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.

Capitalist Contradictions and Revolutionary Struggle: An Introduction

By Derek Ford

Republished from Liberation School.

Hearing or reading about the “contradictions of capitalism” in an article or at a rally might be intimidating, like a foreign language or a term only a certain group can understand. While the contradictions of capitalism are complicated, working and oppressed people can easily understand them for the simple reason that we all live with and negotiate any number of contradictions every day. The contradictions we deal with that are the most confining, that most constrain our capacities and that keep us oppressed are specifically the contradictions of capitalism.

On any given day, we find abundant evidence that makes it clear that the capitalist system doesn’t work in practice. Examining the contradictions of capitalism and demonstrating how they are inherent in the system, proves that capitalism doesn’t even work in theory. Understanding capitalist contradictions heightens our agitation and accelerates political consciousness by cutting through capitalist ideology and the various excuses of capitalists, politicians, and their media. Knowing capitalist contradictions better informs our tactics and strategies in any given struggle and serves as a bridge to socialist reconstruction in the U.S.

This series examines some of the primary contradictions of capitalism, including those between use and exchange values, private ownership and social production, and the interests of individual capitalists and capital as a whole. Each entry will break the contradictions down in an accessible manner, explaining some of their more intricate details, and showing how they relate to other contradictions. We provide some general and concrete examples of how they enhance our understanding of capitalism and our struggle to overthrow that system and replace it with a new one. The reason Marx dedicated so much time to studying and analyzing capital was not because it was “interesting” but because its contradictions were and are opportunities for working and oppressed people to advance and create the world the Earth and its inhabitants need and deserve.

The general and specific contradictions we navigate

Our personal lives are riddled with any number of contradictions—or tensions—that we have to deal with daily. The term “guilty pleasure,” for example, names the contradictory situations we face when we are both attracted to and repelled by the same thing at the same time. Our guilty pleasure might be a “reality” show, for example, or a certain genre of books, or any other activity we engage in that brings us both positive and negative feelings.

Many of us despise social media yet still pick up our phones or check our computers throughout the day to use various social media apps. We also deal with the contradictions of our basic life processes like going to sleep. If we stay up late—to catch the end of a sporting event or spend extra time with our friends—while fully knowing we will have to wake up at the same early hour, we’re wrestling with a contradiction. Whenever we have negative and positive feelings at the same time about the same thing (a show), relation (social media), or process (sleeping), we’re dealing with a contradiction.

We’re also familiar with political contradictions. How many of us and the people we know have zero faith in the ruling-class parties but still vote for them? How many of us live in communities that regularly experience the brunt of racist police violence but, at the same time, see the police as a kind of “necessary evil” to combat the regular violence in our neighborhoods, and even might support campaigns for more police or surveillance cameras?

We experience economic contradictions as well, like the tension between doing the quality of work we can be proud of and the quality of work we are paid to perform. As a teacher, I constantly grapple with this contradiction. I truly want to set up the best possible class to educate students in a way they deserve, which requires spending the time necessary to get to know each student, to find the right content to teach, and do so by crafting a plan for each unique class. To do this, however, means I have to work beyond my contract hours.

Even when we’re thrown out of a job, we search out new work for a paycheck to survive even though we know that paycheck will barely let us survive long enough to show up to work to collect the next one.

Philosophy and our understanding of contradictions

Not all contradictions are the result of capitalism. The oldest religious traditions and cultural customs, for example, provide guidance on dealing with contradictions, like those between love and hate or living and dying. Marx didn’t “discover” contradictions, but he and Engels, built on and critiqued theories of capitalism available at the time. By doing so, Marx and Engels found that, while the best political economists often asked the right questions (like what is the source of profit), they couldn’t answer them because they didn’t grasp the historical specificity of capitalism as a contradictory system. They showed that capitalist contradictions are not inevitable or permanent, only that they are unsolvable within the capitalist system. Similarly, neither Marx nor Engels envisioned socialism or communism as a utopian place free of any tensions or contradictions. The socialist struggle doesn’t aim to solve all contradictions, only those that are intrinsic to the capitalist system and that produce the widespread suffering of the world’s majority.

We all have experience with contradictions, yet how we understand them—and therefore how and if we respond to them—depends on our philosophy, which refers generally to “our world outlook.” Just as we have experiences with various contradictions, we have our own philosophical outlooks, even if we aren’t aware of it or familiar with philosophical language. Philosophies are grounded in material reality, which means “that the various systems of the philosophers also always express a class outlook” [1]. The ruling class is the group that controls not only “the means of material production” but also “the means of mental production,” we’re all raised with their world outlook.

The capitalist philosophy we’re taught maintains that the world is made up of independent and fixed entities. Here, contradictions are the same as paradoxes, like the riddle of what came first, the chicken or the egg? This is only a paradox if we think about both as separate things, but there cannot be one without the other. Marxist philosophy explains that the world is made up of interrelated matter that is always in motion. The chicken and the egg are not independent or fixed but interrelated and always in motion. The reason there is no answer to the riddle is because it asks the wrong question [2].

Consider the common refrain that contemporary injustices like war or poverty are merely the result of “human nature.” Under this conception, humans have a nature that is independent of the world and any given social conditions. Humans have always been independent, competitive, self-seeking, etc. Capitalist philosophy thus explains the “failure” of alternative social systems by claiming they are simply “against human nature.” Human nature is presented as a thing, a static object remaining the same regardless of time, space, or society; this lets capitalism off the hook.

Many of us are taught to think that “humans” and “nature” are independent entities and there was once a pure “natural world.” Marx and Engels, addressing one of their contemporaries who adhered to this view, held that even if there was a “nature that preceded human history…. It is nature which today no longer exists anywhere” [3]. We’re taught that capitalism is natural and the way it structures society is nothing but “human nature;” that we are naturally independent of each other, competitive, and out for our own interests; that we are individuals isolated from each other first before we enter into relations with others. It’s always been this way, the myth goes: we’re all free individuals who choose to be either lazy or hard-working, wasteful or frugal, make bad or positive life choices, or choose the “right” or “wrong” crowd to hang out with. That explains why some of us end up rich and the rest end up as workers, how some workers end up in apartments and houses and others end up homeless, employed or unemployed, etc.

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Two worldviews in action: Education, testing, and the myth of meritocracy

In education, this myth takes the form of “meritocracy,” where the results of our test scores indicate how capable or incapable we are as individuals, how much time and effort we spent studying, etc… This assumes however, that standardized tests are “objective,” an assumption that, as educational theorist Wayne Au shows, allows the tests to be “used to compare students, teachers, and schools, and then make high-stakes decisions about being granted access to resources or subjected to punishment” [4]. These tests are far from value-neutral or objective because, in reality, test scores and educational outcomes are ultimately related to one’s zip code. Moreover, they are historically rooted in eugenics and racism.

In the U.S., IQ (or “Intelligence Quotient”) tests were based on the idea that one’s “intelligence” was static and based on their individual biology and heritage. IQ tests are still “used to sort and rank different people by race, ethnicity, gender, and class according to supposedly inborn, innate intelligence” [5]. The assumptions determine the results. If the language of the test is a certain kind of English, students from communities that speak a different kind of English or another language, like Spanish, will have less access to the questions. Regardless of the bias built into the test, however, those who can afford private tutors and do not have to work in the house or at a job, for example, are likely to perform better than those who can’t afford tutors and have to work to provide for their families, whether it be at a job or cooking dinner for their siblings while their parents are working three jobs.

If we understand the historical specificity of standardized tests, then, we understand they do not measure our “natural” or “individual” intelligence but our class standing. We then see that educational and economic success is not the product of an individual’s choices but rather the system that determines the choices available to us and our ability to access those choices. It disproves that we are “individuals” with our individual intelligence and shows that the very notion of “intelligence” is socially constructed under capitalism in a way that justifies capitalism’s inequalities as “human nature.” Individualism, as Marx showed in his critique of bourgeois political economists, was the product of “civil society” during a specific time and place that “appears as an ideal, whose existence [the bourgeois philosophers] project into the past” [6]. In other words, “intelligence” isn’t a static or independent thing but a process interrelated to social practices, including white supremacy, capitalism, racism, ableism, and other forms of oppression, as well as struggles against standardized testing.

Capitalism as an inherently contradictory process

When an economic crisis grips U.S. society, capitalists blame it on some external cause. They debate whether it is the individual characteristics of a president, a Federal Reserve policy or decision, “state intervention” or lack of legislative oversight. In some cases, they unite and blame it on another country.

Marx demonstrated that capitalist crises are the inevitable result of capital’s internal contradictions and, more fundamentally, that capitalism is defined by its contradictions. Capital is value in expanding motion, meaning that capitalism as a system is defined by the accumulation of more and more value.

The process of capital is, at heart, contradictory for at least two reasons. First, the value of any commodity is the social average of the time necessary for its production. Because capitalists compete with other capitalists for a limited market, they are forced to reduce their individual production time to remain competitive, yet eventually, this lowers the overall social production time and, hence, their ability to accumulate value. Second, surplus value for the capitalist is equivalent to the additional unpaid value produced by labor-power. Because capitalists must invest at least some of their surplus value back to expand their own productive capacity to accumulate more value, there is a constant disproportionality between the value produced and the value realized (or sold) [7].

As Marx puts it, “the ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit” [8]. What he means is that the “absolute law of value” that drives the accumulation of capital expands both the wealth of the capitalists and the poverty of the masses. Even if our wages equal the value of our labor-power, it is impossible for our class to buy the total value we produce.

Capitalism can only move crises around and to higher levels

Contradictions push and pull us between the opposite ends of the same thing or process. Generally, most of these contradictions bubble below the surface. Every few years, however, they boil over into a crisis. To survive, capitalism must continually try to “solve” its contradictions, but can only shift them to different places, delay them, and raise their intensity.

For example, one way capital tries to “solve” the contradiction of surplus value is by extending credit to workers. With credit, we can purchase more commodities than our wages allow. At some point, of course, the debt must be paid. This increases the extent of the contradiction because credit comes with additional costs for us, which ultimately reduces our capacity to purchase goods or pay for the goods we already “bought” on credit.

Another example is how capital tries to “solve” the contradiction between its need to expand and the geographical limitations of the globe. Colonialism and imperialism provide capital with additional outlets to sell their commodities and provide capital with cheaper (often stolen) raw materials and labor-power. Imperialism resulted mainly from this contradiction because, once the capitalists had colonized the world, they could only gain access to extra markets by redividing “their” colonized territories through war. This explains why Lenin’s analysis of imperialism provided the real rationale for World War I [9].

The role of capitalist contradictions in building a revolutionary movement and society

As an inherently contradictory system, as capital grows its own power it, at. the same time, creates and increases its opposing power: the poor and working classes. In this series, we’ll explore some of the most pertinent contradictions of capitalism so that we can seize on them and finally resolve them through socialism.

Contradictions do not unfold in any predetermined manner nor is there any single one that is the most important for all time. Yet a foundational contradiction that is always helpful in raising class consciousness and clarifying the real source of many struggles is the contradiction between use value and exchange value. Under capitalism, all commodities are contradictory unities of both forms of value and capitalists only care about the exchange value of the commodities we produce for them The rest of us, however, buy commodities for their use value.

We rent apartments or take out loans for houses because we need to use them. Capitalists, however, only organize the production of houses for exchange value, or the profit they can make from them. Because capitalists compete for as much exchange value as possible, they end up producing another contradiction examined in the third entry: the absurd crisis of overproduction.

Whenever we struggle to make or keep something as a public good—whether it be education, our libraries, healthcare, water, or utilities—while the capitalists try to privatize it, we’re taking a side in the contradiction between use value and exchange value. We’re saying: “This is important to keep public because society uses and needs it, not because a small group of capitalists can privatize it and profit from it.”

This clarifies that the interests of the masses are directly opposed to the interests of the capitalists and imperialists. When our elected (or unelected) officials still sell them off to corporations despite our protests, it shows our class whose interests the state represents. It further reveals that capitalism doesn’t care about what we need or want to survive, and that they don’t see us as anything other than exploitable and expendable sources of value. Additionally, it helps unite our historically divided class around our common interests, as access to basic public necessities impacts all working and poor people.

On our path toward building a revolutionary movement and society, understanding the contradictions of capitalism helps us accurately identify the cause of the crisis, show the class struggle in action, unite the broad masses, and reveal our common interests and, in general, provides us with the knowledge necessary for our political, tactical, and strategic decisions. The contradictory developments in any society are numerous and it is important to look for the contradictions that will most likely cause intense social conflicts, determining where to put our time and energy, who to reach out to and build connections with, and more.

In this series, we’ll examine multiple fundamental contradictions of capitalism. After examining the contradiction between use value and exchange value in greater detail, we’ll see how that in turn contributes to the absurd crisis of overproduction in the next entry. The series will address other contradictions as well, including the contradiction between technology and living labor, constant capital and fixed capital, and the production and realization of capital. For each, we’ll discuss how we can use them to advance the struggles we’re engaged in daily, promote socialist consciousness, and spread the fact that another world and system is possible and absolutely necessary. That way, we can have enough numbers on our side to seize a revolutionary opportunity: when capitalism’s contradictions pile up high enough that “the ‘lower classes’ do not want to live in the old way and the ‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way” [10].

References

[1] Maurice Cornforth,Materialism and the Dialectical Method(New York: International Publishers, 1953/1971), 7, 8.
[2] For more on this see Curry Malott, “What is Dialectical Materialism? An Introduction,”Liberation School, 04 April 2020. Availablehere.
[3] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology: Part One, with Selections from Parts Two and Three and Supplementary Texts, trans. C.J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 63; see also Sohrob Aslamy, “Marxism, Capitalism, and Nature-Society Relations: An Introduction,”Liberation School, 12 October 2021. Availablehere.
[4] Wayne Au,Unequal by Design: High Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality, 2nd. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2023), 98.
[5] Ibid., 49.
[6] Karl Marx,Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans. M. Nicolaus (New York: Penguin Books, 1939/1993), 38.
[7] For an explanation of the first reason, see Mazda Majidi, “Relative Surplus Value: The Class Struggle Intensifies,”Liberation School, 18 August 2021. Availablehere; for an explanation of the second reason, see Derek Ford and Mazda Majidi, “Surplus Value is the Class Struggle,”Liberation School, 30 March 2021. Availablehere.
[8]. Karl Marx,Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Vol. 3): The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, ed. F. Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1894/1967), 484.
[9] V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline,” inLenin: Selected Works: Two Volume Edition (Vol. 1)(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1916/1963), 634-731. Availablehere. See also Brian Becker, “From Inter-Imperialist War to Global Class War: Understanding Distinct Stages of Imperialism,”Liberation School, 20 July 2018. Availablehere.
[10] V.I. Lenin, “‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder,” inV.I. Lenin Collected Works (Vol. 31): April-December 1920, trans. J. Katzer (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1920/1966). 85.

Santa Claus and the Contradictions of Bourgeois Ideology

By Carlos Garrido

Republished from Midwestern Marx.

A comrade recently pointed my attention to a comedy skit by Foil Arms and Hog called “Santa is Captured by the Russians,” where for two minutes Mr. Clauss is interrogated by the Soviet police. Below are some excerpts from the conversation: 

​Santa:  I think there has been some sort of a mistake. You see I have a very busy night tonight.
Soviet Police 1: He was found attempting to hide in a chimney.
Soviet Police 2: Chimney? What were you doing in Russian airspace?
Santa: I've already told you…
(Santa gets slapped): Ho, ho, ho... That was naughty.
Soviet Police: We found a list of names.
Santa: Ah my list.
Soviet Police: These are American spies?
Santa: No, no…
Soviet Police: There was also a second list.
Santa: Oh you don't want to be on that list.
Soviet Police: You plan to kill these people.
Santa: No, no, they just get a bad present… It used to be a bag of coal… but the whole climate change thing...
Soviet Police: We intercepted a communication from one of his assets.
“Dear Santa, I have been a good girl. I would like a Silvanian Family Cosy Cottage Starter Home.”
Soviet Police: This is clearly code.
Santa: No it's not code.
Soviet Police: Then who is Santa?
Santa: That's me.
Soviet Police: You said your name was Father Christmas.
Santa: Yes, I'm known by very many names.
Soviet Police: So you are spy?... How do you know my children's names?... What are you doing in Russia?
Santa: Presents, I deliver presents.
Soviet Police: Presents? For who?
Santa: Well, to all the children in the world.
Soviet Police: All the children in the world? In return for what?
Santa: Well, nothing.
Soviet Police: Nothing? So...You are communist?
Santa: Da (Yes)… Why do you think I wear red comrade?
Soviet Police: Signals to officer outside “Comrade, two vodka, one cookies and milk.”

This captures wonderfully the gap between reality and the values and narratives enunciated by the liberal capitalist world. Father Christmas is said to be this selfless gift-bringer, someone who enjoys seeing the smile on kids’ faces as they receive – assuming they weren’t naughty – their new toys. Santa Claus gives, in the traditional narrative, to all kids, irrespective of class (but especially the poor), race, nationality, and sex. He gives these gifts, most importantly, for free. He does not give in exchange for money. His purpose, telos, is not profit. He gives gifts to meet the playful needs of children. His goal is social good, not capital accumulation. He gives so that kids can play, so that they may fulfill what it means to be a kid. He does not give so that parents’ pockets are hollowed, and his North Pole bank account inflated.

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Santa Claus’s logic is completely antithetical to the capitalist system. A system premised on producing for the sake of capital accumulation and not social and common good is in contradiction with Father Christmas’s telos. Both the real St. Nicholas (270 – 342 AD) and the Santa Claus we consume in popular culture gift-give without any attempt at obtaining recognition. Unlike the charities in the capitalist West, Santa’s giving does not afford him major tax deductions, and neither does it boost his ‘humanitarian philanthropist profile’ through large, broadcasted events. Saint Nicholas’s giving was not some big spectacle, quite the opposite. He climbs in through the chimney when everyone is sleeping to leave gifts and go. He stands on the side of the poor and does his part in attempting to bring about social justice.

While this is the dominant narrative we operate with, the reality of our commodified Christmas, and of Santa Claus as the personified agent of such commodification, is directly opposed to the narrative itself. As Valerie Panne notes, modern capitalist Christmas has turned Santa Claus into a “decorative marketing tool…for hysterical shopping.” Santa’s commodified image – first used by Coca-Cola in the 1930s – has become instrumental in helping the capitalists realize profit. He has become an instrument used to, as Marx notes in volumes two and three of Capital, “cut the turn over time of capital… The shorter the period of turnover, the smaller this idle portion of capital as compared with the whole, and the larger, therefore, the appropriated surplus-value, provided other conditions remain the same.”

Here we see a clear gap in the enunciated values and the reality of capitalist society. At the ideological level, that is, at the level of how we collectively think about the story and figure of Santa Claus, we find heartwarming values of empathy, selfless giving, and community. However, this ideological level is rooted in the reality of a Santa Claus used to promote conspicuous consumption (as Thorstein Veblen notes), the commodification of family time, traditions, and relations, and the accumulation of capital in the hands of the few.

The ideological reflection of the real world provides an upside-down, topsy-turvy image of itself. This is the essence of bourgeois ideology qua false consciousness. It is a social order that necessitates the general acceptance of an inverted understanding of itself. We come to erroneously understand the “capitalist” Santa through the narratives of the “communist” Santa. Reality is turned on its head. But this is not, as Vanessa Wills notes, a problem of “epistemic hygiene”. The root of the ‘error’ is not in our minds, that is, in our reflection of the objective phenomena at hand. As I’ve argued previously, “it is much deeper than this; the inversion or ‘mistake’ is in the world itself… This world reflects itself through an upside-down appearance, and it must necessarily do so to continuously reproduce itself.” As Marx and Engels noted long ago,

If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

To understand the gap between how Santa Claus (or Christmas) is understood and how it actually functions in modern capitalist society it is insufficient to see the problem simply as one of subjective ‘misunderstandings’ held by individuals, classes, or whole peoples. One must investigate the political economy which grounds, that is, which reflects that erroneous image of itself. The gap between the actual “capitalist” Santa and the ideological “communist” Santa is objective, it is required by the existing material relations of social production and reproduction. Capitalist ideology must disguise the cut-throat values of bourgeois individualism with the universalist values of Santa’s socialistic humanism.

But this is nothing new. Santa Claus is just another particular instant of a universal bourgeois phenomenon. The capitalist class has never been able to fully realize, to make actual, the values it enunciates with its appearance in the arena of universal history as a dominant force. Its universal appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity, etc. have always been limited within the confines of their class. As Marx had already noted in 1843, “the practical application of the right of liberty is the right of private property;” “the necessary condition for whose existence,” he and Engels write in 1848, “is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.” The phrasing of ‘all men’ used to formulate rights under capitalism is always with the understanding, as Marx notes, of “man as a bourgeois,” it is “the rights of the egotistic man, separated from his fellow men and from the community.” Its values, and their reflection in their judicature, always present their narrow class interests embellished by abstract language used to appeal to the masses and obtain their consenting approval for a form of social life which they’re in an objectively antagonistic relation with.

The ideologues of the bourgeoisie always provide the masses with a “bad check,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say. But eventually, as King notes, the masses will come in to cash that check somehow. They’ll notice that within the confines of the existing order, the prosperity that checked promised is unrealizable. Capitalism has never, and will never, fulfill the universal values it pronounces as it breaks out of the bonds of feudal absolutism. Only socialism can.

The values embedded in the narrative surrounding Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or whatever else you want to call him, will never be actual within capitalist society. Only socialism can universalize the form of selfless relationality we have come to associate with Santa. 


Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American philosophy instructor at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the director of the Midwestern Marx Institute and the author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism (2023), Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview (2022), and the forthcoming Hegel, Marxism, and Dialectics (2024). 

When Economists Shut Off Your Water

By Adrian Wilson, Irene Nduta, Somo Abdi, and Jethron Ayumbah Akallah

Republished from Africa Is A Country.

The following account is based on ethnographic research that Adrian Wilson, Irene Nduta, and Somo Abdi conducted in Kayole Soweto, Nairobi in 2022.

In August 2020, people all over the development world started talking about water in Nairobi. There was a lot of anger, and some calls for sending people to the guillotine. The reason: the publication of results from a development randomized controlled trial (RCT), run by two American development economists, working together with the World Bank. In order to compel property owners in Kayole-Soweto—a relatively poor neighborhood in eastern Nairobi—to pay their water bills, this experiment disconnected the water supply at randomly selected low-income rental properties.

There’s no doubt that water is a problem in Nairobi. As Elizabeth Wamuchiru tells us, the water system in the city has a built-in spatial inequality inherited from the British colonial era. Visitors to the city can readily see the differences between the cool, leafy, green neighborhoods of Kilimani and Lavington—segregated white neighborhoods under colonialism, now home to rich Kenyans, foreigners, and NGOs—and the gray and dusty tin-roof neighborhoods of Mathare, Kibera, Mukuru, and Kayole, home to the lower-income Kenyans excluded from Nairobi’s prosperity.

Today’s water system reflects this history of inequality. Nairobi’s water is harnessed from a combination of surface and groundwater sources; however, the city’s groundwater is naturally salty and very high in fluoride. Piped water systems, provided to upper- and middle-income housing estates, do not exist in the vast bulk of the city’s poorer neighborhoods, where people must instead buy water from vendors—often salty water pumped from boreholes, or siphoned off from city pipes through rickety connections that are frequently contaminated with sewage. In the richer neighborhoods, Nairobi Water Company, a public utility, sells relatively clean piped surface water for a fraction of the price paid by poorer Nairobians—a disparity that research has shown to often be the case in other cities in the global South. As the Mathare Social Justice Centre puts it, in poorer neighborhoods such as Kayole-Soweto, “water provision costs more, is less safe, and is less consistent than in other richer parts of the city.”

Researcher Irene Nduta in Kayole-Soweto.

Nairobi’s waterscape has remained opaque to its planners and administrators as well as its residents—both the elite that occupy the planned leafy suburbs of the city, and the urban underclass that lives on the fringes in a perennial survival mode. And while the city has witnessed major developments to improve access and quality of water, some approaches have only ended up reinforcing the economic inequalities in Nairobi’s waterscape. Such developments have often entailed technologies that are inappropriate for the context, “cut and paste” approaches to solving global South problems, and, in many cases, financing models that are covertly anti-poor.

The World Bank’s water project in Kayole-Soweto was a great example of these problems. Between 2016 and 2018, the World Bank and Nairobi Water Company implemented a project to build piped water and sewage connections in Kayole-Soweto among several other lower-income neighborhoods in Nairobi.

The project design was driven by the kind of “neoliberalism lite” that characterizes the Millenium Development Goals-era World Bank. The project’s water connections would be paid for only in part by World Bank grants. The rest of the cost would be borne by users, who would take out loans of $315 USD per connection, payable over five years at an interest rate of 19%. Each property would get a single connection, with a water tap and a flushing toilet. Under a program called Jisomee Mita (“read your own meter”), water meters would be digital, and billing payment can be made digitally via mobile phone. The project was framed as a “magic bullet” that not only embraced the supposed advantages of digitized systems, but also provided a financial model purportedly tailored to the needs of the poor of Kayole-Soweto.

As people in Kayole-Soweto told us, the project was plagued with problems right from the onset (some of these problems are even described in the World Bank’s own 2019 project evaluation). The water supply pipes were supposed to be buried several meters under the streets, but instead were scarcely buried below the surface of Soweto’s dirt roads, often allowing sewage to leak into the pipes. The sewage piping, which World Bank officials told community members would be eight inches in diameter, was instead four inches, thus resulting in constant blockages. No one was sure why implementation wasn’t done to the standard promised, but corruption was widely suspected.

One of the World Bank-built water lines running through sewage in Kayole-Soweto.

And, people told us, when trying to pay back their water connection loans, they found Nairobi Water Company’s billing and payment systems to be opaque at best and criminal at worst. One man told us: “I went and paid, but after paying it… I followed up on that payment, and… I was told that I haven’t paid this money. And I went back [and] I paid for it again. And that’s how I lost [Ksh] 4,900” (about $42 USD). Receipts are nonexistent; statements are nonexistent; people pay, and their money often simply disappears.

And while continuing to largely meet demand in the wealthier neighborhoods, Nairobi Water Company has resorted to what it calls “micro-rationing” in Kayole-Soweto. Water is typically only piped in one day per week, for a few hours at a time. People will hurry to fill jerrycans of water for the week during these few hours—and if they’re at work when the water comes, then they’re out of luck. Often, Nairobi Water Company will pipe in salty borehole water instead of the clean water that residents were promised they’d receive. And, for many customers, water has stopped flowing entirely, for weeks, months, or even years at a time, with no explanation. But even in such cases, Nairobi Water Company still insists that people make payments on their water connection loans—paying down their debt for a connection that provides them with no water. “Unalipia hewa,” one man told us—“you pay for air.”

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The RCT: adding insult to injury

In 2018, two American development economists, Paul Gertler and Sebastian Galiani, started a randomized controlled trial (RCT) aimed at “improving revenue collection efficiency” on the debt that property owners owed on these water connection loans in Kayole-Soweto. Their argument: the problem with water supply in Kayole-Soweto isn’t any of the problems that we described above. The problem is simply that property owners aren’t paying their water bills, thus undermining Nairobi Water Company’s revenue and preventing them from supplying water. (Our finding was the exact reverse: many people stopped making payments on their connection loans out of frustration at water that flowed only a few hours one day per week, if at all.)

In order to test a punitive method for fixing this problem, these two economists turned to an RCT. The RCT, a popular method in development economics for the last two decades, is used to test a development intervention by (1) randomly dividing people into “treatment” and “control” groups; (2) giving some “treatment” to the first group, while withholding it from the second; and (3) measuring the difference in outcomes. While pioneers of the method were rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019, critics are wary of the idea of development economists experimenting on the poor.

In this case, the economists, working with Nairobi Water Company and the World Bank, identified customers who were behind on their water connection loan payments, divided these randomly into treatment and control groups, and disconnected the water at treatment properties, but not at control properties. They found that disconnecting people’s water had a large positive impact on repayment rates (as one person put it during the Twitter controversy: “uh, duh?”). This is rigorous proof, they argue, that water disconnections can help improve a water utility’s revenue enforcement. The authors of this experiment don’t mention the myriad problems with Nairobi Water Company or with Nairobi’s water system more generally.

A map from the publication reporting this RCT’s results, showing how households in Kayole-Soweto were randomly assigned to “treatment” or “control” groups.

Now, let’s unpack this a bit. This experiment would have been ethically dubious in a context in which water service was working perfectly. This experiment is that much more ethically bankrupt in a context in which the water system is as woefully dysfunctional as it is in Kayole-Soweto. Just to give one example of the ethical acrobatics in the economists’ publication describing this project: research guidelines in the US, where both of these development economists hold professorships, dictate that research subjects are supposed to consent to participation in any research, let alone an experiment. The authors tell us that tenants whose water was disconnected had in effect pre-consented to disconnection by the fact of having signed a contract to get the water connection loan in which it is written that your water will be disconnected if you fail to pay. This very “thin” understanding of consent ignores the question of obtaining consent to participate in the experiment—and it also doesn’t apply to the tenants living at these properties, who never signed any such contract, and who also lost their water.

We told several property owners whose water was shut off during the experiment that the economists who ran this experiment said in their publication that the experiment didn’t cause any harm to these research subjects. (It’s important to note that most of these property owners aren’t rich—most of the property owners we talked to live in a slightly nicer unit alongside their tenants.) Matthew, a property owner we interviewed, told us how, when his property’s water was disconnected, several people living at his property—a disabled woman, as well his own 95-year-old grandmother—were forced into the indignity of defecating in basins, which his wife would dump in the Ngong River. Another property owner, Kelvin, told us simply, “We don’t have water and water is life. So, how can you say it doesn’t harm anyone, how, how?”

What can we learn from this?

Water in Nairobi is horribly unequal. Into this unjust context came, first, the World Bank, with a neoliberal project plan emphasizing “cost-sharing,” and with a naive and misplaced trust in the ability of Nairobi Water Company to carry out this project fairly; and, second, two development economists, who were willing to treat poor Sowetans like guinea pigs, and who simply took Nairobi Water Company at their word when the company said that the only problem with water in Kayole-Soweto was that people weren’t paying their bills. Were these just scare tactics to squeeze residents into paying for a service they deemed unreliable? Was this a question of the ugly side of a capitalist market model that is insensitive to the plight of the poor and continues to disinherit them of their right to the city?

The World Bank has, since 2000, stepped back from the stringent structural adjustment plans that the Bank imposed on one African nation after another in the 1980s and 1990s. They now tend to focus their energies on projects like this one, often implemented together with African governments, and often focused on enhancing state capacity to fill its citizens’ basic needs. But the neoliberal ideology, while toned down, is still there: the Bank’s insistence that users pay a large share of the water connection cost, via a private bank loan, is characteristic of this new and more subtle neoliberalism.

In relation to experimentation, and development RCTs, there’s something scary about the degree of power that Western academics can exercise over poor people in places like Kayole-Soweto. To be clear, we aren’t saying that this experiment is typical of development RCTs. In our research, we found this water disconnection RCT to be a very extreme example; most RCTs are conducted with fairly or even very good ethical practices. What this experiment shows, though, is that if a foreign researcher wants to carry out an unethical RCT in a place like Kenya, they can. Existing ethical safeguards are obviously not working.

In finding a way forward for the World Bank’s water project in Kayole-Soweto, we must defer to the demands of the Sowetans we met and interviewed. Repeatedly, they told us that they were very willing to pay for water—if that water service worked, and worked consistently. They told us that they wanted the World Bank to return to the community, to hold meetings with community members, and, with their input, to rebuild the water and sewage infrastructure in Kayole-Soweto to a proper standard. We believe that the World Bank owes this to the people of Kayole-Soweto.

As for the economists and others running RCTs in Kenya, the existing system of ethical safeguards clearly failed the people of Kayole-Soweto. We will set aside the argument that experiments conducted by global North researchers on poor people in the global South should not happen at all. The fallout from this experiment has led to suggestions for reforms to the research approval, funding, and publication processes, in order to ensure that ethical principles are actually followed. Echoing these suggestions, we would encourage actors in this research space to introduce mechanisms to ensure that safeguards are not optional but rather mandatory. And we believe that there should be an ethical mandate of genuine “equipoise” in development RCTs: researchers should be genuinely uncertain whether the “treatment” or the “control” is better for the research subjects. (In the experiment in Kayole-Soweto, that was obviously not the case.)

Finally, the Nairobi County government is currently debating a bill that could privatize Nairobi Water Company. We believe that privatization is not the solution for water in Nairobi. In the Kenyan health care system, for example, we have consistently learned that privatization does not serve the poor. Past examples of water privatization—in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in the late 1990s and, closer to home, in Dar es Salaam in the 2000s—ended in complete failure. We strongly believe that reform and democratized governance—not privatization—of Nairobi Water Company should be part of the way forward. And in the context of the ongoing crisis over the escalating cost of living, we believe strongly that a privatized water company will be that much less likely to ensure that water is affordable (if not free) for even the poorest Nairobians. Water justice, as enshrined in Kenya’s 2010 constitution, must be made a reality for poor people living in precarious urban neighborhoods like Kayole-Soweto. We echo the words of Mathare Social Justice Center: “maji ni uhai, maji ni haki”—water is life, water is a right.

Adrian Wilson is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley.

Faith Kasina is a community activist with the Kayole Community Justice Centre.

Irene Nduta is a community activist with the Kayole Community Justice Centre.

Jethron Ayumbah Akallah is a lecturer in the Department of History and Archaeology at Maseno University.

Canadian Oligarchy: How the Super-Rich Rule "Socialized" Healthcare

By Miranda Schreiber

At the intersection of College St. and University St. in Toronto, six hospitals crowd together over five blocks. Although they are public institutions, most of their various departments are named by both speciality and private donor. In fact, nearly every center for care, research center, ‘wellness gallery,’ and atrium - even the nearby medical school - bears the name of its wealthy Canadian financier. Papered onto bus stops and the temporary barriers around construction sites are hospital fundraising campaigns, sometimes containing the stories of patients who feel particularly served by a given institution. Testaments to the power of private capital are everywhere.

In many ways this philanthropic basis of public healthcare is a virtually unquestioned aspect of the Canadian system, which is partially dependent on sporadic ‘gifts’ of millions of dollars from the highest echelons of the capitalist class. Major hospitals repeatedly characterize such events as generous, rather than reflective of the system that causes much of the sickness they spend their time treating. The Canadian situation is an example of the limits of public services under fundamentally capitalist conditions, the ways that the super-rich rule even ‘socialized’ systems.

Like many other kinds of capitalist infrastructure, the public healthcare system is useful to Canadians. However, it was designed to serve profit, not working people. An institution that has existed since the 1960s, it is easy to forget that it was not a gift from the government, a sign of an enlightened national character, but a concession from the capitalist class. Public healthcare did not simply appear due to a moment of moral clarity on parliament hill, it was demanded.

The history of Canadian medicine reveals this. Capitalist expansion onto Indigenous land led to the state-sanctioned destruction of food systems and smallpox epidemics; Indigenous nations were coerced into signing treaties in the midst of famine, allowing material resources to be expropriated by the settler state. [1] The Canadian government’s refusal to meet basic treaty obligations facilitated the spread of tuberculosis in substandard living conditions on reserves and in residential schools, internment camps where thousands of Indigenous children perished. [2] [3] Since its founding Canada’s existence as a capitalist colony has been contingent on the spread of disease. [4] This was simultaneous with the attempted destruction of Indigenous medicine and healthcare.

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After the first world war, the Canadian settler population became increasingly conscious of class warfare as their economic exploitation accelerated, frightening the capitalist class. “It seems strange now but at the time the possibility of a socialist or communist revolution was a viable threat to the ruling classes everywhere internationally,” says Tyler Shipley, author of Canada and the World. Revolutions in the USSR and Latin America revealed the possibility for working people to seize the means of production. As Alex Birrell explains on the podcast Unmaking Saskatchewan, the rapid spread of infectious disease among settlers led to grassroots organizing for the purposes of establishing public clinics in rural Saskatchewan for the treatment of diseases like tuberculosis. [5] In the 1930s during the depression, farmers who could not pay off medical debts unionized and formed the Farmer’s Labour Party, demanding social security and socialized medicine from the provincial government. [6] Even while farmers faced starvation due to drought, the medical establishment - specifically insurance companies and regulatory bodies representing urban doctors with wealthier patients - resisted public clinics from their inception, fearing a reduction in profits. [7] As Birrell explains on the podcast, “We had to drag the government around and force them to care, force them to act.” The first medicare bill was dramatically diluted by representatives of the medical establishment and commerce, so that “moderates won the battle over what medicare would look like….it was a victory built to be moved to the right.” A more comprehensive medicare plan was rejected in favor of one that placed more power in the hands of physician regulatory boards and industry.

Socialized healthcare in Canada came about at a time of capitalist crisis, as a concession, and so an aberration, of a fundamentally exploitative system that has required human deprivation from its beginning. As Shipley explains, the creation of Canadian healthcare, along with the rest of its social welfare system, stove off revolutionary activity and permitted the social reproduction of labor, offering enough care and security primarily to keep people looking for work. In the sixty years since medicare was passed, this Canadian social security net has been slowly stolen away, as the very forces that resisted public healthcare in the first place have reclaimed the infrastructure they reluctantly handed over to the working class. Over six decades, although more rapidly since the 1980s, the Canadian state has cut back government services and civil service employment while transferring power to private capital in the mass sale of public infrastructure and increases in tax breaks. [8] [9] Public health has been targeted at two ends: in the destruction of the resources that keep people healthy, and the sale of aspects of the healthcare system to private industry. Since 1985, housing and public sector pensions have been consistently clawed back, drug companies have been permitted to monopolize pharmaceutical drugs over generic brands, and thousands of civil service jobs have been eliminated while unemployment insurance has been cut. [10] [11] Grants to advocacy groups supporting the environment, Indigenous people, women, and children have been slashed, and occupational safety training programs have been defunded along with health and welfare grants.  At the same time, the wealthy have received massive tax breaks and government shares in transportation, universities, colleges, and communications have been sold off to private ownership.

The healthcare system is whatever remains after this attempt to maximize surplus profits, which has only hastened in the last several years. This is what explains the absurdly common event in Canadian healthcare in which a person who does not have a house is sent back out into freezing temperatures after receiving a free medical procedure. It clarifies the government decision to offer citizens care for ears but not for eyes, and a free patient-intake interview but not free medicine. There is no moral justification for this with the explanatory power of class analysis.

The story that healthcare makes Canada extraordinary is circulated in the media, in textbooks, and in political rhetoric. Another story we are often told is that people who can’t work but need healthcare are responsible for social misery. Patients are chided for ‘poor lifestyle choices’ and ‘wasting government resources’ by a healthcare system that effectively resents having to treat them. Predominant leaders in healthcare continue to collaborate with the philanthropists who are responsible for increasing homelessness and poverty. These multi-millionaires and billionaires have stolen from the public once through the theft of surplus value and the destruction of the public welfare state, and again in an evasion of just taxation. They donate to hospitals to expedite exploitation, not to end it; it’s just PR and a tax write-off. Representatives of commerce who are price-gouging groceries during a housing crisis like Galon Weston sit on hospital boards, claiming the system. [12] They name every medical building in their image.

Notes

[1] Clearing the Plains pg 24-29 (More in depth chapter 5, chapter 9)

[2] Clearing the Plains pg 27

[3] https://globalnews.ca/news/9432774/saddle-lake-cree-nation-residential-school-investigation-report/

[4] Clearing the Plains pg 24-29 (More in depth chapter 5, chapter 9)

[5] Unmaking Saskatchewan

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] https://www.sfu.ca/~mcohen/publications/Polecon/dismantl.pdf

[9] Stephen McBride and John Shields, Dismantling a Nation: Canada and the New World Order (Halifax: Fernwood, 1993), Table 2.4.

[10] Stephen McBride and John Shields, Dismantling a Nation: Canada and the New World Order (Halifax: Fernwood, 1993), Table 2.4.

[11] Federal Budgets 1985 to 1995; Canadian Council on Social Development, Canada's Social Programs are in Trouble, (Ottawa 1989);

[12] https://sunnybrook.ca/team/member.asp?m=948&page=4071

Chile 50 Years Later: Imperialism's Blight Still Reverberates

By Alex Ackerman

September 11, 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the devastating US-backed coup in Chile that resulted in the death of President Salvador Allende and the installation of fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet. The years that followed under the regime were marked by state-sanctioned disappearances, torture of dissidents, widespread poverty, and systematic repression. In looking back on this day in history, a day that would forever change the course of the country, it is important to connect the example of Chile to the broader structure of imperialism and its manifestations, both past and present. The tactics employed in fomenting destabilization of the country and its subsequent regime change are not an historical aberration; rather, they represent the tactics and aims of imperialism, epitomizing the very intent of the system: exploitation of the people and resources of the Global South for the enrichment of the Global North, especially the United States. Such a system has unleashed incalculable harm as a result of the hundreds of violent interventions motivated by greed and financial interests. However, the case of Chile is not one of deference; the resistance and organization of the working class stands as testament to the collective power that stands to threaten imperialist hegemony, in spite of the numerous contradictions with which it dealt. Through linking Chile to the ways in which imperialism functions historically and currently, a deeper understanding of the history and function of imperialism as a system can emerge. The case of Chile exemplifies the continuous provokation of unrest and instability as a pretext for intervention and control, thereby securing Western economic interests via imperialist tactics and violently maintaining their hegemony. Furthermore, popular resistance to this foreign domination has been violently repressed both historically in Chile and currently, as workers have encountered brutal state-sanctioned violence in the name of anti-communism. 

This coup is a harrowing moment in Chilean and world history, as it marks not only the death of former president Salvador Allende, but also the ushering in of a fascist dictatorship that would loom over Chile for 17 years and still haunts the country to this day. On September 11, Chilean military leadership, which had been incorporated into Allende’s government, launched the coup that would usurp Allende; they initially occupied Valparaíso and subsequently moved in on Santiago, wherein soldiers attacked Chileans on the ground while simultaneously bombing the presidential office, El Palacio de La Moneda. In the days following the swift and ruthless coup, the regime unleashed atrocities on the Chilean people in order to consolidate power and eliminate any potential threat to their authority. Thousands were kidnapped and held hostage in the national stadium, where ultimately they were tortured and massacred by government firing squads. Even the smallest hint of association with support of Allende, or the indigenous and working class masses more broadly, was a death sentence. The leaders of the coup and dictatorship openly admitted that these anti-democratic massacres were fueled by virulent anti-communism, though they claimed to have “freed” the country. For almost two decades, Pinochet oversaw an uninterrupted campaign of terror that claimed at least 3,000 lives and was characterized by extrajudicial kidnapping and trafficking, in addition to widespread poverty and income inequality. 

While the actual day of the coup is significant, it did not occur in isolation nor spontaneously; rather it was the result of a coordinated effort by the Chilean bourgeoisie and the United States government to usurp Allende. In fact, the Chilean working class had thwarted years of attempted sabotage, and the coup was therefore a last resort. The right-wing opposition, consisting of the Christian Democratic Party and the National Party, used any means at their disposal to manufacture unrest across Chile in order to delegitimize Allende’s government, led by the Popular Unity party, and restore the conditions that served their own interests and augmented their personal profit at the cost of the Chilean masses. As a developing country, Chile depended on copper as its main export, accounting for 76.9% of all exports in 1970. Therefore, when copper miners launched strikes across the country in 1972, the entirety of Chile was forced to endure the ramifications that such shortage of production inflamed. Supported by the opposition-led Congress, these mobilizations facilitated calls for regime change, reflecting their reactionary nature and more insidious purpose. Such strikes were not uncommon, and many petty-bourgeois professionals stood on the wrong side of history in their desire for greater personal comfort. For example, with aid and training from the US, Chilean bus owners that dominated the transport sector called an indefinite strike, aggravating already precarious conditions and further paralyzing the country. The 600 state buses stood in stark contrast to the 5000 privately owned buses that no longer offered transportation to and from the factories, resulting in the disturbance of the supply chain and the loss of millions of dollars. 

In addition to the economic pressures, the Chilean opposition used their control of Congress and the Supreme Court to obstruct Allende’s governance and strip the legality of his executive authority. For example, the legislature launched a boycott against the promoters of state-controlled food distribution, leveling accusations against top officials to discredit their competence and integrity, resulting in their acquiescence or expulsion. At least two intendants and seven ministers in Allende’s government were removed by the opposition; they even attempted to dismiss 15 ministers at once, although this specific effort failed. Congress also led continuous efforts to obstruct the legal expropriation of industries that would have further entrenched the power of Popular Unity and cemented their shift away from the capitalist mode of production and imperialist collaboration. In this manner, the opposition stirred political conflict, expanding power that benefited them while attempting to dispute that which Allende held through the executive branch. Furthermore, the military played a role in fabricating this crisis of legitimacy, as they threatened to mutiny if Allende violated the Constitution, of which the right-controlled legislature had control to amend. On June 29, 1973, the military would foreshadow their destruction of democracy, revealing their true face with an unsuccessful coup attempt wherein a small faction of officers attacked La Moneda with tanks and soldiers shot civilians, ultimately killing 22 people. In this instance, Pinochet remained loyal to the forces that defended Allende, who was blind to the fate that awaited him. In the aftermath of the failed uprising, the legislature blocked Allende from declaring a state of emergency, further entrenching their own power while provoking more instability. The political conniving that ensued after Allende took office thus demonstrates the lengths to which the opposition felt threatened by the ongoing project of nationalization that Allende undertook. 

These political ploys were not limited to the Chilean government, but also included support from the US government. The role of the United States in generating social, political, and economic chaos cannot be understated. In seeking to maintain cheap access to Chile’s copper, former employees of US Information Services in Chile instructed Chilean fascist groups, such as Homeland and Freedom, to provoke violence and terrorize the Chilean people with the goal of justifying a coup. These were not solitary acts; rather, they formed a right-wing mass movement fueled by anti-communism that sought to implement a neoliberal, capitalist order in Chile. This neoliberal policy would eventually come to fruition with the aid of the Chicago Boys, economists who studied under Milton Friedman and oversaw the realization of neoliberal policy in Chile once Pinochet had seized power. In addition to aiding fascists, the Chilean military itself received training from the US, with more than 4,000 officers attending courses in the US or Panama Canal area since 1950, as well as $45 million dollars in aid from the Pentagon since Allende took office. By incorporating the military into the government, his hand forced due to gridlock by the right-wing legislature and judiciary, Allende unwittingly signed his own death certificate. 

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Another means by which the US engineered the conditions for regime change in 1973 can be found in its economic warfare against Chile, specifically through boycott and sanctions. By preventing the import of spare parts, the conspirators hoped to halt production in factories, stifling the economy and thus fomenting further social unrest due to this manufactured scarcity. These sanctions affected all aspects of life, as food distribution became a crucial focus amongst the working class as an immediate result of limited supplies; the presence of black markets and the issue of hoarding necessitated the creation of direct supply systems, eliminating the role of intermediaries, whose petty-bourgeois role aligned them with the opposition. This ingenuity on the part of the Chilean people demonstrates their commitment to a government that operated in service of the interests of the masses rather than the few elite, in addition to the innovation that is possible when people organize, especially in the face of such monumental adversity as US imperialism. 

Just as the US weaponized sanctions against Chile during Allende’s tenure in office, US sanctions today impact almost one third of the world population, including those from Syria, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and the DPRK. This policy is an act of warfare itself, designed to intentionally target those most vulnerable and to sow discord amongst the people, ripening the conditions for regime change. The extremely limited supply of food and medical supplies, as well as restrictions applying to international trade, entail a disenfranchised population that struggles to survive on a day-to-day basis. In this manner, sanctions elucidate the connection between the economic and political aspects of imperialism, given that the United States and international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund will contribute “aid” and facilitate trade so long as the respective government heeds the wishes of its neo-colonial puppet masters. Often, a small comprador class will collaborate with the Western imperialist forces, securing personal enrichment at the cost of adhering to neoliberal policy imposed by Western powers, characterized by austerity, free markets, and, in the case of the Global South, inexpensive exports, especially of raw materials. In the case of Chile, the right-wing opposition comprised the few elite who wanted to institute neoliberalism, implicating the entire country in the imperialist machinations of the United States. Thus, the Chilean struggle against imperialism took on a national character, as the fate of the country and what it meant to be Chilean stood in question, while simultaneously belonging to the collective efforts of the international proletariat. 

The US imperialism that deposed Allende in 1973 is the same imperialism that currently operates around the world and informs international politics. In Latin America alone, the US has intervened in at least 15 countries, including Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Panama, and Uruguay. This unfettered violence has resulted in the destruction of democracy and even the very fabric of the countries themselves, as evidenced by the resurgence of open-air slave markets in Libya after the NATO-led operation that resulted in the death of Gaddafi in 2011. In this manner, the US has made clear that the unending pursuit of profit and capitalist expansion will eclipse any moral goodwill or qualms about the ordinary people who face the brunt of being caught in the crossfires of imperialism. The magnitude of resources that the United States poured into regime change in Chile demonstrates the lengths to which they have gone and will continue to go in order to preserve their hegemony and maintain the capitalist-imperialist system that continues to shape current global relations From Iran to Korea, from Syria to Chad, from Vietnam to Ghana, the US empire has unleashed its full arsenal against the colonized and working class masses, deposing leaders across the Global South for threatening the imperialist hegemony that has enriched a few at the cost of the exploitation of billions of people. Important to note is the fact that this imperialism is not a relic of the past, but rather a structure that has evolved concurrently with the changing conditions of an increasingly globalized and digitized world. For example, the Organization of American States (OAS) orchestrated a coup in Bolivia that installed right-wing leader Jeanine Áñez, utilizing bogus statistics and the threat of military violence to unseat democratically elected former president Evo Morales. Morales had presided over a government responsible for a 42% reduction in poverty, as well as the empowerment of historically marginalized indigenous populations and a greater emphasis on environmental protection. These modern machinations of imperialism function in the same manner as they did in 1973, revealing the serpentine nature of empire and its relentless cruelty in perpetuating capitalism and neo-colonialism. 

The weaponization of sanctions, as exemplified in the case of Chile, highlights the importance of organization and national unity among those affected, given that the United States’ express aim is to manufacture forced scarcity in order to destabilize and undermine those countries that resist the encroachment of American empire. In July 2021, the ongoing embargo by the US against Cuba, coupled with even more dire conditions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, sparked counter-revolutionary protests against the government that the United States exploited for their own purposes. This attempted color revolution mirrors the various ways in which the US manipulated the material conditions in Chile with the aim of inciting the overthrow of Allende; only the sacrifice and mass organization of the Chilean working class prevented his earlier demise, which subsequently impelled the US and Chilean elite to their last resort: the coup. The swift implementation of neoliberal policy in Chile, in tandem with the brutal repression of the Pinochet regime, sharply contrasts the previous emphasis on nationalization and agrarian reform under Allende that alleviated the harsh conditions of poverty. The resulting widespread hardship endured by the Chilean people serves as the basis of the model inflicted on countries around the world; in other words, it is the intended consequence, not an aberration or mistaken oversight. What the Chilean people suffered, the US hopes to inflict on Cuba and other countries who resist its hegemony. In fact, the US actively engenders Cuban suffering and obstructs the Cuban people’s right to self-determination because of its continuous struggle against imperialism. For example, despite Cuba developing a vaccine with an efficacy rate of 92 percent, rivaling that of vaccines produced in the United States, a shortage of syringes due to the embargo prevents Cuba from ensuring its citizens' health, even though the vaccine is readily available to be produced. This deliberate approbation of hardship for the Cuban people by the US government serves as an example of the US denial of Cuba’s right to self-determination, exemplifying how rather than championing self-determination, the United States is its active adversary. 

In the midst of United States interference in the conditions of Chile before the coup itself, contradictions emerged specifically amongst the Chilean left from which the left today can learn and use to discern its own path forward. The Chilean working class understood the necessity of community self-defense and organized vigilance committees in order to prevent right-wing sabotage and protect against US-funded fascist violence. This protection was a matter of utmost urgency: military violence manifested across the country in the form of raids, including of cemeteries, under the pretense of searching for illicit weapons, in addition to the looming presence of extrajudicial right-wing groups. However, the issue of taking up arms presented itself with many difficulties due to right-wing interference by the legislature and judiciary. While extrajudicial violence carried out by right-wing fascists received monetary and instructional support from the American state department, the Chilean people were legally not entitled to bear arms and thus take up armed self-defense. In attempting to negotiate with the Christian Democratic Party, Allende was forced into a position wherein he could not risk further alienating this wing of the opposition, who would only balk at the left demonstrating an explicit show of force. Thus, Allende was caught between the growing desire on the left for the right to bear arms and the consequences of enabling this form of defense on his success with maintaining any semblance of cooperation with the other branches of government. 

This specific contradiction that arose amongst the left reflects a growing class consciousness that developed concurrently with the highly systematized organization of the working class in their defense of Allende’s government. The steadfast determination of the Chilean working class maintained the functioning of the mines and factories, as they organized under the slogan “popular power,” or poder popular. Embodying this slogan in every aspect of their praxis, the Chilean masses developed autonomous forms of food distribution, transportation, union protection, and even self-governance. Consequently, workers found themselves directly immersed in the contradictions concomitant with the nationalization of various industries. Though these changes facilitated greater worker participation and control, the nature of the state itself remained unchanged, and the bourgeoisie maintained their grasp of the means of oppression against the proletariat. These conundrums reveal the inherent limitations of liberal democracy, as well as the dangers of granting concessions to the right; the right will always manipulate the verbiage of the law, and even the law itself, in order to gain more power at the cost of progress made by the left. Thus, the left today can call awareness to the fact that genuine revolution will not take place in the form of the ballot or liberal reformism; only through the complete seizure of the state and the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat can an end to capitalism and imperialism be achieved. 

After decades of repression and subsequent papering over the past, Chile is just now beginning to contend with its history. The government announced at the end of August that it would play a more central role in leading the search for the almost 1500 people forcibly disappeared by the Pinochet regime, demanding cooperation from the military, which has historically feigned ignorance as to its crimes. The number of families torn apart by the dictatorship spans beyond those tortured, executed, and dumped in mass graves; at least 20,000 infants were stolen from their families and trafficked into other countries, primarily the United States. Such institutionalized, state-sanctioned devastation bespeaks the cruelty on which these structures of inequality rely. No aspect of life has remained impervious to this government repression, and the ramifications of the regime reverberate through the world to this day. Though the United States, a settler-colonial state founded on slavery and genocide, will never address its own past, it is the task of the left–still scattered and reeling in many ways from previous decades of coordinated anti-communist and racist repression–to reckon with this history and adapt to the current material conditions that dictate the most immediate concerns. An increasingly prevalent rise in right-wing censorship and an institutionalized erasure of history necessitates even greater urgency in confronting the ongoing escalation of domestic and international state-sanctioned violence. 

The lessons the left can learn from Chile assume an even greater importance in this current context of state-sanctioned repression. The United States government is currently escalating state violence against its own population, as evidenced by the RICO charges brought against Stop Cop City protestors in Atlanta. The collective, organized effort of these forest defenders reflects a growing resistance to this imperialist police state in spite of the immense resources levied against those who dare to challenge its hegemony. Furthermore, this brutality is not exclusive to the imperial borders of the United States. The people of Palestine, Kenya, and Haiti, among numerous other countries, continue to challenge the brutal violations of their right to sovereignty and self-determination. In this manner, the imperialist violence occurring today parallels that which occurred in Chile in 1973. 

Chile stands as a principal testament to the viciousness inherent to capitalist imperialism, as well as the power and necessity of unified, working class organization. Imperialism is a global force, and its enforcers are highly organized and have proven that they will use any and all means in order to preserve their power. Thus, it is our collective responsibility to organize, and the example of Chile illuminates the multitude of possibilities that such organization can inspire, with purposeful mobilization guided by concrete goals that do not underestimate the primary enemy of the world. Then and now, Chile shows that revolution is not some distant ideal but rather an immediate possibility; Chile shows that the masses control their own destinies, and that a better world is ours to win.  

Ambiguity In An Art World Shaped By Capital

[Pictured: The author’s painting, entitled “The Bench Sitters”]

By Ian Matchett

“You can’t be Neutral on a moving train”

- Howard Zinn 

I am standing in front of an assemblage of found objects, culled from a midwestern city ravaged by capitalism and racism. The pile has been helpfully located here by an artist with support of the local billionaire’s philanthropic foundation, and a private art school in the suburbs. The artist’s statement informs me that the work is about the possible importance of these objects in the past, before they were abandoned, he wants me to consider how the objects were theoretically important to someone once. I’m confused because these are not trinkets from ancient Rome, many of the people who abandoned them are likely still alive, and the reason they were abandoned seems inextricably connected to the billionaire who paid for the show. I move along to a second piece, a display of books about the apocalypse. The artist's statement again offers insight, saying that they find the books interesting because the apocalypse has never come. I turn and look back at the shards of shattered lives that the artists had piled up with the help of the billionaire. It seems that the apocalypse came for those people. Their worlds ended and broke. Perhaps it doesn’t count if the apocalypse didn’t affect the rich people. Perhaps the next apocalypse will. The artist's statement assures me that the meaning is in the uncertainty, the billionaire’s logo bids me farewell as I leave.

Ambiguity is a key tool of the artist. The use of unresolved imagery and open metaphors allows for artwork to incorporate collaboratively constructed meaning, built by both the artist and the viewer. This allows the artists to deepen and expand their craft- developing a broad range of approaches to connect with an audience beyond direct literal representation. However when we look around at the post modern context, something seems to have gone wrong with this tool. What was once uncertain meaning has become in many cases intentionally oblique artworks, at best requiring an advanced degree to appreciate, and at worst offering little more than their own lack of clarity as a thesis. Today, the art world seems to have fetishized ambiguity: celebrating inscrutability for its own sake, regardless of the effect on the piece- and seem almost to value a failure to communicate with a mass audience as the highest form of work. It seems worth at least briefly investigating the effects of this trend, try to understand why it may be playing such a role at this moment in history, and offering a lens to understand and critique not ambiguity as such, but this trend of fetishized inarticulate artistic production.

In the modern art world, so completely dominated by capital: from foundations, to galleries, auction houses, collectors, tax loopholes, and media; excessive ambiguity seems to abdicate the construction of meaning not to the individual viewer, but to these very capitalist institutions. The artist allows capital to construct and guide the meaning of a piece far beyond any mythologized individual interaction between viewer and artwork. Taken from this perspective ambiguity risks creating art that simply allows the meaning of culture to be even more shaped by the rich and stamped with their world view. 

I am personally invested in the role of artwork in helping shape and transform the world, how it can support working class emancipatory politics, and inspire communities engaged in this struggle. This is obviously not the only goal of art, however, judging by present discourse in the art world, it appears to be a deeply undervalued one. Empowered by this broad indifference, I hope to offer not a complete conclusion, but to at least reassert a key avenue of critique.

To begin we must generally define what we mean by “Ambiguity.” For the purposes of this critique I identify ambiguity as the quality of uncertain meaning or subject in a piece of artwork, and the endorsement of this uncertainty by the creator. As stated above, at its best ambiguity allows an artwork to elevate beyond pure depiction, or a single viewpoint, and create a space where the perception of the viewer helps create the piece. Sometimes this creates a specific interpretation but just as likely it can make the uncertainty and quest for meaning a living part of the work. All of this is perfectly reasonable and indeed critical as a tool of the artist. A career of artwork that speaks in one voice and offers no space for engagement is less that of an artist and more of an advertiser. The quarrel then is not with ambiguity as such, but the more specific role it plays in the socio-economic context of the modern art world. 

It is difficult to define a clear line between the use of ambiguity by any one artist, and the more general trend of fetshized ambiguity. This is in part because the difference occurs not just at the level of the individual creator, but at the structural level- what works are purchased, funded, rewarded, and discussed by the broader art world. The break arises when ambiguity becomes not a tool for engaging an audience member, but to distance them from the artwork, to enforce a division between an elite who “gets” the piece, and the masses who are increasingly deflected from engagement. Rather than creating space for the audience to collaboratively craft meaning, fetishized ambiguity seems intent upon alienating or distancing a significant portion of the audience, in order to make what can often boil down to fairly shallow points about the uncertainty of modern life. Some of this is visionary complex work to be sure, but it seems worth questioning the inherent elitism of this approach, its widespread popularity among the institutions of the art world- and its intention in an art world already so deeply imbued with divisions class and power.

As with all aspects of cultural production, ambiguity functions in a matrix of several variables, and its meaning must be evaluated in this context. Key factors include: the relative visibility of the artist in society, the socio political system of artistic production and validation, and the overall reproductive system of the society at large. Thus, as the visibility of the artist in the society escalates, or the system artistic production is more captured by a specific class interest, or the political moment becomes more tenuous, the issue of ambiguity must be critiqued with more precision. In this context, the tool of ambiguity can overtake the overall mission of artwork- becoming fetishized into an end in it’s own right in order to serve specific class interests. This tendency is similarly conditioned by the very same social/political factors such as methods of display, popularization, materials costs, scale etc. that condition production as a whole. The question is not one why artists are creating ambiguous work, nor why their work is increasingly fetishizing ambiguity, this but why this tendency is being rewarded by the capitalists in control of the artistic sphere.  

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In our present moment then, we must engage with how the art world functions and the role that fetishized ambiguity might play in this system. The art world in capitalist society is controlled not by the public, artists, critics, or even curators- but by capital. This is a point made by many fabulous scholars, though I am most influenced by Mike Davis essays, and Chin Tao Wu’s book “Privatizing Culture.” Through this scholarship, we can understand the art world less as a site of artistic production than of capital accumulation, appreciation, and tax avoidance. As a site of capitalist production, it has faced the same escalating investment as any industry, with capital propping up key galleries, expensive artistic experiences or traveling shows, and private foundations as key value and taste making institutions. A huge amount of artistic labor is done on speculation, never rewarded by collectors/foundations uninterested in its output, or by communities too under resourced to support it. 

Under capitalism the “art market” is concerned with the production of commodities that meet the needs of it’s consumers — who, be it through the foundation, gallery, or direct patronage, are the rich. Art becomes less about expression and more about developing either speculative value on the art itself OR a variety of side benefits be it to increase the value of a real estate holding, improving the patrons’ image, or helping avoid taxes. There remains a portion of this that is artistic production, attempting to explore human experience, emotions, history etc. but this role is increasingly eclipsed by the role of accumulation and commodification that has developed to serve the broad goals and needs of the rich. While the rich may also patronize specific works of a radical, or particular voice, these exceptions prove the broader structural rule of the modern art world- creating imagery in the service of capital. It is in this context that the fetishization of ambiguity must be evaluated for it’s purpose and role in the art world- which is to say in the goals of the rich. 

So why does artwork that fetishizes ambiguity serve the goals of the rich? In the context of capitalist production, art is valued as a site of surplus value production, cultural capital, and to obscure value from the state. None of these goals is invested in the content of the work- and in fact many of them may be harmed by work with a specific viewpoint that makes it unappealing to other wealthy buyers, particularly when coming from new artistic voices without pedigree that can be banked upon. A Jackson Pollock painting thus is more easily sold and resold by various investors (the word collector here seems to give them too much credit) than is a piece with a more clear, enunciated, or challenging content. Particularly once key taste making foundations and funders have funded and popularized his work. Thus ambiguity serves to increase the transferability of an artwork- no just allowing the rich to control it’s messaging, but to complete the transformation of artwork into a transferable token of wealth- a goal potentially undermined by political stance and clarity of purpose of the artists.

This fetishization of ambiguity is even more particularly interested, not just in the ambiguity of message- but in an ambiguity of solutions. Political artwork has long proved perfectly capable of being incorporated as yet another commodity to be incorporated into the value circuits outlined above. While it may suffer some limitations as a commodity that more formalistic or abstract work does not (narrower market, negative reception etc.) it can still be metabolized to this system and its goals. Where the line of demarcation is more starkly apparent however, is on the ambiguity of solutions about the political problems we face. The reason for this is not overly complex- living as we do within a capitalist society characterized by the exploitation and oppression of the vast majority in order to benefit the wealthy- many solutions that fundamentally address the problems we face are tied up with doing away with this system, and by extension the rich as a class. Artwork that clearly asserts this fact and communicates with a working class audience not only doesn’t serve the goals of the rich, but actively inverts the distancing of modern art, alienating the primary force creating and shaping the art world: wealth, and reaching out instead to a mass audience. Criticism is acceptable, collectible, and profitable, so long as the artist does not begin to reach for solutions, and/or so long as those solutions remain unconnected from the working class. 

When a piece of artwork is created, it is not released into an abstract individualized world, but rather into a web of social relationships constructed by capital and history. To release an ambiguous piece, in a context where the audience, spaces, language, and reward structures are all inextricably linked to and shaped by capital, is to risk handing over the task of interpretation to the rich. What institutions frame the work, what “public” views it, and what interpretations are crafted and elevated all become conditioned by a specific capitalist class, race, and gender analysis. In this context, is a gallery that relies upon the Gilbert foundations likely to show work that points out the exploitative/feudal relationship he has built with the city and its people; and If it does, will the gallery prioritize this critical interpretation if given the space to avoid doing so by the ambiguity of the piece and the artist’s stance? 

The point is not that ambiguity is a bad tool- it is that constructing an art world around the fetishization of ambiguity does not put the artists into dialogue with an independent audience, but rather into a dialogue with a disproportionately rich, white audience in an art world shaped by the rich. Ambiguity then becomes a tool for the rich to shape meaning in such a way as to continue their primary goals of profit expansion, and shaping our understanding of reality so as to limit the alternatives to the status quo. What’s more, we should perhaps be more sketical of an ambiguity that repeatedly asks questions with researchable answers, or invite us to once more contemplate the complexity of life.

So if the problem is not with ambiguity as such, but with the broader structures of wealth, where does that leave us? I would hesitate to fully prescribe a solution to such a vast and structural issue- however the very scale of the forces involved does suggest a first step: enter into a community practice. Socially conscious art can not be made in isolation, and an individuals distanced observations will all too frequently retain a voyeuristic shallow quality. Join a party, an organization, a reading group, a union, your block club- the point is to enter into the life of the masses, not attempt to interpret your community in isolation.

Beyond this, it would be foolish to try and prescribe some sort of universal formula for how to approach ambiguity as an artist. It seems better to hold a few questions in tension as we produce work- a lens to critique how and why we are choosing to use ambiguity in our work. Why are you choosing to use ambiguity in your work? Are you uncertain about the question you are asking? Have you done enough research to make a meaningful statement? Does your work stop at asking “what is happening?” Or does it invite the viewer into a process of imagining and building the future? Who will see this work, and in what context? What readings of the work will be most empowered by that audience and venue? 

Finally, there is the issue of the artist who stands behind the work. While it is no substitute for creating work that is able to communicate, artists must use as much of their platform as possible to explicitly combat a softening or limiting of their work by the art world. This does not mean self martyrdom by refusing to ever make money, or ever have your work engaged with by the art world, but it does mean being explicit about your values when in these spaces- and not deriving our value as artists from these spaces. Again this approach becomes meaningful and possible only as the artist roots themselves in their community and the actual work of understanding the world. The struggle to produce impactful work does not end when the artist sends their work out into the world- it continues as long as capital dominates the institutions and structures that interpret culture.

Despite all of this ambiguity remains a critical tool. The future is full of uncertainty, and art has a huge role to play in helping us as we struggle toward a future that we do not yet know. Ambiguity, framed as a collaboration with a working class audience to develop new meanings for our work and our world- this is a key place for this type of artistic ambiguity and exploration in our world. What we must abandon, or at least interrogate far more critically, is the ambiguity of analysis, of alternatives, of struggle. Neither artists nor the working class more generally needs yet another discussion of “what does it mean to pay rent and live in a world of ruthless exploitation, imperialism, and ecological collapse,” rather we need artwork that is helping us all engage with what me must do about these facts: a decisive shift from endlessly reflecting “what is happening” and toward the new horizons of “what is to be done?”

Ian Matchett is an organizer and artist working in Detroit. His art can be found on his website.

The Marxist Theory of the State: An Introduction

By Summer Pappachen

Republished from Liberation School.

Our understanding of the state lies at the heart of our struggle to create a new society and fundamentally eliminate the oppression, exploitation, war, and environmental destruction characteristic of capitalism. In a socialist state, people collectively manage society, including what we produce, how much we produce, and the conditions of our work, to meet the needs of the people and the planet. Under capitalism, the state is organized to maintain the capitalist system and the dictatorship of a tiny group of capitalists over the rest of us through the use (or threat) of violent force and a range of institutions that present capitalism as “common sense.” The primary function of the capitalist state is to protect itself, which means it manages contradictions within the capitalist class and between their class and the working class.

This article serves as an introduction to the state, an essential matter for all justice-minded people to understand, as it determines our objectives, strategies, and tactics. It begins by debunking the ideology of the capitalist state as an impartial mediator to resolve antagonisms between and among classes by explaining the Marxist theory of the state and its role in maintaining–and overthrowing–exploitation and oppression.

The U.S. state has always been “deep” in that it is a highly centralized and predominantly unelected organization with an expansive set of institutions that has facilitated the rule of capital in the face of a variety of changes and through centuries of turmoil. The foundational elements of the state are repressive, such as the police and prison system, while others are ideological in that they reproduce capitalist consciousness and social relations, such as the news media. Because not all capitalist states function in the same manner, we examine the different forms states can take as well as the foundational differences between capitalist and socialist states.

Creating a socialist state is necessary to realize our collective desire for an end to all forms of oppression and exploitation. The socialist state works to eliminate racist police oppression and mass incarceration, to protect the health of our planet against capitalist and imperialist pollution, and to create a society in which differences in all kinds of identities do not mean differences in power. We can’t defend, let alone advance, the world we need without state power, a power that not only represses the former exploiters and oppressors but also produces a new kind of society and consciousness—a state that protects the interests of the many over those of the few. Ultimately, for communists, the goal of the socialist state is to render itself obsolete, which is only possible after the elimination of class society.

Debunking the capitalist myth of the state

The state extends beyond what we think of as the “government” of a country and includes all of the structures the capitalist class uses to maintain its control. In the U.S., the capitalist class holds state power, whereas the working class holds state power in China and Cuba. To have “state power” does not mean that the ruling class, whether capitalist or working class, can meet its own needs perfectly or without limitation. Put simply, the state is the instrument through which class interests are pursued.

At its core, the capitalist state includes apparatuses like the police, the courts, the prisons, and the military, forces necessary for enforcing the will of a tiny clique of capitalists over the masses of workers. The capitalist state also includes administrative offices, social services, school systems, media, mainstream political parties, cultural institutions, and more [1]. If this view of the state seems broad, it is because Marxists do not define the state as capitalists do.

The U.S. capitalist class popularizes a particular view of the state, especially the democratic state, as “a neutral arena of debate” [2]. In this so-called neutral arena, the government arbitrates between the conflicting interests of society through a set of “fair” laws, and it enforces those laws evenly and rationally. According to this view, any violation of the law or injustice in society is simply a mistake to be corrected through the state’s existing avenues through, for example, presidential elections or the Supreme Court. This view is ultimately a fairytale, one that “lulls the ordinary person to sleep,” in the words of the leader of the world’s first socialist state, Vladimir Lenin. It lulls us to sleep “by obscuring the important and basic fact, namely, the split of society into irreconcilably antagonistic classes” [3].

Marxists recognize that our lives are shaped by one basic fact: society is divided into two classes with irreconcilable interests. The capitalist state is organized to protect the interests of the capitalist: the accumulation of ever-greater profits by increasing the exploitation of workers and preventing our class from uniting and fighting for a new system. The working class’s primary interest is reducing our exploitation and eliminating all forms of oppression and bigotry so we—alongside our families and communities—can flourish. The state is not a timeless or abstract entity governing a given territory. The state emerges at a certain point in human history: it arises alongside the division of societies into classes, between the rulers and the ruled, the owners and the workers, the slavers and the enslaved. The state develops from within a society, as Friedrich Engels wrote, when it “is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to exorcise.” The state emerged to mitigate such antagonisms, or “to moderate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’” [4]. The capitalist ideology of the state guards these bounds of order to ensure it is the only available avenue for change.

The U.S. state’s history and present debunk the capitalist mythology of the state as a neutral arbiter, revealing that it is actually made up of organs, or institutions, designed to maintain the domination of capitalists. The U.S. state was established by slave-owning and merchant capitalist founders, later developed by industrial and monopoly capitalists [5]. The ruling class is not a homogeneous entity and the state manages the competing interests of different capitalists to protect capitalism and the existence of the state itself.

Currently, the U.S. capitalist class uses the democratic-republic state as its “organ” or form of governance. Instead of a path beyond capitalism, the democratic-republic form of the state offers the “best possible political shell for capitalism,” allowing the state to feign innocence while ensuring that “no change of persons, institutions, or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it” [6]. Lenin provides a lasting Marxist definition of the state:

“According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order,” which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes” [7].

No matter its class character, the state is a tool of a class. For Marxists, the key distinction between types of states is their class character. For capitalist theorists, types of states are distinguished by their level of democracy versus authoritarianism, while ignoring the class character of both. They therefore cannot recognize the existence of capitalist authoritarianism within capitalist democracies, nor recognize working class democracy within so-called authoritarian socialist states. The U.S provides a clear example that debunks the myth of the state as a neutral arbiter and demonstrates the authoritarianism of capitalist-democratic states. It demonstrates that the state is made up of institutions designed to maintain the rule of capitalists.

Order is reserved for the wealthy since all working people live in a constant state of precarity, uncertainty, and insecurity to varying degrees. Chaos determines the life of the working person in the United States. For instance, the poor are terrified of the police and despise them for their abuses of power. The police murder over 1,000 people every year and most occur in non-violent situations like traffic stops or mental health crises. Racial oppression is part of the lived experience of the working class. As Stuart Hall put it, in many countries, “Race is the modality in which class is lived” [8]. In the U.S., Black people are not only more likely to be killed by the police but are also more likely to be unarmed and peaceful while being killed [9]. Instead of delivering justice when innocent Black people are killed, the courts often work with the police to legitimize the injustice done. The U.S. state only charges 2% of officers who commit murders with any sort of crime, and the courts convict officers in less than 1% of cases [10].

While the state’s prison system fails to take murderous police off our streets, it is efficient at jailing harmless working people. Despite having only 4.4% of the world’s population, the U.S. holds 22% of the world’s prisoners. Over 70% of those prisoners are either non-violent or have not yet been convicted of a crime [11]. And 38% of U.S. prisoners are Black, despite Black people only making up 12% of the population [12]. The social cost of the capitalist system’s violent state apparatuses is immeasurable: families are broken up; children are left without parents; generations become trapped in cycles of trauma, crime, and poverty. This is merely one example of how the capitalist class uses the state to legalize and perpetuate the oppression of working people in the U.S. Far from embodying the fairy tale of a “neutral arbiter” and enforcer of fair laws, the U.S. state is used by the capitalist class to hold down the working class, of which Black people are a crucial part.

Repressive and productive state organs

Marx, Lenin, and other revolutionaries often use the word “organ” to describe the state and its constituent elements. This bodily metaphor is helpful. The organs in our bodies are made up of cells, tissues, and arteries which work together to fulfill particular functions (e.g., the heart pumps blood, the lungs absorb oxygen, etc.). Each organ depends on and helps the other organs to achieve their objective—the body’s survival and reproduction. The pipes and chambers of the heart are made to pump blood, and the airways and sacs of the lungs are made to absorb oxygen in order to reproduce the body. Just like a bodily organ, the state is made up of various elements, or apparatuses, as well. State apparatuses are guided by the objective of the survival and reproduction of the ruling class and its system of domination and exploitation.

Marxists understand the State as primarily a repressive apparatus that uses the force of the courts, police, prisons, and military to ensure the domination of one class over others. The repressive state apparatus contains the violent institutions that work to maintain ruling class power. All in all, the repressive state apparatus functions by direct threat, coercion, and force.

The class in power does not only exercise its control by armed force and physical coercion. In addition to ruling the “material force of society,” as Marx and Engels wrote in 1845-1846, they also rule “the means of mental production,” such that they “rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas” [13]. Because the capitalist class owns the material forces of society, which include those that produce and distribute knowledge, they wield immense control over the overall consciousness of capitalist society, so “generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject” to capitalist ideology [14]. Marx and Engels do not mean that the oppressed are not intellectuals. A few paragraphs later, they write that “in ordinary life every shopkeeper” possesses intellectual capacities that “our historians have not yet won” [15].

Since the time of Marx and Engels’ writing on ideology, many capitalist states, particularly in their more developed forms, have generated and utilized more sophisticated and subtler means of maintaining the dominance of their ideology over society. Louis Althusser built on Marx and Engels’ work on ideology and class struggle by detailing many of their contemporary forms. These “Ideological State Apparatuses include all those elements that reproduce the dominance of the ruling-class ideology, like the school system, the media, mainstream parties, cultural organizations, think-tanks, and so on [16]. The same class that owns the means of production—the factories and banks, telecommunications networks and pharmaceutical corporations—also owns the newspapers, television stations, and movie studios. Globally, six parent companies control 90% of everything we listen to, watch, and read [17].

Schooling illustrates the vulnerability of capitalist rule

A key purpose of ideological state apparatuses is to make the prevailing order of things appear natural and timeless, to justify capitalism as the final stage of human history, and to normalize exploitation and oppression. In the U.S. and other capitalist states, the educational ideological apparatus is a central one in that it produces future workers with the necessary skills, knowledge, habits, and attitudes to fulfill their place in the overall social system. The school system “takes children from every class at infant-school age, and then for years, the years in which the child is most ‘vulnerable’… it drums into them, whether it uses new or old methods, a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped in the ruling ideology” [18]. What this means is that the skills schools teach children—from arithmetic and literature to engineering and computer coding—are just as important as the “the ‘rules’ of good behaviour” and “morality, civic and professional conscience, and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination” that they teach [19].

In their study of the relationship between schooling and capitalism in the U.S. in the mid-20th century, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis found that schools reproduce capitalist relations not by the deliberate intentions of individual teachers or administrators, but by how “the relationships of authority and control between administrators and teachers, teachers and students, students and students, and students and their work replicate the hierarchical division of labor which dominates the workplace. The rule orientation of the high school reflects the close supervision of low-level workers; the internalization of norms and freedom from continual supervision in elite colleges reflect the social relationships of upper-level white-collar work. Most state universities and community colleges, which fall in between, conform to the behavioral requisites of low-level technical, service, and supervisory personnel” [20].

Many U.S public and charter schools, especially those in working-class and oppressed neighborhoods, require students to enter school through metal detectors, use video surveillance in hallways and classrooms, and subject students to regular searches of their bodies and property. This is captured by the concept of the “school-to-prison pipeline” or even the “school-as-prison” given the criminalization of everything from talking loudly in class to minor pranks and the overwhelming presence of cops in schools [21].

The educational apparatus highlights two things. First, as the example of highly securitized and policed schools indicates, there is no hard, fast, or permanent line dividing repressive from ideological apparatuses. Second, the primary distinction between the ideological arms of the state and its repressive core is that the latter are permanent and secure whereas the former are more vulnerable and, therefore, more receptive to change in the face of class struggle.

Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence theory highlighted above is perhaps less important than their repeated affirmation that people’s intervention in education and society contributes to revolution. The book’s argument is against those who believe education is sufficient for revolutionary change and their theoretical, historical, and empirical analysis leads them to the finding “that the creation of an equal and liberating school system requires a revolutionary transformation of economic life” [22]. They conclude their study with strategies for socialist education and teachers and, importantly, frame the overarching aim of socialist education under capitalism as “the creation of working-class consciousness” to contribute to building a socialist revolution.

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Highlighting the fragility of ideological state apparatuses, Bowles and Gintis argue class-consciousness isn’t “making people aware of their oppression” because “most people are all too well aware of the fact of their oppression” [23]. The idea that if we study and focus on school, get into a good university, and “buckle down” will make our lives better lacks any material basis. Schools aren’t mechanically indoctrinating students into capitalist ideology or meritocracy. Students are thinking critically, increasingly open to the solutions required to eliminate oppression, and are even organizing against policing in schools on their own [24].

Democracy: The best possible organ for capitalism

The “organ” as a metaphor underscores the role of state apparatuses in maintaining stability for the ruling class. Organs are interdependent living and evolving entities that, together, each play a part in maintaining the body’s homeostasis, which means preserving stability in the face of changing external circumstances. It’s the same with the state, as the state’s goal is to maintain stability for the ruling class by adjusting to conflicts both within and between classes.

As Marx and Engels first put it in The Communist Manifesto, “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” [25]. Among the tasks of the bourgeois state is to manage conflicts within the capitalist class. This happens, for example, when there is a conflict between the interests of an individual capitalist and the capitalist system as a whole. If it were up to individual capitalists, they would destroy their source of surplus-value (workers) and the environment, which would be detrimental to the survival of capitalism. This is why the state also manages conflicts within the ruling class itself, stepping in to hold individual capitalists or firms “in check” in the interests of capital overall as an economic and political system..

The capitalist state also intervenes when it is faced with the threat of revolt. Legislation regulating the working day, for example, was meant to hold back “the passion of capital for a limitless draining of labour-power” and was motivated by “the working-class movement that daily grew more threatening” [26]. This is one reason why Marx, Engels, and Lenin argued that governance via bourgeois democracy was the most effective way to ensure capital’s rule. Far from inhibiting capitalism, the democratic republic is the most effective political form for capitalism insofar as power is exercised through complex mechanisms and several avenues for popular “participation” and “input.” The more secure the power of the ruling class is, the less it needs to rely on brute force.

This doesn’t mean that democracy is irrelevant to our revolutionary project. In fact, it is quite the opposite: historically, socialist struggles have always emerged from demands for basic democratic rights. Winning those rights helps us experience our power to change society. Socialist movements in the anti-colonial world and within the U.S. have often been waged in the name of a fake “democracy,” which reserves the rights it espouses for the rich. The distinguishing factor is the class character of democracy: there is the democracy of the capitalist class and the democracy of the working class, which is socialism. Revolutionaries are interested in democracy of, for, and by the working class.

From perfecting, to seizing, to smashing the capitalist state

In The Communist Manifesto, written in 1847-1848, Marx and Engels address the topic of the state in the communist project, but in an abstract sense. As historical-materialists, their conception of the state and its role in revolution evolved along with the class struggle. In particular, the defeats of the 1848 revolutions and the 1871 Paris Commune compelled them to refine their approach to the state.

The Paris Commune was the world’s first proletarian government which lasted for 72 days in 1871. Decades of war, discontent, and radicalization led to the working-class takeover of Paris. The Parisian workers elected a council from the various wards of the city and organized public services for all its two million city residents. Their first decree was to arm the masses to defend their new proto-state. They erected a “fuller democracy” than had ever existed before and instated deeply progressive, feminist, worker-centered decrees [27]. But before the Commune could develop into a state, they were overthrown by an alliance of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy, whose armies killed tens of thousands of workers.

In the wake of this unspeakable tragedy, the martyrs of the Commune left behind a crucial lesson: after overthrowing the capitalist state, a new worker’s state must be developed, and it must be defended fiercely from the former ruling class. The next year, Marx and Engels wrote a new preface to The Communist Manifesto explicitly drawing out the lesson: “One thing especially was proved by the Commune: that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes” [28.] Lenin adds that “it is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance,” and the Commune’s failure to do this was “one of the reasons for its defeat” [29]. These lessons were pivotal in the later successes of the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as the subsequent revolutions of the colonized peoples.

Today, some people interested in alternatives to capitalism hope we can build socialism through the legislative and electoral arena, avoiding a large-scale social revolution altogether [30]. We can and should pass legislation to curb campaign financing, increase taxes on the rich, and grant universal healthcare, all of which would be welcome improvements to the majority of our class. Yet such piecemeal reforms cannot produce the wholesale social transformation we need; the capitalists will attack progressive reforms at every opportunity and our class doesn’t have the state to enforce such legislation. The capitalist class, like every ruling class, will not allow their replacement by another class through their own state. We saw, for instance, how the Democratic Party manipulated elections to keep Bernie Sanders out of the presidential race. Any transformation of the capitalist state via reforms will also be impermanent because the people’s hard-fought gains can always be stolen by undemocratic bodies like the Supreme Court. For instance, the abortion rights we won in the 1970s were stolen from us in 2022 by the Supreme Court. To root deep and permanent transformations, we need to set up a workers-state, and we need to defend it.

The “committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” cannot handle the tasks required to develop a new society for working and oppressed peoples. Just as the same bodily organ cannot perform two completely different tasks—the heart cannot be made to breathe, and the lungs cannot be made to beat—neither can the same state perform two completely different functions. The function of the socialist state in the U.S. will be to meet the needs of its people and the planet, and the function of the capitalist state is to meet the profit-seeking needs of the capitalists. Thus, the capitalist state cannot be transformed simply through seizure—it must be destroyed and replaced by a new workers’ state.

The socialist state and its withering away

The socialist state differs from the capitalist state in two crucial ways. First, it is the state of the majority and not of the minority, and second, it is a transitory apparatus unlike the capitalist state that, because it maintains class contradictions, foresees no end. To the first point, the capitalist state protects the material interests of a tiny fraction of society and holds down the vast masses of the people from revolting against them. The capitalist state must ensure that hundreds of millions of people endure their poverty and precarity without stopping production. Even though workers are the producers of all the value, we do not realize the fruits of our contributions. The capitalists do not produce any value, and so their status in society is structurally illegitimate. To maintain this lopsided situation, the capitalist state had to develop violent and ideological state apparatuses. The socialist state’s apparatuses will be drastically less violent, since they will need to repress only a tiny minority, while directing most of their energy to meeting the needs of the people.

To the second point of difference: the capitalist state claims to be at its final stage of history. By contrast, the final aim of the socialist state is to render itself irrelevant. It serves only as the transitory apparatuses that will deliver humanity to classless society. While the capitalist state has no plan for improving itself, or for solving the contradictions that envelop it, the socialist state is built with the self-awareness that it is not at the highest stage of humanity.

The transition from a workers-state to a classless society is important, given that class antagonisms and special oppressions do not disappear overnight. Remnants of the old order lay in wait for the opportune moment to rise up and counter-revolt, and they are often aided by imperialists abroad. The state must persist until “the resistance of the capitalists has been completely crushed, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes” [31]. Without exploitation and oppression, the state is no longer necessary. This transitional period will depend on the existing material conditions and can’t be determined in advance: “By what stages, by means of what practical measures humanity will proceed to this supreme aim we do not and cannot know,” Lenin wrote [32].

The main principle is that the socialist state would transform social relations, grow the productive forces of society, eliminate material scarcity, and then itself “wither away into the higher phase of communism” [33].  No socialist state, historical or present-day, has been able to move past the state.

Conclusion: Our role in the “belly of the beast”

The Soviet Union lived and died as a state, and Cuba and China have been states for 60 and 70 years. Because socialist revolutions occurred not in the imperialist or advanced capitalist countries but in the colonial, semi-colonial, and less industrially-developed ones, the process of building up the productive forces required for socialism was and is protracted. Further, given that the Bolsheviks faced imperialist interventions by 14 countries almost immediately, they had to strengthen their state. Throughout its existence, the USSR had to “defend its revolution from overthrow in a world still dominated by imperialist monopoly capitalism” [34]. Cuba has been under the most extreme trade embargo in existence at the hands of the U.S. since its birth and has withstood numerous counterrevolutionary attempts. The embargo is meant to suffocate and isolate the people of Cuba, and to incite a counterrevolution. Still, the people of Cuba support their government because of its tireless efforts to meet their needs under difficult circumstances which are outside of its control. The U.S.’s newest target for which it is preparing for military confrontation is China with the goal of overthrowing the Communist Party; to defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution, China must fortify their revolution through the state [35].

Despite immense pressure from the U.S. capitalist class, socialist states have been able to win immense victories. China, for instance, eradicated extreme poverty in what was “likely the greatest anti-poverty program achievement in the history of the human race” [36]. Cuba recently redefined the family through the passage of its new Families Code, written democratically and passed by popular referendum. The Code expands the rights of the most oppressed: women, children, LGBTQ people, and the elderly. For these socialist states to flourish, and to eventually wither away, imperialism must first be defeated.

Imperialism is blocking the development of socialist states and projects everywhere. As organizers in the U.S., it is our special duty to make socialist revolution in our country so that we may not only free ourselves, but also free our siblings around the world from the scourge of U.S. imperialism.  Once society is organized “on the basis of free and equal association of the producers,” we “will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax” [37]. This is the communist horizon, in which the people through their state organs fulfill our dreams of organizing society in our own name.

References

[1] Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Towards an Investigation,” inLenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. B. Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970/2001), 95-97. Availablehere.
[2] Martin Carnoy,The State and Political Theory(Princeton University Press, 1984), 10.
[3] V.I. Lenin “The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletarian Revolution” inLenin Collected Works (Vol. 25): June-September 1917, 385-487 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1918/1964), 394. Also availablehere.
[4] Frederick Engels,The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State(New York: International Publishers, 1884/1972), 229. Also availablehere.
[5] For an analysis of the U.S. state, see Eugene Puryear, “The U.S. State and the U.S. Revolution,”Liberation School,10 July 2022. Availablehere.
[6] Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 398.
[7] Ibid., 392; For more context on why Lenin took up this study, see Brian Becker, “How the Ideas of ‘The State and Revolution’ Changed History,” inRevolution Manifesto: Understanding Marx and Lenin’s Theory of Revolution,ed. Ben Becker (San Francisco: Liberation Media, 2015), 8-9.
[8] Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, Brian Roberts,Policing theCrisis: Mugging, theState andLaw andOrder(London: Macmillan, 1978), 394.
[9] Mapping Police Violence, “2021 Police Violence Report” Availablehere.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Roy Walmsey, “World Prison Population List,” 12th ed.,Prison Policy Initiative, 2018. Availablehere; Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022,”Prison Policy Initiative, 14 March 2023. Availablehere.
[12] Sawyer and Wagner, “Mass Incarceration.”
[13] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,The German Ideology: Part One, ed. C.J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1932/1970), 64; For more on Marx and ideology, see Derek Ford, “What is Ideology? A Marxist Introduction to the Marxist Theory of Ideology,”Liberation School, 07 September 202.1.
[14] Marx and Frederick Engels,The German Ideology,64, emphasis added.
[15] Ibid., 65.
[16] Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 96.
[17] Nickie Louise, “These 6 Corporations Control 90% of the Media Outlets in America. The Illusion of Choice and Objectivity,”TechStartups, 18 September 2020. Availablehere.
[18] Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 104.
[19] Ibid., 89.
[20] Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life(New York: Basic Books: 1976), 12.
[21] See, for example, William Ayers, “The Criminalization of Youth: Politicians Promote Lock-Em-Up Mentality,”Rethinking Schools12, no. 2 (1997/1998). Availablehere.
[22] Bowles and Gintis,Schooling in Capitalist America, 265.
[23] Ibid., 285.
[24] Tracey Onyenacho, “Black and Brown Students Are Organizing to Remove Police From Their Schools,”ColorLines, 21 July 2020. Availablehere.
[25] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,The Communist Manifesto, trans. S. Moore (New York: Penguin Books, 1888/1967), 221.
[26] Karl Marx,Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Vol. 1): The Process of Capitalist Production, trans. S. Moore and E. Aveling (New York: International Publishers, 1867/1967), 229. Availablehere.
[27] For more on the Paris Commune, see: Richard Becker, “Vive La Commune! The Paris Commune 150 Years Later,”Liberation School,March 18, 2021. Availablehere.
[28] Marx and Engels,The Communist Manifesto, 194.
[29] Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 424.
[30] For a definition of socialist revolution, see Nino Brown, “What Does it Take to Make a Socialist Revolution?”Liberation School, 29 September 2022. Availablehere.
[31] Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 467.
[32] Ibid., 477.
[33] Richard Becker, “The Soviet Union: Why the Workers’ State Could Not Wither Away,” inRevolution Manifesto: Understanding Marx and Lenin’s Theory of Revolution,ed. Ben Becker (San Francisco: Liberation Media, 2015), 58.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Global Times, “Global Times interview: Brian Becker on socialism and the U.S. campaign against China,”Liberation News, 05 July 2022. Availablehere.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Engels,The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 232.

The Political Tragedy of Capitalist Rule

By Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy

Republished from Monthly Review.

Toward the end of his life, Engels wrote: “It is a peculiarity of the bourgeoisie, distinguishing it from all other ruling classes, that there is a turning point in its development after which every increase in its means of power, that is in the first place every increase in its capital, only tends to make it more and more incapable of ruling politically.” Whatever may have been the validity of this statement a hundred years ago (Engels died in 1895), there can be no doubt that it applies with uncanny accuracy to the world of the late twentieth century.

Society is made up of parts that work together, sometimes more and sometimes less successfully, to produce its livelihood and reproduce itself. The master insight of Marxism is that during that period of human history that has been recorded (some four millennia) the decisive parts have been classes, one dominant and exploitative, the other dominated and productive. For most of this period both parts have been necessary: the brains above, the brawn below. They have also been in continuous conflict over the division of their joint product. The vision of Marxism has been that with increases in human knowledge and growth in the productivity of human labor, the necessity for this split tends to disappear. Brains and brawn tend to come together in the far more numerous productive class. From being a struggle over the division of a joint product, the conflict between the classes becomes increasingly concerned about what will be produced and for what ends. Making these decisions is surely what Engels had in mind when he spoke of “ruling politically.”

Successful political rule in a class society is far from being guaranteed. It involves on the part of the ruling class not only effective protection for its own power but also an understanding of the design of the system as a whole and action to see that the essential parts are maintained in working order and able to perform their respective functions. If a ruling class acquires a monopoly of power and used it exclusively for its own advantage, the result will be certain disaster. The historical record is replete with such tragedies. What is required for successful political rule, therefore, is either wisdom and self-restraint or counter-pressure from a non-ruling but powerful class or alliance of classes. Whatever may have been true of earlier times, it is pretty clear that no modern capitalist ruling class has ever been blessed with wisdom or self-restraint, from which it follows that such successes as may have been achieved in the way of political rule are the result of effective counter-pressure from other classes.

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Many examples, we believe, could be cited in support of this conclusion. One of the best and probably the most famous is the story as told by Marx in Volume 1 of Capital of how bourgeois governments in England, protesting and screaming all the way, finally came during a centuries-long struggle to accept the necessity of a comprehensive regime of labor legislation (prohibition of child labor, conditions of work, length of the working day, etc.). Similar stories could be, indeed have been, told about most of the other developed capitalist countries, including the United States. As for the underdeveloped capitalist countries of the world, most of them, sadly, have little or nothing in the way of successful political rule to boast of.

What has all of this, you may ask, to do with our opening quotation from Engels? His contention, you will recall, was that there is a point in the development of capitalist power after which its capacity for political rule declines. Our contention is that history has proved him absolutely right.

The last two decades have seen an unprecedented increase in the amount and power of capital on a global scale. Common sense tells us that capital has never been in a better position to rule politically, i.e., to do the things that need to be done for society to function reasonably effectively and with a minimum of destructive conflict and disturbance. In reality, of course, nothing of this kind has happened. Instead, capital has used its power exclusively in its own interest, and in doing so has set the world on the road to the disaster history should have taught us to expect.

What should we learn from this experience? First and foremost, that as the second millennium and the twentieth century draw to a close, capital has totally lost its capacity for political rule. Now more than ever what is needed is organized, militant struggle to check and reverse capital’s onslaught on the earning power and living standards of the world’s working and oppressed classes and on the natural environment that is the indispensable foundation for civilized life on an already endangered planet. And the final lesson surely is that success in this struggle must eventually lead to the definitive overthrow of the rule of capital.

How the Capitalist Class Censors Dissenting Voices Via the US Government: The Case of TikTok and the Midwestern Marx Institute

By Carlos Garrido, Noah Krachvik, and Edward Liger Smith

​The First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law… Abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Yet in 2023 the United States is attempting to extradite Julian Assange because he published proof of U.S. civilian executions in Iraq, systematic torture at Guantanamo Bay, and the DNC rigging of the 2016 primary election against Democratic Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders, which is itself a violation of the Democratic rights enshrined in the American Constitution. The U.S., with its supposed constitutional guarantee of free speech and media, has indicted four leaders from the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) and Uhuru Movement on flimsy claims of “advancing Russian propaganda,” simply because they challenge the narrative of the imperialist financial cartels and war mongers. Even if we look only at these examples, how can we say there is freedom of speech or press in our modern age of neoliberal capitalist-imperialism? The Political establishment has shown that it will crack down on anyone who shares information that is damaging to its foreign policy interests, and most social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, owned by wealthy shareholders like Mark Zuckerberg and others, have proven not only to be impressionable to the influence of US intelligence agencies like the FBI and other institutions of the ruling class, but (after the release of the Twitter files) directly steered by them at times.

No social media platform is more tightly linked to the intelligence community, NATO, or US State Department than the incredibly popular Tik Tok app. In 2020 the Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis, within a few months of work, amassed 375,000 Tik Tok followers when the app was still owned and operated by the Beijing, China based company Bytedance, a testament to the people-oriented algorithms of Bytedance that allow any content that is genuinely popular to go “viral”, and a stark contrast to the money-centered way our Western software works. Unfortunately, that year the Biden administration would force ByteDance to hand over management of their U.S. servers to the Texas-based company ORACLE, a company with intimate ties to the CIA. No sooner had news of this forced change of control happened would the Institute have its account, which received millions of views on many videos containing factual information that challenged the narratives of the US war machine, banned from the platform. A second account that we started when the first one was wiped quickly accumulated 200,000 followers, and right when a growth parallel to the previous account was evident, the second account would also be banned. This blatant censorship would continue without explanation as the Institute had five more accounts banned by Tik Tok after they started to quickly gain popularity. It was later revealed that Oracle had hired a litany of former US State Department and Intelligence Operatives to manage the content for Tik Tok, as well as a few NATO executives for good measure. Tik Tok said that they deleted 320,000 “Russian accounts” which included many American socialist organizers who have never been associated with Russia in any way, such as an account ran by an organization of socialist organizers called “The Vanguard” that had over 100,000 followers when it was deleted.

Countless hours of our work that helped inform millions of people were stripped from the internet with little to no explanation, while truly hateful and incendiary accounts were allowed to remain up. Our institute's co-founder and editor, Eddie Liger Smith, was doxxed twice during this period, having his phone number, job, private social media profiles, and location shared by two creators working in tandem to attack Midwestern Marx. Both responsible accounts, Cbass429 and ThatDaneshGuy, were allowed to remain up until recently, when Cbass429 was finally banned for a completely unrelated incident. However, ThatDaneshGuy still has 1.6 million followers on Tik Tok, where he consistently calls for his political opposition to be fired from their jobs. ThatDaneshGuy called for his followers to contact Eddie’s place of employment and ask for his firing, claiming that it was deserved because of Eddie’s stance against US backed regime change efforts in Iran, which Danesh conflated with support for the Iranian Government executing people. Similar campaigns to these have been waged against other Institute co-founder Carlos Garrido and Institute contributor Kayla Popuchet, the latter who, like Eddie Smith, was fired from their place of employment because of the work they do for the Institute. On Tik Tok, the voices which speak the truth and champion peace are quickly banned, while those who harass and deceive people with imperialist lies are upheld by the algorithms.

Since the transfer of power to US entities, Tik Tok users have been fed a steady diet of neoliberal and imperialist propaganda, while critical voices are systematically being censored by the app’s content moderation staff. Neoliberal commentators like Philip Defranco are never made to retract errors, such as when Phil claimed that Russia blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline, despite all the evidence at the time pointing towards a Biden Administration sabotage. Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later proved this to be the case in his detailed report on the incident. Despite all this, Defranco never had his account suspended or removed for posting this misinformation, and his video remains on the platform to this day, as do his comments accusing anyone who suggested the US might have sabotaged the pipeline of believing “Putin propaganda.” The Midwestern Marx Institute had predicted that Biden sabotaged the pipeline before it was revealed in detail and was unsurprisingly attacked and reported for doing so.

Censorship, clearly, does not emerge out of a void. And so, we must ask the question: what are the social conditions which make censorship necessary? Who does the censored speech threaten? Who does it uplift? In whose interests is censorship carried out? On whose side is truth - a category our moribund imperialist era, dominated by postmodern philosophical irrationalism, scoffs at? The liberal ideal of freedom of press can never be actualized so long as the press is owned by a small ruling class, by corporations and shareholders who profit from war and the exploitation of the mass of people. They will always censor dissent and push coverage that suits their foreign and domestic interests. This has been the case throughout history, and the modern Western ruling class is, in this regard, no different from any other. It lies, it manipulates, it misinforms to the best of its ability. It needs a population that can view its actions as ethical and just, and so it must spend countless hours and dollars papering over every crack that appears in the facade its media apparatus has built around the minds of the people.

A revolving door between the media, intelligence agencies, NATO, and the U.S. State Department is only the logical result of a society based on capitalist relations of production, where capitalists not only control the production of material goods, but the production of information as well. The ruling class sees the media, including social media, as a vital part of the societal superstructure that is needed to maintain and reproduce the relations of production at the core of society. In other words, they see it as an important tool to convince you that capitalism and U.S. Imperialism are good and eternal. Under these social relations, the constitutional right to free speech and media have always been exclusive - it excludes all speech and media which substantially challenges the dominant forms of societal intercourse. The freedom of speech and media is, therefore, actually the freedom of pro-capitalist speech and media. V. I. Lenin’s description of the media in capitalist society rings truer than ever in the 2020s, it is dominated by an “atmosphere of lies and deception in the name of the ‘freedom and equality’ of capital, equality of the starved and the overfed.” Any absolute statements about the freedom of the press must be followed by the Leninist question: “freedom of the press… for which class?” The capitalist media’s freedom to deceive the masses in their defense of the existing order is in contradiction to the masses’ interests in searching for and publicizing the truth.

Those who keep our people misinformed and ignorant, who have made their life’s purpose to attack truth-tellers, do so under the insidiously categorized guise of ‘combating misinformation.’ In their topsy-turvy invented reality, as Michael Parenti called it, they posit themselves as the champions of truth and free speech – a paradox as laughable as a vegan butcher. Anyone with the courage to fight for the freedom to speak truth to power should unite in fighting this blatant attack on our constitutional rights. We must stand against this censorship from our ruling class, those who are the worst purveyors of misinformation imaginable, and who now, in the backwards-world name of ‘fighting misinformation,’ censor the truth. 

There is ‘fighting misinformation,’ and there is fighting misinformation. The divide of class interests between the ruling class of the West, and the good, honest, hard-working people who live under their regime could not be clearer. One side finds it necessary to invent a reality, under the guise of fighting the ‘mis-informers,’ that paints the world in a disfigured backwardness, the other side, on the contrary, is sick to death of being lied to by the media machine, and their screams of “fake news” grow more and more common every day. The American people not only deserve the truth, but absolutely need its existence to find commonality in the world, stability, and the ability to pursue lives of meaning and dignity. They are tired of the private monopolization of media that has erased the ability for regular working people to speak on an equal playing field; they feel their voices drowned in a sea of well-funded lies by MSNBC, Fox News, and the rest of them. This struggle has crystallized into a fight over The Truth itself.

And so, if fighting misinformation is to be done, we must begin by asking: Where was the crackdown on the media outlets who got 4.5 million people killed by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Where are the crackdowns on those who are lying us into a third World War with nuclear-armed powers? Where are the crackdowns against those who play the drums for those marching humanity towards nuclear Armageddon? Why is it only the outlets calling for peace that are dubbed “Putin propagandists” and wiped from the internet? Where are the crackdowns on the blood-thirsty warmongers? The answer is: they are nowhere, and they will continue to be nowhere while giant corporate financial interests control the lives and realities of regular Americans. Truth is censored and lies are proliferated because it serves the interests of the ruling capitalist class, and only through the overthrow of this class can a real freedom of thought, not an abstract empty freedom to deceive the people, be achieved. Until then, all we can have – it seems – is a media and culture that elevates the most odious imperialist voices while suppressing those who seek truth and peace. Nonetheless, the fight must continue, and with the dignity that comes from the incessant speaking of truth to power, the enemies of humanity will fall.

Let us remember the words of Julian Assange, whom the imperialists have rotting in a prison because of his sterling bravery… because he is a true journalist and not a lapdog of the powerful: “if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by TRUTH.”

Carlos L. Garrido is a philosophy teacher at Southern Illinois University, editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute, and author of The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism and Marxism and the Dialectical Materialist Worldview.

Noah Khrachvik is a working class organizer, teacher, and editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute. 

Edward Liger Smith is an American political scientist and editor at the Midwestern Marx Institute.