Tipped and Tricked: It's Time To Pay Service Workers A Living Wage

By Liam Easton-Calabria

Republished from Socialist Alternative.

If you’ve recently been out to eat, grabbed a cup of coffee, taken a Lyft, or gotten a haircut, you’ve likely given someone a tip. Leaving a tip as a sign of appreciation is a regular practice in the U.S., and is more common here than any other country in the world. Tipping has become increasingly prevalent across different service sector jobs, and as wages have stagnated and the cost of living has increased dramatically, tips make up an important part of the income of roughly five million workers in the U.S. While tipping is a lifeline for workers in today’s current working conditions, the economic model of tipping as a whole is anti-worker and negatively impacts both the worker and the customer. 

Most tipped workers would say that they really need tips. A restaurant server, thought of as the “classic” tipped worker, usually earns a majority of their income through tips, while getting a subminimum wage from their employer. In many states, this subminimum wage is only the federal minimum of $2.13 an hour. Servers are therefore wholly reliant on customers at restaurants to tip between 15-20% of sales in order to make ends meet. When customers tip below this, or not at all, it can put servers and their families in financially strenuous positions. The difference in tipped wages month to month can determine whether a family is able to pay their rent.

A Growing Problem

Tipped work has changed over time, however, and tips now play a larger role in work outside of just the restaurant industry. There are more service jobs than ever before. This March, the leisure and hospitality sector saw the most growth with 72,000 new positions, while the manufacturing, construction, and retail sectors all saw job losses. An economy dominated by service jobs means many more workers holding multiple jobs in precarious industries. The custom of tipping has expanded to include thousands of counter-service workers, including baristas and food service, and gig workers that work for companies like Uber or Doordash. These workers make minimum wage and typically make far less in tips than servers. The pathetic state of the $7.25/hr federal minimum wage means tips are still vital to making rent, buying groceries, and generally scraping by. In the age of persistent inflation and stagnant wages, even $15/hr is a poverty wage across the U.S. To many workers, tips make it possible to survive, and therefore tipping itself can feel like an act of solidarity between working people. 

However, at the heart of the matter, tipping allows bosses to shove the burden of providing a subminimum wage onto other workers, i.e. customers, generating even more exorbitant profits off the cheap labor of their employees. This relationship becomes abundantly clear when looking at the origins of the custom. Tipping began in the U.S. after slavery was abolished following the Civil War. Employers in the service industry took advantage of the limited economic opportunity for Black people recently freed from slavery by letting them “work” but paying them no wage at all. Instead, bosses pressured customers to provide a small extra charge to their server. The extreme racism of the post-Reconstruction-era U.S. allowed employers to continue profiting off the free labor of an underclass of workers and continue a slavery-like business model. 

Tipped work today has sanitized its image and is a far cry from the horrors Black workers endured in the post-Reconstruction period. But the power imbalance created by the tipping system remains the same, pitting service workers against working class customers. Customer-facing tipped workers endure far greater levels of harassment and exploitation than their non-tipped counterparts. The reliance we have on our tips means we are much more vulnerable to mistreatment and are financially incentivized to withstand verbal and even physical abuse while on the job. Whether a customer has an angry outburst about their overcooked burger or makes a sexist comment to their barista, the tipped worker has to judge how their response will affect the tips from their customer and those around them. Smiling through these types of situations is often the choice that workers have to make. Some of my coworkers at Starbucks would actually switch positions or step off the floor when customers with a record of harassment were seen waiting in line, but this wasn’t always possible Far from being on the side of their employees, managers and supervisors are financially incentivized to downplay or ignore instances of mistreatment and penalize workers who speak up.

Sexual harassment is one of the biggest abuses increased by the tipping system. All tipped workers report higher rates of sexual harassment, but women are by far the most affected. 71% of female restaurant workers report having been sexually harassed on the job, and not only from customers – 41% report facing harassment from a manager or supervisor! Our low wages make the financial exchange from customer to employee extremely important, and in our deeply sexist capitalist society, that power imbalance manifests in extreme objectification of women service workers. In a recent trend on TikTok, female servers test out and report back that wearing their hair in pigtails results in significantly greater tips. While these servers recognize that this is because men are sexually infantilizing them, many say they are going to keep wearing their hair up after testing the “pigtail theory.” As one server put it with a shrug, “single mom,” pointing to herself. This trend is just one of many examples of how women in the service industry are pressured to withstand abuse and even normalize their own objectification.

Gig workers like Uber, Lyft, and Doordash drivers face a different side of the problem: consistent undertipping. While it has long been expected that customers leave a solid 20% tip for taxi drivers, the tradition hasn’t translated to app drivers in the same way. Multiple reports show that Uber drivers average under 10% in tips. This may be because of the depersonalization of the app experience or because these companies pile on junk fees that inflate the price of their service. App drivers are subject to very inconsistent wages because of fluctuating demand, especially since the pandemic. This, compounded by the high price of gas, means tips are all the more important for drivers, sometimes to just break even for a food delivery. Black and Hispanic workers are much more likely to work these jobs than their white counterparts. 

Make The Bosses Pay!

Ultimately, customers are paying the price for this tipping culture. The Square app may give a suggested tip amount of $1, $2, or $3 when a worker takes 30 seconds to scoop your ice cream or pour your black coffee, and even suggests a tip for the server staff of 20% when picking up food, not dining in. Our tips go to workers (usually), but allow the bosses to keep wages at the bare minimum while lining their pockets. The point-of-service tipping model pressures the customer to tip on things that we may not have in the past, and with companies using inflation as an excuse to blatantly price-gouge us, this extra cost can sting. The anxiety that comes with this has come to be known as “guilt-tipping” because most people know service workers deserve more than what they’re getting, but rightly feel as though they shouldn’t be the one to pay for it.

For the time being, we absolutely shouldn’t stop tipping. We should stand with unionized Starbucks workers fighting for credit card tipping, as it would dramatically improve workers’ lives and especially because it’s been used as a bargaining chip against the union drive. Making the bosses pay for our labor, not other workers, will require mass unionization of the service industry, built on campaigns for the best possible wage increases, so we can begin to phase out this anti-worker custom and replace it with a stable and livable income for all.

Coronavirus and the Path Beyond Post-Industrial Society

By Connor Harney

“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, we must justify our right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

- Richard Buckminster Fuller

It has been a little over a week since President Trump deemed my co-workers at Whole Foods and I critical infrastructure during the global Coronavirus pandemic, and already, any sense of appreciation that title conferred—both in being categorized as essential in combating COVID-19 and better everyday treatment by customers—has already dissipated. In the place of that gratitude, our customers seem as entitled as ever toward the labor we thanklessly provide.  At the same time, any supply-chain issue or corporate-rationing policy out of our control means we face their ire, rather than the faceless executives and middle management responsible.

Taking aside that this global outbreak has everyone on edge, this sort of behavior is not at all surprising given the highly-stratified nature of class in the United States. There is a massive gulf in wealth, even among those that work. That is, the pay differential between say a software engineer and grocery stocker like myself is immense: the stock clerk can expect a median pay of just over 12 dollars an hour and the software developer, on the other hand, can expect just under $58. Even the lowest paid developer makes twice that of the clerk. Of course, none of this takes into account benefits connected to employment in the U.S. like healthcare and retirement, which widens this gap even further.

As Zizek wrote recently, “the impossible has happened, our world has stopped,” and yet, as we are expected to provide a sense of normalcy for the rest of country during what can only be described as a breakdown of all norms, workers in the service sector still struggle for basic human dignity. It was only after public shaming that my company offered paid sick leave, and only for the extent of the pandemic. Even our hazard pay is laughable, two dollars more an hour to put ourselves and our families on the front lines of this biological battle.

Given that, it has been nearly a decade since Fight for $15 began their campaign to raise wages and unionize typically-unorganized workers. And as the minimum still sits at under eight dollars, it should come as no surprise that conceptions of the nature of the work constitute a major dividing line among American workers. As a society, we fetishize technology, and its presence looms large over our national consciousness. For that reason, those who work in that sector of the economy find themselves held in high esteem by the public.

Unfortunately, this reverence is almost always accompanied by a zero-sum view, whereas only certain workers deserve dignity. Just like the literal wealth of the nation, there is only so much goodwill to go around—low-skilled workers, or the ones that make sure that everyone is clothed, fed, and sheltered, are barred from pride in their work that those in other sectors are allowed. This belief in the lowly nature of the service worker is by no means a new one.

Dolores Dante, a waitress interviewed by Studs Terkel in the early-1970s for his famous book Working, speaks to this long-standing state of affairs when she described her response to those who would say she was “just a waitress.” According to Dolores, “people imagine a waitress couldn’t possibly think or have any kind of aspiration other than to serve food,” but for her the job fulfilled a sense of purpose to the point that: “I don’t feel lowly at all. I myself feel sure. I don’t want to change the job. I love it.”

As human beings, we need to engage with the material world for our survival. Under capitalism, the way we meet our material needs is determined by factors like where we live, our level of education, skills we have, jobs available on the labor market, as well as the social networks we are a part of.  All of these things set the stage for where and how we work. That a game of chance governs our career trajectories should highlight how arbitrary the barriers to respectability we create are: the Dolores Dantes of the world should find dignity in their work.

However, the strongly-held belief in the connection between “skill” and compensation remains an obstacle to a world where such self-worth for service workers is publicly embraced. In many ways, this problem comes out of the notion of the United States as reaching a new level of economic development—a concept that would not have been foreign to our waitress. During the 1970s, manufacturing began to shift from the core to the periphery of the capitalist world system, and what are often called the service and knowledge economies emerged as the dominant growth sectors. With a certain optimism, Daniel Bell and other thinkers responded to these changes by predicting the coming of the Post-industrial society.

Under these new social arrangements, making things no longer mattered. That the U.S. could provide the bare necessities of life was a foregone conclusion. The focus of the new economy would be on ideas and technical know-how. What this view did not consider is that, rather than a transcendence of industrial society in one country, it represented more its international universalization. This was at least Harry Braverman’s response to the idea of Post-industrial society. In Labor and Monopoly Capital, released in the same year as Bell’s book, he argues that the theory is just another in a long line of “economic theories which assigned the most productive role to the particular form of labor that was most important or growing most rapidly at the time.”

Most importantly, rather than a decline in Taylorism or scientific management in the world of work, the rise of the service economy symbolized its universal application. He describes the segmentation of work similar to that used on an assembly line as “a revolution…now being prepared which will make of retail workers, by and large, something closer to factory operatives than anyone had ever imagined possible.” Not only was American society still reliant on that manufacture of commodities, other workplaces were beginning to look more like the shop floor.

Even so, the link between knowledge and the so-called new economy placed a certain import on those with higher levels of education—as it was often assumed the technology used in the growth sectors of the American economy required more formal learning. Such a view still prevails, but considering the level of technology that has been integrated into our daily lives and the abundance of people with advanced degrees working behind Starbucks counters and driving for Uber, it should be left in the past along with the myth of the post-industrial society the current pandemic has clearly laid bare.

Instead, we should use the current crisis to break down barriers between working people—highlighting the work of all that keeps our economy in motion.  Moving past these antiquated notions, we can come together to forge new social bonds to fight for an economy that works for the working class and not just the rich.

Gangsters for Capitalism: Why the US Working Class Enlists

By Colin Jenkins

This was published as part of the Transnational Institute's State of Power 2017 report.

Through its reliance on the relationship between labour and capital, fortified by state-enforced protections for private property to facilitate this relationship, capitalism creates a natural dependency on wages for the vast majority. With the removal of 'the commons' during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the peasantry was transformed into a working-class majority that now must serve as both commodities and tools for those who own the means of production.

While those of us born into the working-class majority have little or no choice but to submit to our ritualistic commodification, we are sometimes presented with degrees of options regarding how far we allow capitalists, landlords, corporations, and their politicians to dehumanize us as their tools.

While we are forced into the labour market, for example, we can sometimes choose public jobs over private, therefore limiting the degree of exploitation. While we are forced to find housing, we may sometimes choose to live in communal situations with family or friends.

One of the areas where total choice is allowed is in the business of Empire, particularly in the maintenance and proliferation of the modern US Empire. Although governments worldwide are using technological advances in robotics to replace human bodies in their military ranks, and thus lessen their dependence on the working class, there is still a heavy reliance on people to act as tools of war. In 'all-volunteer' militaries like that of the United States', 'willingness' is still a crucial component to the mission.

As global capitalism's forerunner and guardian, the US military has nearly 3 million employees worldwide, including active duty and reserve personnel and 'civilian full-time equivalents'. The US Department of Defense's official proposed budget for FY 2017 is $582.7 billion , which, combined with corollary systems of 'security', swells to over $1 trillion.

According to public Pentagon reports , the US Empire officially comprises of 662 overseas military bases across 38 countries. Since the birth of the United States in 1776, the country has been involved in a war or military conflict in 219 of these 240 years.

Throughout this history, the US government, which has directly represented and acted upon the interests of capital and economic elites, has required the participation of many millions of its working-class citizens to join its military ranks in order to carry out its missions by force.

For many generations, the US working class has answered this call to serve as what US Marine General Smedley Butler once deemed, 'gangsters for capitalism'. Millions upon millions have lost life and limb to clear the path for new global markets, steal and extract valuable natural resources from other lands, and ensure the procurement of trillions of dollars of corporate profit for a privileged few.

Why? Why does the working class willingly, even enthusiastically, join to serve in a military that bolsters the very system which undermines and alienates them in their everyday lives?

Cultural Hegemony and Capitalist Indoctrination

We can start to answer this question by drawing on Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony to see how capitalist interests have shaped the dominant culture in US society. Utilising Hegel's binary of social influence, where societal power is jockeyed between 'political society' and 'civil society' Gramsci suggested that power is based on two forms: coercion (Dominio) or consensus (Direzione).

According to Gramsci, the battle over ideology between the ruling and subaltern classes is ultimately won through 'the hegemony of one social group over the whole of society exercised through so-called private organizations, such as the church, trade unions, schools, etc.'

Under capitalism, the hierarchy relies on the state to control and dictate these central organs of ideological influence, thus establishing cultural hegemony. This isn't necessarily done in a highly centralized or coordinated manner by a tight-knit group, but rather occurs naturally through the mechanisms of the economic system.

Just as the economic base shapes society's 'superstructure', the superstructure in turn solidifies the interests of the economic base. In this cycle, the interests of the capitalist class are morphed into the interests of the working class.

Unearthing these dynamics allows us to explain why impoverished Americans living in dilapidated trailers and depending on government projects still proudly wave the red, white, and blue cloth; why tens of millions of impoverished people measure their value according to which designer clothes or sneakers they're wearing; why these same tens of millions, who can barely afford basic necessities to survive, spend much of their waking time gawking at and worshipping obscenely wealthy celebrities; or why over 100 million working-class people show up every few years to vote for politicians that do not represent them.

It also allows us to explain, at least in part, why members of the working class so willingly carry out the brutalization of their class peers by serving in imperialistic militaries and militarized police forces.

This culture, which is ultimately shaped by capitalism, receives its values through many different channels, formal and informal. Part of this is accomplished through formal education, where traditional intellectuals become more specialized, and where the process of learning and thinking is replaced by indoctrination.

In his 1926 examination of the 'Southern Question' , Gramsci wrote of this phenomenon:

The old type of intellectual was the organizing element in a society with a mainly peasant and artisanal basis. To organize the State, to organize commerce, the dominant class bred a particular type of intellectual… the technical organizer, the specialist in applied science... it is this second type of intellectual which has prevailed, with all his characteristics of order and intellectual discipline.

While Gramsci was specifically referring to the dominant intellectuals in northern Italy during his time, and how they influenced the 'rural bourgeoisie' and their 'crazy fear of the peasants', he was also expounding on the general development of a cultural hegemony that characterizes the capitalist system:

The first problem to resolve… was how to modify the political stance and general ideology of the proletariat itself, as a national element which exists within the ensemble of State life and is unconsciously subjected to the influence of bourgeois education, the bourgeois press and bourgeois traditions.

Uncovering these hegemonic elements stemming from society's economic base, according to Gramsci, was crucial in exposing the ruling-class propaganda that seeped through layer upon layer of working-class and peasant cultures of the time.

So, how does Gramsci's analysis play out today? Within systems of formal education, it exposes the strict parameters set by the capitalist modes of production and the social norms that result. It explains why formal education, even at its highest level, often takes the form of indoctrination.

A prime example of this indoctrination can be seen in the field of Economics, whose students at the most prestigious institutions and earning the highest academic achievements seem unable to apply their thought beyond the narrow confines of classical liberalism and its modern form of neoliberal capitalism.

They may be Ivy League PhDs, members of the Federal Reserve, or highly influential presidential cabinet members, but all exhibit an unwillingness or inability to see the most obvious of contradictions within their theory.

The indoctrination that has essentially taken over all fields of formal 'study' and 'expertise' inevitably flows throughout society, originating from elite institutions that are specifically designed to justify and maintain the economic base, and transferred from there into so-called public policy.

In turn, public education programmes that are shaped by the capitalist hierarchy are not concerned with the students' ability to comprehend or critically think, but rather with turning them into 'docile and passive tools of production'.

Part of this process is focused on the creation of obedient workers who are minimally competent to fulfill their exploitative labour role; and another part is focused on preventing the same workers from being able to critically think about, and thus recognize, their exploited labour role within this system. The former fetishizes obedience, control, and 'work ethic'; the latter obstructs awareness and resistance.

These formal, 'public' structures of dominant ideology are naturally coupled with more informal arrangements deriving from the market system, notably the consumption process. As such, workers are moulded through a structured progression that begins at birth.

In fulfilling this role, workers become consumers in the market for both necessary and conspicuous consumption. As the US capitalist system has become ever more reliant on conspicuous consumption (evidenced in the 'supply-side' phenomenon of the 1980s), this way of life once reserved for the 'leisure class' has now taken hold of the 'industrious class' (working class).

This intensification of the consumption process has exposed the working class to informal channels of indoctrination, established through advertising and marketing, popular entertainment such as television shows, movies, and video games, and the arrival of a billion-dollar voyeur industry based on worshipping the 'cult of personality' and celebrity (and, thus, wealth).

Clearly, when consumption becomes the only goal in life, people are pushed to consume more and more. In doing so, the working class is serving capitalist culture even in its 'personal life'. And through this manufactured encouragement to consume lies a complementary ideology that convinces working-class folks to literally buy into, become vested in, and thus serve and protect, the capitalist system.

Whose Security?

In a class-based society, fear becomes a convenient and effective tool in shaping ideology and pushing through ruling-class agendas with widespread working-class approval.

As in Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, where the interests of the owners and facilitators of capital are gradually accepted as the interests of the masses, issues of security also become blurred between those designed to protect the powerful and those designed to protect the powerless.

The modern security culture that has come to fruition in the US, especially after 9/11, compels masses of citizens to not only be subjected to increasing measures of authority and surveillance, but also to join in the effort to carry out these measures. Americans do so with a shocking willingness.

The reasons for this unquestioned submission to authority can be found in the most blatant of examples: the formation of the US Patriot Act. With the threat of 'extreme Islam' and 'global terrorism,' such legislation passed with ease because, like all such measures, it exploits the emotional (and irrational) needs brought on by fear.

Mark Neocleous tells us :

Security presupposes exclusion. Take the piece of legislation passed just a few weeks after the attack on the World Trade Centre, called the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. Coming in at over 340 pages and carrying twenty-one legal amendments, the Act was said to be necessary and essential to the new security project about to be unleashed on the world.

It changed criminal law and immigration procedures to allow people to be held indefinitely, altered intelligence-gathering procedures to allow for the monitoring of people's reading habits through surveillance of library and bookshop records, and introduced measures to allow for greater access to property, email, computers, and financial and educational records. But if the Act is about security, it is also immediately notable for the wordy title, designed for the acronym it produces: USA PATRIOT. The implication is clear: this is an Act for American patriotism. To oppose it is unpatriotic .

This modern security culture has also taken on an extremely broad and vague agenda of 'national security', a term that represents a very specific construction of government strategy designed to create a catch-all apparatus that accommodates the never-ending growth of the military-industrial complex.

In fact, the term was deliberately chosen as a play of words with 'national defense', used during post-World War II reconfiguration efforts aimed at creating 'a unified military establishment along with a national defense council'.

'By 1947, "common defense" had been dropped and replaced with "national security" - hence the creation of the National Security Council and the National Security Act.' The purpose of this change in wording was tipped by Navy Secretary James Forrestal, who 'commented that "national security" can only be secured with a broad and comprehensive front', while explaining, 'I am using the word "security" here consistently and continuously rather than "defense''.

As Neocleous notes, "security" was a far more expansive term than "defense", which was seen as too narrowly military, and far more suggestive than "national interest", seen by many as either too weak a concept to form the basis of the exercise of state power or, with its selfish connotations, simply too negative'.

This conscious shift from 'defense' to 'security' was made for fairly obvious reasons. President Dwight Eisenhower's outgoing speech in 1961, which included an eerie warning of a creeping military-industrial complex that had become largely unaccountable, exposed the underlying reason in a rare act of deep truth coming from a major political figure.

In a similar act some four decades earlier, US Major General Smedley Butler exposed the embryo of this insidious institution , famously equating his 33-year military career to serving 'as a high-class muscle man for big business, Wall St., and the bankers' and 'a racketeer and gangster for capitalism' by making:

Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

This shift also highlights the importance of understanding Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony and how it plays out in the real world.

By examining the focus of US domestic policy over the past century, we can see how forms of 'security' can be dissected into two parts: those focusing on the interests of the ruling-class minority, and those focusing on the interests of the working-class majority.

An example of the latter, which can aptly be described as 'social security', can be seen in the aftermath of the Great Depression and the subsequent focus on working-class (social) security in the New Deal. Neocleous points to the literature of the time to highlight this culture rooted in social security :

The economist Abraham Epstein, for example, had published a book called 'Insecurity: A Challenge to America,' in which he spoke of 'the specter of insecurity' as the bane of the worker's life under capitalism, while Max Rubinow had been articulating demands for 'a complete structure of security' in a book called 'The Quest for Security'.

A 2012 report issued by The Corner House provides a very clear and useful differentiation between what is referred to as 'lower-case' and 'upper-case' security.

The first type, which they label as 'lower-case' (which Neocleous refers to as 'social'), specifically applies to that of the working-class majority. This type of security, which relates to us all, include 'the mundane, plural protections of subsistence: holding the land you work and depend on; having a roof over your head; being able to count on clean water and regular seasons; knowing you can walk home without being assaulted by thieves or marauders; getting a good enough price for your crop to make ends meet; above all, knowing you have the right to the wherewithal for survival'.

The second type of security, which they label as 'upper-case' (and which Neocleous refers to as 'national'), applies specifically to the capitalist class. 'This is the Security that matters particularly to ruling elites: security of property and privilege, as well as access to enough force to contain any gains made by, or to counter the resistance of, the dispossessed or deprived.'

Actions taken under the umbrella of national security are done so for two main reasons: to protect ruling-class interests, and to feed the immensely profitable military-industrial complex. When major political figures own personal financial stock in the arms industry, as they often do in the US, these dual purposes go hand in hand. The fact that it has developed so intensely within the global epicentre of capitalist power (the US) is expected.

Karl Kautsky's 1914 essay on 'ultra-imperialism' described this inevitable stage clearly, stating that, as capitalist governments, in representing their profit sectors, were forced to seek out new industrial zones, 'the sweet dream of international harmony (free trade) quickly came to an end' because, 'as a rule, industrial zones overmaster and dominate agrarian zones'.

Hence, the massive outgrowth of industrial capitalism, in its constant search for new markets to exploit, can be accomplished only through widespread shows of force and power. Once the ball is rolling, this forceful expansion becomes a perpetual cycle through the opening of markets, the manufacturing and deployment of massively destructive armaments, and the rebuilding of markets.

In this process, the enormous loss of human life is viewed as a necessary and acceptable sacrifice in light of the potential profit to be made.

The final stage of capitalism, which has materialized over the course of the last 50 years or so, confirms these power relations based in the obsessive search for more profit. It is occupied by corporations that 'gobble down government expenditures, in essence taxpayer money, like pigs at a trough', and are facilitated by a 'security' industry that is funded 'with its official $612 billion defense authorization bill' that contributes to 'real expenditures on national security expenses to over $1 trillion a year' and 'has gotten the government this year (2015) to commit to spending $348 billion over the next decade to modernize our nuclear weapons and build 12 new Ohio-class nuclear submarines, estimated at $8 billion each'.

Ironically, by upholding upper-case Security, the working-class majority undermines its own security. As upper-case Security strengthens so too does our insecurity. Despite this, we remain active participants in maintaining the highly militarized status quo.

Patriotism and Penury

Realizing the difference between 'lower-case' and 'upper-case' security allows us to see how the interests of the ruling class can be inherited by the working-class majority through the construction of an 'outside threat' or common enemy:

Traditionally the business of lord or state, Security has always had an uneasy, ambivalent relationship with the lower-case 'securities' of the commons. The law was used to take people's land and subsistence away, but it could also occasionally be mobilised in their defence. The lord or the state's ability to make war was typically used against many of the common people both at home and abroad, but could also enlist a willing community to defend territory and livelihoods against common enemies.

Today, outside threats and common enemies are constructed through popular culture. Corporate news stations that are concerned only with ratings (thus, profit) choose sensationalist narratives that strike fear and shock in the viewer.

In this realm of profit-based 'news', there is no need for government propaganda because corporate 'news' outlets fill this role through sensationalism. The successful creation of foreign threats runs hand in hand with the dominant narrative of safety that is centred in upper-case Security.

It is also made possible through an intense conditioning of patriotism to which every US citizen is subjected from an early age, where as children we are forced to stand in formation in school classrooms with our hands to our hearts, citing a pledge of allegiance in drone-like fashion.

Children as young as five are made to participate in this ritual, with absolutely no idea what they're saying, why they're saying it, and what this odd pledge to a piece of cloth hanging in the corner means. As we grow older, this forced allegiance is layered with vague notions of pride and loyalty, all of which remain defined in the eyes of the beholder, with virtually no substance.

The notion of American exceptionalism serves as the foundation for this conditioning, and has roots in the cultural and religious practices of the original European settler-colonists. 'It's there in the first settlers' belief that they were conducting a special errand into the wilderness to construct a city on a hill in the name of their heavenly father', explains Ron Jacobs :

It is this belief that gave the Pilgrims their heavenly go-ahead to murder Pequot women and children and it was this belief that gave General Custer his approval to kill as many Sioux as he could. It made the mass murder of Korean and Vietnamese civilians acceptable to the soldiers at No Gun Ri and My Lai, and exonerated the officers who tried to hide those and many other war crimes from the world. It [gave] George Bush the only rationale he needed to continue his crusade against the part of the world that stands in the way of the more mercenary men and women behind his throne as they pursue their project for a new American century.

This notion has motivated the ruling classes of the US (and subsequently, the global capitalist order) to ride roughshod over the world's people in order to establish a global hegemony conducive to capitalist growth.

And it is this notion, often rooted in white-Christian supremacy, that has given many working-class Americans a false sense of superiority over the global population - whether labelled 'savages', 'uncivilized heathens', 'filthy Communists', 'backwards Arabs', or 'Muslim extremists'.

Because of its Eurocentric organization, the global capitalist onslaught that has dominated the modern world has blatantly racial underpinnings. The 'core nations' that have led this global hegemony (US, UK, France, Germany) tend to be 'lighter' on the skin-colour scale, while the 'periphery nations' that make up its dominated group (primarily in the global South) tend to be 'darker'.

This oppression based in white makes it easier for core-nation ruling classes to justify their actions to their own. As world-systems theorist Samir Amin tells us , for the peoples who live within periphery nations, 'colonization was (and is) atrocious. Like slavery, it was (and is) an attack on fundamental rights', and its perpetuation is motivated by material gain.

'If you want to understand why these rights were trampled on and why they still are being trodden on in the world today', explains Amin, 'you have to get rid of the idea that colonialism was the result of some sort of conspiracy. What was at stake was the economic and social logic that must be called by its real name: capitalism'.

In relation to the trajectory of imperialism, notions of American exceptionalism and patriotism are almost always fronts for deeper emotional calls to obey capitalism and white supremacy. These are effective and powerful tools.

Most answer this call because, quite frankly, we are incapable of comprehending the systemic exploitation that plagues us under capitalism. It is difficult for many to understand that cheering for the carpet-bombing of Arab and Muslim peoples worldwide, or publicly calling for the mass killing of black protestors in places like Ferguson and Baltimore, only strengthens the proverbial boot that crushes us in our daily lives.

This inability to understand is rooted in the aforementioned formal education system that prioritizes obedience over enquiry, with the ultimate goal of obstructing any degree of class consciousness from forming among American citizens.

For working-class kids in the US, this 'manufactured consent' doubles down on the existing desperation that materializes through a forced dependence on wage labour. Jobs and income are needed to sustain us, but often these do not exist. In the US, unemployment, a staple of capitalism, consistently fluctuates between 4% and 8%.

Underemployment, or the lack of jobs that provide a living wage, plagues another 25-30% of the population, with some estimates as high as 40% in the age of neoliberalism and globalization, where many former unionized, 'middle-class' jobs have been sent overseas. The poverty rate, as defined by the government, consistently rests between 13% and 15% of the US population. As of 2015, 15.8 million households (42.2 million Americans) suffer food insecurity.

Because of this bleak economic landscape, many in the US are forced to consider military enlistment. My own entry into military service, for which I served four years in the US Army, was strongly influenced by a lack of options. With college appearing too costly, the job market appearing too scarce, and with few resources to explore life as an adult, it was a relatively easy decision despite the severity that it posed.

Choosing an unknown future where I could find myself anywhere in the world, fighting whichever enemy my government chooses, and ultimately risking my life and well-being was, I concluded, a better option than wandering aimlessly into a world where my basic needs were not guaranteed, and where jobs, living wages, and affordable housing were scarce.

During my time in basic military training, I recall each soldier being asked why they enlisted. The most common answers were, 'because I needed a job' or 'I need money for college'.

My personal experience is confirmed by a 2015 field study conducted by Brad Thomson for the Institute of Anarchist Studies, where a series interviews with veterans concluded that 'a significant common thread is that they came from working-class backgrounds and overwhelmingly named financial reasons as their motivation to enlist'.

As one veteran, Crystal Colon, said: 'Most of them [recruits] are people that just want money for college, or medical care, or have a family and need money.'

Another veteran, Seth Manzel, sacrificed personal beliefs in order to satisfy material needs, saying: 'I was aware of the war in Afghanistan - it seemed misguided but I was willing to go. I heard the drums beating for Iraq. We hadn't invaded yet but it was pretty clear that we were going to. I was opposed to the idea, but again I didn't really have a lot of options as far as skills that could transfer to other jobs.'

In the face of material desperation, the addition of spiritual and emotional calls to duty becomes even more effective. As one interviewee recalled: 'When I joined, in all honesty, I was very, well, that way I would put it now is indoctrinated… your thinking is that this is your country, you're giving back, it harkens on those strings, and then there's the pragmatic side - how am I going to pay for college? I've got these problems, my family didn't plan well, financially, so I've gotta take care of my own, and how am I going to do that?' For me, the calls to duty were firmly planted through the repetitive ritual of pledging allegiance.

And, growing up in the 1980s, Hollywood had no shortage of blockbusters that glorified war and military service. From Red Dawn to Rambo to Top Gun, working-class kids like myself were (and continue to be) inundated with films that delivered passionate and emotional calls to serve.

It is no coincidence that US military recruiters strategically seek out economically marginalized populations to fill their ranks - which explains why the ranks are disproportionately Black, Latino, poor, and working class.

This modern practice reflects historical precedence. During the Vietnam War, African Americans and poor whites were drafted at much higher rates than their middle-class counterparts, leading to numerous allegations that 'blacks and the poor were intentionally used as cannon fodder'.

Today, African Americans represent 20% of the military population, but only 13% of the general population. In contrast, Whites make up about 60% of the military ranks, despite representing 78% of the general population. Only 7% of all enlistees hold a Bachelor's degree. Nearly 30% of military recruits in 2008 did not possess a high-school diploma, a large proportion of whom came from families with incomes of less than $40,000 a year.

The military (all branches combined) spends roughly $1 billion per year on advertising, which is specifically designed to pull at these emotional strings. The content of these ads, along with recruitment promises, are largely misleading. The money for college, whether through the GI Bill or the College Fund, is overestimated; the supposed job skills that can transfer to the civilian sector are almost always non-existent; and the compensation itself, which is skewed by 'housing' and 'meal' adjustments, is drastically overvalued.

During my time in service, it wasn't unusual to see soldiers using public assistance programmes and receiving Article-15 punishment for writing bad cheques in order to buy groceries.

At each of my duty stations - Ft. Jackson (South Carolina), Ft. Sill (Oklahoma), and Ft. Campbell (Kentucky) - pawnbrokers and cheque-cashing establishments were strategically positioned nearby, ready to exploit the many soldiers who needed their services. My last two years in service were sustained by using cheque-cashing services that charged up to 40% interest on advancing money one or two weeks ahead. For me, as for many, this was a necessary evil to sustain any semblance of a reasonable standard of living.

Conclusion

Under capitalism, the working-class majority constantly finds itself in a paradoxical state. Our entire lives are dominated by activities that directly benefit those who own the houses we live in, control the production of the commodities we buy, and own the businesses we work for. Our participation in these activities both strengthens those owners while also further alienating us from what would otherwise be productive and creative lives. Our activities increase the owners' social and political capital while at the same time separating us from our own families and communities.

This soul-sapping existence takes on a more severe form when we are called upon to fight and die in wars that, once again, only benefit these owners.

In our social capacities, we are conditioned to follow the status quo, despite its propensity to subject many of us to authoritative and militaristic avenues. The vague notion of patriotism ironically leaves us vulnerable to direct repression from our own government. For those who run our worlds, the use of the term 'patriot' in the Patriot Act was not arbitrary, just as the decision to replace 'defense' with 'security' in official policy discussions was not.

This play on words is very effective to an already dumbed-down population. And the cognitive dissonance it creates is blatant - while over 80% of Americans do not believe the government represents our interests, most of us go along with the authoritative policies stemming from this same government, as long as they're labelled patriotic or presented as being designed to keep 'the Other' in check.

Even blind faith in a Constitution that was written 229 years ago by wealthy elite landowners (many of whom were also slave-owners) strengthens this method of control, for it creates another vague form of Americanism that can be used for coercive means.

Just as patriotism is a naturally vague notion, so too are our respective ideas of freedom, liberty, justice, loyalty, and service to our country. So, when called upon to give our lives for the 'greater good', 'for God and country', for 'defense of the homeland', or 'for freedom', working-class Americans volunteer en masse, without question, are slaughtered and maimed en masse, and remain socially and economically disenfranchised en masse, despite our 'service'.

Capitalism's tendency toward mass dependence on wage labour (and, thus, widespread desperation) serves the military-industrial complex well. The politicians who facilitate the system know this, and actively seek to maintain this advantageous breeding ground. Arizona Senator John McCain's off-hand comments during his 2008 presidential campaign, warning about the dangers of 'making veterans' benefits so good that nobody will stay in service', alluded to this fact.

When tens of millions of working-class kids are faced with the dire options of McDonald's or the military, or perhaps college followed by impotent job markets and lifelong student-loan debt, the coercive nature of military recruitment tends to set in.

So, we join en masse, travel the world in metal machines, kill impoverished people whom we've never met, fight, get maimed, sometimes die… and return home still broke, living paycheque-to-paycheque, with inadequate benefits and medical care, struggling to support our families and keep our heads above proverbial water. All the while, arms manufacturers enjoy skyrocketing stock prices and unfathomable profits. And the American military machine keeps churning, spitting us all out in its tracks.

A Bayonet is a Weapon with a Worker on Each End: Rethinking Veterans Day

By Colin Jenkins

In 1885, the Knights of Labor organized a successful strike against Jay Gould's Missouri Pacific Railroad. In response to the strike, Gould famously growled, "I can hire half the working class to kill the other half."

Gould was right. In any hierarchical arrangement, where power and wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few, this tactic becomes available to those wielding this power over a vast majority. Among the masses of workers, slaves, and impoverished, there will inevitably be many willing to "police their own" in order to be in the masters' good graces. History is rife with these examples.

In ancient Greece, the "most prized" slaves were awarded authority positions over their fellow slaves, sometimes given special status as overseers. Masses of slaves captured or bought from nearby Scythia were transformed into an official police force, known as the Scythian Archers, and were "brought back to Athens to carry out the laws of the state," which basically amounted to controlling and strong-arming the slave population in the city. Naturally, their willingness to brutalize their fellow slaves was rewarded with special privileges.

On the colonial American slave plantation there were those who became actively complicit in the subjugation of their fellow slaves. In return for special privileges, these particular slaves agreed to stay close to the master, live among the master and his family, and report to the master any wrongdoings or subversive actions on the part of the masses of field slaves. William Wells Brown, a slave from Kentucky, later described the privileged status he was awarded for his "service": "I was a house servant - a situation preferable to that of a field hand, as I was better fed, better clothed, and not obliged to rise at the ringing of the bell, but about half an hour after."

In Gould's time, referred to by Mark Twain as "the Gilded Age" due to its insidious corruption and wealth inequality, social unrest among the masses of workers became commonplace. "New York City had 5,090 strikes, involving almost a million workers from 1880 to 1900; Chicago had 1,737 strikes, involving over a half a million workers in the same period." The economic elites of the time, like Gould, had two choices in addressing this unrest: (1) share a bigger piece of the pie with their workers, or (2) use force to beat workers into obedience. They chose the latter, taking Gould's words to heart, and proceeded to hire much of the working class to beat and kill the remainder into submission. Police forces and Pinkertons were amassed by the thousands to break strikes throughout the country. As consistent with history, Gould and his counterparts found plenty of workers willing to "serve" them in this role.

On a global scale, international warfare reflects this same dynamic. Throughout history, the ruling classes of each nation have utilized their working-class masses as tools of war, sending them off to fight and kill other members of the working class in remote parts of the world. The willingness of workers to follow these orders is preconditioned through various means, all of which stem from the need to maintain systems of hierarchy. The desperation that comes with being a worker in a coercive system creates immense pressure to merely survive. Today, those who find themselves choosing between minimum-wage jobs or unfathomable student loan debt are left with very little options in supporting themselves and their families. Material conditions force many into increasingly subservient positions. The mythological construction of boogeymen - savages, radicals, extremists, and terrorists - is all that is needed to create the illusion of an imminent threat. And grand tales of patriotism and "freedom" are all that is needed to persuade many to "volunteer" as tools of war.

So, we volunteer en masse. We literally hand over our bodies to powerful people whom we've never met, whose intentions and interests are not to be questioned, and whose authority over us is to be accepted as the natural order of things. We travel across the world, put our bodies in big metal machines, and take the lives of masses of working-class and impoverished people whom we've never met, whose intentions and interests are not to be questioned, and whose perceived threat to us is to be accepted as the natural order of things.

Much like the Scythian archer in ancient Athens, the house slave on a colonial Kentucky plantation, and the worker-turned-Pinkerton in Jay Gould's private army, we become willing tools of powerful interests. We choose to "serve" our masters. Many of us do this because we have no other options. Many of us do this because we are promised glory. Many of us do this because we hear the boogeyman coming. And many of us do this to simply "get in the masters' good graces." Whatever the reason, our unquestioned participation makes us complicit in maintaining the coercive systems of hierarchy that continue to dominate our world. And, despite the pats on our backs and choruses of "thank you" directed at us a few days a year, we remain collectively buried in this system, no different than our working-class counterparts throughout the world who we've been ordered to extinguish for the past two centuries.

The best way to honor Veterans is to question the system that creates us, uses us, and discards us. And the best way to honor our service is to ask ourselves who we really served and for what purpose.