Bodily Autonomy is Impossible Under Capitalism

By Petra Glenn

Bodily autonomy is the right to make decisions about one’s own body. United States capitalism has turned bodies into commodities, thus preventing the obtainment of the human right of bodily autonomy. Capitalism requires the utilization of bodies as capital to generate wealth. The historic bodily oppression and utilization, particularly of black women, has created a dangerous and exploitative experience of motherhood in the United States. Rather than being based on care, the American medical, childcare, and education systems are built to generate profit, which in many cases results in poor care and exploitation. Due to the role and priority of economic efficiency in every stage of reproduction within the United States racialized capitalism, true bodily autonomy is impossible to obtain. 

This argument is part of a wider national discussion regarding bodily autonomy in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Republicans’ newly revealed Project 2025, both of which highlight the GOP’s goal of eliminating access to reproductive healthcare. However, Project 2025 and the Dobbs decision are a consequence of a working system rather than a broken one. Capitalism, in theory and practice, relies on the commodification of bodies. So, despite living under a system supposedly grounded in individual liberties (abortion bans notwithstanding), to secure proper bodily autonomy, capitalism must be abolished. 

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Capitalism requires the utilization of bodily autonomy to sustain profit from workers. Workers sell their labor that occurs through the use of their bodily capital. Capitalists utilize labor by placing an economic value on labor and bodily capital. Through this process, the worker’s body becomes commodified. The United States economy was created through the oppression of enslaved person’s bodily autonomy and now operates under the guise of guaranteeing bodily autonomy but is instead rooted in the denial and utilization of bodily autonomy. Reproduction is vital to this system as it creates more bodies for the labor supply. Laborers create surplus value, or the value from labor that isn’t used to compensate the laborer. Through surplus value, businesses and companies generate profits. The goal within capitalist markets is to maximize profits, and therefore the surplus value created through laborers. Laborers thus don’t own their labor value. This system therefore relies on the exploitation of lower classes, which further burdens marginalized populations, such as women. 

The oppression of women has long played a role in the maintenance of capitalism even when separated from its racialized elements. The creation of modern Western class hierarchies was in part an establishment of gender hierarchies. From slavery through feudalism to capitalism, the oppression of women has been a feature of all stages of class society. The creation of separate family units isolated women into servile positions in their homes and families. Capitalist ideology reduced women to vessels of future workers, demeaning them while stealing the fruits of their uncompensated domestic labor. Pregnant people are therefore cogs in the creation of a labor supply while being economically valued through their labor in rearing children, homemaking, and other aspects of unpaid labor on which the United States economy relies. 

Black women are among the most oppressed populations in the United States through their intersection of race and gender. Through the legacy of slavery and contemporary racist policies,  race and American capitalism are inherently linked. Black labor was, and still is, foundational to the growth and development of the United States. The pivotal industries of cotton, tobacco, and sugar, which established the early infrastructure and profit that grew the economy, were built by enslaved persons. Railroads, which were essential in the Western expansion that grew and industrialized the states, were too. The White House, Capitol, and other landmarks were built by enslaved people. The rearing of many white children of plantation owners was through the labor of enslaved women. The for-profit prison industry and policing system were created in response to the emancipation of enslaved persons and now rely on black bodies for continual profit. The very core of the United States economy and culture was created through black labor and the suppression of bodily autonomy. 

Abortion access is just one facet of a racialized and for-profit medical system, which often fails to deliver actual care. Reproductive justice includes the ability to birth and raise children in a safe and healthy environment, which requires proper medical care beyond abortion access. These are consequences of the healthcare system's overall capitalistic structure, which creates economic inequality via class division. Owners' interests come first, so even healthcare is governed by principles of maximizing shareholder value. Among other things, this incentivizes insurance companies to deny care to those who are qualified for coverage.

Consequently, women are routinely denied the care they need to fully realize bodily autonomy — including but not limited to abortion. And it’s not just healthcare. No paid maternity leave also curtails bodily autonomy. The lack of support pushes many mothers into financial instability, disempowering these women and making them more reliant on their employers. 

Proper bodily autonomy therefore cannot exist under capitalism. For mothers in particular, every stage of conceiving, rearing, and raising children has been commodified, erasing the sanctity of procreation and parenthood. True reproductive justice is impossible under a class system that values profit over human lives. The Dobbs decision and the doom of Project 2025 simply prove that reforming a for-profit society can only secure basic rights for so long until the hierarchy inevitably shoves women back into place. Regardless of who wins in the upcoming 2024 election, securing true bodily autonomy will require greater class consciousness, rather than bandaging a system that requires control over our bodies. 

Petra Glenn is an activist and aspiring political scientist. She is pursuing her PhD and aims to aid in bridging the gap between academic theory and practice.

Palestine: The Human Cost of Capitalist Exploitation

By Peter S. Baron

As the genocide in Palestine continues, we must confront the stark reality of American involvement. American taxpayer money is funding a continuous supply of bombs and war technology to Israel, weapons that are being used to kill Palestinians. Despite the political posturing, the U.S. government’s unwavering stance isn't about moral high ground or justice — it's about cold, calculated geopolitical and capitalist interests.

Escalation and Brutality Since October 7th, 2023

Since October 7th, 2023, Israel’s brutality in Gaza has escalated to unimaginable levels. Families have been torn apart, homes reduced to rubble, and entire communities shattered. The death toll is over 45,000, including more than 41,000 civilians, 15,620 children, and 10,173 women, according to Euro Med Monitor. When including “indirect deaths,” the Lancet estimates the true death toll is likely upwards of 186,000 people. With countless bodies buried under 40 million tons of rubble, the true number may never be known.

Children, who should be playing and learning, are instead facing death and destruction. Roughly 80% of Palestinian children have reported emotional distress and trauma. Think back to when you were a child, say nine years old. Could you imagine living in such a dystopian reality? According to UNICEF, at least 17,000 children have been orphaned or separated from their families. Over 2,750 people have been detained or forcibly disappeared by the Israeli Defense Force, leaving families in anguish and communities in fear.

Israel’s constant bombardment has left over 86,200 injured, overwhelming Palestine’s already crumbling healthcare system. The injured and sick have been abandoned with nowhere to go as over 30 hospitals, 100 clinics, and 275 ambulances have been targeted and destroyed by Israeli strikes. Health professionals, who should be saving lives, are themselves becoming casualties, with over 486 killed and 640 injured. Civil defense workers, crucial for emergency response and rescue operations, have not been spared, with over 259 killed or injured.

Palestine is being suffocated under a wave of deliberate, calculated suffering. A million people are gasping for air with acute respiratory infections, 577,000 are writhing in agony with severe diarrhea, and 107,000 are battling acute jaundice. Over 100,000 people are being devoured by scabies, 65,000 are enduring the relentless torment of skin rashes, 12,000 are passing blood through their bowels in sheer agony, and 11,000 children are suffering from chickenpox in conditions that are nothing short of hellish.

And it doesn't stop there. Hundreds are gripped by mumps and meningitis, diseases that thrive in the chaos and despair deliberately inflicted upon this population. The threat of a polio outbreak looms, like a vulture waiting to feast on a community already pushed to the brink.

Gaza has tragically become a vast graveyard, a land where the living walk among the dead, buried hastily and in desperation as the relentless bombardment continues. Once vibrant neighborhoods have been reduced to fields of graves, where bodies are laid to rest in backyards, beneath staircases, and along roadsides. Cemeteries overflow, and morgues can no longer contain the sheer number of the dead. The ground is dug up repeatedly, with graves being made on top of graves as space runs out. In some places, graves themselves have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, leaving bones and remains scattered and exposed. The once sacred rituals of honoring the dead have been replaced by hurried, makeshift burials, often without the dignity of proper rites. Gaza has become not just a place of death, but a symbol of the utter devastation and inhumanity that has turned an entire territory into one massive, sorrow-filled cemetery.

Israel has completely destroyed over 141,920 Palestinian homes and partially damaged another 312,000, displacing at least 1.7 million people out of a population of 2.2 million. Can you fathom such enormous numbers? What about the terror of losing your home, your loved ones, and your sense of security, repeatedly over the course of eight long months? This mass displacement has left countless people without shelter, food, electricity, or basic necessities. Families are huddling in makeshift shelters, clinging to the hope of survival amidst relentless attacks.

Over 180 press headquarters, 2,500 industrial facilities, 460 schools, 690 mosques, 3 churches, and 200 heritage sites have been destroyed or damaged. This is the erasure of the history, culture, and identity of an entire people. This genocide has been the deadliest event on record for journalists in decades. Deliberately targeting reporters, killing over 140, aims to silence the truth and blind the world to the atrocities being committed.

The blockade on Palestine, which has been in place since 2007, has been elevated to a “complete siege,” significantly restricting the flow of food, water, electricity, humanitarian aid, and medical supplies ensuring that Palestinians remain trapped in a cycle of poverty, dependency, and despair. Israeli Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir, even went so far as to assert, “The only thing that needs to enter Palestine are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid.” This blockade, justified under the guise of security, is in reality a brutal economic stranglehold designed to cripple the region and maintain geopolitical dominance.

The justifications for the blockade of Palestine, particularly claims like those highlighted by commentator Steven Bonnell, known online as "Destiny," that Hamas uses sugar from imported soda and sweets to manufacture rockets, are patently absurd. They insult the intelligence of the global community. The implausibility of using common sugar for military rocket propulsion is glaring. It belies established chemistry.

The real motivation for blocking basic goods is to make Palestine uninhabitable. The tactic of deliberate deprivation carried out by Israeli elites with American support coerces the Palestinian population into leaving their homeland behind or suffering intolerable living conditions, thereby clearing the way for further territorial control. Israeli Colonel Yogev BarSheshet revealed as much, saying, “Whoever returns here, if they return here, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.”

The United States’ steadfast support of Israel’s manipulative use of basic human needs for geopolitical ends demonstrates a profound disregard, if not contempt, for the humanity of Palestinians. The death and devastation are not “mistakes.” This is a calculated campaign of destruction and control.

Economic Interests and Military-Industrial Complex

The United States’ unwavering funding for Israel’s actions in Palestine is driven by a web of economic, political, and ideological factors that prioritize profits and power over human lives.

The U.S.-Israel partnership is not just about direct military might; Israel's intelligence capabilities provide the U.S. with critical insights into Middle Eastern geopolitics, preempting threats to American economic dominance while generating profits for the elite.

Israel's advancements in cybersecurity, defense, and agriculture are exploited by U.S. industries to create profitable joint ventures and innovation hubs that benefit the wealthy few. The Iron Dome missile defense system, a joint U.S.-Israel project, is lauded for safeguarding Israeli cities, but it primarily serves to bolster the military-industrial complex, allowing U.S. defense companies to gain insights and innovations that they can apply to other projects. For example, the Iron Dome has introduced cutting-edge technology in missile interception, which the U.S. likely integrates into its own defense systems.

Of course, the production and maintenance of the Iron Dome system generate significant profits for U.S. defense contractors involved in the project. The Israeli corporation Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the U.S. corporation Raytheon have joined up to produce Iron Dome components and systems within the U.S. The partnership is propped up by over $7 billion in U.S. investments allocated to Israeli missile defense programs since the early 1990s.

The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, which Israel then uses to purchase advanced weaponry and technology from American defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. Outside of corporate executives, major shareholders, and a limited number of employees directly involved in the defense industry, very few people benefit from investments in these companies.

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Overall, about 61-63% of Americans own some form of stock, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds, retirement accounts, and other investment vehicles. Given the widespread investment in major indexes and mutual funds, which often include shares of these large defense companies, it is likely that a substantial portion of Americans who own stock indirectly hold shares in defense companies. For instance, many popular index funds and ETFs that track the S&P 500 or other major indexes include shares of these top defense contractors. However, this figure is misleading when it comes to the actual distribution of wealth. As of the third quarter of 2023, the top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks — the highest level ever recorded. In stark contrast, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks. This means that despite a majority of Americans technically owning stock, most people see very little financial benefit from the market, including any profits gained by defense companies. The economic and social costs of military engagements disproportionately impact the majority, who gain almost nothing from the stock market despite their indirect involvement.

The Stable-Unstable dynamic

More broadly, the relationship with Israel is vital for U.S. companies aiming to access, dominate, and control the Middle East's abundant resources — namely, oil and natural gas. Despite the U.S. achieving energy independence, regional “stability” remains crucial for the elite, because it allows them to maintain control over global energy prices, secure profitable trade routes, and preserve their geopolitical dominance, all of which protect their economic and strategic interests on a global scale.

Israel’s US funded military capabilities aims to prevent conflicts or political upheavals that could disrupt the U.S.’ dominance over the flow of oil and other goods through critical chokepoints like the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, which are essential for maintaining global trade routes. According to Israel, for example, Israel’s Shin Bet — its FBI equivalent —  has foiled adversarial plots aimed at key targets, preventing attacks that could have disrupted global oil supplies.

But let’s be clear, what the elites seek to foster is not peaceful stability, but rather controlled instability.

Regional stability is essential in key areas like oil flow and trade routes because it ensures that oil and goods keep moving smoothly, without sudden disruptions that could hurt the profits of the elite. Stability here means oil tankers safely passing through shipping lanes without threats of piracy or war, and goods flowing from factories to markets without delays. Governments in these regions need to be cooperative, keeping things calm and under control so that business can continue as usual.

But in other regions, controlled chaos is part of the strategy. By stirring up conflict and instability in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Libya, the U.S. prevents any one country or group from becoming powerful enough to challenge American dominance. This kind of instability looks like ongoing civil wars, governments struggling to maintain control, and communities torn apart by violence. These conditions keep local leaders too busy trying to survive to focus on resisting U.S. influence or forming alliances with America’s rivals.

In this way, the U.S. ensures that no single country in these regions becomes strong enough to disrupt American interests. Instead, these countries remain weak, divided, and dependent on U.S. military aid and economic support to stay afloat. The chaos keeps them in check, while the stable regions keep the oil and goods flowing—both serving to maintain U.S. power and control in the world.

Therefore, what the elites truly seek is a balance: stability where it protects their economic interests and controlled instability where it ensures their geopolitical dominance.

Selective Stability, Controlled Instability

The U.S.-Israel military presence in the Middle East serves as the iron fist behind the smooth flow of oil and goods, ensuring that nothing disrupts the relentless pursuit of profit. Oil tankers, loaded with crude, glide through the Persian Gulf under the ever-watchful eyes of American and Israeli warships, their safety guaranteed by the threat of overwhelming force. These tankers are the arteries of the global economy, and the military presence ensures that they deliver their cargo without interruption. The calm waters mask a brutal reality: this enforced stability exists solely to protect the profits of oil magnates, ensuring that every drop of oil fuels the capitalist machine, keeping the elite firmly in power.

On land, the same dynamic plays out with trade routes from factories in the East to markets in the West. U.S. and Israeli forces act as enforcers, maintaining a system where compliant governments keep their populations in check, ensuring no disruption disturbs the flow of goods. This military presence suppresses any threat to the status quo, propping up regimes that prioritize business as usual over human rights.

Simultaneously, the U.S. military presence in the Gulf keeps the Middle East in perpetual turmoil. Israel's airstrikes on Hezbollah targets aren’t about self-defense—they’re about throwing gasoline on the fire. When bombs rip through crowded neighborhoods, it’s not just militants who suffer; it’s entire communities—families gathered around dinner tables, children laughing in the streets—obliterated in an instant. This isn’t collateral damage; it’s a strategy. The more destruction, the more Hezbollah is provoked, ensuring a vicious cycle of retaliation that justifies yet another wave of attacks. This relentless violence keeps the region seething with rage, just the way the arms dealers like it. With every missile launched, stock prices for American defense contractors soar, profits stained with the blood of innocents.

Saudi Arabia’s onslaught against the Houthis is no different. These so-called "precision" airstrikes routinely tear apart schools, hospitals, and marketplaces—places where everyday people go to survive, to live. But that’s exactly the point: to turn Yemen into a landscape of despair, ensuring it remains a theater of war. The more catastrophic the situation becomes, the more Saudi Arabia clings to American military support, feeding into the U.S.'s grand design. The bombs don’t just destroy buildings—they destroy any chance for peace, ensuring Yemen remains a battlefield where only the arms dealers prosper.

When local governments are weakened by instability, they become more desperate, more willing to sign deals that favor U.S. companies, especially in resource extraction and trade. These companies swoop in, exploiting the disarray to secure access to valuable resources at bargain prices, all while the region burns. Meanwhile, the ongoing turmoil makes it nearly impossible for rival powers like Russia and China to establish a stable presence or secure long-term investments. Every time they try to establish a foothold, the instability disrupts their plans, forcing them to pull back or lose billions in failed ventures. This ensures that U.S. interests face no real competition in the region, keeping American dominance secure.

The paradox of U.S. policy lies in using instability to achieve a form of controlled stability. By periodically destabilizing the region, U.S. elites maintain a balance of power that prevents any one nation from becoming too powerful while ensuring ongoing dependence on U.S. support.

Palestine isn't just a footnote in this power-hungry game; it's a centerpiece. The capitalist elite know that crushing Palestinians will ignite resistance, not just in Palestine but across the entire Middle East. And that's exactly what they want. This turmoil becomes the perfect excuse for Israel to beef up its military, all under the guise of "security," funded by billions of U.S. dollars. Every act of Palestinian defiance is twisted into a justification for Israel's brutal military machine, which the U.S. gleefully supports because it keeps their imperial ambitions alive.

“Orientalism” (as understood by Edward Said) provides further pretext for the atrocities in Palestine. Arabs and Muslims are depicted by corporate media and bad-faith social media personalities as violent, backward, and a threat to Western civilization, which views itself as rational and enlightened. This dehumanization makes it easier to justify and carry out extreme violence against them. The Israeli government speaks of fighting “human animals,” making Palestine a “slaughterhouse,”  and “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.”

The skeptics among us might wonder, "Even if we are being overly destructive, isn't the core of this foreign policy in our best interests?" After all, our politicians constantly assure us that our military actions are meant to protect us and enhance our security.

No. This policy doesn't protect us; it undermines our security. The “stable instability” American elites create fosters resentment and extremism, breeding terrorist groups that then target innocent civilians, including us. The CIA has admitted that such actions generate significant "blowback," leading to increased threats that culminate in loss of lives. The fear and threats generated by our aggressive foreign policy lead to the erosion of our own civil liberties through measures like invasive airport security. One study demonstrated that despite spending over $550 million on TSA screening equipment and training, TSA agents failed to detect a threat in 67 out of 70 mock tests. This means that in 95% of the trials, the TSA missed planted threats. The elite are sacrificing our privacy and rights in the name of a security that remains elusive.

Elite Manipulation of Politicians

Historically, politicians have never hesitated to carry out the elite’s killing missions in exchange for political funding. The situation here is no different. The Israel lobby’s influence in the United States plays a significant role in maintaining this status quo. Powerful lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) exert tremendous influence over U.S. politicians. Through campaign contributions and political pressure, these groups ensure that U.S. policies remain staunchly pro-Israel. Politicians, driven by the need to secure campaign financing and re-election, often align their policies with the interests of these lobbies.

Despite its relatively small financial contributions compared to other donors, AIPAC strategically targets key lawmakers to maximize its impact. By lobbying, fostering close relationships with politicians, and forming strategic alliances and partnerships with various interest groups, political entities, and organizations to advance their policy goals and support for Israel, AIPAC ensures that legislators align with its pro-Israel agenda.

Furthermore, AIPAC uses intimidation tactics, threatening to support challengers against incumbents who do not toe the line, thereby coercing politicians to adopt its views. Recently, the anti-Zionist Democrat Jamal Bowman lost his primary to Zionist candidate George Latimer, who received over $15 million from AIPAC in the most expensive primary race ever. Politicians witness the political fallout in races like NY-16 and quickly learn the severe consequences of defying the Israel lobby. This creates an oppressive environment where fear of backlash forces compliance, transforming the political landscape into a monolithic echo chamber where Zionism is the only acceptable stance.

The Cycle of Violence and Exploitation

Remove all the moral platitudes and justifications for our actions and what we are really talking about here is an obscene, ruthless pursuit of power and money, where the deaths of children and the destruction of homes are built into the business model. The elite have their sights set on Gaza today, with plans that starkly illustrate their predatory strategies. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor, highlighted the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's waterfront properties. In a revealing interview at Harvard University, Kushner suggested Israel should remove civilians from Gaza to "clean up" the area.

Israeli real estate developers, such as Harey Zahav, have proposed building beachfront properties over the ruins in Gaza, which have been heavily bombarded. Constructing settlements on the remains of demolished Palestinian homes evokes the harrowing history of the Nakba, during which over 500 Palestinian towns and villages were systematically destroyed by Zionist militias. Israeli General Elad Peled described the war crimes he committed during the Nakba, saying “we entered the village [and] planted a bomb next to every house.”

Ultimately, the more successful Israel is in wiping out Palestinians, the stronger the U.S.-Israeli stranglehold on this region becomes. More land becomes available to exploit, to expand settlements, and to control strategic trade routes, such as the Suez Canal where 30% of the world’s shipping containers must pass through and the Bab el-Mandeb strait where six million barrels of oil pass through every day.

The Zionist leaders of years past were clear about their intentions. In 1948, the founder and first prime minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion said, “We must do everything to ensure [the Palestinians] never do return.” Moshe Sharret, the second prime minister, agreed, stating, “We… have come to conquer a country from the people inhabiting it.” Chaim Weizman, the first president of Israel, analogized Palestinians to “the rocks of Judea” — “obstacles that have to be cleared on a difficult path.”

At its core, Zionism is a capitalist project. It is about turning land — what should be communal — into a commodity for private profit. The Jewish State, a pamphlet written by the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, admits as much. He called for transforming previously non-commercial lands into productive economic zones through agriculture, urban planning, and infrastructure — efforts that would inevitably displace existing populations. Israeli authorities implemented this idea, strategically seizing and reclassifying Arab land to consolidate their control over it.

By forcibly removing Palestinians and appropriating their land, Zionism creates fertile ground for real estate ventures and new markets. This process is further bolstered by the military and security industries, cornerstones of capitalist economies, which profit from the instability and conflict.

The Zionist project does not merely parallel capitalism; it is a manifestation of it, embodying the drive to dispossess, commodify, and profit.

The Nauseating Reality

How sickening is this?

The endless churn of war keeps corporate profits soaring. Capitalism demands ever-growing profit margins, and the corporate overlords, with their iron grip on political power, won't let go. The U.S. must remain Israel's staunch ally, not for justice or security, but to keep the gears of the war machine turning, to keep the stock market fat, and to ensure the elite continue to float above the suffering they've engineered.

Without unwavering U.S. support, Israel would have to consider diplomacy, stripped of the military dominance that U.S. aid guarantees. This could finally reduce tensions, forcing other nations and groups in the region to soften their aggression, knowing the U.S. is no longer fueling the militarized madness.

However, in this late stage of capitalism, the elite cannot afford peace. Demand for weapons would plummet. The military-industrial complex, bloated by blood money, would see profits wither. Stock prices of defense companies would fall, dragging down the portfolios of the elite who thrive on this manufactured chaos.

The deep animosity between Israelis and Palestinians is a direct result of the calculated strategies employed by elites to maintain their stranglehold on power. This conflict is deeply rooted in the reality of Israel as a settler-colonial state, driven by a capitalist system that thrives on division and exploitation. The powerful deploy propaganda and systemic oppression to manipulate the masses into fighting each other, distracting them from uniting against their true oppressors — the elites themselves.

This situation mirrors the European settlers' ruthless exploitation and slaughter of Indigenous populations in North America. European elites indoctrinated and mobilized ordinary European settlers to commit genocide out of fear and hatred, but the elites were truly motivated by the opportunity to seize indigenous resources and grow obscenely wealthy. Similarly, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is motivated by an elite community’s rapacious desire to control land and resources. The elites stoke hatred and fear among ordinary Israelis, framing the conflict as an inevitable clash where both sides must annihilate the other. They position themselves as indispensable protectors in this endless cycle of bloodshed, manipulating public opinion to cement their power.

Many Israelis may genuinely feel that their security is at risk, leading them to support their government’s aggressive policies as a form of self-defense. This fear is skillfully manipulated by the elite through a relentless stream of propaganda. Settlers are not inherently evil; they have been indoctrinated—through schools, media, and political discourse—to believe that their safety requires they have an exclusive right to the land.

The truth is, no one has an inherent right to any land. The earth belongs to all people. Israelis aren't wrong simply for living in Palestine; they're wrong for denying Palestinians the same right to live there.

Recognizing this common oppression is crucial for building solidarity and working towards an equitable resolution. Otherwise, we fall back into the same old power struggles that the elite have always used to divide and conquer.

The Real Struggle

The real struggle is not between Israelis and Palestinians but between the oppressed masses and the elite forces that divide them and facilitate their exploitation in the pursuit of profit and power. Israeli society, like any other, is divided by class. The elites, who benefit from the conflict, use their power to maintain control and increase their wealth, manipulating the fears and prejudices of the broader population to sustain the status quo. The average Israeli, despite being on the dominant side of the conflict, is still part of the oppressed mass under capitalism. They are manipulated into supporting policies that perpetuate the occupation and the conflict, believing it necessary for their survival and security.

On the other side, Palestinians' anger and resentment are understandable, if not inevitable. Such feelings are born from their experiences of dispossession, violence, and systemic brutality. Both populations are oppressed by the same capitalist system that prioritizes profit over human lives, using division and hatred to maintain control and suppress any potential unity against the true oppressors. There is a vast difference in degree, but not in kind.

The true enemy is not the individual Israeli or Palestinian but the elite-driven capitalist system that fuels the Zionist project. Recognizing this common oppression is crucial for building solidarity and working towards a just and equitable resolution.

This entire situation reflects a broader reality; a tiny elite class routinely manipulates global politics and economies to their advantage. The genocide in Palestine is a means to an end — ensuring that share prices climb and profits soar, all while innocent lives are taken. Millions are deemed expendable by an elite class that orchestrates these horrors from boardrooms and government offices, far removed from the bloodshed and despair their decisions cause.

This is murder for money.

Peter S. Baron is the author of If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Groveling at the Feet of Greed: How U.S. Politicians Sacrifice Lives for Profit and Power

By Peter S. Baron

U.S. foreign policy has consistently exposed the cowardly and self-serving opportunism of our political leaders, who are driven by the interests of their corporate elite overlords. From the earliest days of the Republic, American interventions abroad have prioritized the elite class’s accumulation and consolidation of profit and power over human rights and international stability. Politicians, ever ready to serve corporate interests, have implemented policies designed to expand market access, control vital resources, and maintain global dominance, all while cloaking their actions in the rhetoric of democracy and security.

American politicians, as executors of this foreign policy, perpetuate wars, coups, and economic sanctions, ensuring a steady stream of blood money to their elite patrons. They manipulate public sentiment and suppress dissent to create a facade of national interest that conceals the true beneficiaries of these policies. The cumulative devastation from the African Slave Trade to the genocide in Gaza exposes the moral bankruptcy of a foreign policy rooted in murder and torture for profit and power. This grotesque complicity demands a radical rethinking of America's role in the world, prioritizing human dignity over corporate greed.

A History of Exploitation: From Slavery to Modern Conflicts

The pattern of exploitation, intrinsic to American capitalism and imperialism, traces back to our earliest days as a new nation. Understanding this continuum helps explain ongoing atrocities in places like Gaza, where marginalized lives remain collateral damage in the pursuit of profit and power.

The African Slave Trade, beginning in the 16th century, was an era of unparalleled brutality that resulted in the deaths of approximately 1.5 to 3 million African people. This brutal chapter in history was propelled by European powers and elite colonists, whose capitalist ambitions demanded a massive labor force to produce surpluses of profitable crops like sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Africans were enslaved and forcibly torn from their homes, families, and cultures, then transported across the Atlantic under the most inhumane conditions imaginable. Packed like cargo in the filthy holds of ships, many died from disease, malnutrition, and abuse. Those who survived the harrowing journey were sold like cattle, treated as mere property, stripped of their humanity, and forced to toil under relentless, brutal conditions.

The dehumanization and commodification of millions of men, women, and children generated immense wealth for European and American economies, laying the very foundation for modern capitalism.

In what is now the contiguous United States, the Indigenous population was decimated from over 5 million before European contact to fewer than 238,000 by the late 19th century, a near-total annihilation that subjected indigenous communities to unimaginable horrors—relentless warfare, violent displacement, and the deliberate introduction of diseases to which they had no immunity. The forced removal and extermination of Indigenous peoples was justified by U.S. expansionist policies under the guise of "Manifest Destiny." Americans were supposedly destined to occupy and control the land across the American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Driven by a relentless capitalist hunger for land and resources, the U.S. government and settlers aggressively seized vast territories for agriculture, mining, and real estate ventures in a calculated effort to pave the way for capitalist development.

The American Revolutionary War resulted in approximately 25,000 American deaths, around 24,000 British deaths, and about 7,500 Hessian (German) mercenary deaths, totaling approximately 56,500 fatalities. British trade policies were designed to keep the colonies economically dependent on Britain, restricting their ability to trade freely and forcing them to benefit the British economy. These policies included excessive taxation, which disproportionately burdened the lower classes in the colonies, fueling their anger towards both the elite in the UK and their colonial counterparts.

However, as the revolution progressed, the colonial elite seized control of the revolutionary committees and assemblies. This allowed them to hijack the grassroots demands for liberty and self-determination, twisting the revolutionary fervor to serve their own selfish economic interests. The common colonists were thrust into a violent and bloody struggle, duped into believing they were fighting for genuine freedom. However, the revolution ultimately served only to enrich and empower the wealthy American elite, betraying the common people and stripping them of the promised economic and social gains.

Elite leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison ensured the founding documents would usher in a political structure that safeguarded the interests of property owners and the wealthy. The original Constitution included mechanisms like the Electoral College and the Senate, which diluted the direct influence of the popular vote and ensured that power remained concentrated among the elite.

In essence, the rich leaders of the revolution, like George Washington who was one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, sought to dismantle British control to establish a capitalist economy where private property and free enterprise reigned supreme. Washington, often lauded for his prudence in declining to rule as King, certainly did not forgo the opportunity to live like one. He paid himself a Presidential salary that amounted to 2% of the total budget of the newly established American nation.

The US Civil War, which claimed between 620,000 and 850,000 lives, was fundamentally a battle between the Southern elites' agrarian economy based on slavery and the Northern elites' industrial economy based on wage labor. Southern landowners accumulated wealth through the brutal exploitation of enslaved people on plantations that produced cash crops like cotton and tobacco. The relentless drive for profit under capitalism pushed these enslavers to seek expansion into new American territories, a practice that Abraham Lincoln aimed to halt.

Northern elites, driven by the same capitalist commitment, were invested in expanding industrial capitalism, which relied on wage labor. They saw slavery as an economic hindrance to their vision of a more profitable and adaptable workforce. Wage labor allowed Northern industrialists to exploit workers without the legal and logistical constraints of slavery, offering a more scalable and flexible labor force for factories and industries. Workers could be hired and fired based on demand, paid only when needed, and subjected to poor working conditions without the need for lifelong ownership.

The North's victory dismantled the Southern slave-based economy, ending the agrarian capitalist model and paving the way for industrial capitalism to dominate. This shift facilitated rapid industrial growth and infrastructure development, promoting a capitalist economy based on wage labor. After approximately a decade of Reconstruction efforts, Northern industrial powers strengthened their influence over key economic sectors such as manufacturing, railroads, and finance. Subsequently, they withdrew their support for Reconstruction, allowing the South to effectively reinstitute slavery through the systems of sharecropping and convict leasing.

The Spanish-American War of 1898, which led to approximately 60,000 Spanish deaths and 3,200 American deaths, was driven by the U.S. desire to expand its influence and open new markets for American goods. The war was partly fueled by the sensationalist journalism of the time, which drummed up public support for intervention in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. However, underlying this public sentiment were strong economic motivations. The U.S. sought to protect its investments in Cuba and to gain control of other Spanish colonies like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The acquisition of these territories allowed the U.S. to expand its reach into new markets, securing strategic locations for military and trade purposes, thereby furthering American capitalists’ economic and strategic interests.

The US-Philippine War, which occurred from 1899 to 1902, caused around 220,000 Filipino deaths. This war was driven by the U.S.'s desire to establish a foothold in Asia, opening up new markets and resources for American businesses under the guise of "civilizing" and democratizing the region. Following the Spanish-American War, the U.S. took control of the Philippines, facing resistance from Filipino nationalists who sought independence. The brutal suppression of the Filipino independence movement demonstrated the lengths to which the U.S. would go to maintain its new colonial possessions.

During World War I, the federal government registered about half a million "enemy alien" civilians, monitored many of them, and sent around 6,000 German Nationals and German-American men and a few women to internment camps. The camps were harsh and inhumane, with poor living conditions, inadequate food, and rampant disease. Internees were subjected to forced labor and constant surveillance, stripped of their freedoms under the guise of protecting the nation. Perhaps, more strikingly, the government seized vast amounts of private property, often with dubious connections to the war effort, amassing assets worth over half a billion dollars—nearly the entire federal budget before the war.

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By seizing the businesses and properties of German Americans, the American elite removed economic competition and consolidated control. Xenophobia was used as a tactic to create an ideological construct where the German American community was scapegoated, symbolizing both external and internal threats. This strategy reinforced national cohesion by projecting fears onto a racialized other, uniting the nation against a common enemy.

Following the Pearl Harbor attack, American elites and their obedient politicians deflected public anger away from their own profit-driven actions that had escalated tensions with Japan. The greedy capitalist elite, desperate to control vital resources like oil and rubber from Southeast Asia, had imposed crippling economic sanctions on Japan. A State Department memorandum a year before Pearl Harbor laid bare their true motives: fear of losing access to lucrative markets and essential materials in Asia. These ruthless measures posed a clear and potent threat to Japan's very existence, intentionally provoking them into war. Instead of holding these capitalist vultures accountable, the government cowardly redirected blame onto Japanese Americans, shielding the true culprits behind this manufactured conflict.

Thus, echoing the strategic motivations behind the internment of German Americans during World War I, the U.S. government initiated the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. These camps were dehumanizing, with families torn from their homes and businesses, stripped of their rights, and confined in remote, desolate locations. The deplorable conditions lacked adequate shelter, food, and medical care. People lived in overcrowded barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, enduring extreme weather and a constant sense of fear and uncertainty.

The Korean War, which raged from 1950 to 1953, was a horrific conflict that resulted in approximately 2.5 million deaths, leaving the Korean peninsula in ruins and its people devastated. This war, driven by the U.S. aim to contain Soviet influence and protect global capitalist interests, reveals that the Cold War was essentially a series of hot wars, with Soviet and American elites fighting proxy battles around the world. After World War II, Korea was divided into two zones, with the North under Soviet influence and the South under American control. The American aim was to establish a capitalist South Korea that could serve as a bulwark against Soviet influence, ensuring a market-friendly environment beneficial to American economic interests. The war saw relentless bombings, mass executions, and widespread atrocities. Entire cities were leveled, and countless civilians were caught in the crossfire, subjected to unimaginable suffering.

In Guatemala in 1954, the U.S.-backed coup of Jacobo Árbenz set the stage for decades of brutal conflict and repression, including the Guatemalan Civil War, that led to the deaths of between 140,000 and 200,000 people. The overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz was a direct response to his land reform policies that aimed to redistribute land to impoverished peasants, which threatened American corporate interests, particularly those of the United Fruit Company.

The US-backed Indonesian genocide from 1965 to 1966 resulted in the deaths of between 500,000 and 1 million people. The U.S. supported General Suharto's rise to power as part of a broader strategy to eliminate communist influences in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country and a region of significant geopolitical importance. Suharto's regime, with U.S. backing, targeted members of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and suspected leftists, resulting in mass killings and widespread atrocities. The elimination of communist influences in Indonesia helped to secure a stable and capitalist-friendly regime that ensured a favorable environment for American economic interests and multinational corporations in Southeast Asia.

The Vietnam War, from 1955 to 1975, resulted in approximately 2 million deaths. The U.S. intervened to prevent the spread of communist influence in Southeast Asia, crucial for protecting global capitalist interests. The Domino Theory suggested that if one country fell to communism, others in the region would follow, threatening capitalist markets and investments.

The war was characterized by extensive bombing, chemical warfare, and brutal ground battles, leading to immense destruction and loss of life. The U.S. aimed to support a non-communist government in South Vietnam to maintain a strategic and economic foothold. Th U.S. government installed Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of South Vietnam in 1954, a man who aided the French colonizers in rounding up independence fighters during Vietnam’s revolution and who was living in Lakewood, New Jersey prior to being installed as President of South Vietnam. Villages were razed, civilians massacred, and entire regions devastated by napalm and Agent Orange.

As part of the Vietnam War, the U.S. bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos from 1969 to 1973 resulted in 500,000 deaths. These, known as Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal, were aimed at destroying North Vietnamese supply routes, particularly the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through these countries. The campaigns involved extensive use of carpet bombing and chemical defoliants, causing widespread civilian casualties and long-term environmental harm. In total, U.S. dropped 2,756,941 tons of bombs, more than all of the bombs dropped by the Allies in World War II.

The Bangladesh famine of 1974, which claimed up to 1.5 million lives, was tragically induced by U.S. policies that prioritized geopolitical interests over human suffering. During the Bangladesh Liberation War, the U.S., driven to uphold global capitalism through their Cold War alliances, supported the Pakistani government with aid and arms, enabling Pakistan to brutally suppress the independence movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

The conflict ravaged the region, leading to widespread devastation and economic collapse. When Bangladesh finally achieved independence, it was left in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed, and its economy in shambles. The newly formed government struggled desperately to address the famine that followed. Fields lay barren, markets were empty, and the people starved. During the height of the famine, the U.S. withheld 2.2 million tons of food aid as a means to pressure the Bangladeshi government into aligning with American political and economic interests.

The haunting images of skeletal children did nothing to stir the cold, calculating hearts of American politicians, who shamelessly grovel at the feet of greed. As expected, their consciences, deeply buried beneath their unwavering service to those who relentlessly pursue profit, remained impervious to the suffering they inflicted. The elite relied on their unwavering commitment to corporate profit and control over the global order, and these politicians met those expectations without hesitation.

The $8 trillion U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, part of the broader War on Terrorism, has resulted in over 900,000 deaths over the ensuing years. Initially justified as a response to the September 11 attacks, aimed at dismantling Al-Qaeda and toppling the Taliban, this intervention was heavily influenced by imperialist strategic interests. Afghanistan's critical location in Central Asia made it a prime target for projecting U.S. power and influence, surrounded by key nations like Iran, Pakistan, China, and the Central Asian republics. Establishing a foothold in Afghanistan provided the U.S. a strategic base to manipulate regional dynamics and counterbalance rivals such as Iran and China. Additionally, the prolonged military occupation and reconstruction efforts were a boon for American corporations involved in defense, security, and infrastructure, including then Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton.

The U.S. interventions in Iraq, including the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2003, resulted in catastrophic human losses, with approximately 100,000 deaths the Gulf War and 600,000 deaths from the Iraq War. These interventions were driven by strategic interests in Iraq's vast oil resources, with the U.S. aiming to control and secure these assets for capitalist benefits. The Gulf War was initiated to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, a key oil-producing country, thereby protecting U.S. allies and ensuring the stability of global oil supplies. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, under the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction, was similarly motivated by the desire to gain control over Iraq's oil fields and to establish a compliant government that would favor U.S. economic interests. Here too, the Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, made a staggering $39.5 billion from contracts related to the Iraq War, many of which were awarded without competitive bidding.

The devastation caused by these wars was immense: infrastructure was obliterated, cities were reduced to rubble, and millions of civilians were caught in the crossfire or suffered from the resulting chaos and instability, with 5 million displaced. The prolonged occupation and the dismantling of its military and governmental structures created a power vacuum and widespread chaos. This environment facilitated the rise of extremist groups, with ISIS eventually forming from the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other militant factions.

The NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, which led to approximately 22,000 deaths, was officially framed as a humanitarian effort to protect civilians during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi's regime. However, beneath this veneer of humanitarianism lay significant strategic and economic interests, particularly related to Libya's vast oil reserves. Libya, boasting the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, was a crucial supplier of oil to Europe. The NATO-led intervention resulted in the overthrow of Gaddafi but also plunged the country into chaos, leading to prolonged instability and conflict. This destabilization allowed multinational corporations easier access to invest in and exploit Libya's oil resources. Moreover, the intervention had dire consequences for the social fabric of Libya. The power vacuum and ensuing chaos led to the re-emergence of open-air slave markets, where human beings are being bought and sold like commodities for as little as $400.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is simply another manifestation of the capitalist ethos that permeated the violence described above. The U.S. government's complicity in perpetuating violence and destruction is driven by economic and geopolitical imperatives just like those we have discussed above. American taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel supports a relentless campaign against Palestinians, masked as a security measure but fundamentally rooted in capitalist and strategic interests. This alliance between American and Israeli elites consolidates control over critical resources and trade routes, enriching defense contractors and entrenching regional dominance. Innocent civilians bear the true cost: tens of thousands killed, homes and infrastructure decimated, and entire communities obliterated.

Collective Disengagement: Standing Up to Oppression and Building a New Future

The elite sustain this centuries long pattern of calculated violence by manipulating our collective psychology. They justify their acts of violence and war, while those who denounce such atrocities and propose new ways of organizing society are marginalized and discredited. Public sentiment is meticulously crafted through propaganda that narrows the range of acceptable discourse and paints revolutionary voices as unrealistic, insane, or dangerous.

Their fearmongering is particularly effective because it exploits our vulnerable position in a systemically competitive society. Those who have the least are warned they can't afford to join the courageous revolutionaries and risk losing what little they have, even though they stand to gain the most. Meanwhile, those with some financial security are told that embracing revolutionary ideals would plunge them into the struggles faced by those below them. The truth is, these revolutionary ideals would remove us from the cutthroat competition that characterizes the current world order. Such actionable ideals promise a world where no one has to live in insecurity or fear of losing everything. By fostering cooperation instead, we can create a society where everyone's needs are met, and the constant anxiety of survival is abolished.

The elite's hostility towards so-called 'radical' ideas is not simply a matter of ideological disagreement. They are acutely aware of the power, practicality, and rapid spread of these revolutionary concepts, and they fear how quickly they can be implemented. Thus, they ensure such dissent is systematically suppressed through state-sanctioned violence, creating a climate of acquiescence. This dual approach of bounded discourse and suppressed dissent ensures that transformational ideas are marginalized and genuine social change is hindered. Through this method, the ruling class engineers a grotesque charade where the only permissible political stances are those fundamentally devoted to perpetuating corporate dominance and expanding capitalism.

But their manipulation runs deeper—they sell us these contrived choices! They cleverly associate being a Democrat with specific cultural values and being a Republican with others. Glossy advertisements and sleek marketing campaigns flaunt both celebrities and everyday people who embody these fabricated values, pushing products that supposedly define liberal or conservative lifestyles, along with their various subcultures.

Every purchase we make, whether it's a hybrid car adorned with progressive bumper stickers or a pickup truck flaunting patriotic decals, feeds into this fabricated dichotomy. We're not just voting with our wallets; we're being coerced into aligning our self-worth and identity with these consumer choices. It's a grand illusion where both sides, despite their apparent differences, funnel us into the same exploitative system.

We’re bombarded with slogans and images that blend politics with consumerism. "Vote blue, buy green." "Real Americans wear red." It's a relentless cycle where we are implored to buy products that signify our 'values'—values crafted in boardrooms to serve corporate interests.

Every vote, every purchase, every piece of cultural paraphernalia we adorn ourselves with is a cog in their profit machine. The elites sit back, watching us dance to their tune, our dissent muted, our choices orchestrated, our lives commodified. This is a profound violation of our autonomy and dignity, a testament to the insidious power of corporate hegemony.

It’s time we reject the individuals who are “leading” our country, recognizing them as the spineless and avaricious opportunists they repeatedly prove themselves to be. They do not look out for “American interests.” They look out for elite interests. The elite are fully aware of the destruction and death they cause. They wield force not just because it’s effective but because it sends a chilling message to those of us who see through their charades. They know that some of us can see their justifications for war—drenched in pompous, misleading rhetoric of spreading democracy or protecting American interests—for the sham that it is. They want us to understand that if we challenge them, they can and will bring hell upon earth. They will kill without hesitation.

Yet, they have a vulnerability. To oppress and kill, they need us to do their bidding. They need us to ship the bombs, to provide political support, to play their rigged game. They require vast numbers of soldiers to sign up, commit these atrocities, suffer from PTSD, and then be discarded when they return and seek help. It's time we stand together and refuse to be pawns in their murderous schemes. We must take this stand for ourselves and for humanity. By building networks of mutual aid and supporting each other, we can create the solidarity needed to resist their exploitation and implement new, just ways of organizing society.

Our collective power lies in our ability to say no. By refusing to participate in their wars, by resisting their propaganda, we can dismantle their power. The elites rely on our complicity, our labor, and our silence to maintain their dominion.

Imagine we chose to serve each other instead! Picture the strength of a unified populace, rejecting the exploitation and brutality inflicted in our name. We must rise together, in defiance of the so-called leaders who have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of capitalism. For every life shattered by their betrayal, for every dream crushed under the weight of their gluttony, we must unite. It is our duty to reclaim the values they have perverted, the future they threaten, and the planet they are setting aflame with their endless pursuit of profit. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to disrupt this cycle of violence and build a new social order that values human dignity over capital. Now is the time to come together and take action.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Debunking Myths About Venezuela: What's Really Going On?

[Photo Credit: MIGUEL GUTIERREZ/EPA/Shutterstock]

By Eli Morey

Republished from Liberation Center.

Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela’s socialist movement, won the July 28 Venezuela presidential election by a wide margin. In a near-repeat of 2019,  the Biden administration  immediately declared the election illegitimate and recognized their preferred—but badly defeated–candidate as the winner, Edmundo González as the winner, just as they supported Juan Guaido’s pitiful attempt to take power in 2019-2020. Similarly, the U.S. is fully supporting current right-wing violence in Venezuela to set the stage for another coup against the legitimate and widely popular government.

None of this appears in the corporate media, of course. Instead, we only encounter accusations of “corruption” and “illegitimate” elections.

What about the polls that showed Maduro losing?

Headlines in the U.S. cite polls as evidence of fraud in the 2024 elections. According to some polls, Maduro trailed the opposition by a wide margin in the lead-up to election day. A closer look reveals that these polls are not a reliable source of information about Venezuelan voter preferences. 

In fact, each of the four polls cited by Western media were run by organizations with a clear conflict of interest:

1. The Encuestadora Meganálisis poll is openly affiliated with the opposition, as their Facebook page filled with videos denouncing Madruo and the Bolivarian Revolution.

2. The Caracas-based Delphos poll is directed by Felix Seijas Rodriguez, an outspoken member of the Venezuelan opposition who has authored numerous articles attacking Maduro and even discussing U.S. military intervention against Venezuela.

3. OCR Consultores is a “consultancy” group whose Director, Oswaldo Ramirez Colina, lives in Miami, where the group is headquartered. Colina studied “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” at Georgetown University, which is notoriously cozy with the CIA. He has appeared on news segments and podcast episodes criticizing Maduro and questioning the legitimacy of Venezuela’s electoral processes.

4. Edison Research, whose exit poll claimed Maduro’s loss, has “top clients [that] include CIA-linked US government propaganda outlets Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, all of which are operated by the US Agency for Global Media, a Washington-based organ that is used to spread disinformation against US adversaries.”

Are elections in Venezuela free and fair?

While western media consistently accuses Maduro of rigging elections, there is zero evidence to support this claim. In both the 2018 and 2024 elections, thousands of international observers were present at polling stations across Venezuela. 

In fact, even mainstream liberal organizations like the Carter foundation have praised Venezuela’s electoral system. In 2012, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said that “as a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Who are the leaders of the opposition?

Maduro’s primary opponent in the elections, Edmundo Gonzalez Urritia, was not a big figure in Venezuelan politics until this most recent election cycle. He is primarily serving as a stand-in for Maria Corina Machado, who is the true face of Venezuela’s opposition. 

Machado is on the far right. Her policies would undermine Venezuela’s sovereignty by privatizing national assets and selling off Venezuela’s oil reserves to western corporations. 

She is also a proud and open Zionist. In fact, in 2018 she wrote a letter directly to Benjamin Netanyahu asking Israel to intervene militarily in Venezuela to conduct a “regime change” operation in order to overthrow its democratically elected government. In 2020, she signed a cooperation agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud party stating that they were in agreement on “political, ideological, and social issues” and “issues related to strategy, geopolitics and security.”

The right-wing’s violence is particularly directed against Afro-Venezuelans and the indigenous populations because the Revolution has greatly benefitted the sectors of society who have historically been excluded and oppressed. In 2014, a right-wing group beat a law student named William Muñoz, and doused him in gasoline. Fortunately, an ambulance rescued Muñoz before the mob could ignite the gasoline. In 2017, the right-wing went on a rampage targeting darker-skinned Venezuelans, setting them on fire and even lynching them.

Why and how does the U.S. try to overthrow the Venezuelan government?

It is not only the domestic reactionaries that constantly threaten the Revolution. Particularly since 2005, the U.S. has deployed numerous strategies to reverse the revolutionary gains of Venezuela.

A few years after the presidential election of Hugo Chávez, representing the Fifth Republic Movement, the U.S. ruling class started openly working to destroy Venezuela’’s socialist government since the Bolivarian Revolution began with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who ran as the Fifth Republic Movement’s candidate.’s government. Under Chávez’s leadership, Venezuela’s democratic processes expanded quickly and rapidly. In 1999, Venezuela adopted a new constitution that created a constituent assembly, bringing the people into positions of power to pass laws in their interests. Land was redistributed and social goods like housing and education were prioritized thanks to the massive oil reserves of the country.

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What became known as the Bolivarian Revolution, led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)—which formed in 2007—was a spark that set off a “pink tide” throughout Latin America. Progressive governments came to power in Brazil and Bolivia, and people’s movements surged across the continent. With state power, progressives and socialists formed new alliances to challenge U.S. domination and imperialism, including notably ALBA, or the Alliance for the People’s of Our America. Founded in 2004, ALBA enables Latin American and other countries to engage in non-exploitative trade and other inter-state projects and agreements.

Sanctions were the first tactic the U.S. deployed against the Revolution. By depriving the government of the ability to fund social programs, the intent was and is to create widespread poverty and misery to foment dissent and blaming the results of the sanctions on the policies of the Venezuelan government.

If Venezuela’s socialist government was allowed to engaged in “free trade,” they could make even more impressive advances for their people and inspire other countries to follow in their path. As a result, Venezuela is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world, with over 900 unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States alone. The U.S. has actively worked for over a decade to destabilize the Venezuelan economy specifically by targeting its oil industry and its financial sector.

However, undermining the Venezuelan economy is just one element of the U.S. hybrid war on Venezuela. There have also been multiple coup attempts with links to the U.S. Here are a few:

• 2002: Socialist president Hugo Chavez was kidnapped and removed from power by military coup plotters connected to Venezuelan big business. After two days, huge protests in support of Chavez forced the coup government out of power and restored the constitutional order. Chavez was freed and returned to the presidency.

• 2019: In 2018 the opposition boycotted the elections, and as a result their candidates lost by a huge margin. In spite of this, they then declared opposition figurehead Juan Guaidó—who had not even run in the elections and won 0 votes—the new interim president of Venezuela. The United States immediately recognized Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. The following year Guaidó led a failed coup attempt against Maduro. 

• 2020: “Operation Gideon,” an armed invasion of Venezuela led by a former member of the U.S. Army special forces, was defeated by the Venezuelan military.

Why are so many immigrants leaving Venezuela?

Millions of people have left Venezuela in the last 10 years. While the U.S. media often portrays these people as political refugees fleeing a dictatorship, the reality is quite different. 

Global oil prices dropped drastically in the mid 2010s. Oil is a key component of Venezuela’s economy. This would not have been a problem if Venezuela was able to take out loans to cover shortfalls until the price of oil rebounded. Oil-dependent countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE are able to get cheap loans when oil prices decline because they are allies of the U.S. and EU. In Venezuela’s case, the U.S. did everything it could to undermine the Venezuelan economy in a moment of crisis, and prevent its economy from rebuilding in the wake of disaster. 

Most of Venezuela’s immigrants are in fact victims of the U.S’s harsh sanctions regime, which has damaged Venezuela’s economy and prevented it from accessing key goods including food and medicine. 

Why do I see posts on social media calling Maduro a dictator?

After every election there are outspoken people who are upset about the outcome. If you were to look on social media or talk to random people on the street after the 2016 or 2020 elections in the U.S, you would certainly find people angry or confused about the results. You would probably also encounter people claiming that the election was rigged. This does not amount to evidence of election fraud. 

In the U.S. and on western social media platforms, the anti-Maduro position is over-represented because of the number of expats living in the United States. Venezuelans living here have, for the most part, left Venezuela either because they had the money to leave when the economy took a downturn, or they left out of desperation when the economy was at its lowest point. These are the segments of the population most likely to be critical of Maduro, most likely to speak English, and most likely to be on American social media pages and platforms.

Alternatively, the social base of the Bolivarian revolution is in the working class, poor, and indigenous people living in the barrios and rural villages of Venezuela. These people are significantly less likely to speak English, have smartphones, or be active on social media platforms like Instagram. Their voices are never centered in conventional media like TV and radio in the United States, which is largely run by corporations with a vested interest in demonizing socialism.

What is the Bolivarian Revolution and why do the masses support it?

Under the leadership of Chavez and later Maduro, notable achievements were made in spite of ongoing attempts by the U.S. to sabotage Venezuela’s socialist project. The main vehicles for these achievements has been the mobilization of the working class and the misiones, or “missions,” which are long-term economic and social development programs. The Bolivarian government has built over 4 million new homes for poor people living in substandard housing as part of the Misión Habitat. Over 10 million poor Venezuelans have benefited from subsidized food under a program called Misión Mercal. Another program known as Mision Barrio Adentro built thousands of clinics and community centers in an effort to provide free healthcare and dental care to Venezuela’s poorest people.

A massive literacy campaign in the 2000s helped over a million people to read and write. In spite of economic hardships due to the oil crisis and U.S. sanctions, millions of Venezuelans continue to support the Maduro government because of the tangible benefits it provides in their day-to-day lives. This is even more understandable given the ruthless nature of the racist right-wing opposition.

Origins of Modern Greed

By Steve Johnson

Greed is a strong and excessive desire for wealth, possessions, or power, often accompanied by an unwillingness to share or give to others. It is a trait characterized by an insatiable desire for more, often at the expense of ethical considerations or the well-being of others.

Dissecting the meaning of greed in the same manner that a word would be dissected in a legal document reveals that the entire definition is full of terrible human qualities that all point to an individual's choice to value their own life above all life. When we look at history, it’s important to remember that people have been capable of complex thought, compassion, empathy, and love for thousands of years. Early people were not hateful, fearful savages. They were as we are, but with different struggles and different technologies.

The Origin of Modern Greed, a Proletarian Theory

In an attempt to understand the origins of greed, I first looked at which civilizations have spread without pause and conquered the most throughout the previous 500 years of world history. It is easy to ascertain based on historical documents that it was the following nations: England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Next, I looked at what these nations have in common: harsh winters, some of the earliest archaeological evidence of widespread cannibalism, reduced sun exposure due to latitude, and limited landmass and resources as populations grew. I will now attempt to guide you through my thought process that greed is not a basic human trait that exists in us all, but instead developed as a means of survival during the most desperate of times in human history. I propose that the early civilizations of Northern Europe suffered resource scarcity, limited sun exposure, and cannibalism as a way of ensuring individual survival above all else which would later foster a culture of materialism and greed. Jared Diamond has touched on many of these topics in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. We will also look at Cannibalism by Bill Schutt to explore the long-lasting psychological trauma that cannibalism can have on a population. World history and general psychology references are common knowledge and can be verified by a multitude of sources at the reader’s convenience.

Survival of the Warmest

When I was four, my family moved from sunny Florida to beautiful Michigan. The changing of the seasons is something magical, however, winters in Michigan caused me to be very aware that there are different needs for survival depending on geographical location and season. There are unique challenges of a harsh winter that are not present in a place like Florida. Needing wood for heat during the winter and ensuring adequate food supply to last the season are top priorities. The need for winter clothing to stay comfortable in colder climates is a distinctive feature of civilizations accustomed to frigid temperatures.  There is less exposure to the sun, resulting in a loss of vitamin D and serotonin. That alone has a hugely negative impact on the human psyche. Winter is harsh, and it can leave a lasting toll on populations forced to endure such a climate. Everything about lasting through winter involves having more than you need to ensure survival, a fact of life missing from the more temperate climates of Earth, with year-round sun and milder season transitions. You simply need less when the outside world is more forgiving.

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The more you have going into winter, the more likely you are to survive. Over time, the strong or desperate survive and the weak die, resulting in more resources for the survivors. After winter, the more you have remaining, the more you can trade for other goods and services to prepare for the inevitable coming of the following Winter. This simple exchange based on supply and demand is the basis of materialism that develops into capitalism. Greed developed as a means of individual and communal survival in a time of limited resources that ensured the wealthiest and most powerful would survive. Over an extended historical timeframe, the accumulation of sufficient wealth could elevate an individual to the status of a chief, king, or ruler. Fast forward through all of the muddied conflicts of kings and kingdoms in Europe up to 1500 CE, and now we look again at who the primary conquering nations of indigenous people of the world were. England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain claimed much of South America, North America, Africa, and portions of Asia. No other nations have overrun so much of the Earth at one time. Survival of the fittest would be false, but survival of the wealthiest, cruelest, and most immune would be true, which the longest surviving families would be the pinnacle of. It is these lineages that lead the populations and determine where to invade, for the betterment of themselves and their strongest supporters. “It is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.” (Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond p166)

Survival of the Maddest

The latitude that the majority of the conquering nations exist at directly implies a lack of sun exposure throughout the winter. This will result in a vitamin D deficiency, which in turn leads to a weakened immune system, reduced bone strength, mood disorders, and sleep problems. This could translate into much of the Northern European population being tired, crabby, depressed, sore, and malnourished. It is not difficult to imagine that early Northern Europeans may have turned on each other during the course of a harsh winter to survive. The extent to which they may have turned on each other could theoretically be evident in archaeological sites around Europe and even in Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America founded in 1607. Many human remains featured butchery marks that “were identical to the damage found on the bones of non-human animals that had presumably been used as food.” (Schutt, Cannibalism p 159) 

It may seem like quite the jump that I looked into the archaeological evidence of cannibalism in reference to greed. This stems from the knowledge of horrifically true stories of survival such as the Donner Party, the cruise ship Mignonette, and Flight 571. Nothing screams desperation to survive and valuing your own life above all else more than consuming your fellow man. A common theme in all of these scenarios is resource scarcity, harsh conditions, and desperation. Settings not unlike that which early civilizations of Northern Europe may have  been faced with in any given Winter.  This heinous act is often portrayed as very primitive, and usually is only referenced when it pertains to indigenous peoples, not caucasians. However, the vast majority of evidence of cannibalism discovered so far, has taken place in England and “many cultures share the belief that consuming another human is the worst (or close to the worst) behavior that a person can undertake.”(Schutt, Cannibalism p12)  For further reading on the history of cannibalism in Europe, I recommend Sarah Everts’ article here.

Survival of the Fittest Immune

During the time of Western conquest around the world, populations were surging in England, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. There was a lack of “food production, a major determinant of local population size and societal complexity —hence an ultimate factor behind the conquest.”(Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel) Much of Europe had taken to farming, while the populations in undiscovered lands were living in harmony with the earth as hunter/gatherer societies. The impact of Western colonization and imperialism on indigenous peoples worldwide was intense and devastating. Dispossession of land, loss of cultural heritage, introduction of diseases, violence, forced labor, and cultural assimilation were all common and terrible themes. Genocide, slavery, ecological damage were also prevalent. Indigenous people were no match for the diseases that farmers of Europe brought to the world. “The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history—smallpox, flu, tuberculosis*malaria, plague, measles, and cholera—are infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our own epidemic illnesses are paradoxically now almost confined to humans.”( Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel p196-197)

Survival of the Richest

If I could tell the entire world one thing, it would be this: Greed is an antiquated negative trait that arose out of a need for survival. By definition, it is only utilized to ensure the survivability of one’s self over others. We now live in a world of plentiful resources, deep philosophy, amazing technology, and a world population that craves peace, happiness, comfort, and autonomy above all else. Now is not only the time to ensure humanity’s survival, but also to allow humanity to truly thrive. To do so, we must turn away from the tragedies of the past and look to the future. We need to exchange our mirrors for windows, and look outside to our neighbors and offer assistance where needed. Continuing to hold more resources than any one person or family could use in multiple lifetimes is a luminous beacon to the world that you value your own life above all other life on this planet. The upper echelon view themselves as gods amongst men. But, the truth is, we have all survived equally and are here together, now.

Steve Johnson is a retired saltwater fisherman who has exchanged his rod and reel for pen and paper. His stories and articles range from observations of the world to fiction and back again. He enjoys spending time with his wife, kids, and grandkids in their hometown in Maine. Seeing the world through the eyes of children has added life and purpose to his writing.

Big Government is the Answer

By Sudip Bhattacharya

Having been on Medicaid, I understand that state power is not inherently unjust. Government overreach does exist and must always be countered. Yet the notion that state power can only be a vehicle of repression and violence is an extremely conservative one, even when uttered by those of us on the Left. It is politically naïve and reductive.  

Not only has government power been a positive for many oppressed and marginalized groups, including working people; its ability to use force and coercion has been a necessary tool in shifting power away from the entrenched few. Taxing the rich, regulating major corporations, and redistributing land are all necessary forms of government coercion to raise living standards for the masses. These are all things that government has done in the United States and elsewhere.

In Black Reconstruction, W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic work examining the Reconstruction era following the demise of chattel slavery in America, Du Bois wrote of federal government intervention in the former Confederacy and its benefits. Through its direct military occupation of the South, the federal government created space for civic and political groups organized by white progressives and African Americans for the first time in the region’s modern history. There was also the creation of federal bureaucracies, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau, that Du Bois cited as being historic. For the first time, a majority of African Americans and poor whites were finally being provided free universal schooling and healthcare.

“The Freedmen’s Bureau was the most extraordinary and far-reaching institution of social uplift that America has ever attempted,” Du Bois stated. “It was a government guardianship for the relief and guidance of white and black labor from a feudal agrarianism to modern farming and industry.”

Du Bois himself published his work on Reconstruction politics while living through the New Deal, another era that saw the federal government playing a greater role in providing resources and rights for a larger share of the American populace. It was under the New Deal that social welfare programs were finally created to offset the precarity that people faced existing in a so-called free market world where companies could hire and fire whomever and whenever they wanted. It was also through the New Deal that the right to unionize was protected against corporate zealotry and overreach.

Social security and unemployment insurance were created, followed by a more emboldened Internal Revenue Service focusing on corporate returns. Not to mention the federal government decades later, pushed by grassroots efforts, to take a more serious interventionist role in protecting the rights and freedoms of African Americans and other marginalized groups against white terror. One could argue more coercive means should’ve been used, with more Klansmen being arrested and disappeared, as well as white supremacists who chose to wear suits rather than robes to their meetings. The prison system should’ve been filled with racists and their sympathizers.

Why is it so important to have this broader view of government power and its benefits? Because this view enriches us, providing a clearer analysis of how to generate power and change for the working masses. It also reminds us that the era we’re in remains an era of narrowed political interests and horizons. Biden or Trump, government functions as a vehicle for private capitalist interests to grow fat and ever more looming over the rest of society.

The Biden administration has been more open to ideas such as the right to unionize, and yet, it still resists any real attempts at utilizing government institutions, which it could, to seize more power from the major capitalists that render our society a swamp for their own profit motive and greed. In a capitalist society such as ours, state power includes that of capitalist institutions, along with civic associations and groups. Government competes with capitalists who concentrate the distribution of goods and services within their grasp. After all, when wanting more housing or healthcare, where do we turn to? The government? Perhaps when we need some kind of reprieve. But usually, we are dependent upon the private insurance company or landlord for our salvation, for what we need to live. We depend on a job to access scraps and crumbs.

As Kevin Young, Michael Schwartz, and Tarun Banerjee state, “Capitalists routinely exert leverage over governments by withholding the resources — jobs, credit, goods, and services — upon which society depends.” During the Obama administration, even when tepid reforms and regulations were pushed ahead, major businesses responded by withholding critical investments that would cause the economy to become far more precarious for a growing segment of the population because they had the power to do so. “The ‘capital strike’ might take the form of layoffs, offshoring jobs and money, denying loans, or just a credible threat to do those things, along with a promise to relent once government delivers the desired policy changes,” Young, Schwartz, and Bannerjee add.

When COVID became our enduring reality, the medical industry had been caught flat-footed. In a saner society, not one dominated by profit-hungry entities called companies, there would’ve been a stockpile of masks and other medical resources in case of emergency, especially as pandemics become more commonplace.

However, most major companies were uninterested in having an excess of masks, depreciating assets whose value was only speculative. Money is far more important than saving lives, of course.

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“But executives in the medical supply industry said that while they are rushing to accelerate their output of face masks, it could take months to ramp up,” it was reported at the time, as body bags lined the streets of Manhattan, as the medical industry staggered through the crisis to meet critical demand at basically the last second, leading to countless needless infections and deaths. Imagine if the healthcare industry was not an industry at all but rather part of a national system. Imagine the experts who could’ve predicted the need for a stockpile of masks. Imagine that stockpile being available the moment people start feeling their chests get muddy, their breathing cut short.

As Donald Cohen and Aillen Mikaelian note in their dissection of neoliberal privatization, the government, especially at the federal level, could and should step in, not just in terms of regulating major industries but providing an actual public option of many goods and services that people need. Why keep such important goods, like housing and health, in the supposed care of a select few major corporations, and landlords? These are things that all people need, not the same as choosing between what cereal or TV show to purchase/binge.

“If we take back control of our public goods — if we reject what political philosopher Michael Sandel calls ‘a market society’ — we will gain an incredible opportunity to build instead a society based on public values and a commitment to ensuring that public goods are available to all,” they explain in The Privatization of Everything, adding, “We’re all better off when we limit privatization and market competition over things we all need — things including public health, key infrastructure, water, education, and democracy itself.”

After the Russian Civil War, which saw an army of proto-fascists and fanatics unleashed onto the Russian working classes and peasantry, Vladimir Lenin, the great theoretician of the “state,” believed that having some level of government bureaucracy was necessary in forging the transition from a country ruined by war and capitalism toward something more oriented toward the needs and interests of the masses. Of course, the government bureaucrats would be accountable to the various levels of revolutionary pressure, from the Bolshevik party to members of the working class and peasantry who understood their historic role inside the country.

Nevertheless, much like Du Bois, Lenin embraced the realpolitik of government institutions being capable and willing to coerce the ruling elite and to forge a society that finally abolished class distinctions itself.  There was much work to be done, according to him.

“Our society is one which has left the rails of capitalism, but has not yet got on to new rails,” he stated in an essay collected in The Day after the Revolution, “The state in this society is not ruled by the bourgeoisie, but by the proletariat. We refuse to understand that when we say ‘state’ we mean ourselves, the proletariat, the vanguard of the working class.”

People can certainly exist in a future society in which they care for each other and check in on those around them in terms of what neighbors might need. People have that capacity to perform mutual aid. However, none of that individual or hyper-local level of care negate the fact that a society still needs major institutions to function for people to truly feel liberated, from the maintenance of hospitals (no longer run for profit) to schooling (also free and universal) to, of course, such institutions filled with a level of expertise, whether its medical or educational or the ability to maintain the traffic lights at the nearest intersection, that not everyone should be expected to have. Is it really a liberated society in which everyone, regardless of their interests or capacity, is expected to produce and provide asthma inhalers and other types of medicine for those around them? Is it liberation for everyone to have to spend every day gathering food and other resources so that everyone can survive?

This is where Big Government intervenes, cultivating people and institutions that respond to our needs so that we’re truly free and less burdened overall. Or, as Jodi Dean has said regarding the masses and the party form, channeling and developing peoples’ skills and energies far higher than simply being obsessed with the extremely local. We need a world that’s free. We are against capitalist forces imposing their nightmare upon us — a nightmare that’s global in reach.

Now, questions do remain of how to create that government we so desperately need. One could argue somehow that all we must do is run candidates, possibly independent of major parties, and for them to simply “take over” existing institutions. To some degree, this is indeed important — at least in the short term when it means providing and tweaking policies that could improve peoples’ lives, such as appointing officials sympathetic to labor to the NLRB or hiring more IRS officials to pursue white-collar tax dodging, or at a more visceral level, providing free money to people during a pandemic.

And yet, Lenin’s insight that the state or particularly government power doesn’t automatically change simply because there’s an immediate changing of the guard also holds true. In the United States, even as the government is reoriented to be more perhaps, “sympathetic”, toward interests beyond the elite, it remains a network of institutions situated to sustain capitalism, and other forms of oppression. Even the New Deal itself, as much as it curried favor and improved peoples’ lives tremendously, was itself a “compromise” between workers and their employes, and hence, sought a friendlier version of capitalism, well-regulated of course, to survive, which it did until more extremist elements of the capitalist class demanded more in terms of government largesse and power.

There will need to be a dramatic break with how government is currently oriented to truly meet the political aspirations and dreams of most people. It will be a government that does more than just tax the wealthy but abolishes them. It will be a government that does more than create programs to achieve balance but rather completely redistributes land and wealth, completely addresses historical wrongs from the dispossession of indigenous groups to the ghosts of enslavement, to paying money and making amends to the recent victims of the War on Drugs, and militarized policing.

This break necessitates revolution, always. There still is a need for a revolutionary party to break through the white noise of our status quo politics, and gather our forces to confront and challenge, and reinvent. There is still that need for more than just simply running candidates for re-election, no matter how radical platforms may seem.

But one can’t sustain without the other. Shorter-term needs get met, and longer-term horizons expand. People become emboldened as they win, not when they lose everything, including their sense of self and sanity.

Whatever the path toward political synergy might be, it cannot be wedded to an analysis of government and state power that is not only reductive, but stinks of political immaturity and a form of libertarian analysis that only sees government as somehow oppressive and all forms of “independence” from it as liberatory.“One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair,” Du Bois had written regarding the violent defeat and the shutting down of progress at the tail end of the Reconstruction period. Similarly, as much as people are being immiserated and, in some instances, compelled to take on a more radical opposition or critique, we also have seen a rise in rightwing violence and a predilection amongst the capitalist classes to express antipathy and throwing obstacles against any form of progressive reform even. Both the Democratic and Republican parties, with different levels of intensity, are very much against the cries of the oppressed and the dreams of the politically voiceless. The working classes who envision a socialist world have no real political home, let alone political momentum at this point.  

Crises beget more crises, which beget the oppressed and exploited being overwhelmed and politically confused. Big Government is an answer, and yet, who or what will spread the gospel and make it heaven on earth before the waters rise above our knees?

On the Development of Political Consciousness

By Peter S. Baron

Political consciousness involves understanding how our lives are shaped by social, economic, and political systems, particularly within the framework of capitalism. By developing political consciousness, we can recognize how the capitalist system perpetuates everyday issues like poverty and inequality. Doing so, we can explore ways to work together towards a fairer, more cooperative society.

To develop political consciousness, we must understand that regardless of our class—whether lower, middle, or upper—we are part of the general population. We are not part of the small group who holds real power regarding how society is organized. Since we lack significant power to influence decisions that shape the structure of our society, it's crucial to recognize that our capitalist and hierarchical systems, which impose economic inequality, social stratification, and power imbalances, are not inherent to "human nature." These structures are artificially constructed—man-made—and therefore, they can be reimagined and changed.

Social ills like poverty, war, crime, poor health, long working hours, and job dissatisfaction are intrinsic to the capitalist system, designed to maximize profits and reinforce the power of the wealthy few. Capitalism thrives on inequality, ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor by maintaining poverty. Wars, driven by capitalist competition for resources and markets, not only benefit the elite through military-industrial profits but also open new markets, force rebellious countries into the capitalist world order, and dominate natural resources. Economic disparities lead to crime, which keeps people scared of each other instead of the capitalists producing these conditions and creates a perceived need for police, who are necessary to suppress social movements that threaten capitalism. The for-profit healthcare system locks out the poor, keeping them sick, irritable, and in pain, leading to more social problems in their communities and hurting their chances for upward mobility. Employers push for long hours and monotonous jobs to numb people's minds, conditioning them to accept an unfulfilling existence while draining them of the energy to resist. These issues are not accidental but are systematically perpetuated to maintain elite control and economic dominance, highlighting the need for systemic change.

We have the technology and resources to meet everyone's basic needs and more. However, within the capitalist system, owners of essential resources deliberately keep them scarce to boost their profits and maintain socioeconomic and political control over society. This enforced scarcity compels us to compete for money, which we need to purchase these essential resources. We compete by vying for jobs or by selling goods and services.

Remember, money doesn’t materialize out of thin air; it comes from our pockets, circulating among individuals and businesses, continuously moving from one person to another. Think of it this way: when you pay rent, your hard-earned cash goes straight into the landlord's bank account. The landlord then uses that money to pay for services, transferring the money to other workers and businesses. This cycle repeats in countless ways: your grocery store purchase goes to the store owner, who then pays employees and suppliers. This constant flow of money among us shows how our economic system is interconnected, continuously shifting money from one person to another. Each transaction becomes a competition for businesses and individuals to maximize their earnings at the expense of others. This pits us against each other, making us competitors rather than collaborators, and ultimately making it harder to work together for our common good.

The ruling elite (owners) maintain this system because it keeps us preoccupied with our own survival, ensuring that we don't challenge their power. By keeping us competing for resources, they maintain their control over society. We need to see through this manipulation and understand that cooperation, rather than competition, can help meet everyone's needs. Instead of competing, we can support and create systems where resources are shared fairly, like community food banks or cooperative housing projects.

Currently, we find ourselves competing with each other over slivers of wealth and power—small salary increases, slightly better apartments, marginally better schools for our kids, and slightly more powerful positions at work—while the corporate community and ruling elite hoard vast wealth and control. We undermine and exploit each other while competing for the limited resources distributed by the ruling elite, yet we often don’t even stop to think about it! By perpetuating these systems, we reinforce power structures that serve a select few at our collective expense.

Recognizing and Challenging the Capitalist System

We can live better lives without capitalism. We should question why we must compete. Wouldn't we rather work together to improve our quality of life? We have the power to choose to cooperate. It is a fool’s errand to continue upholding these oppressive structures when we can create a society based on mutual aid and cooperation, where everyone has access to what they need and the freedom to pursue their desires without harming others.

Importantly, such questioning requires a recognition that we, the people, have been conscripted to willingly, and often enthusiastically, do the rulers' bidding of perpetuating systems that serve ruling interests. We do exactly as they wish by competing with each other over shavings of wealth and power. How much longer will we allow ourselves to be driven by the spiritually bankrupt belief that accumulating wealth and power equates to a better quality of life?

At our core, we are all humans—essentially apes who share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees—sharing the same planet (which capitalism is currently ravaging…). None of us are inherently superior to one another, regardless of the social constructs or values we use to measure each other. While intelligence tests, work performance, and other criteria may create the illusion of ranking and comparison, these are merely human-made constructs. They do not reflect the fundamental reality that we are all essentially the same. As humans, there is no true measure of being better at being human; these constructs fail to capture our shared essence and humanity. Ultimately, we are all just apes, and these rankings do not define our worth or existence. How can we look at someone struggling under capitalism and tell them they deserve this suffering? How can we be so cruel as to shame them into believing they are inferior because of mistakes, factors beyond their control, or simply losing in this ruthless, competitive society?

While some argue that individual agency, effort, and personal responsibility, measured through intelligence tests and work performance, drive personal and societal progress by incentivizing innovation, hard work, and excellence, this perspective overlooks a crucial aspect of human nature. Humans are inherently innovative and social beings who thrive on helping each other. We don't need money to drive our creativity. The wheel wasn't invented for profit, and Nikola Tesla pursued his groundbreaking work out of passion, not for financial gain. When we create a society where people can take risks without the fear of homelessness or destitution, we unleash a greater potential for innovation. Moreover, imagine a world where our inventors and entrepreneurs innovate out of pure passion and a genuine desire to help others. It's disheartening to think that self-interest alone should drive innovation, as this often warps the true potential and purpose of their creations. Isn't it far more inspiring to envision a society where the love for one's work and the commitment to collective well-being fuel our greatest advancements? By fostering a culture of mutual support and cooperation, we can inspire more people to contribute their ideas and talents for the collective good, leading to a more prosperous and innovative society for all.

The real culprit here is the capitalist system that warps humanity to such an extent that people commit inhumane acts. This system creates conditions of scarcity, competition, and alienation, driving individuals to extreme behaviors as they struggle to survive and succeed. When we encounter individuals who are “lazy,” “irresponsible,” or “antagonistic,” it's easy to overlook that these behaviors often stem from systemic pressures and the dehumanizing effects of capitalism. Similarly, when we see extreme cases like murderers or Nazis, we must remember that their actions are also the result of systemic traumas and distortions created by the same flawed system.

Mother Teresa’s compassion and service were commendable, but her worth wasn’t greater than anyone else's. I’m positive she would say the same. As Carl Jung reminds us, we must acknowledge our “collective shadow”—the parts of society that we’d rather ignore or vilify. Instead of scapegoating individuals, we need to dismantle the system that perpetuates these cycles of harm.

By understanding that harmful behaviors are symptoms of a deeply flawed system, we can shift our focus from blaming individuals to transforming society. This means fighting for a world where resources are shared, and where everyone has the opportunity to live with dignity and purpose. It’s not about excusing wrongdoings but recognizing that our collective liberation depends on changing the conditions that lead to such acts in the first place. Only then can we truly honor our shared humanity and work together for the common good.

The capitalist system continues because we support it daily, despite its burdens. We  must understand that the capitalist system inherently creates inequality and suffering, which pushes all of us into the position where we may either contribute to the problem or work towards solutions. We have the power to create a society where communities and individuals possess meaningful control over their own lives. We do not have to live according to the dictates of corporate overlords who shape the material conditions we must live within, forcing us to compete for marginally better status in a fundamentally oppressive system. We can build communities that work together, share resources fairly, and make decisions together. By focusing on mutual aid and cooperation instead of competition, we can make sure everyone has what they need.

But this, what we are doing today, is crazy! Look at how we treat each other. Our society is based on all of us competing with each other over money and power to determine how we allocate basic necessities like where we live, what we eat, and the quality of our healthcare. What kind of society plays such a sadistic game where “losing” or refusing to submit to ruthless competition results in a poor quality of life? It’s certainly not a “civilized” society. Yet, we continue to perpetuate these exploitative systems, harming each other for what? The benefit of a small elite who couldn’t care less about our well-being. This is ridiculous. This relentless competition is a brutal and dehumanizing way to organize our lives, and it's time we see it for what it is.

So, what do we do? How do we help each other realize these truths? We should help each other develop our political consciousness. We should understand the flaws of the current order while simultaneously envisioning a cooperative society. By living in ways that emphasize cooperation, without hierarchy, profit, or commodified life, we can experience the benefits of a non-exploitative system firsthand. This lived experience is crucial in fostering a deeper political consciousness.

Thus, the development of political consciousness and the building of a cooperative society go hand in hand. As we disengage from the capitalist system and start creating alternatives, we strengthen our awareness and commitment to a more equitable future. In this sense, helping each other reach political consciousness is not just a step toward revolution—it is the revolution itself.

Awakening

The journey towards political consciousness requires a profound psychological transformation that we undergo together. It's a process where we collectively change how we see the world and our place within it. This transformation involves several key stages, each marked by significant shifts in our awareness, understanding, and emotional responses.

Initially, many of us exist in a state of false consciousness; that is, a state in which we don’t realize our true interests as a collective group and instead accept things as they are. In this stage, we often internalize the dominant capitalist ideology, accepting the status quo as natural and unchangeable, perhaps even good for us. We might attribute our socio-economic conditions to personal success or failings, believing in meritocracy, which asserts the harder and more productive we are as workers, the more we deserve to receive. This way of thinking is kept alive by the promotion of “rags-to-riches” stories, media narratives, and education systems that hide the truth about class oppression and exploitation.

Envision working tirelessly, dedicating yourself fully, yet seeing your socio-economic status remain stagnant or even deteriorate. Imagine doing everything you were told to do growing up, graduating from college, only to enter a workforce that offers survival-rate salaries and benefits. Your employer piles on intense pressure for you to consistently meet targets to avoid demotions or termination. Your work feels mind-numbing, your apartment is a tiny, overpriced box, and you’re scrambling to make ends meet while drowning in a mountain of student loan debt that grows faster than your paycheck. When you complain, your friends and family tell you “That’s life, work harder.” 

The first psychological shift happens when we start to experience cognitive dissonance, a deep sense of unease born from the glaring contradictions between our lived experiences and the dominant ideology. This realization hits hard, maybe making you question everything you've been taught. It's a jarring wake-up call, filled with confusion and frustration, leading to a budding skepticism of the status quo.

In this stage, we often begin to look for things to blame. Demagogues will try to exploit this confusion, urging us to scapegoat minority groups like immigrants, claiming they are driving down wages. But this is where we must stand together and help each other see the truth. The real culprit isn't the migrant who traveled vast distances seeking a better life for their family, only to be exploited even more harshly than we are. The responsibility lies with the exploitative systems and the wealthy elites who perpetuate them, pitting us against each other to maintain their power and control. But let's be clear: these systems would collapse without our participation. We, the people, are the ones shouldering the burden and perpetuating these oppressive structures. It's time we recognize our power and refuse to uphold a system that exploits and divides us.

Spiral Dynamics of Political consciousness

From here, it’s helpful to conceptualize the development of political consciousness through the lens of “Spiral Dynamics,” as articulated by psychologists Don Beck and Christopher Cowan and explained eloquently by Ken Wilber in his book “A Theory of Everything.” Spiral Dynamics offers a framework for understanding human development and societal evolution through a series of stages. The journey towards political consciousness can be viewed as an ascent through various stages of the spiral, each characterized by a distinct way of understanding and addressing social issues.

Within the Spiral Dynamics framework, we can visualize two main tiers of consciousness development. Stages 1-3 make up the first tier, while stages 4 and 5 belong to the second tier. Completing the third stage prepares individuals to make a significant leap into second-tier consciousness.

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At this higher tier, individuals can appreciate the entire range of political consciousness development, recognizing that each stage is crucial for the validity of the overall spiral. Understanding the validity of the spiral means recognizing that every stage, even the lower ones, plays an essential role in the growth and development of human consciousness. We all have to start at the beginning. Each stage provides foundational insights and experiences that are necessary for progressing to more advanced levels of understanding.

In other words, in second-tier consciousness, people understand that earlier stages are not just obstacles to be overcome but integral parts of a holistic system. For instance, while stages 1-3 involve more basic levels of awareness and critique, they are necessary steps that lay the groundwork for more complex and integrated thinking. This perspective allows individuals to see the value in every stage, fostering empathy and reducing animosity towards those at different levels of consciousness, ensuring that no one is left behind and that the transformation process is grounded in a deep understanding of human development. This stands in opposition to those at the lower stages of consciousness (1-3) who often believe their perspective is the only correct one and may react negatively when challenged.

So, what exactly are the stages in the spiral dynamics of political consciousness? (Note: the stages described below are original and presented in broad strokes to provide a general overview for the purpose of this article.)

Stage 1: Viewing Individual Political Personalities as the Cause of Social Issues

At the first stage of political consciousness, individuals may attribute social problems to specific political figures, believing that changing leaders will resolve these issues. This perspective, heavily influenced by media portrayals, focuses on authority and order, viewing strong leadership as essential for stability. For example, liberals may blame Donald Trump or the GOP for various social ills, while conservatives target figures like Joe Biden or blame the liberal “establishment”, seeing them as symbols of corruption.

Individuals at this stage are often attracted to simplistic solutions, such as believing that removing certain leaders will resolve systemic problems (e.g., “If only the democrats could control all three branches”). Although this is the lowest stage on the spiral, it is widely perceived as the only valid perspective because media narratives, driven by corporate interests, emphasize personalities and scandals over substantive policy discussions.

This focus on individuals distracts from the systemic nature of issues such as capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. It perpetuates the illusion that we simply have the wrong leaders, but if we vote for the “good ones” they can bring about meaningful change. However, this perspective misses the point that simply changing leaders, especially when we are forced to choose from options essentially handpicked by the corporate elite, is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. While it might appear to offer temporary relief, it does nothing to address the underlying problem. Additionally, this stage fosters divisive politics, weakening collective action and solidarity among the working class.

Thus, this stage represents a superficial understanding of societal issues, justifying its placement at the bottom of the hierarchy. It upholds the existing political and economic systems by implying they can function justly with the "right" people in charge. Ignoring the fundamental issue of power—the flawed belief that any leader should have the authority to make decisions for us—overlooks the inherent potential for abuse and denies individuals their inherent right to have a meaningful say in decisions that affect their lives.

To progress, individuals must engage in political education to understand systemic power dynamics, build solidarity among diverse groups, and develop a critical approach to media consumption.

Stage 2: Blaming Greedy Billionaires and Individual Corporations for Social Issues

At the second stage of political consciousness, individuals move beyond blaming political figures and start identifying greedy billionaires and individual corporations as the main culprits of social issues. People in this stage may target figures like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg for their immense wealth and exploitative practices. Corporations like Amazon, Facebook, and ExxonMobil are criticized for contributing to income inequality, data privacy violations, and environmental degradation. Solutions at this stage often include calls for higher taxes on the wealthy, stricter antitrust laws, and stronger labor protections to curb corporate excesses.

This sort of thinking is (sometimes) championed by people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While this stage is a step forward from blaming political leaders, it remains incomplete. Focusing on the greed and unethical behavior of billionaires and corporations still personalizes systemic issues, attributing problems to individual actions rather than recognizing these behaviors as inherent to capitalism itself. The pursuit of profit at any cost, driven by competition and the need to maximize shareholder value, is a fundamental feature of capitalism, not a deviation.

The proposed reforms, such as regulatory measures and higher taxes, do not fundamentally challenge the capitalist system. They might temporarily mitigate some of the worst excesses, but they leave the underlying structures of capitalism intact, allowing exploitation to evolve and continue in different, often stealthier, forms.

Notably, these reforms necessitate the existence of a powerful centralized government, which itself can become an instrument of oppression and control. True liberation requires dismantling these systems entirely, rejecting the illusion of top-down solutions, and embracing grassroots, decentralized approaches that empower individuals and communities to create a just and equitable society from the ground up.

Stage 3: Recognizing Capitalism's Inherent Inequalities

At the third stage of political consciousness, individuals move beyond blaming specific people or organizations and recognize capitalism itself as the root cause of social issues. Individuals at this stage, engage in a systemic critique of capitalism, understanding that issues like inequality, exploitation, and environmental degradation are inherent to a system based on year over year profit growth. They understand how capitalism alienates workers by separating them from the products of their labor, stripping away their sense of humanity, and isolating them from each other. They also see how capitalism intersects with other forms of oppression, such as racism and gender inequality, creating a complex web of inequality.

While this stage marks significant progress in political consciousness, it still overlooks a critical element: understanding the deeper psychological and existential factors that drive human behavior. It misses the crucial realization that it is us, the people, who enable the rulers to maintain the capitalist system.

Individuals at this stage often face the difficult challenge of balancing their anger at capitalism with the necessary effort to understand why people act and believe as they do, including those who perpetuate the system like billionaires and corporate leaders, as well as the managerial white-collar workers who comprise most of upper-middle class. This stage may still portray figures like Jeff Bezos as simply evil or greedy without considering the complex motivations and fears that drive such behavior.

The problem lies in failing to recognize the existential fears and psychological mechanisms that influence everyone. This includes understanding how fear of insecurity, mortality, and existential anxiety can shape beliefs and actions. Without this deeper understanding, the critique remains superficial, failing to address why people cling to harmful systems or resist change.

Stage 4: Recognizing Our Own Fear of Insecurity and Uncertainty as Holding Us Back

At this advanced, second-tier stage of political consciousness, individuals transcend systemic critique and develop deep self-awareness, recognizing that our fear of insecurity and uncertainty fundamentally impedes social progress. This stage integrates systemic thinking with holistic understanding, emphasizing the psychological insights of Ernest Becker's book "The Denial of Death" and Om Søren Kierkegaard's concept of the "automatic cultural man."

Capitalism not only exploits materially but also conditions people to internalize feelings of powerlessness and dependency. Becker argues that human behavior is profoundly influenced by our fear of death. To cope with this fear, we create "cultural systems"—the shared beliefs, values, norms, and practices of our society—that give our lives a sense of meaning. These cultural systems offer a symbolic form of immortality by allowing us to feel part of something enduring and larger than ourselves, thus providing psychological protection against our innate fear of mortality. The denial of our mortality thus often results in our irrational adherence to oppressive systems like capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Kierkegaard describes individuals who conform to societal norms to avoid existential anxiety as “automatic cultural men.” These "automatic cultural men" uncritically accept systems such as consumerism, competition, and hierarchical structures, seeking security in conformity rather than challenging the status quo.

Ultimately, this fear of death is a fear of life itself. Many people prefer the manufactured security of societal norms and the capitalist status quo because it helps them avoid facing the harsh reality that nothing in this world can provide true security. Many of us advocating for social change hold onto the belief in gradual reforms and working within the system to bring about change for the same psychological comfort, driven by a fear of uncertainty, insecurity, and vulnerability in a ruthless world.

Yet, we are vulnerable beings on a ruthless planet, subjected to various dangers, including dangers from each other. There’s no escaping this reality. However, acknowledging this truth can be liberating. Accepting our vulnerability allows us to confront life head-on. Instead of each person seeking false comfort in societal norms and the capitalist system, which turn us into the “automatons” Kierkegaard describes, we can embrace our collective strength. Through solidarity, we can support one another and create a more secure and fulfilling existence.

Those in stage 4 understand it is important to recognize that billionaires, too, are "automatic cultural men," bound by a life philosophy that sees cold-blooded success in capitalism and the accumulation of wealth as the ultimate goal. They are held captive by this belief. Recognizing this, individuals at Stage 4 understand that everyone, including billionaires, must break free from these psychological constraints. However, the primary focus remains on the broader populace, particularly the most downtrodden and oppressed, since our liberation does not hinge on the billionaires awakening.

In the spirit of Rousseau's cry that "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains," it is evident that our innate drive for power, which Nietzsche identified as the driving force of all life in his concept of the "will to power," is being grotesquely misdirected. In our current predicament, instead of channeling this “will to power” towards individually and collectively conquering life's challenges and mastering our own existence, we tragically seek to dominate each other.

We are social beings born with the potential to cooperate and help each other confront life’s obstacles directly. Yet, we elect to willingly rush headlong into the chains of capitalist cultural systems that confine us, blinding ourselves to our tremendous collective capacity. These systems, which we so readily accept, serve as deceptive sanctuaries, allowing us to hide from the profound realities of life and death. They seduce us into maintaining power structures that channel our energy for justice into judgmental and oppressive avenues, putting a smile on the face of our rulers.

We must unchain ourselves, reject the comfort of our accepted systems, and collectively confront life with the raw, untamed will to power Nietzsche envisioned. Only then can we realize the freedom Rousseau proclaimed was our birthright, casting off the chains that bind us and standing unflinchingly in the face of life's ultimate truths.

At stage 4, individuals realize these truths, understanding that overcoming the fear of insecurity and uncertainty is crucial for genuine social transformation. Addressing these fears unlocks human potential for empathy, creativity, and collective action. Recognizing that we psychologically and philosophically seek comfort and security to protect us from our fear of death, individuals begin to see that the only way out of the suffocating society we have constructed lies in enabling individual creativity and diversity to flourish freely.

Stage 5: Integrating All Stages with Negative Capability and the Perennial Philosophy

At the highest stage of political consciousness, individuals not only integrate the insights from earlier stages but also embody John Keats' concept of "negative capability" and Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy. This stage, characterized by a holistic, global, and transcendent perspective, represents a profound understanding of interconnectedness and a deep commitment to creating a just and equitable world. Here, individuals transcend ego and personal desires in favor of collective well-being.

In this stage, we move beyond simply recognizing the need for individuals and communities to flourish creatively and autonomously. We understand that such flourishing is only possible through mutual aid. This realization is grounded in the Perennial Philosophy, which posits that all existence is interconnected.

Picture a vibrant community where people actively support each other's growth and well-being. Artists collaborate on public murals, transforming blank walls into colorful expressions of collective creativity. Farmers share their harvests at local markets, ensuring everyone has access to fresh, healthy food. Neighbors form childcare co-ops, allowing parents to pursue their passions while knowing their children are cared for by trusted friends. Volunteers organize educational workshops where knowledge and skills are freely exchanged, empowering everyone to reach their potential.

In this interconnected community, self-interest and the interests of others are seamlessly intertwined. The success of one person directly contributes to the success of all, fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. This tapestry of mutual aid shows that our well-being is inextricably linked to the well-being of others—including all people, other living beings, and the Earth itself. This interconnectedness reveals that our interests are not separate, highlighting that mutual aid is essential for our collective flourishing.

Negative capability is a term coined by the Romantic poet John Keats in a letter written in 1817. It refers to the ability to remain comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt without the need to seek concrete answers or rational explanations. Keats believed that this capability allowed poets and artists to fully embrace the complexity and mystery of life, creating works that captured the depth of human experience. Negative capability is characterized by openness to multiple interpretations and the acceptance that not all questions have definitive answers. It contrasts with the drive for resolution and certainty, emphasizing the value of intuition and imagination in understanding the world.

Embracing negative capability, individuals at this stage navigate the uncertainties of creating this new form of social organization described above without clinging to rigid ideologies. They understand they cannot perfectly plan the future but must start building it by embracing ambiguity with confidence. They embrace the inherent uncertainties and complexities of dismantling existing structures without seeking immediate, definitive solutions. This openness to ambiguity fosters creativity and adaptability, enabling us to envision and implement more fluid and organic forms of social organization. This mindset asserts the means are the ends. It prompts action with the understanding that maintaining a holistic and integrative perspective will lead us to our goals. In fact, those in stage 5 realize that every moment they practice this mindset, they are already achieving their goals.

Ultimately, Stage 5 calls for a profound internal and external transformation. By understanding and addressing the psychological and existential factors driving human behavior, individuals adopt a compassionate, holistic approach to political consciousness.

Creating a just society requires taking a bold leap into the unknown. After all, let’s reflect on why so many idolize America's founding fathers. It’s certainly not because they were paragons of virtue. These men owned hundreds of slaves, were consumed by the pursuit of profit, and stood as the wealthiest individuals in the nation. Despite their deeply flawed characters, they are revered because they dared to take a leap of faith, striving to create a new nation in the face of brutal opposition from the British crown and resistance from their own countrymen. They exhibited undeniable courage.

We must channel their bravery into a new direction. Instead of perpetuating a system designed to protect capital and profit, we must harness our collective courage to create a system that truly facilitates human flourishing. It’s time to transcend the flawed ideals of the past and build a society rooted in equity, compassion, and the well-being of all its members. The true revolution lies not in defending the interests of the few but in uplifting the humanity of everyone.

This movement requires facing our basic vulnerability as animals on a dangerous planet and recognizing that no “cultural system” we manufacture can fully protect us. Fear will never totally leave us; we must learn to live in spite of it. There’s nowhere to run. We must begin embracing the uncertainty that is inherent in life, doing so with poise and confidence. Crucially, we must do so together. Life can be ruthless, but through solidarity, we can provide each other security.

We can overpower our innate fears as a collective. By embracing our vulnerability, we see that the unknown is precisely what makes life so beautiful. Embracing our vulnerability through decentralized mutual aid systems and maintaining a constant skepticism of power enables us to take risks, be adventurous, and pursue our creativity, all with the support of friends and community. Isn’t that what it means to be human?

But right now, we are shrinking in the face of life. We must stand up to life, and we must stand up together! We cannot allow fear to deter us. We must face it and realize that what we truly fear is our own potential—a potential so great it is impossible to imagine the forms it will take. By taking the leap to collectively reorganize society, we will unlock this potential and transform our world. The time to act is now; together, we can help each develop political consciousness and build a future where everyone thrives.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Ultra-Processed Food: The Profitable Filth Capitalism Feeds Us

By Ezra Ellis

Republished from In Defence of Marxism.

Capitalism is polluting the air we breathe, the water we drink and the very food we eat: all in the name of profit. Further evidence of this comes from a review published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on 28 February, evaluating the best available research on the effect of ‘ultra-processed food’ (UPF) on our health. This review included 45 studies and almost 10 million participants, and crucially did not include any research funded by the big food companies. The findings are categorical.

The review found that consumption of UPF was linked to a substantially increased risk of at least 32 harmful health outcomes including all-cause mortality, cancer, diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases and mental health problems. This review confirms what UCL doctor and health researcher, Chris van Tulleken, argued in his book Ultra Processed People (published 2023): the food we eat is making us sick.

In general, the discussion around diet today is a monotonous sermon. From the newspaper columns to the television studios, the problem, we are told, begins and ends with the individual. The root cause of the global nutrition epidemic is boiled down to a lack of will to exercise, a lack of discipline to resist unhealthy snacks, and a lack of intelligence or capacity to teach oneself how to cook and prepare varied meals.

In this stale atmosphere, van Tulleken’s book, Ultra Processed People comes as a breath of fresh air. He puts forward a rigorous materialist analysis of the effect of the capitalist system on both the global food system and human diet.

Using a wide range of research data and interviews, van Tulleken challenges the consensus that humans have just become lazy and greedy.

Instead, he proposes the leading cause of growing levels of obesity is the drastic change in our modern diet that has come with the introduction and proliferation of UPF, pushed for profit over all else. UPF now constitutes more than half our diet in the UK, US, Canada and Australia but the big food companies are trying (successfully) to make it the staple across the globe.

UPF: not really food

UPF is a scientific definition for a category of food, originally drawn up by Carlos Monteiro, a Brazilian nutrition researcher. The hallmarks of UPF are the addition of stabilisers, emulsifiers, gums, lecithin and obscure oils you’ll never find in a supermarket or ordinary kitchen. What these ingredients have in common is they save corporations money, as they reduce the need for real ingredients in the food.

Not all scientists are in agreement that UPF is the problem. There have been many to speak out in defence of UPF, some even arguing that it can be good for you. However, a closer inspection shows that these scientists defending UPF have ties to the big food corporations manufacturing UPF such as Mcdonald's, Nestle and Coke.

UPF and Overeating

By analysing the past 100 years of research, the book demonstrates that it's neither fat, sugar, nor lack of exercise that has fundamentally led to the obesity crisis and increase in metabolic disorders. Instead, it is the nature of UPF itself that results in weight gain and poor health, as these foods are designed to encourage overeating.

UPF is soft and low in fibre making it faster to eat and digest, leaving you less full, and the flavour additives in it rarely correlate to the nutritional content interfering with our bodies' hormonal appetite regulation. UPF is engineered to keep you eating, and studies have found it can activate the brain in the same way as alcohol and drugs.

Van Tulleken references a study that demonstrated UPF leads to overeating and associated weight gain. The researchers fed two groups a diet identical in nutritional content, one 80 percent UPF and the other UPF-free, and swapped the groups over after two weeks. The same individuals ate an average of 500 calories more a day on the UPF diet.

This overconsumption of food has become a global health epidemic. Since 2017, more people in the world have been obese than underweight. Obesity is paradoxically beginning to be understood as a form of malnutrition, as UPF is high in calories but low in nutritional content.

In some places, this transformation has happened over just a few years, as multinational food companies like Nestle extend their reach into the developing world and swamp the local markets with UPF. The consequences for people in low-income and developing countries can be devastating as they have no access to dentistry or healthcare to address the problems UPF consumption causes, like tooth decay and diabetes.

You can’t ‘run off’ UPF

The proposed solution to overeating is exercise. This is often pu forward by the same multinationals causing the crisis. For example, Coke funded the ‘Exercise is Medicine’ programme, and funded many studies to ‘prove’ that the cause of the obesity crisis is lack of exercise, not Coke consumption.

However, Ultra Processed People examines the evidence and demonstrates that increasing exercise will not increase our bodies' expenditure of calories.

The book uses a study of the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer tribe in Tanzania, and discovered they burned the same amount of calories as an American office worker. This isn’t to say Van Tulleken believes we should stop exercising. Exercise is good for your health – both physical and mental. However, diet is the crucial factor.

UPF is often the only option

Despite the effect UPF has on our bodies, the domination of the big food monopolies means that, for many, UPF is the only option.

23.5 million Americans live in food deserts, where fresh food isn’t available. 3 million people in the UK don't have a shop selling raw ingredients within 15 minutes of their home by public transport. Almost a million people in the UK don’t have a fridge, 2 million have no cooker, 3 million have no freezer, and the cost of energy now means many who do have it, can’t use it. UPF is consequently indispensable.

Deprived areas of England have more than twice as many fast food outlets (per capita) as more affluent areas. Teenagers are swamped with UPF, their bus tickets contain McDonald’s vouchers and fast food restaurants are often the only place they can hang out after school given the closure of youth clubs and community centres.

In the developing world, the situation is even worse. Coke is often cheaper than water, and as the influx of cheap UPF squeezes local farmers out of the market, UPF quickly becomes the only option. Globally 75 percent of our diet today consists of only 12 plants and five animals, UPF has replaced traditional foods.

To see the depravity of the capitalists you need look no further than the baby formula monopolies, like Nestle. They have aggressively pushed their products in countries where it was impossible to access safe drinking water, leading to 80,000 preventable infant deaths a year.

Why companies can’t stop selling it

What Ultra Processed People makes clear is that we can’t just change UPF and make it healthier. The products that are most addictive will sell best and do best on the market.

The book gives the example of ice cream. This is most often made using emulsifiers as an egg substitute, as it is cheaper and easier to store and transport. The reason companies are driven to experiment with the ingredients is that there is no room left to reduce costs in other areas. Capitalism drives companies to cut costs in production wherever possible, and UPF is cheaper to make, easier to store and transport, and has a much longer shelf life.

The evidence of the dangers of UPF, as found by the BMJ, falls on deaf ears for the capitalists, who respond with more processing: adding probiotics to ‘counteract’ their microbiome-damaging emulsifiers, adding artificial sweeteners, adding vitamins and minerals after all the original ones have been bleached out.

However they reformulate their products, their ultimate priority will always be to make profit, to sell as much as possible, and therefore to drive excess consumption.

The reason for the proliferation of UPF, despite these detrimental effects on nearly every aspect of human health is straightforward economics: a food that people consume more is food that sells more. This comes with the double benefit that you can sell a gym plan, “weight loss” branded UPF, or private healthcare membership as solutions to add even more revenue.

It is no coincidence that our diets are killing us – it is part and parcel of the capitalist profit-seeking system.

Why we need a revolution

What Ultra Processed People demonstrates is that consumers are largely powerless to cut out UPF, as we eat what we can afford. Companies are almost equally powerless to change things as they must produce the most profitable commodities, and rubbish that we can’t stop eating is a gold mine for them.

The main shortcoming of Van Tulleken’s book is that, having drawn these conclusions, he calls for government reform as the solution. In reality the government – through campaign funding, outright bribes and lucrative ‘job’ opportunities for MPs – is bought off by the food companies. And capitalists trying to cut their costs by feeding us rubbish is as old as capitalism itself; Marx was talking about the adulteration of bread going back to the beginning of the 18th century.

If we want to imagine a world without UPF, which is possible, we have to imagine a world without capitalism.

UPF has become indispensable, because the living and working conditions of the working class are so poor. Even before the cost of living crisis, British people spent 8 percent of their household budget on food. If the poorest 50 percent of households wanted to eat a diet that adhered to current healthy living guidelines they would need to spend 30 percent of their budget on food. The reason we spend so little? Because everything else (rent, utilities, transport) costs so much.

Even if you can afford to buy healthier real food, most people don’t have the time or energy after work to cook three meals from scratch every day. Many other people are completely dependent on ready meals because they are unable, through disability or illness, to cook for themselves.

Despite the industrialisation of agriculture, and the production of 2.6 times the food that humanity needs to feed itself, at least 2.3 billion people lack secure access to healthy and nutritious food. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Through a socialist plan of production, we could easily produce enough real food to meet everyone’s needs. With the creation of public canteens serving healthy and delicious food, we could socialise the domestic labour of cooking, which is currently primarily the burden of women. We could enable people to engage socially at mealtimes, rather than the lonely reality many face today of returning from a long day at work to eat a ready meal in front of the television.

This is all possible and it is the only way we can free ourselves from dependence on UPF. But it requires abandoning the profit motive and recreating our society at every level for the benefit of the working class – the overwhelming majority of the population.

The Exploitative Alliance: How Corporate Strategies and Union Investments Undermine Worker Security

[ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX NABAUM]

By Peter S. Baron

A major obstacle to the collective well-being of workers is how corporate employers connect retirement funds to the stock market. This linking means that workers bear the brunt, as publicly traded companies aim to maximize profitability through cost-cutting measures that negatively impact their wages, job security, and working conditions. Similarly, labor unions like the United Auto Workers (UAW) channel membership dues into investment funds that often hold stocks in the very companies they may confront or negotiate with.

Recent history has witnessed a significant transformation in the structure of labor's retirement portfolios; they are now primarily sustained by individual contributions, with companies only occasionally offering modest matching contributions. Individuals now shoulder the entire risk, while corporations benefit from reduced financial liabilities and greater predictability in managing retirement expenses. Insidiously, as corporations have shifted financial risk onto individuals, they have also directed these investments toward financial management behemoths. These entities hold control over each individual investor’s voting rights, effectively seizing the collective power of working-class retirement funds. This power is then leveraged to amplify the relentless profit-driven mechanisms at the core of capitalism. Running parallel, organized labor’s advocacy power has been undermined by union bureaucrats who have chosen to tether the union's financial health to the success of the same corporate giants it should be challenging, effectively making the union a complacent, and likely complicit, partner in the very corporate strategies that exploit its members. 

These financial realities, carefully engineered by corporations and meekly accepted by labor, are riddled with contradictions that reveal the blatant exploitation at the core of the elite’s oppression of workers. They serve as stark reminders that security and well-being, let alone collective liberation, won't come from corporate investment schemes or the leadership of corporate bureaucratic puppets, but only from the solidarity and unified strength of the workforce. The power to dismantle this exploitation lies in workers rejecting the illusion of corporate benevolence and instead building unwavering unity to reclaim their future through collective action.

Background

Traditionally, workers' retirement funds were managed through Defined Benefit (DB) plans, which ensured a stable pension for retirees and placed the investment risk on employers, who shouldered the costs of employees' retirement benefits. Though these DB plans were similarly invested in the stock market, the companies themselves were responsible for ensuring that the retirement fund has enough resources to meet those guaranteed payouts, meaning the employer must cover any shortfall if investment returns do not meet expectations. These plans became seen as economically burdensome by corporate executives who aimed to maintain steadily growing profits in an era marked by rapid market shifts and increasing global competition (https://livewell.com/finance/why-have-employers-moved-from-defined-benefit-to-defined-contribution-plans/).

The transition to 401(k) and other Defined Contribution (DC) plans offloaded these risks onto employees, fundamentally transforming the nature of retirement savings. Defined Contribution plans prioritize contributions over guaranteed payouts, requiring employers and workers to allocate set amounts into individual retirement accounts. With the employer no longer liable to provide a guaranteed income, workers must now shoulder the burden of their own retirement funding, gambling their hard-earned savings in the unpredictable stock market. Though favorable returns can occur, sustained gains are elusive due to regular market crashes that occur every six years on average. This means that when the market plummets, it's the employees who bear the brunt, not the employers, exposing workers' financial security to the whims of an unstable market while leaving them vulnerable to navigating a system designed to shift the risks and costs of retirement away from corporations.

The neoliberal ideological shift that encouraged employers to search for cost-cutting measures also aligned with broader economic changes, including a shift from manufacturing to service and IT sectors, where new companies were more likely to adopt DC plans. Furthermore, legislation like the Pension Protection Act of 2006 facilitated this transition by imposing stricter funding requirements on DB plans and enhancing the attractiveness of DC plans through various incentives (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v69n3/v69n3p1.html).

Running parallel, the recent trend of labor unions—such as the massive United Auto Workers (UAW)—investing membership dues in the stock market, including in companies they might challenge or negotiate with, starkly illustrates how union bureaucracies are increasingly co-opted by the very corporate forces they are supposed to oppose. From the 1980s onward, the government-corporate alliance has evolved into a toxic web of aggressive market liberalization and ruthless deregulation. The calculated removal of oversight was a brazen move that handed corporations unchecked power while shredding public accountability. Worker protections were gutted, and investment returns soared on the backs of labor exploitation, as corporate greed flourished at the expense of those who toil.

The UAW, like many other unions, seized on the opportunity to increase their cash reserves and began channeling part of their dues and pension funds into the stock market. Superficially, this was a move to diversify and increase the assets available to serve and protect members. However, it effectively entangled the unions' financial interests with those of the very corporations they were meant to be monitoring and moderating, at the very least.

This alignment with corporate performance underscores a deeper ideological shift within the union bureaucracy, from champions of workers' rights to managers of complex financial portfolios. This shift has distanced the union's leadership from the everyday realities and immediate needs of their rank-and-file members, leading to decisions that favor long-term financial stability over aggressive advocacy for better wages, benefits, or working conditions.

In both scenarios, workers face a ridiculous contradiction: pursuing their true interest in collective emancipation from the exploitative capitalist class risks undermining their wages, benefits, and retirement savings.

The Paradox of Worker Investment in Corporate Profits

The transition from traditional pension plans to 401(k) plans encapsulates a critical transformation in the relationship between labor and capital, deeply embedded with ideological and material implications.

By investing their retirement savings in the stock market, workers are compelled to support, and indeed root for, the success of the very entities that exploit their labor. The corporate profits that boost their retirement funds are sourced directly from corporate strategies such as suppressing wages, reducing workforce sizes, and demanding increased productivity. This is effectively a transfer of wealth from workers to the rulers, who assume the title of “shareholders” and “executives.” Yet, this extraction of wealth is cleverly disguised as a harmless, or more often, benign, retirement savings scheme, misleading workers into passively acquiescing to their own exploitation.

Under the oppressive gears of capitalism, driven by the relentless hunger for perpetual growth, these savings plans don't just subtly coerce workers into endorsing their own exploitation—they force them to champion an ever-escalating cycle of exploitation. This vicious spiral is demanded by a system addicted to ceaseless profit increases year after year, chaining workers to a fate where they root for deeper cuts into their own flesh. Essentially, through these defined contribution plans, workers unwittingly empower their rulers to repeatedly enact the very cost-cutting measures that threaten their jobs, deny them raises, and increase their workload and hours.

Relinquishing Control

A troubling feature of 401(k) plans is the significant loss of control they impose on workers, who must hand over their financial decision-making to corporate giants like Vanguard, Blackrock, or State Street. Workers are compelled to hand over their retirement funds to corporations like Vanguard, Blackrock, or State Street because these financial goliaths contract with employers to manage 401(k) plans, effectively controlling the investment options and strategies available to employees. These management companies administer 401(k) plans, offering workers only a limited selection of investment options that are chosen to serve corporate goals rather than the financial needs or preferences of the employees themselves. This limited selection gives the appearance of choice, but in reality, it substantially diminishes workers' autonomy over their own retirement funds.

In other words, these managers make critical investment decisions without direct input from the workers, decisions that shape the potential growth and security of the workers' retirement savings. Consequently, workers are left on the sidelines, passive observers of their own financial destinies, reliant on the strategies and ethical considerations of entities that prioritize corporate profitability over individual security.

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Despite the fact that, collectively, the controlling stake in almost all publicly traded companies is technically "owned" by a broad base of worker-investors, the reality is starkly different. By channeling investments through entities like Vanguard, workers are stripped of any direct influence over corporate actions. When workers entrust their savings to financial behemoths like Vanguard, they effectively hand over their shareholder "voting rights," surrendering any semblance of control over the corporations their collective labor has built.

This arrangement starkly illustrates how capitalist structures co-opt workers’ assets for corporate gain, rendering them powerless in decisions that affect their own economic futures. Intermediaries like Vanguard wield our collective power to relentlessly pursue corporate profit growth, endorsing actions that ruthlessly undermine our interests as workers. They push for job cuts, relentless lobbying against fair wage laws, and environmental shortcuts—all leveraging our collective votes to bolster shareholder value at the expense of the very workforce that enables it.

The systemic channeling of worker investments into entities like Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street is not merely a feature of modern financial management; it is a cornerstone of capitalist power dynamics. This process ensures that the vast pool of capital derived from workers' savings is used not to empower those workers as shareholders, but rather to fortify the very structures that oppress them. With our collective investments holding controlling stakes in nearly all publicly traded companies, the corporate elite deliberately divert this immense power into their own hands to maintain dominance. They design this system to crush any potential worker resistance, ensuring their agendas remain unchallenged while deepening economic disparities that empower the elite at the expense of the working majority.

Blindness to Class Antagonisms

The financialization of workers' savings essentially turns their labor into a commodity. By reducing their economic agency to numbers in an investment portfolio, workers are disconnected from the real outcomes of their own economic contributions. As their hard-earned money is invested in large capitalist enterprises, it's managed under the guise of seeking growth and security. However, this management actually reinforces the power structures that limit workers' autonomy and freedom.

Investment funds serve as tools that embed workers deeper within the capitalist system, presenting their subordinate position as a necessary efficiency rather than exploitation. This makes the process seem like prudent financial management, but it's really about maintaining the status quo. This creates a cognitive and practical dissonance, where the worker’s financial planning for the future is tied up with strategies that undermine their present livelihood and working conditions.

As workers see their retirement savings—invested in volatile stock markets—potentially jeopardized by decisive labor actions, there arises a rational general reluctance to engage in or support extensive strikes or vigorous protests. This caution stems from the fear that disrupting the market, even temporarily, could diminish their financial security, despite the potential long-term benefits such actions could have on improving working conditions.

Without the backing of unorganized laborers whose retirement funds are entrenched in the stock market, organized labor faces a much tougher challenge in gaining public support for substantial changes that would shift power from the elite to the people. This dynamic introduces a significant delay in the class struggle, reducing the momentum for radical change. Thus, the capitalist class gains a buffer period to adjust and refine oppressive strategies, reinforcing the status quo and perpetuating the cycle of worker exploitation, all while maintaining a facade of empowering workers through financial participation.

The capitalist class exploits this lag, not only through overt repression but also through more subtle forms of coercion. By shaping norms and expectations—such as the prioritization of market stability over the improvement of labor conditions—they manipulate workers into accepting, and even defending, a system that fundamentally works against their interests. This ideological control helps sustain the status quo, continually diverting attention from the systemic exploitation that underpins the capitalist system and muffling the calls for transformative change that might otherwise resonate through the working class. This clever manipulation of worker priorities ensures that any potential disruptions to capitalist accumulation are blunted, securing ongoing dominance by the ruling elites.

The UAW’s Investment Strategy and Worker Conflict

Even within organized labor contexts such as unions, bureaucratic structures often paralyze workers into a passive acceptance of a system that purports to aid their financial well-being while subtly undermining their real interests, just as unorganized laborers, with their retirement funds tied to the stock market, passively support the corporate entities they should be challenging. In unions, this dynamic is replicated through bureaucratic controls that bind workers to the same detrimental financial entanglements, ensuring that even within organized frameworks, the mechanisms ostensibly designed to empower workers instead reinforce their submission to a system that undermines their genuine interests.

For example, the UAW bureaucratic apparatus derives a substantial portion of its revenue from indirect auto company subsidies and Wall Street investments. These funds have been used not just for operational costs but to swell the ranks of its high-paid staff and finance extravagant leadership conferences, from which the ordinary union member is conspicuously absent.

Dues from UAW members are funneled into various mutual funds and stocks globally, including stakes in companies whose workers are represented by the union. In essence, the auto workers' union is investing in the very companies they are negotiating with for better wages and conditions! Notably, the UAW also has investments in notorious hedge funds like Bardin Hill Investment Partners and Kohlberg Investors IX, firms infamous for harsh worker cuts, operating out of places like the Cayman Islands. Thus, the UAW is investing in both the employers that exploit their own members and in corporate entities that extract wealth from workers generally.

As a result, net spending for the UAW, excluding strike payouts, escalated dramatically from $258 million in 2022 to $318.4 million in 2023, with compensation for headquarters staff rising from $52.57 million to nearly $59 million. This investment strategy has undeniably benefitted from the stock market's recent boom, driven largely by Wall Street's aggressive undermining of the working class's social standing, particularly through widespread layoffs, wage suppression, and the denial or reduction of benefits.

Ostensibly, these vast reserves bolster the UAW's strike fund, yet strikes are rarely called and are often restricted in scope. Last year's "stand up strike" saw most auto workers continue to labor, while the employers’ revenues actually increased. The strike fund, rather than serving as a militant tool against corporate power, increasingly appears as a financial cushion for the union bureaucratic elite, not the workers it claims to represent.

This arrangement embodies a conflict: while the union fights for better wages and conditions, its financial health and the ability of its strike fund to grow are largely dependent on the prosperity of the same corporate entities they may be contesting. This interdependence complicates the union’s role and its strategies in advocating for workers' rights.

Conflict Between Worker Advocacy and Financial Interests

The financial maneuvers of the UAW, particularly its investments in the very companies its members labor under, reveal a stark betrayal orchestrated by union elites. These leaders—career unionists who have risen through the ranks—are entrenched in safeguarding their own positions, power, and privileges at the expense of the rank-and-file workers they claim to represent. These bureaucratic elites have distanced themselves from the daily struggles of the workforce, becoming gatekeepers who often suppress radical initiatives that could genuinely empower workers.

This leadership stratum, with its grip firmly on the union’s strategic levers, has consistently shunned aggressive labor actions that might jeopardize their investment portfolios and their cozy relationships with corporate powerhouses, or possibly even invite state backlash. Their risk-averse, conservative tactics dilute the potential for revolutionary changes, favoring instead incrementalistic policies that do little more than maintain the status quo. In negotiations, these leaders are quick to prioritize job security over substantial wage increases or essential adaptations to industry evolution, such as retraining for emerging technologies. This strategy goes beyond mere conservatism; it is actively complicit. It represents a deliberate choice by a self-interested bureaucratic elite to align with corporations and a co-opted state, entities that actively resist transformative changes.

Reflection

The seismic shift from defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) plans marks a significant transformation in the landscape of worker retirement security. This transition encapsulates a broader trend in the neoliberal economic agenda, prioritizing market solutions and individual responsibility over collective welfare and guaranteed benefits. By shifting the burden of retirement savings to individuals, workers find themselves compelled to invest in and support the very corporate systems that may undermine their job security and wage growth. The involvement of financial giants like Vanguard in managing these investments exemplifies a deep entrenchment of capitalist interests in workers' lives. These firms, by controlling vast pools of retirement funds, not only influence corporate governance but also align workers' financial futures with the health of the stock market and corporate profitability, effectively muting potential collective dissent against exploitative practices.

In parallel, the role of unions like the UAW in this financialized landscape reveals a troubling convergence of interests between union leadership and corporate power. As unions invest in the stock market, including in companies they negotiate with, there arises a conflict between advocating for robust labor rights and maintaining the financial performance of their investments. This duality suggests a corrosion of union solidarity, driven by a bureaucratic elite more attuned to the fluctuations of the market than to the struggles of the rank-and-file members. Such dynamics underscore a broader erosion of labor power, where the traditional role of unions as bulwarks against corporate excess is compromised, making them less a force for challenging the status quo and more a part of the financial systems they should be critiquing.

It's time to disengage from these capitalist structures that exploit us and instead cultivate solidarity rooted in class consciousness. Only by recognizing our collective power and prioritizing mutual welfare can we dismantle the financial machinery that subjugates workers and reclaim our future.

Peter S. Baron is the author of “If Only We Knew: How Ignorance Creates and Amplifies the Greatest Risks Facing Society” (https://www.ifonlyweknewbook.com) and is currently pursuing a J.D. and M.A. in Philosophy at Georgetown University.

Union Politics: The Contradictions of a Capitalist Labor Movement

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

On December 1st, 2023, the United Auto Workers (UAW) officially voiced their support for a ceasefire in Gaza, becoming the largest labor union to do so. The announcement came from the union’s director, Brandon Mancilla, during a press conference outside the White House. In announcing, the UAW added its name to a growing list of union locals, national chapters, and labor organizations that have called for an end to the genocidal violence still unfolding in the region.

On January 24th, the UAW went on to announce their endorsement of Joe Biden for president during the union’s national Community Action Program (CAP) conference. Thus, in just under two months, UAW managed to call for an end to a genocide whilst simultaneously endorsing a second presidential term for one of its most powerful proponents. And they are not alone. Of the roughly 150 organizations that have signed onto the labor movement petition calling for a ceasefire, nearly one third have also publicly endorsed — or are directly affiliated with a national chapter that has publicly endorsed — Biden for the presidency. Such a gross contradiction cannot be ignored, especially as it represents only the latest example of a broader phenomenon present in much of the American labor movement: capitalist dissonance.

The movement’s shortcomings are well-documented. Much of the labor landscape in the United States — while certainly working to win immediate material improvements for the working class — often fails to provide a more comprehensive framework for revolutionary praxis that looks to a liberated future. The Black Rose Anarchist Federation said it best in their piece ‘The State of Labor: Beyond Unions, But Not Without Them,’ when they described contemporary American unionism as a largely “bureaucratic, service-oriented form” that remains “controlled by a hierarchy of career officials who operate outside the workplace, manage the sale of labor to capital, confine union struggles to narrow and legalistic ‘bread and butter’ issues within their respective industries, and encourage members to pin their hopes to the Democratic Party.” In other words, unions in the United States exist within a heavily enclosed space, one in which their organizational structures and strategic logics, either by external force or internal conviction, do not move past the operational and theoretical limits imposed by the powers that be.

On the domestic front, this can mean a gross lack of worker militancy. Pro-establishment sensibilities make many labor unions averse to necessary direct action and militant resistance in the workplace, especially when financial and legal stability is at stake. This was the case when bureaucratized inaction kept grocery workers across the country from winning tangible post-pandemic gains with their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). It exacerbated the ever-growing division between rank-and-filers and leadership in the education sector with both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). It also prompted members of the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) to begin a petition campaign calling on leadership to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. After all, career organizers and labor leaders are incentivized to chart the path of least resistance, forged by impotent contract negotiations and anti-strike clauses. The same can be said for international solidarity. A top-down labor union in cahoots with the US government may state their disagreement with a foreign policy decision — as many did by signing the ceasefire petition. But their entrenched incentive structures and hierarchical layout will rarely allow for a wielding of labor power that truly beats the state into submission. 

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This is because such radical resistance would put the stability of the managerial labor class at risk. Domestically, opposing a two-party candidate for the presidency means foregoing an otherwise surefire way of securing business-as-usual governance for the next four years. The third-party-facing or non-electoral implications of such opposition would produce a level of uncertainty not compatible with the otherwise predictable “bread and butter” issues, industry-specific bargaining, and established labor relations so characteristic of big unions. On the international scale, the same is true. The stability of managerial labor is feasible only if preceded by that of US capital, as downturns in economic growth and fluctuations in performance can pose a risk to corporate power -- the de facto handler of labor managers -- and radicalize workers into embracing more militant sympathies and radical action as a result. One outstanding threat to such stability is the emergence of left labor movements abroad, as such movements are often characterized by policies that harm US economic interests such as the nationalization of industries and the cutting of economic ties with Western nations. The logical conclusion of such a dynamic can be seen in institutions such as the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ (AFL-CIO) Solidarity Center. This agency has a stated mission of “[e]mpowering workers to raise their voice for dignity on the job, justice in their communities and greater equality in the global economy.” Meanwhile, its exploits have heavily involved confrontations with leftist governments in South America, often via funding they provide to opposition groups in countries such as Venezuela.

Highlighting this unfortunate reality is hardly an all-encompassing indictment of the US labor movement. The undeniable upsurge in union activity following the COVID pandemic improved people’s lives and deserves credit. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, “the National Labor Relations Board saw a 53% increase in union election petitions, the highest single-year increase since fiscal year 2016.” The embrace of more militant leadership by unions such as the UAW and the Teamsters has yielded significant victories as well, not to mention the advances made by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild in September of last year.

But the imperative of organizers and class strugglers to reshape unions to better facilitate collective liberation remains. This can take many forms, such as bolstering organizing efforts by independent unions like (ex: Trader Joe’s United, Amazon Labor Union), supporting the ongoing work and growth of rank-and-file-oriented unions like the Industrial Workers of the World, and backing the emergence of caucuses and coalitions within established unions that either organize to push their organization in a more radical direction, or ultimately become an independent union that can subsequently hold a candle to its establishment counterpart in terms of size and resource access.

Reformist concessions at the negotiating table and rhetoric restricted to the worker-boss dichotomy do not have to be our daily bread. Worker militancy on the shop floor and a rhetoric of class warfare are more in line with the aims of a revolutionary movement. Moreover, symbolic slaps on the wrist and stern talking to’s — petition signatures, public denouncements — needn’t be the only forms of accountability when our government actively finances and endorses acts of genocide. We can do better. Acknowledging this potential will allow us to transform labor in America, liberating ourselves and each other in the process.

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