Why Comparisons Between the Boston Tea Party and Baltimore Riots are Wrong

By Colin Jenkins

The comparisons being made between the Baltimore riots this past week and the historical Boston Tea Party are wrongheaded. Baltimore residents have much more to fight for than the American colonists of old.

The Boston Tea Party

In 1767, British Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which included a tax on the American colonies for tea imports from Britain. For the next six years, in order to avoid paying this tax, colonists established a significant smuggling ring with the Dutch, which amounted to approximately 900,000 pounds of tea being shipped into the American colonies per year. This was viewed as a crime by British authorities. So, in 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act. Contrary to a popular misconception, the Tea Act did not create a new royal tax on the American colonists. Rather, it was implemented for three reasons: (1) to help boost the East India Company, which had fallen on hard times, by granting them the right to ship tea directly to the colonies as a duty-free export, (2) to undercut the price of smuggled tea the colonies were receiving from the Dutch, and (3) to bolster and reinforce the tea import tax placed on the colonies due to the Townshend Acts.

Since the Tea Act indirectly served as a way to enforce the tax established by the Townshend Acts, colonists were up in arms. Not because they were being denied basic necessities like food, water, clothing and shelter. Not because they were terrorized by British authorities patrolling their neighborhoods. Not because they were forced to live in constricted areas with no jobs, no resources, and no ownership over their communities. They were up in arms, ready to rebel, prepared to destroy the property of another, because their sipping tea was suddenly going to cost a little more.

New England merchants who had constructed profitable businesses with the help of a complex and illegal smuggling scheme were suddenly worried about their bottom lines. Artisans worried about their rising costs of tea. Silversmiths began fretting about the prospect of falling demands for teapots. These material concerns grew fast. Town hall meetings were called to address this issue. Merchant meetings ensued. Talk continued throughout the New England colony until this disdain developed a political context falling under the banner of "no taxation without representation."

On the fateful night of December 16, 1773, over one hundred colonists, some of whom were disguised as Native Americans, jumped aboard the three ships docked at Boston Harbor and proceeded to smash open 340 chests of East India Company tea with axes. The colonists dumped every single tea leaf, 90,000 pounds (45 tons) in all, into the ocean. None of the tea belonged to them. Yet, over the course of three hours, they destroyed all of it. Its value, in today's dollars, was roughly one million dollars.

The men who took this rebellious, "criminal" and incredibly destructive stand that night must have been distressed, even hopeless. After all, what kinds of conditions would have to exist to drive people to destroy $1 million worth of someone else's property? And tea nonetheless. So, who were these desperate men? They were Paul Revere, a "prominent and prosperous" Boston Silversmith. They were Thomas Young, a Physician. Elisha Story, a Physician and the son of the Register of the Court of Admiralty, William Story. Edward Proctor, a "prominent citizen," military officer, and importer. They were Thomas Mellville, a Theologian and Princeton graduate. Abraham Hunt, a business owner involved in importing and exporting. They were David Kinnison, a farm owner. Nathaniel Barber, a wealthy merchant and insurer. Charles Conner, a coastal trader, Innkeeper and horse trader.

The list goes on and on. All men of privilege. All men of wealth. All products of a multi-generational, state-protected, feudal system of 'nobility.' All benefactors of the very empire they now opposed. Willing to riot, commit severe "criminal" acts, and destroy a million dollars worth of property in order to prevent a rise in the cost of tea.

The Baltimore Resistance

In the modern US, the state of Maryland is the standard-bearer of rising inequality. As the wealthiest state in the country, with a median income of $71,707, over 13 percent of Maryland's children live in poverty. And in this sea of extreme inequality and poverty, Baltimore has been drowning for decades, so much so that the city's socioeconomic landscape resembles that of a Third-World country, and in many cases, is much worse.

36.5% of Baltimore's children have grown up in poverty. In a city where one needs to make $24 an hour in order to sustain themselves adequately, a large majority simply cannot. The lack of living-wage jobs has forced 35% of the population to rely on food stamps to supplement their diet, and 84% of children must rely on the government supplemented reduced lunch program in order to eat in school. Since the arrival of the Great Recession in 2008, things have gotten progressively worse. Between 2008 and 2013, the participation rate in Baltimore's Food Supplement Program increased by 59 percent.

A recent study published by the Journal of Adolescent Health examined the living conditions of 15-19 year olds in poor areas of five cities across the world. Baltimore happened to be one of those cities. The others were Shanghai, China; Johannesburg, South Africa; New Delhi, India; and Ibadan,Nigeria.

In comparison to the other cities, Baltimore teens showed "poor perceptions about their physical environments, their sense of social cohesion, and their sense of safety within their neighborhoods." Teens from Baltimore and Johannesburg, the cities that received the lowest ratings, are generally "fearful" and "don't feel safe from violence."

This fearful existence is the result of impoverished economic conditions that have been shaped by historical occurrences of institutional racism, racial segregation, and "White Flight." During the housing boom of the 2000s, real estate agents pulled out the "White Flight" operating manual and capitalized on "racial fears," convincing large amounts of white residents near expanding black neighborhoods to sell their houses only to turn around and "sell them to black families at a much higher price," regularly approaching 69 percent markups and fueled by the widespread illegal activities by banks leading up to the Subprime mortgage crisis. In all, the Department of Justice exposed 4,500 cases of mortgage fraud directed at residents in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. This predatory and highly-racialized housing scam was built on decades of similar practices, creating intensely segregated neighborhoods. Like most large cities in the US, a majority of Baltimore's African American residents have effectively been corralled into ghettos with deteriorating infrastructure, substandard schools, and nonexistent jobs, opportunities and resources. "The city's black population had nearly doubled between 1950 and 1970 as whites reactively began moving away: Almost a third of the city's population left the city between 1950 and 2000." When teenagers from East Baltimore were asked to describe their neighborhood, they spoke of "big rats going around in people's trash, vacant houses full of squatters and needles on the ground."

Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who was brutally murdered by police, grew up in similar surroundings. "In Sandtown-Winchester, more than half of the people between the ages of 16 and 64 are out of work and the unemployment rate is double that for the city at one in five. Median income is just $24,000, below the poverty line for a family of four, and nearly a third of families live in poverty. Meanwhile, somewhere between a quarter to a third of the buildings are vacant, compared to 5 percent in the city as a whole." These material conditions create a desperate reality when compounded with draconian drug laws and increased policing aimed at predominantly poor, black, and working-class communities.

Higher Stakes

To be fair, for the American colonists who staged the riot at the Boston Harbor, relations with King George III had been deteriorating over time. The Boston Massacre had occurred three years earlier when five colonists were killed by British soldiers who were confronted by a mob. Tension surely existed, even animosity; however, most of the American colonists' still maintained privileged lives, owned prosperous businesses, enjoyed positions of prominence and power, and owned property. They were elitists in every sense of the word.

In contrast, Black residents of Baltimore have been forced to endure a bleak landscape - one shaped by centuries of white supremacy, institutional racism, and uneven development. The creation of the black ghetto in the US is the culmination of this development - a desolate and barren landscape that often resembles more of an open air prison than a community. Despite valiant efforts on the parts of many in this community, these historical developments have been difficult to shake. Joblessness continues. A lack of resources persists. A general indifference on the part of state and federal government is now chronic.

The change that was willed by great Civil Rights leaders of the past never arrived. It's been suspended in mid-air, surrounded by empty celebrations of de-radicalized revolutionaries, de-contextualized ideas, and empty promises made by a Black "leadership" class that has continuously sold its constituents out. This once-promising change is now held forever out of reach, serving as nothing more than a mockery of our present reality. The hopes accompanying the election of the first black President proved to be a mirage. We not only failed to land in a "post-racial America," we drifted further away. Domestic military and police forces have taken on the role of a foreign occupier, patrolling the streets in armored cars, recklessly smashing in doors of homes, harassing and intimidating community members, and even referring to them as "enemy forces." Constitutional rights are regularly overridden by "stop and frisk" policies that scoff at any minimum standard for being stopped and questioned, let alone reasonable suspicion. The fact that Freddie Gray ran for his life after officers "made eye contact with him" is understandable. Unlawful stops that turn into deadly encounters have become the norm in Black neighborhoods across the US. Thus far in 2015, on average, three people are killed per day by the police.

Police officers have been become more militarized than ever, more aggressive than ever, and bolder than ever. Not only do they murder young (and unarmed) black Americans daily, they do it on national television, while laughing and gloating, for all to see. Surreal debates ensue about whether this murder was justified or that murder was acceptable. White racists flood social media with a robotic vileness that seems worthy of Stanley Kubrick's direction. And the desperate people of Baltimore - who are treated as strangers and outsiders in their own neighborhoods, allowed no vested interest in their communities, and given no say over how their lives unfold - are labeled "animals," "criminals," "savages," and "thugs," even by the kowtowing Mayor they elected, as they fight, by any means necessary, to gain an ounce of dignity or respect. The American colonists had it easy. The people of Baltimore are fighting for their lives.

Juxtaposing Anarchy: From Chaos to Cause

By Colin Jenkins

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

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

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

Pop Anarchy and Nihilism: Rebels without a Cause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberal Enablers and the Right's Appropriation of Libertarianism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Authentic Anarchism and Its Philosophical Roots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Does this Matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

[2] Schmidt & van der Walt, p. 34

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

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

[5] Schmidt and van der Walt, p. 33

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

[7] Chomsky on Anarchism , p. 192.

[8] Rocker, P. 59.

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

Gangs of the State: Police & the Hierarchy of Violence

By Frank Castro

Hierarchy of Violence: A system of oppression in which those with power, existing above those without, enact and enforce a monopoly of violence upon those lower on the hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is normal and is accepted as the order of things. When violence is attempted by those lower on the hierarchy upon those higher, it is met with swift and brutal repression.

December 15th, after the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos of the NYPD , New York City mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted "When police officers are murdered, it tears at the foundation of our society. This heinous attack was an attack on our entire city." On July 18th, the day after Eric Garner, a longtime New Yorker and father of six, was choked to death by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, the mayor of of the Big Apple had only this to say: "On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Eric Garner."

In his condolences there was no mention of a " heinous attack" against the actual people of New York City. There was no mention of the "tearing at the foundation of our society" either. Still further, in the case for the police officers, de Blasio went as far as to use the word "murdered" long before a shred of evidence was provided. Yet in the face of video footage (that pesky thing called evidence) of Eric Garner's actual murder at the literal hands of an NYPD officer, de Blasio showed no "outrage", only platitudinous sentiment.

Such reactions are typical, but there is nothing shocking about them when we understand that our society operates on a clearly defined, yet often unarticulated, hierarchy of violence, and that the function of politicians and police is to normalize and enforce that violence. Thus, as an institution, police act as state-sanctioned gangs charged with the task of upholding the violent, racist hierarchy of white supremacist capitalism and, whenever possible, furthering a monopoly of power where all violence from/by those higher on the hierarchy upon those lower can be normalized into business as usual.

Any deviation from this business as usual, any resistance - the threat of force displayed in massive protests after Garner's death, or any displacement of state power whatsoever - by those lower on the hierarchy upon those higher is met with brutal repression. This is why cops are always present at protests. It is NOT to "Keep the peace." We have seen their "peace" - tear gas, rubber and wooden bullets, mace, riot gear, sound cannons, and thousands of brutal cops leaving dead bodies. They are not there for peace, but rather to maintain at all times the explicit reminder of America's power hierarchy through the brutalization of black and brown bodies above all others.

This is why de Blasio offered worthless platitudes to Eric Garner's family instead of outrage or solidarity. To him, as heinous as choking an unarmed black person to death is, it was business as usual.

Normalizing the Hierarchy of Violence

By framing this power dynamic as business as usual or "just how things are", it follows that the deployment of violence by police is always justified or necessary. This framing takes a myriad of forms almost always working in tandem to control how we think about the violence enacted by the state and its domestic enforcers, the police. Below are just a few of the tactics employed 24/7, 365 days a year.

Cop Worship & the Criminalization of Blackness. In this hierarchy of violence a cop's life matters infinitely more than a black person's life, and Americans, like NYC mayor Bill de Blasio, are expected to demonstrate sympathy with the lives of police officers. By contrast, Americans are encouraged to scrutinize and question the humanity of black and brown people murdered by police before questioning the lethal force used in otherwise non-lethal situations. This social reality illustrates how power is coordinated and wielded unilaterally, directed against the masses by a specialized minority within the population.

Police repression is framed in the mainstream media in such a way that when police commit violence against black and brown communities, it appears to white Americans as if they simply are protecting white communities from black criminality. This is the active dissemination of white supremacy. From it police accrue social capital and power within a conception of black bodies that perpetuates their dehumanization and murder. Completing the cycle, racist white Americans, after participating in the process of dehumanizing black people slain by police, then offer their sympathy, material support, and privilege to killer cops.

For example: George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson received over a million dollars for their legal defense funds. Both were either acquitted or not indicted by majority white juries. Officers Liu and Ramos of the NYPD, their families' mortgages are being paid. And thousands of other (white) officers are awarded paid time off (vacation) and non-indictments for what would otherwise be brutal crimes.

Ultimately, cops are praised because they enforce violence on behalf of the moneyed class. They protect existing power, wealth, and the right to exploit for profit, while simultaneously appearing to exist primarily for public safety. Straddling this paradoxical position, cops are worshiped because they are explicitly and implicitly attached to the rewards of privilege under capitalism.

Victim Blaming (Lynching the Dead). Seeking to justify hierarchical violence, the police collude directly with the mainstream media to exalt those who "uphold the law," while eroding the humanity of those whom have had their lives stolen by the police. Most often in the extrajudicial killings of black and brown people this has happened through a process of character assassination, or the process by which authorities and the media dredge up every possible occurrence of a "bad deed" of the victim's to discredit their innocence. It is effective considering dead people cannot defend themselves.

Erasure & Decontextualization. Time and time again police and the mainstream media will attempt to divert attention from the violence of the state by focusing on the retaliation of an oppressed group. This purposeful refocusing is a method of erasing the previous violence visited upon oppressed peoples in order to delegitimize any resistance to police domination. If those higher on the hierarchy can erase the history of those lower on the hierarchy, they effectively erase the oppression they themselves committed and make invisible the power they obtain from it.

We have seen this in the establishment's constant prioritization of defending private property over black and brown lives. As an example, after Mike Brown was slayed in the street by killer cop Darren Wilson the media headlined stories about "looting" instead of the fact that an unarmed 18 year old child's life was snuffed out. The role of "looting" rhetoric served to remove the context of a white supremacist power structure, its history, and to allow for a game of moral equivalence to be played - one where property damage was as heinous as killing a black child.

In addition it served to usurp the fact that America's justice system has always been and continues to be racist. From its racist policing built on profiling, to its war on drugs which dis-proportionally incarcerates black (and brown) people , to its sentencing laws that increase in severity if you are black, to the fact that a black person is killed by cops or vigilantes every 28 hours . It is murderous and racist to its core, but the neither the mainstream media nor the state will ever admit it.

Narrative Restriction. To build off what Peter Gelderloos said in his piece The Nature of Police, the Role of the Left , discussions in America operate by fixing the terms of debate firmly outside any solutions to the problem. This happens by first establishing "fierce polemics between two acceptable "opposites" that are so close they are almost touching". Surrounding the national "discussion" about police terror, this has manifested as a polemic between "good cops" versus "bad cops". Second, encourage participants toward lively debate, and to third "either ignore or criminalize anyone who stakes an independent position, especially one that throws into question the fundamental tenets that are naturalized and reinforced by both sides in the official debate."

By creating a limited spectrum of discourse an ideological foundation is created for the hierarchy of violence. The end result is a set of normalized choices (reforms) which restrict or repress any competition an actual solution to the problem might bring. What is valued as acceptable within this limited spectrum then is only that which reflects the range of needs of those higher on the hierarchy of violence (reforms which gut radical resistance in order to maintain status quo power structures) and nothing more. In the current "discussion", the prevailing and unapproachable axiom is that the police represent protection and justice, and therefore they are a legitimate presence in our lives. Anyone who says otherwise is an agent of chaos.

This narrowing of the discourse never allows us to deconstruct the fact that policing in our society has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with punishment.

As Against Hired Guns put it, "Regardless of laws that claim we are all innocent until proven guilty, the results of wrongdoing and office referral, investigation and trial, always start and end in punishment. Our society takes this punishment as justice, and even though it is the nature of this system to attempt to prevent crime by deferment regardless of circumstance, many of us still cling to the idea that at its core the system means well. Many of us think to ourselves that aberrations of this are merely "bad apples" and we must expunge or punish them, but the reality is that this is not a unilateral system of justice at all. The police enforce a steady system of punishment on our streets, and punishment is specifically and intentionally directed at Black or Brown people."

The Law & the (In)Justice System. Institutions designed exclusively for punishment, primarily the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), expose the inability of a penal system to produce justice and the conditions for liberation. Here, the deliberately narrowed discourse concerned only with crime and punishment fabricates a perceived necessity for police that appears undeniable. This is an exploitative deception obscuring the socio-economic conditions that produce poverty and suffering within oppressed communities. On its own terms, the mechanisms of hierarchical violence fail to provide the resources and opportunities necessary for assimilation into a white supremacist capitalism. The ultimate limitation of capitalism is that it will always need an exploitable class of people to produce profit for an insignificantly small wealthy population.

The System Isn't Broken, It Was Built This Way

Since its formative days as an institution of slavery, policing in America has always been about the maintenance of this country's racist power structure. The major difference today has been an increased technological and military capacity for politicians, the media, and the police to march locked in step with each other in controlling the narrative we see. Politicians like Bill de Blasio still make laws informed by white supremacy. The police still enforce them through the same hierarchy of violence. The media still kowtows to the powered elite's depiction of violent oppression. And we the oppressed are still fighting for our liberation. Thus by now we ought to know that police, as the Gangs of the State tasked with the preservation of white supremacy and capitalism, can only be abolished by a movement which has correctly identified and been equipped with the tools to dismantle the hierarchy of violence.

Editor's Note: This piece was the first of a series written in collaboration with PraxisandCapital. We hope to continue deconstructing the hierarchy of violence in the future. Suggestions for clarification in later installments will be useful, so please, inbox either of us and we will make notes.

A Captured or Dead Assata Wouldn't Be To Silence Her: It Would be to Silence Us

By Frank Castro

"For centuries, nothing has so stirred up American fury like the escape of a slave. That ain't just distant history. For daring to slip her bonds and escape from brutal and unjust bondage, the Empire now labels her a terrorist. That's because to them, nothing is more terrifying than resistance to their imperial will."

- Mumia Abu-Jamal on Assata Shakur

When it comes to "capturing" "terrorists" or America's political fugitives, the same litmus test applies: What makes less noise, a prisoner or a corpse?

With the United States and Cuba resuming diplomatic ties, there has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to Assata Shakur, a 67 year old black liberationist and political fugitive. Almost immediately after President Obama announced resurrecting ties between the two nations, the New Jersey State Police (NJSP) started scheming to get their hands on her.

According to the NJSP's Facebook page, Colonel Rick Fuentes, Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, issued the following statement:

"We continue to work closely with the FBI towards the capture of Joanne Chesimard [Assata Shakur], a convicted felon and fugitive who escaped from jail in 1979 and remains on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List, as well as New Jersey's Most Wanted List. We view any changes in relations with Cuba as an opportunity to bring her back to the United States to finish her sentence for the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. We stand by the reward money and hope that the total of two million dollars will prompt fresh information in the light of this altered international relationship."

But of course that's the state sponsored narrative of whom she is and why she is wanted by US authorities. This is the only propaganda you are supposed to unquestionably swallow as you rally behind the most racist nation in the world to go lynch yet another life in the name of "justice".

In reality Assata was a prominent female member of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army. She became a member of the Black Power movement at a time when many activists were galvanized following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. And she experienced firsthand the authentic history of a nation built on genocide and slavery, something which stands in stark contrast to the whitewashed beacon of exceptionalism that mainstream America propagates today.

That experience was cemented as Shakur was targeted and framed by the FBI's COINTELPRO program, a series of illegal practices and entities formed precisely for the purpose of domestic political repression.

As David Love elaborated in a recent article for the Grio:

"The baby of J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO was designed to monitor, infiltrate and destroy social justice movements seen as a threat to national security, including civil rights and antiwar groups, the Black Power movement, [the American Indian Movement], and the Young Lords. Some of the stated goals of the program in an FBI memo were to "prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups," to "Prevent the RISE OF A 'MESSIAH' who could unify…the militant black nationalist movement," to "Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to…both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy…," and to "prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth."

As a result, black leadership was decimated, either assassinated… or thrown in prison with the key thrown away. Assata Shakur, who fled to Cuba, was the last woman standing, so to speak. And apparently that is embarrassing to someone in the FBI, so they want to make an example of her as a so-called "domestic terrorist." That is why last year, 40 years after the shooting, the FBI made thepolitically-motivated move of placing Shakur on their Ten Most Wanted Terrorists list, making her the first woman and second U.S. citizen on that list. If you listen to the FBI, you'd think the ten most dangerous people on Earth are essentially nine Al Qaeda operatives and-Assata Shakur."

Yet still, to peoples struggling against American oppression she remains a prominent figure in the fight for liberation, and that's the REAL problem. To put it how Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin might, a former political prisoner himself, the reason that the US government is still after Assata is not because they fear that she will engage in violence or to just punish her, but rather because they fear her effects upon the oppressed, who see in her the inspiration to fight - and more importantly, the strength to win.

Primarily it is for this reason that the US government is unlikely to seek extradition of Shakur. Further still, bringing her back stateside in the midst of a social movement like BlackLivesMatter, the likes of which has not mobilized since her last years in America, would only add fuel to the flame of public outrage over police terror in our communities.

There are more logistical reasons she is unlikely to be extradited anytime soon though.

These include, but are not limited to 1) because her (alleged) crime and acceptance into Cuba was political in nature she is not subject to extradition per the un-revoked 1905 extradition treaty between the US and Cuba; 2) if Shakur is a Cuban citizen, this would prevent extradition; 3) there are precedents for U.S.-friendly nations that have refused to extradite American fugitives who have fled the U.S. whom fear political repression upon returning; 4) it would take a decision by Obama or the DOJ to order it in the first place; and 5) any renegotiated treaty would have to go through the Senate first.

But if we know anything about the United States' treatment of political dissidents, extraditions are low on the priority list.

There is a reason Osama bin Laden was brought back dead rather than alive. The U.S. government didn't want to try him. They didn't want bin Laden, a former partner of the CIA, to recall in intimate detail the U.S. sponsored terrorism in the Middle East that has killed millions . They didn't want to remember that before the Taliban they funded, trained, andpart nered with the Mujahideen and countless other militias in proxy wars with the USSR, devastating and destabilizing entire regions in the process. LEAST of all did the U.S. government want a lesson in historical accuracy to rally the victims of U.S. oppression around the fact that AmeriKKKa has never given a shit about brown bodies - not here, not anywhere.

Nope. They didn't want any of that. What the U.S. government DID want was a trophy for U.S. imperialism. They wanted to hang a dead body in the public square. They wanted a dead body because dead bodies don't talk.

This is why Fred Hampton never spoke again. Why Dr. King never spoke again. Why Malcolm X never spoke again. Why Huey P. Newton never spoke again. Why George Jackson, John Huggins, Bunchy Carter, Sylvester Bell, and so many others never spoke again. Any threat to the hegemony of AmeriKKKa's narrative that it is the benevolent land of milk and honey - of democracy and freedom - MUST be dealt with.

It is why if we understand the current options available to the U.S. government, and if we remember its history, the danger of Assata's U.S.-sponsored assassination is now more menacing than ever. AmeriKKKa doesn't want to bring her to "trial". That was done already and it was a farce. This government wants her shut up, out of sight, or dead. And a re-established U.S. embassy in Havana would make it that much easier. It would put agents of repression closer to Shakur than they may have ever been in the past 40 years.

So now is the time to renew our conviction to Hands Off Assata. Now is the time to remind our oppressive government that we are here, we are watching, and we will fight for Assata no matter where she is. This is the time to remember, in the powerful words of Dr. King, that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because any effort to silence Assata Shakur is an effort to silence us.

The Brutes in Blue: From Ferguson to Freedom

By Andrew Gavin Marshall

The protests resulting from events in Ferguson and New York have spurred a nation-wide anti-police brutality and social justice movement. This movement is addressing issues related to the realities of institutional racism in the United States, a colonial legacy born of slavery. Policing itself has a history and institutional function that is relevant to current events. This part in the series, 'From Ferguson to Freedom' examines the institution of policing and 'law enforcement', designed to protect the powerful from the people, to punish the poor and enforce injustice.

A Primer on Policing

Many social divisions erupt when it comes to discussing the issues of police and policing. Many accept the police and state-propagated view of police as being there 'to serve and protect', and that the 'dangerous' jobs of ensuring 'peace' and 'safety' are deserving of respect and admiration. Others view police as oppressors and thugs, violent and abusive, the enforcers of injustice. Here, as with the issue of racism itself, we come to the dichotomy of individual and institutional actions and functions.

As individuals, there are many police who may act admirably, who may 'serve and protect', who serve a social function which is beneficial to the community in which they operate. But, as with the issue of racism, individual acts do not erase institutional functions. The reality is that as an institution, policing is fundamentally about control, with cops acting as agents of 'law and order'. They enforce the law and punish its detractors (primarily among the poor), they 'serve and protect' the powerful (and their interests) from the people.

When individuals in poor black neighborhoods are caught with illegal substances, such as drugs, the police are there to arrest them and send them into the criminal justice system for judgment and punishment. When Wall Street banks launder billions in drug money, police are nowhere to be seen, the law is ignored, justice is evaded, and the rich and powerful remain untouched. Crime is subject to class divides. Crimes such as mass murder, crimes against humanity, war crimes, slavery, ethnic cleansing, money laundering, mass corruption, plundering and destruction are typically committed (or decided) by those who hold the power, have the money and own the property. These crimes largely go unpunished, and very often are even rewarded.

Crimes committed by the poor, the oppressed, and especially those which take place in communities of colour are the main focus of the criminal injustice system. It is the poor and exploited who are policed and repressed, punished and sentenced, beaten and executed. The criminal rich and powerful are largely untouchable. The police enforce the law, so far as it applies to the poor, and are primarily there to serve the interests of the powerful. This is not new.

Like with all institutions, to understand their functions, one must turn to their origins and evolution through the years. In the United States, the history of 'policing' pre-dates the formation of the country itself, when it was a collection of European colonial possessions. From the late 1600s onward, just as racism was itself becoming institutionalized in the slave system, the social concept of policing increasingly emerged. The European colonial system was dependent upon the exploitation of slave labour, which since the late 1600s had become increasingly defined along racial lines.

In the 1700s, colonial societies began forming "slave patrols" to keep the slaves in line, to capture escapees, and to maintain "law and order" in an inherently unjust and exploitative social system of domination. As black slaves increasingly outnumbered the local white colonists, paranoia increased (especially in the wake of slave rebellions), and so the "slave patrols" and other locally organized 'vigilante' groups would be formed to protect the white colonizers against the local indigenous populations and the enslaved black African population.

The slave patrols defined the early formation of the modern " law enforcement" institution in the United States, which extended into the 19th century, up until the Civil War. The slave patrols also had other functions within the communities they operated, but first and foremost, their primary purpose was "to act as the first line of defense against a slave rebellion."

Following the processes of industrialization and urbanization, cities became crowded, immigrants became plenty, and poverty was rampant as the rich few became ever more powerful. Thus, throughout the 19th century, the slave patrols began evolving into official "police forces," with their concern for "order" and "control", largely via the policing of poor communities of colour.

The evolution of policing in America since the 19th century has largely maintained its focus on the policing of the poor, acting as soldiers in the "war against crime" (which J. Edgar Hoover declared in the 1930s), though, of course, this applies almost exclusively to crime committed by the poor, by immigrants and 'minority' groups, as the rich and powerful are able to continue plundering and stealing wealth, waging wars and killing great masses of people, engaging in institutional corruption and even participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity, almost always with impunity and beyond the reach of police or justice.

In the past few decades, police forces across America have become increasingly militarized, with the rise of what has been called the " warrior cop." Police forces get military equipment, tanks, rocket launchers, and even wear military outfits and get military training. Militaries are of course designed to be institutions of force, to kill, to destroy, to occupy and oppress. They are fundamentally, and institutionally, imperial. So as police forces become increasingly militarized, their function becomes increasingly aligned with that of the military. While the military secures the interests of the rich and powerful abroad, the police secure the interests of the rich and powerful at home. The domestic population is treated increasingly like an "enemy population," with poor communities (especially poor black, Hispanic and indigenous communities) treated like occupied populations.

The origins of the modern police force began as a distinctly colonial structure, to enforce the injustice of slavery, to protect the colonizers as they expanded their territories and committed genocide against the indigenous population. Colonization, ethnic cleansing, slavery and genocide are inherently wrong and unjust. As such, these policies must be protected by force. The legal system has always been far more concerned with the protection of property (belonging to rich white men) than it has been with the protection of the population from the abuses of an inherently unjust social system. In a slave society, human beings become property. The law protects private property, but does so often through the oppression of populations. Property becomes more important than people, even when peopleare property.

The Global Reality of the Brutes in Blue

Think, for a brief moment, of the images, videos and realities of protests, revolutions, resistance movements and rebellions around the world in the past several years. From the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, to Indigenous movements in Canada and Latin America and Africa, to the peasant and labour unrest across Asia, to the anti-austerity movements across Europe, with social unrest reaching enormous heights in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, from the Indignados to Occupy Wall Street, to the student movements in Quebec, the UK, Chile, Mexico and Hong Kong, to the urban rebellions in Turkey and Brazil, and now to the civil unrest in the US sparked by Ferguson. What do you see, in all of these cases?

In each and every case, there are large or significant segments of populations who are rising up in resistance to oppressive structures, against dictatorships, state violence and repression, against poverty, racism and exploitation. In each case, there are populations struggling for dignity and opportunity, for freedom and democracy, for justice and equality. These populations, those who protest and resist, those who struggle and strive for the realization of democracy and justice, are historically the main reason why society has in any meaningful way ever been able to advance, to civilize itself, for rights and freedoms to be won and realized. Progress for people as a whole has always been accompanied by mass struggle and resistance against the forces of oppression and to upset the 'stability' of the status quo.

And, both historically and presently, without exception, the struggle and resistance of populations at home and abroad has always been met with the blunt, brute force of police, there to beat the people back down into subservience and to maintain "law and order." In the youth-led rebellions from Egypt to Spain to Indonesia, from Brazil to Mexico to Quebec, from Hong Kong to Turkey to Ferguson, Missouri, the police are there with batons, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets, real bullets, beatings and brutality, mass arrests and murder, all in the name of preserving 'stability'.

This is the true institutional function of the police. It cares not whether there are good or decent individuals within police forces, no more than the institutional reality of militaries cares whether individual soldiers are good or decent. Their job is to protect the powerful, police the poor, and punish those who threaten the stability of this unjust system. This is an institutional function which has been a lived reality for the black community in the United States since the origins of slavery and policing. The protests resulting from Ferguson are a reflection of this reality, regardless of the opinions of white people who have been largely spared the blunt truth of batons and bullets wielded and shot by the Brutes in Blue.

Black and Blue

According to a study published in 2012, every 28 hours in the United States, a black man, woman or child is murdered by a law enforcement official, security guard or "vigilante." In 2011, murder was listed as the number one cause of death for black males between the ages of 15 and 34 . In the month prior to Michael Brown's murder, three other unarmed black men were killed by police, with data from police forces across the country revealing that black males are far more likely to be shot and killed by police than any other demographic group.

According to data from the Department of Justice, between 2003 and 2009, roughly 4,813 people were killed in the process of being arrested or while in the custody of police officers. In 2012 alone, 410 people were killed by police in the United States. Between 1968 and 2011, data from the CDC reveals, black Americans were between two and eight times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans. On average, black Americans were 4.2 times more likely to be murdered by police than whites.

Between the murder of Michael Brown in August and the delivery of the verdict in November of 2014, police in the United States killed roughly 14 other teenagers, at least six of them black. Two days before the Darren Wilson verdict was reached, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by police in Cleveland, Ohio, for holding a BB gun.

In late December, however, a mentally ill man in New York shot and killed two NYPD police officers in Brooklyn, after which he shot and killed himself. New York mayor Bill de Blasio, who has attempted to navigate between placating protesters and police, has made himself hated by many in the NYPD, who view anything but absolute and unquestionable loyalty as unforgivable betrayal. The head of the NYPD's union commented on the two killed cops, saying that many had "blood on their hands", which " starts on the steps of City Hall , in the office of the major."

Attempting to placate the police, mayor de Blasio called for the protests to end until the funerals for the two cops had passed, saying, "It's time for everyone to put aside political debates, put aside protests, put aside all of the things that we will talk about in due time." Of course, this and other statements made by de Blasio are designed to keep his own police force under his control; however, the hypocrisy of the statement should not go unnoticed. After all, hundreds of unarmed black Americans are murdered by police every year, and now, people have had enough, have reacted, taking to the streets to protest. Yet, when two cops are killed, the mayor calls for the protests to end out of some misplaced form of 'respect' for the police. Clearly, murdered black Americans are not given the same type of respect, even if it is guided by political pandering. That should speak volumes.

The backlash against the protesters and the emerging social justice movement has been palpable, and the police have been (as they often are) on the front lines of social regression. There was even a small protest in New York held in support of the NYPD, attended mostly by white men (and cops), some wearing shirts declaring, "I canbreathe," mocking the final words of Eric Garner as he was choked to death by a NYPD officer, repeating, "I can't breathe." At the same time, there was a counter protest on the other side of the street, attended largely by black and Hispanic New Yorkers, chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets!" with the pro-NYPD crowd responding, "Whose jails? Your jails!" When the crowd chanted "hands up, don't shoot!" the pro-police crowd chanted, "Hands up, don't loot!" The pro-NYPD protest was largely made up of retired or off-duty police officers and their supporters, which along with the assembled on-duty police, media and counter-protesters, did not amount to more than 200 people.

Following the shooting deaths of the two NYPD officers, the head of an NYPD union declared that, "we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a 'wartime' police department. We will act accordingly." So the NYPD has declared 'war', but against who? Well, they place the blame for the two deaths not only on the mayor, but more so on the protesters and the anti-police brutality movement itself. Thus, the largest police force in the United States, made up of 35,000 people, has essentially declared 'war' on a significant part of the population. It's worth remembering that the previous New York mayor, billionaire oligarch Michael Bloomberg, once declared during a press conference, " I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world."

In light of the two killed cops, many who had previously been pleading for people to respect the police and remember 'that they are there to protect us' and have 'dangerous jobs' suddenly feel vindicated. However, as theWashington Post reported back in October of 2014, " policing has been getting safer for 20 years ," with 2013 being the safest year for police since the end of World War II. Indeed, as the Post noted, "You're more likely to be murdered simply by living in about half of the largest cities in America than you are while working as a police officer." According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, policing is not even on the list of the top ten most dangerous jobs in America. Some of the jobs which appear on the top ten list include loggers, fishermen, pilots, garbage collectors, truck drivers, farmers and ranchers.

However, it IS dangerous to be an unarmed black man, woman or child in America. And while the NYPD union boss has declared a "war" on the people, the realities of that war have been felt and suffered by black and Hispanic Americans for years and decades.

For over a decade, New York City has implemented a "stop and frisk" policy whereby police are given the illegal 'authority' to stop and frisk citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, an obvious violation of constitutional rights. Between 2004 and 2012, New York City cops conducted 4.4 million 'stops', with 88% resulting in no further action (arrest or court summons). In roughly 83% of 'stop and frisk' cases, those stopped by the police were either black or Hispanic.

A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2014 revealed that young men who were subjected to stop and frisk by police, particularly young black men, "show higher rates of feelings of stress, anxiety and trauma." In over 5 million stop and frisks that took place during the 12-year tenure of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire oligarch, young black men accounted for a total of 25% of those targeted , yet accounted for 1.9% of the city's population, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. In over 5 million stops, police found a gun in less than 0.02% of the cases.

In late 2014, with a new mayor (de Blasio) and following increased public outrage against the policy as well as legal rulings against it, the 'stop and frisk' policy declined in its implementation. However, as the New York Times noted, "police officers today remain ever-present in the projects," with a "new strategy" for policing the projects slowly forming. Police stand at posts on the perimeters of housing blocks, "officers park their cars on the sidewalk and turn on the flashing roof lights," and, at night, "the blue beams illuminate the brick of the projects for hours on end, projecting both a sense of emergency and control."

Black communities remain under 'military' occupation by the Brutes in Blue, the modern manifestation of the 'slave patrols'. The rich and powerful are protected and served, the poor are punished, the descendants of African slaves are slain, their communities under 'control,' as the police walk their beat, and beat black lives back down. From Eric Garner and Michael Brown, to the mass protests and civil unrest, the institutional function of the police is, as always, about maintaining stability and order in an inherently unjust social system.

The institutionalization of racism, slavery, and policing predates the formation of the United States itself. And while these things have evolved and changed over the years, decades and centuries, they remain relevant and present. If they are not addressed in a meaningful or substantial way, the America that many imagine or believe in will fade away, leaving only racism, slavery and repression here to stay.

The Hunger Gamerization of American Police and the Community

[PHOTO CREDIT: VIOREL FLORESCU/North Jersey/Landov]

By Jason Michael Williams

On December 20th, 2014 in the late afternoon social media and television news stations were flooded with reports regarding the execution of two NYPD officers . Later into the day Mayor de Blasio held a press conference where NYPD officers protested his presence by turning their backs to him. One lesson that stems from this atrocity is that all lives should matter, including both officers and innocent civilians. As a result of conflict, both sides (police and community) have had to taste the unnecessary flavor of premature death, and for what? In response to the shooting of the two NYPD officers,Charlotte Schnook made a compelling argument on Facebook:

“Marxist gate keeper theory: police are the enforcers of the hierarchy, and the more abusive the hierarchy gets, the more abusive the police will get, thus the conflict between the proletariat and the law enforcement will snow ball.

You take a job in which you maim, execute and abuse working people, eventually one will treat you the same. Is it horrific? Yep, but revenge has never been pretty…

The police can either stop this abuse of people, or EXPECT this to become more common because folks aren’t sitting ducks forever. “

Although some may take issue with the argument being made by Charlotte, I believe she is making a profound point. Charlotte is, in effect, describing the extent to which American policing to many communities of color and increasingly others have become tyrannical and hyper-repressive. There had been other op-ed articles on the illegitimacy of policing, however, what these articles fail to take into account is the extent to which police illegitimacy has long been a factor in the Black community. This tumultuous relationship between police and Blacks does not exist in a vacuum like so many are painting it out be. In fact, according to many criminologists and police scholars, American policing began in the South with the slave patrols (Balko, 2014), and yet like then, today, the response to the outcries of Blacks on this issue is non-acknowledgement and condemnation-on par with the story line of “The Hunger Games,” no?

The sole duty of the slave patrols was to maintain white supremacy to the detriment of the Africans who were enslaved and denied their humanity- point blank! If a discussion is to take place regarding the tumultuous relationship between Blacks and the police, it must begin there. It must start with the fact that much as not changed-that, in fact, when police officers are in communities of color the feeling is still very much like the slave patrol. Moreover, today police resources and power are still disproportionately situated within communities of color; meanwhile criminals in Washington, D.C., on Wall Street, and other corporate criminals go unnoticed and unaffected by justice. This unwillingness to focus police resources on other areas of crime is also observed via the FBI uniform crime report which seems to purposely focus solely on what may be considered street crime-not white collar or political crime, the crimes of which do the most harm to the public (see also, Friedrichs, 2003).

This concentration of police power within communities of color is on par with the theme of “The Hunger Games” in the sense that these repressed communities see the cops as the gatekeepers of the elite. They do not recognize the police as a legitimate force there for their protection, and their viewpoints ought to be acknowledged. Thus, the police officer’s job (to them) is to enforce often racist and classist laws (among others) for the sole purpose of maintaining the alignment. The results from these practices are further used to legitimize the subordination of the affected groups at the behest of the ruling class which subsequently maintains superiority (see Giuliani’s remarks on Black crime).

In fact, this is the primary reason why victims of state violence are immediately vilified and made to appear as if death was deserved (e.g., as in the case of Brown, Myers, Garner and countless others). Official statistics are rarely used to address crime problems forthrightly, but are rather used as mechanisms of justification for majoritarian trickery that masquerades as justice for all. Meanwhile, communities of color are being torn apart by a “justice system” that is obsessed with delivering rigid and unremitting punishment more than anything even remotely related to the word justice. One can walk into any American inner-city and see these results for himself.

Surprisingly after the Ferguson decision there seem to have been an uprising in consciousness surrounding the nearly tyrannical power of American police in communities of color and the near illegitimacy and outright silliness of the American justice system. People from all walks of life are protesting in defense of the notion that #BlackLivesMatter and these protests are disrupting business as usual. These protests have angered police unions across the nation, thus sending the message that certain people have not the right to protest and exclaim freely in America that they too matter, that the continued murdering of innocent Black lives at the hands of the state should be unacceptable in a free society. Hunger Games-like?

Nevertheless, it should be noted that the murdering and brutalization of Black bodies with impunity is as American as apple pie. America has a history of tolerating such brutality, and this history has yet to be confronted because the ruling elite has decided that it does not matter. This devaluation of people’s feelings and experiences is what gives rise to Katniss Everdeens (the victor in The Hunger Games). The systematic exclusion of the repressed will almost always lead to conflicts and catastrophe on both sides as witnessed with the shooting of the two NYPD officers. The question is how does a civilized society respond to this?

Additionally, Charlotte’s argument is rooted in histories of physical violence against the marginalized and the utter reckless indifference of the ruling class against excluded communities since the beginning of American civilization. This hegemonic destruction of marginalized experiences, bodies, and voices disguised as justice and fact is unhealthy and an affront to democracy and basic human decency. The current conflict is symbolic of the bottom having had enough. The bottom is reacting to an authoritarian body in ways that describe their lack of hope. Case in point: The gentlemen who decided to kill the two NYPD officers was not only acting in his lonesome, but clearly he was a young man without hope, and one affected by police violence. Society should focus on what created his hopelessness. Or perhaps society should wrestle with the fact that a Black is killed by an officer every 28 hours. Or that since 911, there have been more police killings of civilians than soldiers killed in the Iraq War. Hunger Games?

The question that lingers now is whether or not society will respond in a manner on par with the ruling elite in The Hunger Games or a manner consistent with democratic values. The test of America sits before us right now as the world watches in disbelief while American exceptionalism is steadily torn to pieces due to socially manufactured poisons that this nation has yet to confront. The shooting of the two NYPD officers should be condemned, but it should not hinder the change needed in the American criminal justice system, otherwise there will likely be more casualties. Both sides have much to lose, and with that said a change must come if the legitimacy of law enforcement and justice is ever to existfor all in this nation.

A version of this article was published on Truthout. Permission to reprint granted by author.

Works Cited

Friedrichs, D. (2003). Trust criminals: White collar crime in contemporary society, 2nd ed. Beverly Hills: Wadsworth.

The Universal and the Particular: Chomsky, Foucault, and Post-New Left Political Discourse

By Derek Ide

Postmodern theory was a relatively recent intellectual phenomenon in 1971 when Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault sat down to discuss a wide range of topics, including the nature of justice, power, and intellectual inquiry. At one point Chomsky, who Peter Novick suggests as an example of left-wing empiricism in post-war academia, engages the concrete issue of social activism and invokes the notion of "justice," to which Foucault asks poignantly: "When, in the United States, you commit an illegal act, do you justify it in terms of justice or of a superior legality, or do you justify it by the necessity of the class struggle, which is at the present time essential for the proletariat in their struggle against the ruling class?" After a brief period he quickly reiterates the question again: "Are you committing this act in virtue of an ideal justice, or because the class struggle makes it useful and necessary?" Chomsky attempts to situate a notion of justice within international law, to which Foucault replies: "I will be a little bit Nietzschean about this… the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power… And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice." In other words, for Foucault justice is only intelligible within a relative framework of class antagonisms. Meanings of justice may differ, but they are only understandable vis-à-vis certain class positions. Chomsky responds: "Well, here I really disagree. I think there is some sort of an absolute basis--if you press me too hard I'll be in trouble, because I can't sketch it out-ultimately residing in fundamental human qualities, in terms of which a 'real' notion of justice is grounded."[1]

Foucault's position appears correct, at least on the surface, because it is deeply rooted in the recognition of class-based power, hegemony, and contestation. Chomsky, on the other hand, has trouble sketching out any "pure form" or "absolute basis" of justice. Instead, it appears to be an abstraction to which he has some, perhaps understandably, visceral attachment. Yet, Foucault's position seems at odds with the stance that Patricia O'Brien attributes to him when she explains that, for Foucault, "culture is studied through technologies of power-not class, not progress, not the indomitability of the human spirit. Power cannot be apprehended through the study of conflict, struggle, and resistance… Power is not characteristic of a class (the bourgeoisie) or a ruling elite, nor is it attributable to one… Power does not originate in either the economy or politics, and it is not grounded there."[2] Instead, it is an "infinitely complex network of 'micro-powers,' of power relations that permeate every aspect of social life."[3]

In one way, the adoption by "critical" leftists (the proliferation of critical race theory, whiteness studies, etc. may be a reflection of this) of this notion that power is an "infinitely complex network of micro-powers" may help to explain the rise of the post-New Left vocabulary and the political orientation of those who engage in privilege discourse. Thus, institutional "oppression" as a "pattern of persistent and systematic disadvantage imposed on large groups of people" becomes sublimated by "privilege," where the criticism is centered on "set of unearned benefits that some individuals enjoy (and others are denied) in their everyday lives." Likewise, "liberation," referring to ultimate victory against systems of exploitation and oppression, is abandoned in favor of fighting for "safe spaces," where "the attempt to create occasions or locations wherein the adverse effects of privilege on marginalized people are minimized in everyday interpersonal interactions."[4] Thus, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob characterize postmodernists as "deeply disillusioned intellectuals who denounce en masse Marxism and liberal humanism, communism and capitalism, and all expectations of liberation."[5] The persistence of postmodernist intellectual parameters on the post-New Left political discourse could not be clearer.

What O'Brien says is "most challenging of all is the realization that power creates truth and hence its own legitimation," [6] a position which seemingly aligns with Foucault's comment to Chomsky that justice is an "invented idea...put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power." The notion that "power is not characteristic of a class" or that it "does not originate in either the economy or politics" seems far from the position Foucault takes when discussing the issue of justice and class power with Chomsky. Thus, at best one finds a level of disconnect between Foucault's position a la O'Brien and the position he seemed to be articulating vis-à-vis Chomsky. At times it seems that Foucault is even at odds with himself. Contradictions aside, others such as Daniel Zamora have posited that the very questions Foucault asks are incorrect, and have "disoriented the left." The problem for Zamora is "not that [Foucault] seeks to 'move beyond' the welfare state, but that he actively contributed to its destruction, and that he did so in a way that was entirely in step with the neoliberal critiques of the moment."[7]

Despite such contradiction and critique, one of the most recognizable transitions in history that occurred with the advent of postmodernism was the so-called "linguistic turn." Thus, as O'Brien explains, "one of Foucault's recognized contributions, which a wide variety of the new cultural historians embrace, lie in the importance he attributed to language/discourse as a means of apprehending change."[8] Clifford Geertz, albeit in a very different way, also posited the importance of linguistic and textual interpretation. For Geertz, "materialism of any kind" was "an implicit target."[9] Conversely, action is text and "the real is as imagined as the imaginary."[10] Thus, "man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he has himself spun." [11] In many ways, language and discourse came to dominate and displace discussions of power and oppression for postmodernists. This "interpretative turn," as Aletta Biersack refers to it, is a sort of hyper-hermeneutics, where etymology in essence becomes epistemology.

This linguistic turn may also have some relevance to the post-New Left discourse as well. As the radical left retreated into academia, and in the absence of social movements in the first world on a large scale, power become viewed as an infinitely complex web of micro-powers which permeate everyday life. Likewise, the political-linguistic discourse reflected a by now largely alienated intellectual leftist community. Thus, for critical postmodern left-wing academics language and every-day, small scale interactions sublimate material reality and large-scale, institutional structures.

This has been explored in detail by Steve D'Arcy's "The Rise of Post New-Left Political Discourse," which asks the poignant question of whether activists from the New Left era would even find the discourse of today's left intelligible. Juxtaposing words like "oppression" vs. "privilege," "exploitation" vs. "classism," "alliances" vs. "being an ally" (a fundamental distinction!), and "consciousness-raising" vs. "calling out," D'Arcy explicates upon the seismic shift that has gripped leftist discourse.[12] Strategic alliances between oppressed groups or blocs are replaced with hyper-individualized conceptions of being an ally, economic and structural analyses associated with words like exploitation are replaced with "classism," suggesting personal prejudice against members of certain economic backgrounds, etc. This "post-New Left" lexicon is fundamentally different than the language utilized by groups and organizations spanning the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, or even the old left of the 1930s and before. It is also a language keenly peculiar to the first world, and in particular North America and a few European states. The implications of this shift are contentious, but however one views the linguistic transition it is clear that both the political goals and results have been restructured with its advent.

More generally, poststructuralists have put forward a "theoretical critique of the assumptions of modernity found in philosophy, art, and criticism since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."[13] They "argue against the possibility of any certain knowledge… [and] question the superiority of the present and the usefulness of general worldviews, whether Christian, Marxist, or liberal… there is no truth outside ideology."[14] For them "no reality can possibly transcend the discourse in which it is expressed" and while scientists or empiricists may think certain practices "bring them closer to reality… they are simply privileging the language that they speak, the technologies of their own self-fashioning."[15] Thus, historical truth, objectivity, and the narrative form of history have all been targets of the postmodernist critique. Jacques Derrida, for instance, advocated deconstruction "to show how all texts repressed as much as they expressed in order to maintain the fundamental Western conceit of 'logocentrism,' the (erroneous) idea that words expressed truth in reality."[16] Since "texts could be interested in multiple, if not infinite, ways because signifiers had no essential connection to what they were signified."[17] In this way, language was a barrier to truth and precluded human capacity to know truth.

The effect this has had on history is complex. For instance, "the history of what postmodernists called 'subaltern' groups-workers, immigrants, women, slaves, and gays-in fact proved difficult to integrate into the story of one American nation."[18] Partha Chatterjee, for instance, is one of the intellectual founders and banner holders for postcolonial and subaltern studies. Chatterjee, in his study of the "nationalist imagination" in Asia and Africa, The Nation and Its Fragments, cites Foucault as helping him recognize how "power is meant not to prohibit but to facilitate, to produce."[19] For Chatterjee, colonial rule created "a social order that bore striking resemblance to its own caricature of 'traditional India': late colonial society was 'nearer to the ideal-type of Asiatic Despotism than anything South Asia had seen before.'"[20]Specifically referring to search for pre-European capitalism in India, Chatterjee asserts that the "development of industrial capital in… Western Europe or North America, was the result of a very specific history. It is the perversity of Eurocentric historical theories that has led to the search for similar developments everywhere else in the world." [21] Thus, for postcolonial scholars, and implicit in the subset of subaltern studies, totalizing and universal theories are an intellectual and historical impossibility.

This has not permeated all of academia, however. There has been a spirited defense of the radical Enlightenment tradition, especially from the left, as the heated exchanges between Vivek Chibber and Partha Chatterjee have shown. Chibber, in his magnum opus Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, demonstrates the intellectual inconsistences and failures of subaltern studies and offers a comprehensive critique of postcolonial theory. His argument is that it is possible, indeed necessary, to posit a totalizing, universal theory without succumbing to Eurocentrism or reductionism (economic or otherwise). In his work he takes to task Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee, three scholars who he considers emblematic of postcolonial theory. Thus, the battle was pitched between Chatterjee, who rejects universal discourses, and Chibber, who asserts a nuanced and sophisticated Marxist analysis. Chatterjee laid out the battlefield in his response, suggesting that Chibber implores a "plea for continued faith in the universal values of European Enlightenment." He acknowledges that "the debate between universalism and its critics continues and will not be resolved in a hurry. The choice between the two sides at this time is indeed political." Indeed, while he claims the "greatest strength of the universalist position is the assurance it provides of predictability and control over uncertain outcomes," he argues that the critics of universalism, a category he places himself in, "argue that the outcomes are unknown, indeterminate, and hence unpredictable. They accept the challenge of risky political choices, based on provisional, contingent and corrigible historical knowledge." His main contention, then, is that "the working classes of Europe and North America and their ideologues can no longer act as the designated avant-garde in the struggles of subaltern classes in other parts of the world… Historians of Subaltern Studies have only attempted to interpret a small part of these struggles. And changing the world, needless to say, is a job that cannot be entrusted to historians."[22]

In response, Chibber argues in favor of universalizing categories when applicable, suggesting that the "motivation for my intervention was to examine a common charge that postcolonial theory levels at the Enlightenment tradition, that its universalizing categories obliterate all historical difference. They do so, we are told, because they homogenize the diversity of social experience by subsuming it under highly abstract, one-dimensional categories." Here he cites the example of Marx's concept of abstract labor, which he argues postcolonial theories have simply misunderstood. Therefore, "while it is certainly true that some universalizing categories might be problematic, it is sheer folly to insist that this is a necessary flaw in all such categories. Postcolonial theory's broadside against Enlightenment universalisms is vastly overdrawn." Instead, he argues postcolonial and subaltern studies have been an immense failure both intellectually, in understanding the actual conditions of their subjects, and politically, not only by failing to facilitate radical change in any direction but by actually constraining and enervating radical analysis and transformation of society.

Indeed, Chibber proclaims that "Chatterjee's essay [against Chibber's book] is designed to allay any anxieties that his followers might have about the foundations of their project... It is a palliative, a balm, to soothe their nerves." Not only was this meant to boost morale in the wake of political failure, however, it was also meant to be an attack on the radical Enlightenment tradition, particularly Marxism: "Subaltern Studies was not just supposed to offer a rival framework for interpreting colonial modernity; it was also supposed to have internalized whatever was worth retaining from the Marxian tradition, thereby inheriting the mantle of radical critique. For years, the Subalternists have focused just about everything they have written on the irredeemable flaws of Marxism and the Enlightenment -- how they are implicated in imperialism, their reductionism, essentialism, etc." [23] Thus, the battle between postmodernism, of which postcolonial theory and subaltern studies are intellectual legacies, and modernity are not over. This is particularly true in the realm of history, where the debate between Chatterjee and Chibber is only the most recent manifestation.

For leftists, this battle is of immense importance. The words we utilize, the discourse we construct, and the movements which both manifest from and shape our language are at stake. The political implications of these choices are dire, especially at a time when the forces of reaction are winning everywhere across the world. Yet, there are perhaps few places on Earth where the left is weaker than the first world. This is particularly true where post-modern discourse and post-new left political vocabulary has emerged victorious. Without ignoring the insights of the particular, and without exaggerating the past victories and potential of the universal, it would appear that post-new left political discourse has left our side stranded. It has failed to facilitate growth and shown itself incapable of capturing the masses, all the while forcing us to feed upon ourselves, augmenting isolation and alienation from each other. Perhaps the time for a renegotiation of this development is in order; perhaps the left requires a discourse rooted more in the universal and less in the particular.

Notes

[1] "Human Nature: Justice versus Power, Noam Chomsky debates with Michel Foucault" (1971), accessed March 15, 2014. http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm.

[2] Patricia O'Brien, "Michel Foucault's History of Culture," The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: Univerisity of California Press, 1989), 34.

[3] O'Brien, "Michel Foucault's History of Culture," 35.

[4] Stephen D'Arcy, The Public Autonomy Project, "The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary." Last modified January 27, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2014. http://publicautonomy.org/2014/01/27/the-rise-of-the-post-new-left-political-vocabulary/.

[5] Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994), 206.

[6] O'Brien, "Michel Foucault's History of Culture," 35.

[7] Daniel Zamora, "Foucault's Responsibility," https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/michel-foucault-responsibility-socialist/

[8] Ibid., 44.

[9] Aletta Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond," The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: Univerisity of California Press, 1989), 75.

[10] Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History," 78.

[11] Ibid., 80.

[12] Steve D'Arcy, "The Rise of Post-New Left Political Discourse." http://publicautonomy.org/2014/01/27/the-rise-of-the-post-new-left-political-vocabulary/

[13] Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, 201.

[14] Ibid., 202-3.

[15] Ibid., 204.

[16] Ibid., 215.

[17] Ibid., 215.

[18] Ibid., 217.

[19] Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 15.

[20] Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, 32.

[21] Ibid., 30.

[22] Chatterjee Partha, "Subaltern Studies and Capital," Economic and Political Review Weekly, XLVIII, no. 37 (2013), http://www.epw.in/notes/subaltern-studies-and-capital.html (accessed March 15, 2014).

[23] Vivek Chibber, Verso Books, "Subaltern Studies Revisited: Vivek Chibber's Response to Partha Chatterjee." Last modified February 25, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2014. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1529-subaltern-studies-revisited-vivek-chibber-s-response-to-partha-chatterjee.

Zombie Apocalypse and the Politics of Artificial Scarcity

By Colin Jenkins

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

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

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

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

Human Nature and Interaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capitalism and Artificial Scarcity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Control through Commodification

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A World beyond Profit

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

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

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

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

In Defense of Looting: Turning the White-Supremacist Narrative Upside Down

By Willie Osterweil

Originally published at New Inquiry.

As protests in Ferguson continued unabated one week after the police killing of Michael Brown, Jr., zones of Twitter and the left media predominantly sympathetic to the protesters began angrily criticizing looters. Some claimed that white protesters were the ones doing all of the looting and property destruction, while others worried about the stereotypical and damaging media representation that would emerge. It also seems that there were as many protesters (if not more) in the streets of Ferguson working to prevent looting as there were people going about it. While I disagree with this tactic, I understand that they acted out of care for the struggle, and I want to honor all the brave and inspiring actions they've taken over the last weeks.

Some politicians on the ground in Ferguson, like alderman Antonio French and members of the New Black Panther Party, block looting specifically in order to maintain leadership for themselves and dampen resistance, but there are many more who do so out of a commitment to advancing the ethical and politically advantageous position. It is in solidarity with these latter protesters-along with those who loot-and against politicians and de-escalators everywhere that I offer this critique, as a way of invigorating discussion amongst those engaged in anti-oppression struggle, in Ferguson and anywhere else the police violently perpetuate white supremacy and settler colonialism. In other words, anywhere in America.

The dominant media is itself a tool of white supremacy: it repeats what the police deliver nearly verbatim and uncritically, even when the police story changes upwards of nine times, as it has thus far in the Brown killing. The media use phrases like "officer-involved shooting" and will switch to passive voice when a black man is shot by a white vigilante or a police officer ("shots were fired"). Journalists claim that "you have to hear both sides" in order to privilege the obfuscating reports of the state over the clear voices and testimony of an entire community, members of which witnessed the police murder a teenager in cold blood. The media are more respectful to white serial killers and mass murderers than to unarmed black victims of murder.

And yet, many of the people who perform this critique day-in, day-out can get jammed up by media perceptions of protesters. They want to correct the media's assertion that protesters were all looters for good reason: the idea of black people looting a store is one of the most racially charged images in the white imaginary. When protesters proclaim that "not all protesters were looters, in fact, most of the looters weren't part of the protest!" or words to that effect, they are trying to fight a horrifically racist history of black people depicted in American culture as robbers and thieves: Precisely the image that the Ferguson police tried to evoke to assassinate Michael Brown's character and justify his killing post facto. It is a completely righteous and understandable position.

However, in trying to correct this media image-in making a strong division between Good Protesters and Bad Rioters, or between ethical non-violence practitioners and supposedly violent looters-the narrative of the criminalization of black youth is reproduced. This time it delineates certain kinds of black youth-those who loot versus those who protest. The effect of this discourse is hardening a permanent category of criminality on black subjects who produce a supposed crime within the context of a protest. It reproduces racist and white supremacist ideologies (including the tactic of divide-and-conquer), deeming some unworthy of our solidarity and protection, marking them, subtly, as legitimate targets of police violence. These days, the police, whose public-facing racism is much more manicured, if no less virulent, argue that "outside agitators" engage in rioting and looting. Meanwhile, police will consistently praise "non-violent" demonstrators, and claim that they want to keep those demonstrators safe.

In working to correct the white-supremacist media narrative we can end up reproducing police tactics of isolating the individuals who attack property at protests. Despite the fact that if it were not for those individuals the media might pay no attention at all. If protesters hadn't looted and burnt down that QuikTrip on the second day of protests, would Ferguson be a point of worldwide attention? It's impossible to know, but all the non-violent protests against police killings across the country that go unreported seem to indicate the answer is no. It was the looting of a Duane Reade after a vigil that brought widespread attention to the murder of Kimani Gray in New York City. The media's own warped procedure instructs that riots and looting are more effective at attracting attention to a cause.

But of course, the goal is not merely the attention of dominant media. Nor is the goal a certain kind of media attention: no matter how peaceful and well-behaved a protest is, the dominant media will always push the police talking points and the white-supremacist agenda. The goal is justice. Here, we have to briefly grapple with the legacy of social justice being won in America: namely that of non-violence and the civil rights movement. And that means correcting a more pervasive and totalizing media and historical narrative about the civil rights movement: that it was non-violent, that it claimed significant wins because it was non-violent, and that it overcame racial injustice altogether.

In the 400 years of barbaric, white supremacist, colonial and genocidal history known as the United States, the civil rights movement stands out as a bright, beautiful, all-too-brief moment of hope and struggle. We still live in the shadow of the leaders, theory, and images that emerged from those years, and any struggle in America that overlooks the work (both philosophical and organizational) produced in those decades does so at its own peril. However, why is it drilled into our heads, from grade school onward, in every single venue, by presidents, professors and police chiefs alike, that the civil rights movement was victorious because it was non-violent? Surely we should be suspicious of any narrative that the entire white establishment agrees is of the utmost importance.

The civil rights movement was not purely non-violent. Some of its bravest, most inspiring activists worked within the framework of disciplined non-violence. Many of its bravest, most inspiring activists did not. It took months of largely non-violent campaigning in Birmingham, Alabama to force JFK to give his speech calling for a civil rights act. But in the month before he did so, the campaign in Birmingham had become decidedly not-non-violent [1]: protesters had started fighting back against the police and Eugene "Bull" Conner, throwing rocks, and breaking windows. Robert Kennedy, afraid that the increasingly riotous atmosphere in Birmingham would spread across Alabama and the South, convinced John to deliver the famous speech and begin moving towards civil rights legislation.

This would have been impossible without the previous months of courageous and tireless non-violent activism. But it is also the emergent threat of rioting that forced JFK's hand. Both Malcolm X and MLK had armed bodyguards. Throughout the civil rights era, massive non-violent civil disobedience campaigns were matched with massive riots. The most famous of these was the Watts rebellion of 1965 but they occurred in dozens of cities across the country. To argue that the movement achieved what it did in spite of rather than as a result of the mixture of not-non-violent and non-violent action is spurious at best. And, lest we forget, Martin Luther King Jr., the man who embodied the respectable non-violent voice that the white power structure claims they would listen to today, was murdered by that same white power structure anyway.

Though the Civil Rights movement won many battles, it lost the war. Mass incarceration, the fact that black wealth and black-white inequality are at the same place they were at the start of the civil rights movement, that many US cities are more segregated now than they were in the sixties: no matter what "colorblind" liberals would say, racial justice has not been won, white supremacy has not been overturned, racism is not over. In fact, anti-black racism remains the foundational organizing principle of this country. That is because this country is built on the right to property, and there is no property, no wealth in the USA without the exploitation, appropriation, murder, and enslavement of black people.

As Raven Rakia puts it, "In America, property is racial. It always has been." Indeed, the idea of blackness was invented simultaneously with American conceptions of property: via slavery. In the early days of colonial America, chattel slavery was much less common than indentured servitude-though the difference between the two was not always significant-and there were Irish, French, German and English immigrants among these populations. But while there had always been and continued to be some black freedmen, over the course of the 17th century light-skinned European people stopped being indentured servants and slaves. This is partially because production exploded in the colonies much faster than a working population could form to do the work-either from reproduction or voluntary immigration-and so the cost of hired labor went through the roof. Even a very poor and desperate European became much more expensive than an African bought from the increasingly rationalized transatlantic slave trade.

The distinction between white and black was thus eventually forged as a way of distinguishing between who could be enslaved and who could not. The earliest working definition of blackness may well have been "those who could be property". Someone who organized a mob to violently free slaves, then, would surely be considered a looter (had the word come into common usage by then, John Brown and Nat Turner would have been slandered with it). This is not to draw some absurd ethical equivalence between freeing a slave and grabbing a flat screen in a riot. The point, rather, is that for most of America's history, one of the most righteous anti-white supremacist tactics available was looting. The specter of slaves freeing themselves could be seen as American history's first image of black looters.

On Twitter, a tongue-in-cheek political hashtag sprang up, #suspectedlooters, which was filled with images of colonial Europeans, slave owners, cowboys and white cultural appropriators. Similarly, many have pointed out that, had Africa not been looted, there wouldn't even be any black people in America. These are powerful correctives to arguments around looting, and the rhetorical point-that when people of color loot a store, they are taking back a miniscule proportion of what has been historically stolen from them, from their ancestral history and language to the basic safety of their children on the street today-is absolutely essential. But purely for the purposes of this argument-because I agree wholeheartedly with the political project of these campaigns-I want to claim that what white settlers and slave traders did wasn't mere looting.

It was genocide, theft, and barbarism of the lowest order. But part of how slavery and colonialism functioned was to introduce new territories and categories to the purview of ownership, of property. Not only did they steal the land from native peoples, but they also produced a system under which the land itself could be stolen, owned by legal fiat through force of arms. Not only did they take away Africans' lives, history, culture, and freedom, but they also transformed people into property and labor-power into a saleable commodity. Chattel slavery is the most barbaric and violent form of work coercion-but as the last 150 years has shown, you can dominate an entire people through law, violence, and wages pretty well.

Recently an Instagram video circulated of a Ferguson protester discussing the looting and burning of the QuikTrip convenience store. He retorts the all too common accusation thrown at rioters: "People wanna say we destroying our own neighborhoods. We don't own nothing out here!" This is the crux of the matter, and could be said of most majority black neighborhoods in America, which have much higher concentrations of chain stores and fast food restaurants than non-black neighborhoods. The average per capita income in Ferguson, MO is less than $21,000, and that number almost certainly gets lower if you remove the 35% white population of Ferguson from the equation. How could the average Ferguson resident really say it's "our QuikTrip"? Indeed, although you might hang out in it, how can a chain convenience store or corporate restaurant earnestly be part of anyone's neighborhood? The same white liberals who inveigh against corporations for destroying local communities are aghast when rioters take their critique to its actual material conclusion.

The mystifying ideological claim that looting is violent and non-political is one that has been carefully produced by the ruling class because it is precisely the violent maintenance of property which is both the basis and end of their power. Looting is extremely dangerous to the rich (and most white people) because it reveals, with an immediacy that has to be moralized away, that the idea of private property is just that: an idea, a tenuous and contingent structure of consent, backed up by the lethal force of the state. When rioters take territory and loot, they are revealing precisely how, in a space without cops, property relations can be destroyed and things can be had for free.

On a less abstract level there is a practical and tactical benefit to looting. Whenever people worry about looting, there is an implicit sense that the looter must necessarily be acting selfishly, "opportunistically," and in excess. But why is it bad to grab an opportunity to improve well-being, to make life better, easier, or more comfortable? Or, as Hannah Black put it on Twitter: "Cops exist so people can't loot ie have nice things for free so idk why it's so confusing that people loot when they protest against cops" [sic]. Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.

White people deploy the idea of looting in a way that implies people of color are greedy and lazy, but it is just the opposite: looting is a hard-won and dangerous act with potentially terrible consequences, and looters are only stealing from the rich owners' profit margins. Those owners, meanwhile, especially if they own a chain like QuikTrip, steal forty hours every week from thousands of employees who in return get the privilege of not dying for another seven days.

And the further assumption that the looter isn't sharing her loot is just as racist and ideological. We know that poor communities and communities of color practice more mutual aid and support than do wealthy white communities-partially because they have to. The person looting might be someone who has to hustle everyday to get by, someone who, by grabbing something of value, can afford to spend the rest of the week "non-violently" protesting. They might be feeding their family, or older people in their community who barely survive on Social Security and can't work (or loot) themselves. They might just be expropriating what they would otherwise buy-liquor, for example-but it still represents a material way that riots and protests help the community: by providing a way for people to solve some of the immediate problems of poverty and by creating a space for people to freely reproduce their lives rather than doing so through wage labor.

Modern American police forces evolved out of fugitive slave patrols, working to literally keep property from escaping its owners. The history of the police in America is the history of black people being violently prevented from threatening white people's property rights. When, in the midst of an anti-police protest movement, people loot, they aren't acting non-politically, they aren't distracting from the issue of police violence and domination, nor are they fanning the flames of an always-already racist media discourse. Instead, they are getting straight to the heart of the problem of the police, property, and white supremacy.

Solidarity with all Ferguson rebels! Justice for Mike Brown!

Notes

[1] I use the rather clunky phrase not-non-violent purposely. For some non-violence ideologues breaking windows, lighting trash on fire or even building barricades in the street is "violent". I once watched a group of black teens chanting "Fuck the Police" get shouted at for "being violent" by a white protester. Though there are more forms of violence than just literal physical blows to a human body, I don't believe a conception of "violence" which encompasses both throwing trash in the street and the murder of Michael Brown is remotely helpful. Frustratingly, in protest situations violence tends to be defined as "whatever the nearest cop or non-violence practitioner says it is." Calling breaking a window "violent" reproduces this useless definition and places the whole argument within the rhetorical structure of non-violence ideology. Not-non-violent, then, becomes the more useful term.

Imperialist Feminism and Liberalism

By Deepa Kumar

In a recent CNN interview, religion scholar Reza Aslan was asked by journalist Alisyn Camerota if Islam is violent given the "primitive treatment in Muslim countries of women and other minorities." Aslan responded by stating that the conditions for women in Muslim majority countries vary. While women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia, elsewhere in various Muslim majority countries, women have been elected heads of states 7 times. But, before he could finish his sentence pointing out that the US is yet to elect a woman as president, he was interrupted by co-host Don Lemon who declared: "Be honest though, Reza, for the most part it is not a free and open society for women in those states."

How is it that people like Camerota and Lemon, who very likely have never travelled to "free and open" Turkey, Lebanon or Bangladesh, or read the scholarship on women's rights struggles in Morocco, Iran and Egypt, seem to know with complete certainty that women are treated "primitively" in "Muslim countries"? On what basis does Lemon believe that he has the authority to call Aslan out for supposed dishonesty? How is it that with little or no empirical evidence on women's rights in Muslim majority countries (which vary widely based on country, regions within a country, social class, the history and nature of national liberation movements, the part played by Islam in political movements etc.) Western commentators routinely make such proclamations about women and Islam?

The answer lies in a ubiquitous, taken-for-granted ideological framework that has been developed over two centuries in the West. This framework, referred to by scholars as colonial feminism, is based on the appropriation of women's rights in the service of empire. Birthed in the nineteenth century in the context of European colonialism, it rests on the construction of a barbaric, misogynistic "Muslim world" that must be civilized by a liberal, enlightened West; a rhetoric also known as gendered Orientalism.

Colonial/imperialist feminism has taken new and old forms in the US. The immediate context for a resurgence of imperialist feminism in the US is the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Borrowing a trope from Britain in India and Egypt, and France in Algeria, the US argued that it was going to liberate Afghan women. Liberals and feminists in the US, going against the wishes of Afghan feminist organizations such as RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) who opposed US intervention, linked arms with the Bush administration and supported the Afghan war.

In the Obama era, liberalism became even more intertwined with empire. Despite mountains of evidence to show that the US/NATO occupation had done little for women's rights, Amnesty-USA conducted a campaign in support of the continued occupation of Afghanistan. In 2012, ads appeared in public places of Afghan women in burqas with the caption: "Nato: Keep the Progress Going!" Amnesty further organized a summit that rearticulated through the voices of powerful women, such as Madeline Albright, imperialist feminist justifications for war.

What explains this tendency among liberals to take positions that go against the interests of Muslim women and women of color? While there are numerous factors, two are worth noting-racism and empire.

As several Third World Feminists have argued, a historical weakness of liberal feminism in the West has been its racist, patronizing attitude towards women of color who have been seen less as allies/agents and more as victims in need of rescue. This attitude prevails both in relation to women of color within Western nation states, as well as women in the global South. This is what allows figures such as Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton to be viewed as feminist saviors even while both, in their roles as Secretary of State, have advanced US imperialism. It is liberalisms understanding of the state as a neutral body, rather than as a coercive apparatus used to advance capitalism and empire, which is at the root of such perspectives.

In the cultural sphere, TV shows such as Homeland reproduce imperialist feminism not only through its plot line and female lead character (Carrie Mathison), but also through its ad campaigns. In the lead up to Season 4, the publicity campaign featured Mathison "far from home" fighting the righteous war. Mathison's red hood, blue gown and white face stand in for the American nation against a sea of Eastern darkness. Her unique clothing and her active posture mark her as the embodiment of liberal individualism in contrast to the passive, indistinguishable Muslim women in black. The larger narrative is the construction of "us" as a society that values women and their agency, and of them as misogynistic in a classic reproduction of the "clash of civilizations" colonial argument.

Yet, imperialist feminism has not been the province only of white elites in the West; comprador intellectuals in the global South have always played a productive role. Today, in the "post-racial" era, it is not only white liberals and feminists that have bolstered imperialist feminism, middle and ruling class brown and black women in the West and the global South have actively contributed to the articulation of new forms and new agents of imperialist feminism.

One recent example of how imperialist feminism can occasionally incorporate Muslim female agency is the widespread media attention in the West focused on the UAE female pilot Maryam al-Mansouri. Widely praised by liberals and conservatives in the US (not withstanding the "boobs on the ground" comment), al-Mansouri became a means by which to paper over the gulf monarchies' atrocious human rights record. Even while the image of a Muslim female pilot served to disrupt the standard victim imagery, the larger narrative was one which cast the US as savior leading a coalition of "good Muslims" in a righteous war against ISIS. In place of T. E. Lawrence, we have Barack Obama.

Liberal feminism has routinely viewed women's participation in the military as positive. In 1991, after the first Gulf war, feminist Naomi Wolf praised US female soldiers for eliciting "respect and even fear" and for taking the struggle for women's rights forward. What she failed to discuss is the over 200,000 Iraqis, men, women and children, who were killed in that war. US women cannot achieve their liberation on the bodies of the victims of empire any more than Arab women can by raining bombs on Syrians. Empire does not liberate, it subjugates.

Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of media studies and Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers University (New Jersey). She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike.

This article was originally published at Open Democracy