13), but it’s difficult to discern a distinctly socialist perspective in his commentary.

Straightforward advocacy of socialism is something you very rarely see in corporate media (Washington Post, 3/6/18).

The Hill’s Krystal Ball (2/17/19), cohost of the show Rising, criticized Trump’s remarks claiming that “America will never be a socialist country” for presenting the false dichotomy of “smash-and-grab capitalism” or “what’s happening in Venezuela.” The class-conscious commentator described Sanders and other democratic socialists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “messengers for a compelling message with an actual vision.” Although she seems not to explicitly embrace the “socialist” label like Bruenig or O’Donnell, it may be fair to describe her as a democratic socialist pundit, because she often speaks favorably of the ideology, and provides a friendly platform to socialists on her show.

It appears corporate media give some degree of space for pundits to call for replacing capitalism with a new system, so long as they don’t identify themselves or that new system as “socialist.” Times columnist Michelle Alexander hasn’t explicitly identified as a socialist, but has argued (6/8/20) that “transforming our economic systems” is necessary to achieve “racial justice” and a “secure and thriving democracy,” while approvingly citing figures like W.E.B. Du Bois, Albert Einstein, Hellen Keller and Paul Robeson, all of whom argued that the U.S. “must move toward some form of socialism.” The Post’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel also hasn’t called herself a socialist, but has argued (12/10/19) that “capitalism is broken,” and that we need a “new system to better serve the common good,” without describing this new system as “socialism.”

Although CNN’s Van Jones was involved in the early 1990s with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), a defunct Maoist Bay Area group, since 2000 or so, he’s identified with the “green capitalist” movement instead (Green America, Fall/2007).

“Socialism” itself is a very contested term, and many self-described socialists may not consider some or all of these pundits to be genuine socialists. Conservatism is also a broad range of ideologies, not all of which are consistent with each other, which also has self-identified conservatives who denounce others as unworthy or inconsistent with the label (New York Times, 1/14/15; The Hill, 12/16/19). Conservative audiences are not expected to approve of all pundits who identify as conservatives, or who speak favorably of conservatism. Likewise, while some socialists may be unsatisfied with these figures, it is still significant that there are pundits who embrace being labeled a “socialist” and explicitly call for alternatives to capitalism within the US.

Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó has remarked that “socialist” figures like Ocasio-Cortez would be considered social democrats in his own country (New Yorker, 6/10/20). The Times’ Paul Krugman (2/13/20) is no socialist, but he has criticized Bernie Sanders for presenting himself as a “socialist,” rather than a “social democrat,” making himself “an easy target for right-wing smears.”

It’s more common to see criticism of capitalism (New York Times, 12/4/17)—but still not very common.

One can find criticisms of capitalism in corporate media, but that is ideologically consistent with liberals or progressives who call for government intervention to deal with market failures. Columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg (12/4/17), who noted that “capitalism looks like the god that failed” to young people because of the “increasingly oligarchic nature of our economy,” and the Times’ Nicholas Kristof (5/23/20), who condemned “dog-eat-dog capitalism for struggling workers and socialism for the rich,” are critics of capitalism in corporate media who aren’t necessarily calling for socialism.

Other pundits have normalized socialism by claiming it already exists in a limited form, because they conflate all government spending on social programs with socialism—not advocating for socialism so much as claiming that it already exists in the US. Thus the Times’ Roger Cohen (3/8/19) and the Post’s Catherine Rampell (3/21/19) argue that “Europe” demonstrates how “socialism and the free market are compatible,” and dismiss the capitalist/socialist dichotomy as not being a “meaningful binary,” because “all modern countries have elements of capitalism and socialism.” These pundits make arguments similar to O’Donnell’s, defending a socialism that’s hard to distinguish from liberalism, though without identifying with the label as O’Donnell does.

A few other commentators have praised socialism and defended figures who identify as socialists. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes defended Bernie Sanders from McCarthyite criticisms, and praised the Democratic Socialists of America. MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle has made remarks on-air that appear to defend democratic socialism, in addition to explaining why it is a more desirable alternative to communism (NBC News, 2/27/20). The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson has written several columns urging Democrats to embrace the party’s more progressive base (7/2/18, 7/1/19), and described “democratic socialism” as something that is “perfectly appropriate” for Ocasio-Cortez’s district, in addition to endorsing (1/15/15) Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for “economic equality”—which King suggested could be called “democratic socialism” (In These Times, 1/15/18).

Like Hayes and Ruhle, Times’ columnists like Jamelle Bouie and Farhad Manjoo have published numerous columns that appear to praise socialism or policies associated with socialists, but that appears to be the farthest they can go, as neither of them have ever embraced the label (New York Times, 2/6/19, 2/14/19, 10/22/19, 3/11/20).

“Open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” writes the Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne (2/10/19)—but it’s still not a normal part of our media conversation.

When socialism or socialists are discussed favorably, or at least not adversely, it’s often in opposition to revolutionary socialist ideologies like Marxism-Leninism (the official ideology of around 20% of the world’s population, and of the US’s greatest geopolitical rival). Democratic socialism is often contrasted with socialist states of the Global South, whether Communist countries like China or Vietnam, or multi-party systems like Venezuela or Nicaragua, which are frequently presented by even the left-most pundits as justifiable targets of imperialism. Instead, wealthy, predominantly white Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Norway are often upheld as the preferable socialist ideal (New York Times, 4/27/19).

Although the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. (2/10/19) argued that Trump and the Republican Party’s attempts to tar all Democrats as “socialist” and antithetical to “American values” will fail because “open advocacy of socialism is now a normal part of our political discourse,” it’s quite clear that McCarthyism is still constricting political discourse in the US. While socialism is being discussed more often, there’s a huge disparity between its acceptance among the U.S. population and the representation of socialists among pundits at the biggest news outlets in the country. There are almost no pundits employed in corporate media who feel comfortable openly identifying as a socialist and calling for socialism as an alternative to capitalism.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that corporate media outlets owned by oligarchs and the investor class are hostile to socialism, but when socialist pundits are virtually nonexistent at these agenda-setting outlets, despite 76% of Democrats being willing to vote for a socialist, it’s clear that these institutions are intended to propagandize the U.S. population into accepting the status quo. Even when politicians and policies often described as “socialist” are presented in a positive light, the fact that these journalists are uncomfortable embracing the label is evidence that McCarthyism still exercises a formidable restraint on the U.S. political imagination and discourse.

Why is the World Going to Hell? Netflix's 'The Social Dilemma' Tells Only Half the Story

By Jonathan Cooke

Republished from the author’s blog.

If you find yourself wondering what the hell is going on right now – the “Why is the world turning to shit?” thought – you may find Netflix’s new documentary The Social Dilemma a good starting point for clarifying your thinking. I say “starting point” because, as we shall see, the film suffers from two major limitations: one in its analysis and the other in its conclusion. Nonetheless, the film is good at exploring the contours of the major social crises we currently face – epitomised both by our addiction to the mobile phone and by its ability to rewire our consciousness and our personalities.

The film makes a convincing case that this is not simply an example of old wine in new bottles. This isn’t the Generation Z equivalent of parents telling their children to stop watching so much TV and play outside. Social media is not simply a more sophisticated platform for Edward Bernays-inspired advertising. It is a new kind of assault on who we are, not just what we think.

According to The Social Dilemma, we are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon”, with our societies standing on the brink of collapse. We face what several interviewees term an “existential threat” from the way the internet, and particularly social media, are rapidly developing.

I don’t think they are being alarmist. Or rather I think they are right to be alarmist, even if their alarm is not entirely for the right reasons. We will get to the limitations in their thinking in a moment.

Like many documentaries of this kind, The Social Dilemma is deeply tied to the shared perspective of its many participants. In most cases, they are richly disillusioned, former executives and senior software engineers from Silicon Valley. They understand that their once-cherished creations – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat (WhatsApp seems strangely under-represented in the roll call) – have turned into a gallery of Frankenstein’s monsters.

That is typified in the plaintive story of the guy who helped invent the “Like” button for Facebook. He thought his creation would flood the world with the warm glow of brother and sisterhood, spreading love like a Coca Cola advert. In fact, it ended up inflaming our insecurities and need for social approval, and dramatically pushed up rates of suicide among teenage girls.

If the number of watches of the documentary is any measure, disillusion with social media is spreading far beyond its inventors.

Children as guinea pigs

Although not flagged as such, The Social Dilemma divides into three chapters.

The first, dealing with the argument we are already most familiar with, is that social media is a global experiment in altering our psychology and social interactions, and our children are the main guinea pigs. Millennials (those who came of age in the 2000s) are the first generation that spent their formative years with Facebook and MySpace as best friends. Their successors, Generation Z, barely know a world without social media at its forefront.

The film makes a relatively easy case forcefully: that our children are not only addicted to their shiny phones and what lies inside the packaging, but that their minds are being aggressively rewired to hold their attention and then make them pliable for corporations to sell things.

Each child is not just locked in a solitary battle to stay in control of his or her mind against the skills of hundreds of the world’s greatest software engineers. The fight to change their perspective and ours – the sense of who we are – is now in the hands of algorithms that are refined every second of every day by AI, artificial intelligence. As one interviewee observes, social media is not going to become less expert at manipulating our thinking and emotions, it’s going to keep getting much, much better at doing it.

Jaron Lanier, one of the computing pioneers of virtual reality, explains what Google and the rest of these digital corporations are really selling: “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception – that is the product.” That is also how these corporations make their money, by “changing what you do, what you think, who you are.”

They make profits, big profits, from the predictions business – predicting what you will think and how you will behave so that you are more easily persuaded to buy what their advertisers want to sell you. To have great predictions, these corporations have had to amass vast quantities of data on each of us – what is sometimes called “surveillance capitalism”.

And, though the film does not quite spell it out, there is another implication. The best formula for tech giants to maximise their predictions is this: as well as processing lots of data on us, they must gradually grind down our distinctiveness, our individuality, our eccentricities so that we become a series of archetypes. Then, our emotions – our fears, insecurities, desires, cravings – can be more easily gauged, exploited and plundered by advertisers.

These new corporations trade in human futures, just as other corporations have long traded in oil futures and pork-belly futures, notes Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard business school. Those markets “have made the internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity”.

Flat Earthers and Pizzagate

The second chapter explains that, as we get herded into our echo chambers of self-reinforcing information, we lose more and more sense of the real world and of each other. With it, our ability to empathise and compromise is eroded. We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants.

Anyone who has spent any time on social media, especially a combative platform like Twitter, will sense that there is a truth to this claim. Social cohesion, empathy, fair play, morality are not in the algorithm. Our separate information universes mean we are increasingly prone to misunderstanding and confrontation.

And there is a further problem, as one interviewee states: “The truth is boring.” Simple or fanciful ideas are easier to grasp and more fun. People prefer to share what’s exciting, what’s novel, what’s unexpected, what’s shocking. “It’s a disinformation-for-profit model,” as another interviewee observes, stating that research shows false information is six times more likely to spread on social media platforms than true information.

And as governments and politicians work more closely with these tech companies – a well-documented fact the film entirely fails to explore – our rulers are better positioned than ever to manipulate our thinking and control what we do. They can dictate the political discourse more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than ever before.

This section of the film, however, is the least successful. True, our societies are riven by increasing polarisation and conflict, and feel more tribal. But the film implies that all forms of social tension – from the paranoid paedophile conspiracy theory of Pizzagate to the Black Lives Matter protests – are the result of social media’s harmful influence.

And though it is easy to know that Flat Earthers are spreading misinformation, it is far harder to be sure what is true and what is false in many others areas of life. Recent history suggests our yardsticks cannot be simply what governments say is true – or Mark Zuckerberg, or even “experts”. It may be a while since doctors were telling us that cigarettes were safe, but millions of Americans were told only a few years ago that opiates would help them – until an opiate addiction crisis erupted across the US.

This section falls into making a category error of the kind set out by one of the interviewees early in the film. Despite all the drawbacks, the internet and social media have an undoubted upside when used simply as a tool, argues Tristan Harris, Google’s former design ethicist and the soul of the film. He gives the example of being able to hail a cab almost instantly at the press of a phone button. That, of course, highlights something about the materialist priorities of most of Silicon Valley’s leading lights.

But the tool box nestled in our phones, full of apps, does not just satisfy our craving for material comfort and security. It has also fuelled a craving to understand the world and our place in it, and offered tools to help us do that.

Phones have made it possible for ordinary people to film and share scenes once witnessed by only a handful of disbelieved passers-by. We can all see for ourselves a white police officer dispassionately kneeling on the neck of a black man for nine minutes, while the victim cries out he cannot breathe, until he expires. And we can then judge the values and priorities of our leaders when they decide to do as little as possible to prevent such incidents occurring again.

The internet has created a platform from which not only disillusioned former Silicon Valley execs can blow the whistle on what the Mark Zuckerbergs are up to, but so can a US army private like Chelsea Manning, by exposing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so can a national security tech insider like Edward Snowden, by revealing the way we are being secretly surveilled by our own governments.

Technological digital breakthroughs allowed someone like Julian Assange to set up a site, Wikileaks, that offered us a window on the real political world – a window through we could see our leaders behaving more like psychopaths than humanitarians. A window those same leaders are now fighting tooth and nail to close by putting him on trial.

A small window on reality

The Social Dilemma ignores all of this to focus on the dangers of so-called “fake news”. It dramatises a scene suggesting that only those sucked into information blackholes and conspiracy sites end up taking to the street to protest – and when they do, the film hints, it will not end well for them.

Apps allowing us to hail a taxi or navigate our way to a destination are undoubtedly useful tools. But being able to find out what our leaders are really doing – whether they are committing crimes against others or against us – is an even more useful tool. In fact, it is a vital one if we want to stop the kind of self-destructive behaviours The Social Dilemma is concerned about, not least our destruction of the planet’s life systems (an issue that, except for one interviewee’s final comment, the film leaves untouched).

Use of social media does not mean one necessarily loses touch with the real world. For a minority, social media has deepened their understanding of reality. For those tired of having the real world mediated for them by a bunch of billionaires and traditional media corporations, the chaotic social media platforms have provided an opportunity to gain insights into a reality that was obscured before.

The paradox, of course, is that these new social media corporations are no less billionaire-owned, no less power-hungry, no less manipulative than the old media corporations. The AI algorithms they are rapidly refining are being used – under the rubric of “fake news” – to drive out this new marketplace in whistleblowing, in citizen journalism, in dissident ideas.

Social media corporations are quickly getting better at distinguishing the baby from the bathwater, so they can throw out the baby. After all, like their forebears, the new media platforms are in the business of business, not of waking us up to the fact that they are embedded in a corporate world that has plundered the planet for profit.

Much of our current social polarisation and conflict is not, as The Social Dilemma suggests, between those influenced by social media’s “fake news” and those influenced by corporate media’s “real news”. It is between, on the one hand, those who have managed to find oases of critical thinking and transparency in the new media and, on the other, those trapped in the old media model or those who, unable to think critically after a lifetime of consuming corporate media, have been easily and profitably sucked into nihilistic, online conspiracies.

Our mental black boxes

The third chapter gets to the nub of the problem without indicating exactly what that nub is. That is because The Social Dilemma cannot properly draw from its already faulty premises the necessary conclusion to indict a system in which the Netflix corporation that funded the documentary and is televising it is so deeply embedded itself.

For all its heart-on-its-sleeve anxieties about the “existential threat” we face as a species, The Social Dilemma is strangely quiet about what needs to change – aside from limiting our kids’ exposure to Youtube and Facebook. It is a deflating ending to the rollercoaster ride that preceded it.

Here I want to backtrack a little. The film’s first chapter makes it sound as though social media’s rewiring of our brains to sell us advertising is something entirely new. The second chapter treats our society’s growing loss of empathy, and the rapid rise in an individualistic narcissism, as something entirely new. But very obviously neither proposition is true.

Advertisers have been playing with our brains in sophisticated ways for at least a century. And social atomisation – individualism, selfishness and consumerism – have been a feature of western life for at least as long. These aren’t new phenomena. It’s just that these long-term, negative aspects of western society are growing exponentially, at a seemingly unstoppable rate.

We’ve been heading towards dystopia for decades, as should be obvious to anyone who has been tracking the lack of political urgency to deal with climate change since the problem became obvious to scientists back in the 1970s.

The multiple ways in which we are damaging the planet – destroying forests and natural habitats, pushing species towards extinction, polluting the air and water, melting the ice-caps, generating a climate crisis – have been increasingly evident since our societies turned everything into a commodity that could be bought and sold in the marketplace. We began on the slippery slope towards the problems highlighted by The Social Dilemma the moment we collectively decided that nothing was sacred, that nothing was more sacrosanct than our desire to turn a quick buck.

It is true that social media is pushing us towards an event horizon. But then so is climate change, and so is our unsustainable global economy, premised on infinite growth on a finite planet. And, more importantly, these profound crises are all arising at the same time.

There is a conspiracy, but not of the Pizzagate variety. It is an ideological conspiracy, of at least two centuries’ duration, by a tiny and ever more fabulously wealth elite to further enrich themselves and to maintain their power, their dominance, at all costs.

There is a reason why, as Harvard business professor Shoshana Zuboff points out, social media corporations are the most fantastically wealthy in human history. And that reason is also why we are reaching the human “event horizon” these Silicon Valley luminaries all fear, one where our societies, our economies, the planet’s life-support systems are all on the brink of collapse together.

The cause of that full-spectrum, systemic crisis is not named, but it has a name. Its name is the ideology that has become a black box, a mental prison, in which we have become incapable of imagining any other way of organising our lives, any other future than the one we are destined for at the moment. That ideology’s name is capitalism.

Waking up from the matrix

Social media and the AI behind it are one of the multiple crises we can no longer ignore as capitalism reaches the end of a trajectory it has long been on. The seeds of neoliberalism’s current, all-too-obvious destructive nature were planted long ago, when the “civilised”, industrialised west decided its mission was to conquer and subdue the natural world, when it embraced an ideology that fetishised money and turned people into objects to be exploited.

A few of the participants in The Social Dilemma allude to this in the last moments of the final chapter. The difficulty they have in expressing the full significance of the conclusions they have drawn from two decades spent in the most predatory corporations the world has ever known could be because their minds are still black boxes, preventing them from standing outside the ideological system they, like us, were born into. Or it could be because coded language is the best one can manage if a corporate platform like Netflix is going to let a film like this one reach a mass audience.

Tristan Harris tries to articulate the difficulty by grasping for a movie allusion: “How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you’re in the matrix?” Later, he observes: “What I see is a bunch of people who are trapped by a business model, an economic incentive, shareholder pressure that makes it almost impossible to do something else.”

Although still framed in Harris’s mind as a specific critique of social media corporations, this point is very obviously true of all corporations, and of the ideological system – capitalism – that empowers all these corporations.

Another interviewee notes: “I don’t think these guys [the tech giants] set out to be evil, it’s just the business model.”

He is right. But “evilness” – the psychopathic pursuit of profit above all other values – is the business model for all corporations, not just the digital ones.

The one interviewee who manages, or is allowed, to connect the dots is Justin Rosenstein, a former engineer for Twitter and Google. He eloquently observes:

We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. A world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way, and corporations go unregulated, they’re going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and we know it is going to leave a worse world for future generations.

This is short-term thinking based on this religion of profit at all costs. As if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best result. … What’s frightening – and what hopefully is the last straw and will make us wake up as a civilisation as to how flawed this theory is in the first place – is to see that now we are the tree, we are the whale. Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.

Here is the problem condensed. That unnamed “flawed theory” is capitalism. The interviewees in the film arrived at their alarming conclusion – that we are on the brink of social collapse, facing an “existential threat” – because they have worked inside the bellies of the biggest corporate beasts on the planet, like Google and Facebook.

These experiences have provided most of these Silicon Valley experts with deep, but only partial, insight. While most of us view Facebook and Youtube as little more than places to exchange news with friends or share a video, these insiders understand much more. They have seen up close the most powerful, most predatory, most all-devouring corporations in human history.

Nonetheless, most of them have mistakenly assumed that their experiences of their own corporate sector apply only to their corporate sector. They understand the “existential threat” posed by Facebook and Google without extrapolating to the identical existential threats posed by Amazon, Exxon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and thousands more giant, soulless corporations.

The Social Dilemma offers us an opportunity to sense the ugly, psychopathic face shielding behind the mask of social media’s affability. But for those watching carefully the film offers more: a chance to grasp the pathology of the system itself that pushed these destructive social media giants into our lives.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Limits of Neoliberal Feminism

[Photo credit: Danita Delimont Photography/Newscom]

By Matthew John

Republished from dialogue & discourse.

On September 18, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died from complications related to pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old and was surrounded by loved ones at the time of her death. Thousands attended a vigil outside the Supreme Court building and innumerable additional events took place in her honor throughout the country. Ginsburg was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and became known as a feminist icon and a pioneering advocate for women’s rights due to her dissenting opinions in cases like Gonzales v. Carhart, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores. An email I received from Black Lives Matter Global Network the following day concisely encapsulated public sentiment:

“Last night, we lost a champion in the fight for justice and gender equality: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg was a giant in the fight for equality and civil rights — she embodied everything that our movement stands for. We stand on the accomplishments of her life’s work that have continued to amplify the need to protect and expand equal rights for women and underserved communities. And we celebrate women having a voice in the workforce while also having the ability to make decisions for their own health and wellbeing because of the work of Justice Ginsburg.”

In the wake of this national tragedy, Ginsburg’s life and legacy took center stage in political discourse and rampant speculation ensued regarding how this event might influence the nation’s future. Democratic campaign contributions skyrocketed and Republican leaders began calculating and scheming to fill the vacant court seat. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Ginsburg would be the first woman to lie in repose at the Supreme Court and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state would erect a statue in her honor. Politicians and pundits memorialized the fallen titan, who had become a cultural icon known fondly by the moniker “Notorious R.B.G”, while others found inspiration in idiosyncratic elements of Ginsburg’s persona.

As is the case with other beloved American heroes, the national discourse surrounding the death of Ginsburg included every detail imaginable other than her cumulative record in public service. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court tenure of Ruth Bader Ginsburg encompassed more than just pussyhats and rainbows. As with any prominent figure, we must account for the “problematic” aspects of Ginsburg’s legacy as well. These include her disparaging statement regarding Colin Kaepernick’s racial justice efforts, her positive statement regarding former colleague Brett Kavanaugh (who was credibly accused of rape), her designation of flagrant reactionary Antonin Scalia as her “best buddy”, and her final case on SCOTUS, in which she agreed with the decision to fast-track President Trump’s deportations. In terms of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comprehensive legacy on the Supreme Court, the well-known, progressive dissenting opinions are dwarfed by her extensive résumé of anti-indigenous, anti-worker, pro-cop, and “tough on crime” decisions. (Unless otherwise noted, the following bullet points are quoted or nearly quoted from this Current Affairs article, which I’d recommend reading for more details and context.) For instance:

• In Heien v. North Carolina, the court held that the police may justifiably pull over cars if they believe they are violating the law even if the police are misunderstanding the law, so long as the mistake was reasonable.

• In Taylor v. Barkes, the Court held that the family of a suicidal man who was jailed and then killed himself could not sue the jail for failing to implement anti-suicide measures.

• In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the court held that the family of two men could not sue the police after they had shot and killed them for fleeing a police stop.

• In Samson v. California, the Court decided the issue of whether police could conduct warrantless searches of parolees merely because they were on parole. Instead of joining the liberal dissenters, Ginsburg signed onto Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in favor of the police.

• In Kansas v. Carr, the Kansas Supreme Court had overturned a pair of death sentences, on the grounds that the defendants’ Eighth Amendment rights had been violated in the instructions given to the jury. SCOTUS informed Kansas that it had made a mistake; nobody’s Eighth Amendment rights had been violated, thus the defendants ought to have continued unimpeded along the path toward execution. The Court’s decision was 8–1, the lone dissenter being Sonia Sotomayor. Ginsburg put her name on Justice Scalia’s majority opinion instead.

• In Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, the court ruled against the Oneida Tribe over a dispute regarding its territorial claim. Ginsburg’s majority opinion stated, “We hold that the tribe cannot unilaterally revive its ancient sovereignty, in whole or in part, over the parcels at issue.” Ginsburg referenced the Eurocentric, racist, and colonialist “Doctrine of Discovery” in her comments. (Source)

• In Salazar v. Ramah Navajo Chapter, Ginsburg dissented, disagreeing with the ruling that that the United States government, when it enters into a contract with a Native American tribe for services, must pay contracts in full, even if Congress has not appropriated enough money to pay all tribal contractors. (Source)

• In Kiowa Tribe v. Manufacturing Technologies, Ginsburg once again dissented, opposing the ruling, which stated that the Kiowa Tribe was entitled to sovereign immunity from contract lawsuits, whether made on or off reservation, or involving governmental or commercial activities. (Source)

• In Inyo County v. Paiute-Shoshone Indians, the Bishop Paiute Tribe of California asserted that their tribe’s status as a sovereign nation made them immune to state processes under federal law and asserted that the state authorized the seizure of tribal records. Ginsburg joined the majority in dismissing the tribe’s complaint. (Source)

• In Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government, the court unanimously ruled against a tribal council that wanted to collect a tax from non-tribal members doing business on tribal lands. The Court claimed the land (which was owned by the tribe) was not subject to the tribal tax because it was not part of a Native American reservation. (Source)

• In C & L Enterprises, Inc. v. Citizen Band, Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, the court held that the tribe waived its sovereign immunity when it agreed to a contract containing an arbitration agreement. (Source)

• In Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, the court ruled against the Navajo Nation, who have consistently protested the encroachment of a ski resort on Navajo territory (San Francisco Peaks). In short, the decision upheld the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling that the use of recycled sewage water was not a “substantial burden” on the religious freedom of American Indians. (Source)

• In Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk, the court ruled that workers didn’t deserve paid compensation for being required to watch theft security screenings. (Source)

• In Brogan v. United States, the court ruled that the Fifth Amendment does not protect the right of those being questioned by law enforcement officials to deny wrongdoing falsely. (Source)

• In Chadrin Lee Mullenix v. Beatrice Luna, Ginsburg sided with the majority opinion which granted immunity to a police officer who unnecessarily shot and killed a suspect. (Source)

• In Bush v. Gore, the contentious decision that decided the 2000 presidential election, Ginsburg’s draft of her dissent had a footnote alluding to the possible suppression of Black voters in Florida. Justice Scalia purportedly responded to this draft by flying into a rage, telling Ginsburg that she was using “Al Sharpton tactics.” Ginsburg removed the footnote before it saw the light of day.

• In Davis v. Ayala, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a lengthy concurrence condemning solitary confinement. Most notably, Justice Kennedy made no reference to any particularly vulnerable group, instead suggesting that long-term solitary confinement may be unconstitutional for all. Justice Ginsburg did not join the concurrence.

• Scott v. Harris involved a motorist who was paralyzed after a police officer ran his car off the road during a high-speed chase. Ginsburg concurred with the majority that deadly force was justified. (Source)

• In Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc., Ginsburg approved allowing the government to threaten the withdrawal of funding in order to punish universities that ban discriminatory job recruitment by the military.

The list goes on. Of course, no one is perfect. Everyone has flaws. However, when evaluating any prominent or powerful individual, it seems the proper outlook is to weigh the harm inflicted by their actions against the positive results of their actions. For instance, Abraham Lincoln’s passage of the Emancipation Proclamation helped end the most prominent form of slavery in the U.S. (but not all forms), and because of this, many Americans are willing to forgive his racist views and perceive his overall contributions positively. By this measure, it is dubious at best to suggest that Ginsburg’s full record contains more — simply put — good than bad. That is to say, it seems that her career as a whole caused more harm to vulnerable people than any positive impact her rare instances of dissent may have had.

The simple aforementioned formulation — cumulative good vs. cumulative harm — may be a bit naïve when compared to the manner in which most citizens evaluate public figures and the process by which these figures are often lionized despite their substantial misdeeds. The cult of personality surrounding Ruth Bader Ginsburg is certainly a notable phenomenon that can be explored in sociological and cultural contexts, but the whitewashing of her record is a crucial aspect of this process that is worth analyzing.

This unfettered, liberal adulation of Ginsburg can stem from a conscious attempt to conceal the unsavory aspects of her record, from plain ignorance, or from a third, more insidious place: acquiescence to the brutality that is “baked into” the American political system and our nation’s history more broadly. This is a system founded by white supremacists who enslaved and tortured Africans on stolen, blood-soaked land — a system by and for economic elites. In this sense, Ginsburg’s consistently anti-indigenous voting record might be perceived by liberals as a “necessary evil” — a simple extension of the settler-colonial mentality and the vestiges of “Manifest Destiny.” The same critique applies to her conservative rulings that harmed immigrants, people of color, and the working class in general.

Beyond Neoliberal Feminism

It is usually the case that about half of any large population is comprised of women. When speaking of feminism, we often forget that universal issues are also women’s issues; healthcare, housing, and wages, for instance. Under neoliberalism, exploitation, austerity, vicious imperialism, and state violence are systemic aspects of daily reality. We must remember that this includes the experiences of women, and often to a greater degree. Why don’t we take into account the indigenous women, or the immigrant women, or the women experiencing poverty when discussing Ginsburg’s record or government policy more broadly?

Let’s break this down even further. Recognizing these demographics, is it “feminist” to continue displacing and attacking the sovereignty of native women? Is it “feminist” to rule in favor of employers rather than female employees? Is it “feminist” to deport women back to countries we destroyed with sanctions and military coups? Just as the lofty, foundational American ideals were designed by and for white, property-owning men, this elite notion of feminism only applies to certain groups of women under certain circumstances. This superficial feminism is a far cry from a Marxist feminism that seeks a more holistic approach to liberation and empowerment. As Martha E. Gimenez wrote:

“As long as women’s oppression and other oppressions occupy the center of feminist theory and politics, while class remains at the margins, feminism will unwittingly contribute to keeping class outside the collective consciousness and the boundaries of acceptable political discourse. To become a unifying, rather than a divisive, political and ideological force, twenty-first-century Marxist feminism needs to become an overtly working-class women’s feminism, in solidarity with the working class as a whole, supporting the struggles of all workers, women and men, and gender-variant people of all races, national origins, citizenship statuses, and so on, thus spearheading the process toward working-class organization and the badly needed return to class in U.S. politics.”

American Institutions and Systemic Violence

Deifying political figures like Ginsburg not only whitewashes their crimes against marginalized people — it also further legitimizes a fundamentally elitist, unjust, and undemocratic political system. As political scientist Rob Hunter wrote, “The Supreme Court is a bulwark of reaction. Its brief is to maintain the institutional boundaries drawn by the Constitution, a document conceived out of fear of majoritarian democracy and written by members of a ruling class acting in brazen self-interest.”

A sober analysis of Ginsburg’s rulings clarifies that America has never strayed from its roots as a genocidal, hyper-capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal settler-colonial project with economic elites running the government and blue-clad henchmen violently enforcing this agenda through state-sanctioned terror. Some wonder if it has always been this way. Has it gotten better? Worse? Has slavery just been repackaged? What’s clear is that the advent of neoliberalism has heightened the perilous and precarious conditions of this crumbling society while technology has allowed strangers to share the visceral horrors contained therein.

It is time to stop normalizing this barbarism. Performative identity politics and the ubiquitous brand of white, neoliberal feminism are façades used to conceal the profound violence of a dying empire and to paint the “moderate” wing of capital as somehow more humane and enlightened. A society founded on land theft, on commodifying basic human needs, on exploiting, enslaving, and brutalizing the vulnerable, is a society that should not be celebrated. And it is a society where the realization of true feminism has — thus far — proven to be out of reach. As Thomas Sankara once said, “The status of women will improve only with the elimination of the system that exploits them.”

Seven Theses on "Re-opening the Economy": Further Notes on Viral Dialectics

By Bryant William Sculos

1.  The economy is not—and never was—closed or shutdown.

At the peak of the global economic shutdown, it is likely that less than 50% of the economy actually shutdown. And for most of the initial “lockdown” period, much much less than 50% of the economy was inactive. Unskilled workers, sometimes having their hours cut, sometimes increased without overtime pay, magically became “essential workers.” While there is national and regional global variance, this is nearly universally true. Of course, many millions—if not billions—have lost their jobs around the world. Some of these are entertainment or hospitality/comfort service workers, but many are truly essential care and educational workers. The real backbone of the capitalist economic system has been endangered, hyper-exploited, or otherwise cast off. The stock market thrives all the while. Maybe, just maybe, we should actually shutdown this foundationally unjust world order.

2.  The cure is worse than the disease.

The shutdown—and this weird post-shutdown partial shutdown period—has caused enormous harm to countless people. Actually, we could count them, but the people who make those decisions about what to count (and what counts) don’t care enough. It is because of the literal insanity of our system that people are literally being driven insane, into the depths of emergent and exacerbated mental illness. People are killing themselves because of the responses to COVID-19. But that isn’t because we shut down, but rather it is because of how we shutdown, without coming close to addressing long-preexisting social inequities that were barely below the surface—if below the surface at all. This is no cure at all. The most vulnerable are either dead or more vulnerable; the safe and secure are, for the most part, at least as safe and secure as they were before.

3. The disease is worse than the cure.

An economy isn’t a thing that is capable of caring. In the midst of a mass pandemic where likely well-over a million people have already died, we should care about something that has never cared about us? How could it? Economies are systems that reflect the distributions of power and then the character of the values and priorities of that society. The responses to COVID-19 are perfectly in-line with the systemic values of capitalism. As the infamous graffiti reminds us, capitalism is the virus. A COVID-19 vaccine won’t change that. There is a vaccine for capitalism, and it is up to all of us to find it (really, to create it, in practice) together.

4. Yes, the economy is more important than your grandma.

And it always has been. It is more important than you too! It shouldn’t be though. It doesn’t have to be, but if we look at the absolutely wretched state of elder care in the US and around the world, we shouldn’t be surprised to hear actual alive human beings—elected officials and policymakers no less—suggest that grandparents should be willing to sacrifice their lives on the altar of capitalism. Think about that. These people have been made completely fucking psychotic. Then again, before COVID-19 too many of us accepted this basic logic on a daily basis.

5. We really should compare this to the flu.

Not that COVID-19 is as serious as the seasonal flu—a mistaken thought I had and quickly abandoned in early March 2020. And yet, seasonal flu is an enduring civilizational challenge that we too easily accept as intractable, beyond what we’ve achieved thus far with the existing vaccination protocols. We have, occasionally more than 50% effective, vaccines that people need to take every year. Still, we have hundreds of thousands of people dying annually from the flu. Perhaps millions are saved, yes. But how many billions of dollars are made by the health care companies that make and distribute these vaccines? Vaccines that—while better than nothing—are still wildly inadequate. There are political-economic lessons we must learn from how the flu is treated, and we must refuse to allow the same things to happen with COVID-19, a much more serious problem.

6. Don’t let them bring evictions back.

We should be paying more attention to the fact that right now, in many places (but, perhaps, most notably in the US), evictions are effectively non-existent. As banks, landlords, and local sheriffs still try to find a way to evict people, we should fight to get the prohibition against eviction accepted as a new political norm—even if the result of such a struggle is a compromise that simply makes it harder for people to be evicted.

7.  Physical distancing is new. Social distancing has been going on for a while. Since the late 1700s probably.

With the urbanization associated with the industrial revolution people have, over the past several centuries, lived increasingly close to one another. Physical proximity has increased along with the development and spread of global capitalism. During that same period, humanity has become increasingly socially-isolated. Family ties are less. Friendship bonds, while they may be maintained in more mediated form through social media, are perhaps stronger and more significant than ever before. Still, these bonds are not as powerful or enduring at this stage of historical social development as family bonds were prior to the advent of global capitalism—however oppressive and violent they indeed were. COVID-19 has merely exacerbated a problematic sociological pattern that was already with us. One wonders whether social ties will experience a jump in strength once COVID-19 is under better control, epidemiologically and medically speaking (likely only possible once mass vaccination is achieved).

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is the founding curator and editor of LeftHooked, a monthly aggregator and review of socialist writing, published by the Hampton Institute, where he is also a contributing editor. He is a visiting assistant professor of global politics and theory at Worcester State University. Bryant is also the politics of culture section editor for Class, Race and Corporate Power and co-editor (with Prof. Mary Caputi) of Teaching Marx & Critical Theory in the 21st Century (originally published with Brill and now available in paperback with Haymarket Books).