Classism

The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

Large-scale political and economic challenges are confronting the US multi-national corporate elite. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Pfizer and scores of other multinational tax evaders are facing the triple threat of multi-billion dollar fines, the redistribution of their wealth and the possible reintroduction of equitable socio-economic programs, which could undermine their power.

I can’t believe it, but then I can believe it, or I must believe it. These are compliant times, where people in the US workforce are kowtowed and then for years these multiple generations in the workforce have thrown in the towel and been so bullied by the Politically Crap Corrective Collective Group-Think that they are not even human — they can’t even rage against the injustice befalling them. I have both taught and worked alongside people who just believe deep down there’s no sense in fighting the powers that be, and that’s it, too bad, sure, but what can we do about it?

The world is in bad shape. Every reasonably intelligent, aware, objective person in the world knows, if only intuitively, that something is very, very wrong. There should not be this many armed conflicts, this much anger, this much violence, this much unemployment and underemployment, this much debt, this much homelessness, hunger, poverty, this ever widening gap between the income and wealth of the super rich and everyone else, and this much distrust in government and politicians. The future does not look good; a financial crisis and a socioeconomic collapse are just around the corner.

In the great scheme of things a minor confusion or disturbance in the routine of less mainstream journalism, whether called progressive, left or radical — terms which themselves confuse more than they clarify — has no great consequences. No revolts occur and none are quelled. But the exchange in these pages, especially the observation that certain essays were rejected by what might be called the less — or sub-mainstream establishment — should draw our attention to a constant and serious problem in our analysis of events: the problem of intention.

When analyzing the issues of police brutality in America and the Black Lives Matter movement, a lot the most important aspects of the situation are rarely talked about.

Legalized chattel slavery did not die out because it was an abhorrent system but because the system of wage labour and debt money offered a more effective and useful economy of power for dominant owners.
— Tim Di Muzio, The 1% and the Rest of Us: A Political Economy of Dominant Ownership, p 100

In all countries socialists renounced the class struggle and proceeded instead to go to war for their fatherland and their people.
Jacques R. Pauwels, The Great Class War 1914-1918, p. 69

The constitutional order of the US, such as it exists, faces a profound crisis of legitimacy, rooted in the multi polarity of US society.

I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems— ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad.