Introduction
The world is experiencing an awakening, a realization that for all the apparent advances and progress made by humanity, there still exist deep-rooted prejudices that threaten to undermine the potential for real and lasting change for the betterment of all. We live in a time when reactionary views have re-emerged (or rather, re-surfaced) to take hold in the minds of those unwilling to accept differences and embrace diversity. The current and looming social, political, and environmental upheavals have made plain the necessity to celebrate and affirm the diversity of life in its many forms and facets and differences, while also tearing down the structural, systemic, institutional, interpersonal, and personal inequities that exploitative and oppressive social constructs, barriers, and methods of stratification inseparably enforce.
While capitalists and the ruling class benefit from the exploitative and oppressive social constructs, barriers, and methods of stratification that artificially separate and divide us, the exploitation and oppression faced by marginalized groups in the socioeconomic and sociopolitical enforcement of those constructs is materially real (indeed, the exploitation and oppression are inseparable from those social constructs, barriers, and methods of stratification), and the experiences of exploited and oppressed peoples must not be ignored or sidelined in the fight against the capitalist, (neo)colonialist, settler-colonialist, and imperialist systems.
On Intersectionality
The workers, students, and exploited and oppressed peoples of the United States and all nations around the world are currently facing inordinate difficulties due to the restraints of the COVID-19 crisis, even though in many places lockdowns have been lifted. Because of worsening supply chain disruptions, accessibility to the various essentials of life has become limited, in regard to nutrition, housing, healthcare, social interaction, technology, and basic supplies in general. These staples are often taken for granted, and their removal is causing great instability in the lives of workers and the unemployed alike.
It is not difficult to see that these types of financial upheavals make functioning well, whether vocationally, academically, or socially, virtually impossible. We must remember, however, that these hardships, faced by most workers and students only in times of crisis, are the norm for a significant portion of the population. These adversities are the daily reality for the oppressed, marginalized, disadvantaged, impoverished, and disabled. If these misfortunes are deemed intolerable in times of crisis, when even the most privileged struggle, why then are they deemed acceptable when only the underprivileged are affected?
This crisis is exposing the inherent inequities of capitalism. In light of the climate crisis, of which the current COVID-19 crisis is merely a foretaste, how can we continue to justify the knowledge rationing that stems from a for-profit post-secondary educational system? How can we continue to justify the healthcare rationing that stems from a for-profit healthcare system? How can we continue to justify institutions and systems that base our worth as individuals on our ability or inability to be “productive members of society”?
Surely, if access to the essentials necessary for functioning, let alone survival, can be temporarily guaranteed in times of crisis, they can be permanently provided as a baseline of subsistence regardless of the circumstances. Otherwise, we are admitting to ourselves that we believe access to education, healthcare, and the basic means of survival must be reserved for the privileged.
If, for example, moratoriums can be placed on rents and mortgages during lockdowns, the rents and mortgages can be canceled when the lockdowns are lifted. For another example, access to an equitable college education is a human right, and should be provided as a public service. If we continue to maintain that a quality college education is a privilege for those who can afford it, or for those who have attained certain scores on standardized tests (which are inherently racist, classist, and ableist), then we must admit we believe that education is to be reserved for those who benefit the most from capitalist exploitation, neoliberal apartheid, and the socioeconomic and sociopolitical subjugation of the exploited, oppressed, marginalized, disadvantaged, impoverished, and disabled.
To quote and paraphrase Colin Barnes, “You can’t confront any form of inequality in a capitalist, neoliberal, free market society, because the whole thrust of free market-led economics is about competition and maximization of profit. And in those kinds of environments, people who are oppressed, marginalized, impoverished, or disabled will always be disadvantaged”.
In other words, under capitalism, social worth is determined by one’s productivity. Capitalism, at its core, is about the maximization of profit margins, accumulation and commodification of resources, and competition. Under any form of capitalism, whether “friendly” or otherwise, the oppressed, marginalized, impoverished, disadvantaged, and disabled will always be considered a burden, because unless we can, by our labor-power, produce surplus labor-value for the profit of capitalists, we have no social worth.
As we look back at the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the COVID-19 crisis serves to remind us of the difficulties faced by the disadvantaged in “good times”. In “good times”, the needs of the disadvantaged are considered an afterthought at best, negligible at worst, and a burden always. Our inclusion in interaction, if it exists at all, is sequestered. Our spaces and means of accessibility, if provided at all, are not integrated into the infrastructure, but tacked on as addenda.
This issue is pervasive throughout the entirety of American, and indeed, all capitalist, neoliberal society. It is indicative of systemic, structural, institutional, interpersonal, and individual discriminatory practices and policies. We should have no desire to defend the socioeconomic and sociopolitical systems that encourage the Malthusian and Social Darwinian nonsense that has historically and detrimentally defined the American Way. We must refuse to be defined by our ability or inability to outperform others in the vocational and academic arenas. Our worth is not determined by our productivity.
In light of this, learning more about groups of social identity helps provide a frame of reference for acknowledging and understanding the experiences of others, and can bolster the solidarity and intersectionality that are vital in combating systems of oppression. The idea that all oppression can be reduced to a single input factor or type of oppression is profoundly wrong, especially because it imposes linearity onto inherently nonlinear social interactions. Different groups experience oppression differently, and, consequently, any effective and equitable solutions to that oppression must take into consideration those differences. Different social conditions produce different results in different contexts, even if the interacting social components are identical or at least largely congruent. In other words, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to these problems.
On Power and Privilege
As with any problem, the first step to solving a problem like systemic inequity is to recognize that it exists. This means evaluating the historical and material conditions of existing social, economic, and political arrangements, and assessing firstly what the interlocking components are, secondly the dynamics of how these components interact, and thirdly what conditions produce what results in what contexts in that interaction, at the microdynamic, mezzodynamic, macrodynamic, and hyperdynamic levels of abstraction.
It is important to keep in mind that because the way our brains process and integrate information involves mental maps and priority filters, biased through gradient descent weights, that can distort or alter sensory input towards a particular cognitive output bias, it is necessary to be aware of these biases when analyzing how we perceive, interpret, prefer, and select the informational inputs, whether externally or internally induced, to which we pay attention. It is important to note that these mental maps, in and of themselves, are not necessarily positive or negative; rather, it is the method in which these cognitive outputs are applied or not applied in subsequent social behavior that warrants valuative judgment.
We’ve been raised in a society that teaches that capitalism, especially free market capitalism, is the only viable economic model, and because of this social conditioning, we are more likely to accept this assessment and not investigate other economic models. It’s analogous to being raised to believe only Christianity (or any other religion) holds truth: it makes us less likely to entertain that it might not hold all, or even any, of the answers to life’s questions. There’s a general inability to see things from any perspective other than through the lens of our upbringing. It’s not just the fundamentalist or Cold War-era trappings, although those certainly don’t help. The conservative outlook on a lot of social issues is very linear and binary, and such an outlook makes it extremely difficult to reconcile the fact that other cultures and ways of life exist. It’s sort of an ideological Gimbal lock, in that the strict binary and linear outlook allows for very few permutations and has little-to-no room for any complexity beyond perturbation to linear dynamics to compensate.
The problem with this outlook is that virtually all social interactions have nonlinear dynamics, and the same social components can produce different results in different situations (in other words, they’re divergent). Conversely, different social components can produce the same results in different situations (in other words, they’re convergent). The way interactions occur within society involves social and cultural priority filters, based on historical and material conditions, that shape the outcome of various social interactions. Because the outcome of social interactions is context specific, there is seldom a one-to-one input-output correlation in social situations. Regardless of whether the historical and material conditions, or the social and cultural relations are biased through gradient descent weights, are identical or not, one can get completely different outputs, even with the same physical or environmental inputs. Therefore, it is fallacious to suggest that, just because one person or one group of people can succeed in specific circumstances, others should be able to as well, and therefore, the implications of “bootstrap theory” – namely, that people create their own opportunities and lift themselves up – are erroneous.
Power and privilege are examples of what happens when these types of weighted social priority filters are applied directly to existing social relations. Power and privilege, in and of themselves, are not necessarily positive or negative, but, like with cognitive biases, it is the method in which they are applied or not applied that is crucial: if power and privilege are used to the advantage of or biased toward the benefit of those with power and privilege and to the disadvantage of or biased against the benefit of those without, exploitation and oppression are the inevitable social outputs.
A necessary aspect of recognizing and unpacking one’s privilege is learning how to accept and embrace the diversity of social interactions. In order to resist, challenge, and dismantle oppression, we must first understand the historical and material realities that shape it and sustain it. In general, a liberal worldview, when critical of oppression at all, rightly recognizes the negative effects of power structures of enforcement like racism, sexism, transmisia, etc., but because this worldview generally isn’t framed in system-wide terms, the root cause is often missed and social symptomatology is conflated with social etiology.
Even when a liberal analysis is able, by pure chance, to produce a macro-criticism, the solution is still asserted to be individual. This phenomenon is readily seen, for example, in the “more women CEOs” trope common in bourgeois feminism or in the phenomena of “rainbow capitalism” or “green capitalism”. The motivation for these types of responses is not inherently maladaptive or toxic, but nevertheless fails to account for any structural solution to, for example, toxic masculinity in cis-men (or to those who have internalized the toxic masculinity of this cultural hegemonic narrative), the harmful, destructive, and abusive behavior of those who have power, or for the inherent inequity and unsustainability of capitalism. In general, liberal viewpoints, when critical of exploitation and oppression at all, fail to account for the fact that these justification structures prop up, and indeed, are inseparable from, system-wide exploitation and oppression, stemming from the inequity inherent in the types of hierarchical power structures that specifically siphon resources upwards; namely capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, settler-colonialism, and neoliberalism.
In contrast, a conservative worldview does not deny that the exploitative and oppressive system of capitalism, neoliberal imperialism, and neocolonial and settler-colonial expansion are what provide the upper classes with their amenities and privileges. However, because conservatives generally wish to maintain some degree of subtlety, so that this system may be viewed in a positive light, mythologies of justification, through what Antonio Gramsci called “cultural hegemony”, must be concocted to maintain an illusion of justice, be it through propaganda like Malthusianism, Social Darwinism, Prosperity Gospel theology, or white supremacist lies like the American Dream, which in turn inevitably lead to, and are inseparable from, the institutional entrenchment of reactionary viewpoints like racism, sexism, xenomisia, homomisia, transmisia, etc.
In other words, because the conservative outlook ignores that, for example, poverty is often not a result of personal shortcomings (for example, one can do everything right financially and still flounder), there is a tendency to assume the commonality between results is directly correlated to particular people or people groups and not to socioeconomic or sociopolitical conditions being similar. One may, for example, see a tendency for certain groups of people in America specifically or the Global North/Imperial Core generally to do well, and other people to not do as well, and may come to the completely erroneous conclusion that there’s something innate about socially successful people that gives them an advantage, and, by implication, something innate about socially unsuccessful people that gives them a disadvantage.
Even if it were possible for anyone to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” (it’s not; no one is an island unto themselves; nobody exists in a vacuum), racialized and marginalized groups in the American Empire specifically and the Global North/Imperial Core generally are not automatically exposed to the combination of environmental and socioeconomic conditions that the average straight white person takes for granted that would make pulling themselves up – i.e., “succeeding” (in the eyes of the institution) – a doable task.
On White Privilege
For Americans particularly, it can be difficult to come to grips with the fact that the historical and material conditions of post-colonialism and American imperialism have fostered privilege. People fall victim to reactionary views like racism or sexism at least in part because they refuse to acknowledge they have privilege. In a similar way, people fall victim to the scapegoating tendencies of conspiracy theories at least in part because they refuse to acknowledge the open conspiracy of capitalism and imperialism. There is no force in the shadows pulling the strings, no secret cabal or society plotting in the wings. Instead, we have been socially conditioned to celebrate the corporatocratic despotism of capitalism-imperialism as the herald of freedom, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
As such, in order to say that this privilege doesn’t exist, one would essentially have to ignore all of world history from at least 1492 to today. After the end of feudalism until the 20th century, virtually every country in the world was under the control of and exploited and oppressed for the benefit of European colonial powers, or else was fighting to keep colonialism from happening, or else vying themselves for the spoils of colonialism.
Capitalism was in no way born from the “free and voluntary association between individuals governed by rational self-interest”. Capitalism was born from the brutal exploitation and oppression of the poor, the mass bloodshed and proletarianization of the European peasantry, and the mass enslavement and genocide of Indigenous Peoples.
The European colonizers who settled in what is now called the Americas certainly did not “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps”. Their ability to survive and thrive in what is now called America was precisely a result of the genocide of the Indigenous peoples of the First Nations of Turtle Island and the forced labor of enslaved Africans, the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (under the encomienda system), and the indentured proletariat of Europe. This system of oppression and exploitation is exactly what allowed capitalism to emerge and dominate in global commerce, and exactly what allowed the mass accumulation of capital.
Capitalism was founded on genocide, slavery, and the enclosure of the commons, the same genocide, slavery, and enclosure of the commons upon which the United States and all settler-colonial regimes were founded.
The historical and material conditions of post-colonialism and current Euro-American capitalist neoliberal imperialism perpetuate the social dynamics that produce poverty, and require, indeed, are inseparable from, sociopolitical narratives and power structures of enforcement; hence, racism, ethnonationalism, xenomisa, nativism, misogyny, ableism, cis-heteronormativism, and corporatism.
What Is Capitalism?
What then is capitalism? Capitalism is a scarcity-based socioeconomic distribution system in which the access to natural resources and the conversion of these resources to socially-useful products (i.e., commodities), through operation of a business and/or use of landed/private property -that is, access to capital and/or the means of production – is privileged to those individuals and corporations with the legal licensure or charter, and in which the division of labor within said business is hierarchically managed through the hiring of wage labor, so that those performing the acts of labor which convert resources into commodities have little-to-no say in either the production and distribution of those commodities or in the management of the business. This commodity production hinges on the exploitation of labor, in which the worker who produces the commodity produces more value than the employer pays them in wages; in other words, the worker is producing more than they’re getting in compensation. [Note: For more information, see Karl Marx’s concepts of metabolic rift and alienation]
Thus, capitalism, by definition, is legally-backed (i.e., state-sanctioned) proprietorship; that is, capitalism is the legal entitlement to operate a business and/or use landed property. A person who is not a chartered proprietor is by definition not a capitalist; ergo, such a person cannot have equal opportunity within a capitalist paradigm.
Why Communism?: A Thought Experiment
Because natural resources are finite, or scarce, humans, being generally both social and productive, are faced with the decision of how to best divide access to resources and subsequently how to distribute the products of use derived from those resources. Socioeconomics deals with how societies decide to allocate access to resources, how to produce goods and services from those resources, and how to distribute those goods and services produced, while sociopolitics deals primarily with who among society makes and enforces those kinds of decisions.
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that there exists a powerful collective entity that maintains a monopoly on force (force being defined as the power to exert social, political, and economic will through the use of coercion, threats, violence, etc.). Let’s call this entity ‘the State’. Let us also say, for the sake of argument, that this powerful entity collects from those under its social, political, and economic will certain regular tributes as payments for services rendered. Let’s call these regular tributes “taxes”. Now, in the collection of these taxes, the citizen knows that the State, because it has a monopoly on force, does not need to literally threaten to enact violence every time these taxes are collected. The very fact that that monopoly of force is in the hands of the State is usually enough to deter tax evasion (we’ll ignore for now the existence of legal loopholes that allow for tax incentives, credits, etc.). Would it make sense to call the dynamic of this exchange between the State and the citizen voluntary?
It stands to reason that the only possible scenario in which this exchange could be reasonably considered voluntary is if the citizens themselves had direct input into what those taxes were used for, and if the State collecting and utilizing those taxes was either completely comprised of or else directly accountable to those citizens, and that more the direct control citizens have of that collection process, the more the need for States and taxes withers away. Let us call these types of voluntary sociopolitical arrangements ‘democracy’. This analogy should by no means be interpreted as an endorsement of libertarianism. It is merely being used for the sake of drawing a comparison.]
Let us now imagine that there also exist powerful people that maintain a monopoly on resources, or the means of production (whether in access, production, or distribution of these resources). Let’s call these people “capitalists”. Let us also say, for the sake of argument, that these powerful people extract from those under their employ, those workers who do the bulk of the accessing, producing, and distributing of those resources, their collective labor-power, or ability to produce these commodities, or products that have social use-value, in order for capitalists to make a profit. Let’s call this extraction process “capitalism”.
Now, in the extraction of this labor-power, the worker knows that capitalists, because they have a monopoly on the means of production, do not need to literally threaten starvation, poverty, and overall ill-health every time the worker arrives to provide labor-power under the capitalist mode of production. The very fact that that monopoly of resources is in the hands of capitalists is usually enough to deter unemployment (we’ll ignore for now the existence of welfare safety nets that provide for those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, etc.). Would it make sense to call the dynamic of this exchange between capitalists and the worker voluntary?
It stands to reason that the only possible scenario in which this exchange could be reasonably considered voluntary is if the workers themselves had direct input into the process of production, whether in access, production, or distribution of the commodities or in the use of their collective labor-power or in the compensation for that labor-power, and that those extracting those resources and labor-power was either completely comprised of or else directly accountable to those workers, and that the more direct control workers have of the extraction processes, the more the need for capitalism withers away. Let us call these types of voluntary socioeconomic arrangements ‘socialism’.
Let us finally call the mode of society in which democratic arrangements of citizens and socialist arrangements of workers maintain direct control over resources ‘communism’. It then follows, given the existing social needs and the existing levels of production, that communism is the most voluntary arrangement of society possible.
On American Conservatism and the Religious Right
It’s not by accident that the loudest apologetics for American capitalism and rhetorical dispersion of anti-Communist propaganda come from people like Mike Pence and the Religious Right, in the tradition of the so-called Protestant Work Ethic. American Conservative Christianity, whether of Republican or Libertarian extraction, is a bizarre and disturbing phenomenon. There seems to be a tendency to promote the literalism and inerrancy of the Christian Bible within these movements, yet also to conveniently ignore the over 300 verses (from both the Old and the New Testaments) that explicitly mandate social and economic justice. If there’s any one theme or motif that is consistent throughout the entirety of the Christian Bible, it’s that those who maintain the oppression and exploitation of the poor and destitute, especially for personal gain, are worse than contemptible in the eyes of God. Of all the positions one can twist and distort the Christian Bible into supporting, the defense of capitalism is arguably one of the least tenable and unravels with any degree of serious scrutiny.
There’s an irony in the Religious Right pushing to end government spending on programs like Medicaid and SNAP benefits while bursting out in patriotic hymns when that same government increases the already absurd amount of military spending, already more than the defense expenditure of the next 26 countries in the world combined, for the sole purpose of maiming, killing, and destroying for profit.
It’s not by accident that the Religious Right dispenses anti-science rhetoric and wants Americans to remain ignorant of things like evolution, climate change, and comprehensive sex education. There is a correlation between the degree of suppression of education and sexuality and the suppression of marginalized groups in patriarchal-dominated societies. Knowledge rationing serves as a method of control. The more ignorant individuals are of their own bodies and their processes, the less control they have over their own choices and decisions in relation to patriarchal society.
For example, an individual who is not allowed to choose whether or not they have children is functionally treated as chattel. To say that all persons capable of bearing children should have children and are thus somehow incomplete without them is to treat these individuals as serfs to the chauvinistic whims of patriarchal-oriented cis-men; little more than “glorified housemaids” and “baby factories” with no place for dreams and aspirations, fully submissive to the cis-man, second-class human beings.
If the Religious Right is not going to be consistent and commit themselves to protecting life after birth by fighting against war, poverty, the death penalty, and other forms of sanctioned killing, they would do best to stop calling themselves pro-life, because they’re not. For the most part, those who call themselves pro-life could care less about “the sanctity of life”, because to them, as soon as that baby is born, “it’s just another welfare parasite that needs to get a job”. It’s time for the Religious Right to wake up and realize that most people who call themselves “pro-life” do not support life at all. [Note: For more information, see Silvia Federici’s insights in Caliban and the Witch]
As such, short-term relief without long-term solutions does little to address the systemic issues involved with poverty. The class structures inherent within the capitalist mode of production not only facilitate but necessitate socioeconomic disparity. In other words, poverty is a built-in outcome in the capitalist mode of production. Because the mass accumulation of capital within scarcity-based distribution systems means that those without access to capital do not have equal opportunity, the socioeconomic hierarchical power structures inherent within the maintenance of capitalism, in such a scarcity-based distribution system, necessitate inequity. That is axiomatic.
Additionally, most of the self-reliance rhetoric of American libertarians and/or small government Republicans was popularized in the pro-segregationist/anti-civil rights movement, especially the ultra-right-wing, conspiracy theory-promoting John Birch Society (which, unsurprisingly, is the exact same movement that the anti-abortion movement emerged from; it’s quite literally a straight line connecting the two movements). When someone like Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan (or more recently Ron Paul) was saying the government should stay out of people’s lives, or that the Supreme Court has too much power, they were referring to the government regulations and Supreme Court rulings that (at least nominally) ended Jim Crow. Many of the current economic regulations were put in place to force businesses to integrate. So much of, if not all, deregulatory rhetoric is covert racism/white supremacism. So when someone like Donald Trump pushed deregulation, to those who realize this, it’s obvious he’s racist and is simply continuing decades of anti-integration policies.
On Gun-Control, Toxic Masculinity, and White Supremacism
The combined effect of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, the Steel Crisis, White-Flight, and Reaganomics in the 80s reversed most of the advancements made in urban communities since the Civil Rights Act. When marginalized people fought back against institutionalized racism within law enforcement and the justice system (during the Civil Rights movement, for example, when the Black Panthers formed militias to protect black communities from racist police brutality), Republicans and the NRA promoted gun control like it was divinely inspired. Nixon did it. Reagan did it. Republicans could care less about “constitutional rights” when it comes to anyone else but themselves. The second amendment only matters to them when it’s white Christian cis-men pulling the trigger. The first amendment only matters to them when far-right bigots are (rightly) being called out on their hatred. (Never mind the inherent problems of relying on two hundred-year old documents penned by abusive white supremacist genocidal human traffickers for any sort of germane sociopolitical advice).
White supremacists, the people actually committing the overwhelming majority of gun-related crimes and acts of reactionist violence in the American Empire, don’t stock up on guns to protect themselves against the government. White supremacists stock up on guns to protect their “ideal” of white supremacy and intimidate anyone who threatens “traditional American values” with mass shootings and acts of reactionist violence. It’s no wonder that right-wing hate groups rallied to the support of Trump, who pandered to their views.
No amount of “being nice” to these white supremacists, racists, and neo-fascists, who almost invariably are behind these mass shootings, will stop them, especially once they commit to implementing their ideology. Fascism and its ilk, and the toxic masculinity that comes with such views, are not to be debated as if they were legitimate sociopolitical stances; they are to be confronted and crushed. Playing the “let’s just get along”/”I don’t see color” card is a large part of the reason why Trump was elected president, and a large part of what enables and emboldens school shooters and violent reactionaries. When neo-fascists, white supremacists, and racists are given a platform to speak, this is what happens. Their hatred spreads like a weed. Fascism, white supremacism, and racism must be pulled up by the roots and destroyed utterly.
On Bases and Superstructures
Dealing with the problem of state violence, police brutality, and military aggression without dealing with the underlying societal structures that give birth to that violence, brutality, and aggression is like treating social symptomatology without treating social etiology. In Marxian terms, it’s the concept of the “base and the superstructure”. If one only abolished the problematic superstructure, in this case the state, the police, and the military, without abolishing the base from which it arises, namely private property, capitalism, slavery, and settler-colonialism, the superstructure has only been negated (in the Hegelian sense) and will manifest in different forms. The negation must be negated.
The Marxian concept of the base and superstructure really helps explain how the effects of institutional racism and social inequity can persist even after the social institutions of slavery and segregation have been nominally ended. This relates, in addition to the Hegelian concept of “negation”, to the Aristotelian concepts of “form” and “content”, in that, while the form (in the Aristotelian sense) of the superstructures representing existing social relations have (at least nominally) changed, the content (in the Aristotelian sense) remains the same, and is subsequently negated (in the Hegelian sense).
So, in context, while the societal superstructures have at least nominally changed, in the sense that chattel slavery is no longer legal, prison is a socially-acceptable form of slavery; and while Jim Crow and segregation have nominally ended, there is still structural segregation, through redlining, gentrification, gerrymandering, voter ID laws, etc.. While colonialism has nominally ended, through neoliberalism and imperialism, the United States, and other developed nations of the Global North and the Imperial Core, maintain hegemonic domination. This is the difference between de facto structural discrimination and domination and de jure structural discrimination and domination.
Because the base, or content, of existing social relations remains intact, the superstructure, or form, of existing social relations has merely been negated into a different manifestation of institutional discrimination: slavery negated into segregation, segregation negated into mass incarceration, private prisons and the “War on Drugs”, colonialism negated into neocolonialism, neoliberalism, imperialism, and the “War on Terror”. In each of these forms of superstructure, the police (domestically) and the military (abroad) have been the means through which the subjugation, exploitation, and oppression of racialized communities, the oppressed, the marginalized, the disadvantaged, and the impoverished, have been brutally enforced.
So this is the reason why we still have institutionalization of racism, because the institutional structures remain. Even though their form has changed, their content is still the same. Even though the prison-industrial complex and the war on drugs looks different than Jim Crow or slavery, the underlying way in which society is structured, socioeconomically and sociopolitically, is the same. Similarly with the military-industrial complex: under neoliberalism, neocolonialism looks different from colonialism, but the power dynamics are the same, and the exploitation, oppression, and resource extraction remains. Even though the social relations have manifested differently, the social conditions that give rise to institutionally discriminatory superstructures remain.
Consequently, this is directly analogous to why the abolition of the State is not possible until after the abolition of the historical and material conditions that give rise to the State: namely, private property and class antagonisms.
Indeed, the relationship between the abolition of the State and the abolition of private property and class antagonism share many similarities with the abolition of the police and prisons; in that, in the same way that abolition of the police and prisons is predicated upon the abolition of private property, which the police and prison system exist to enforce, in order for the abolition of the State to be meaningful, the material conditions and social relations from which the State emerges, namely class antagonisms and private property, must be abolished first. Indeed, they are co-requisite processes.
If one where to simply abolish the State first, without abolishing the material conditions and social relations from which it emerges, one would still have private property and class antagonisms, which would mean that those who possess private property, in order to maintain their position as the exploiting and oppressing class, would simply hire a private army to protect that property, and the State and the police would simply reemerge.
This is why the Marxist-Leninist position (at least in this regard) is the correct one: the process of dismantling class antagonisms and private property must occur first, and the State cannot wither away so long as these social relations continue to exist – that is, until the complete abolition of those class antagonisms and of privatization occurs.
The purpose, then, of the dictatorship of the proletariat (that is, the enforced prioritization of meeting human social needs above the profit motive) is to abolish the the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (that is, the enforced prioritization of the profit motive above meeting human social needs), and remove the exploiting and oppressing class from their positions of power and privilege, since the process of collectivization and disenclosure of the commons cannot begin without their overthrow. Additionally, the State must be smashed and transformed into a Workers’ and Oppressed Peoples’ State, in order to keep the reactionary elements of the exploiting and oppressing class from reestablishing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, until the complete abolition of private property and class antagonisms is carried out.
On a global scale, this whole process must include the self-determination, through liberation by any means necessary, of the exploited and oppressed in the colonized nation-states, and the self-determination and liberation by any means necessary of the exploited and oppressed within settler-colonial regimes. In order to keep settler-colonial powers from reestablishing colonialism, the Workers’ and Oppressed Peoples’ State must protect against colonialism, neoliberalism, and imperialism . Once colonialism, neoliberalism, and imperialism cease to exist, then the work of abolishing private property, abolishing class antagonisms, and the disenclosure of the commons can begin, which would lead to the withering away of the State.
In sum, until the base of existing social relations is removed, these types of superstructures, and the state violence, police brutality and military aggression that enforces them, will simply continue negating into different forms and reemerging in different manifestations. The negation must be negated. While absolutely necessary, it’s not sufficient to merely end chattel slavery, to merely end segregation, to merely end the prison-industrial and military-industrial complexes. The roots of capitalism-imperialism – namely, enclosure of the commons, class antagonisms, and private property – and the inseparably connected reactionism and bigotry – like white supremacism, ableism, and patriarchy – that enforce these roots must be dug out and utterly eradicated, the base of existing social relations must be utterly dismantled, and the exploitative and oppressive power structures that in enforce and maintain it, namely the police and the military, and the prison-industrial and the military-industrial complexes, must be abolished.
The police, in the context of settler-colonialism and capitalism, exist to protect private property, and the military exists to protect hegemony over resource extraction, respectively. For the abolition of the state, police, and military to be meaningful, their raison d’être, private property, class antagonisms, and the enclosure of the commons, must also be abolished. In other words, merely settling for treating the symptoms of social inequity is no longer viable (if it ever was); the causes must at long last be treated. Therefore, in the context of these historical and material conditions and social relations, the reason racism still exists is that the socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions that foster it still exist. If those conditions which cause, enforce, and perpetuate reactionism continue to be ignored, inequity will continue to thrive and prejudice continue to flourish.
Similarly, the bigotry seen behind anti-immigration rhetoric and policies is nothing new. Trump did not invent deportations or border walls or indefinite detainment. These are merely modern extensions of the genocide and settler-colonialism encapsulated within Manifest Destiny and the hegemonic domination of the Monroe Doctrine, stripped of the intellectual facade. The American Empire has had far-right-wing tendencies since its inception. Since the Red Scares and the Cold War, the Overton Window has been pushed so far right that positions that should be the default starting points of basic dignity and respect (i.e. much of the current platform of the Democratic Party) are seen as radical and leftist. The fact that we are still arguing whether people have basic human rights is beyond ridiculous.
So impeaching or voting out obvious reactionaries like Trump, on its own, was never going to solve anything. Unless the interlocking ideological plagues of right-wing ideology, hatred, ethnonationalism, xenomisia, racism, nativism, misogyny, ableism, cis-heteronormativism, corporatism, and neoliberal imperialism are eradicated once and for all, there will be more like Trump, like Bolsonaro, like May, like Johnson, like Le Pen, like Salvini, like Kurz, like Orban, like Jansa, like Modi, like Netanyahu who will spring up to take their places.
Bigotry deserves no platform. Fascism is not to be debated: it is to be confronted and crushed. So-called “moderates”, like Biden, or Clinton, or Trudeau, or Macron, will do little-to-nothing to stem the rising tide of the far-right, as these “moderates” are utterly beholden to maintaining the status quo and protecting capital and imperial interests, nor will center-leftist progressives dedicated to mere reformism, like Warren or Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez, so long as they continue to espouse the idea that capitalism can be fixed, or that the Global North’s neoliberal policies and imperialist hegemony can be maintained. Capitalism-imperialism and its ills cannot be reformed.
On the American Dream
So it’s an easy comfort for liberal and progressive Americans to look at the rabid racism and xenomisia in the words and actions of Trump and others and say, “This isn’t what America is about. This isn’t a reflection of the American Way.” It’s easy to imagine that this bigotry and vile hatred is an ideological illness corrupting the original ideals this country is said to have been founded on. It is easy to think this, but it’s not true. This is America.
Many conservatives will point out that similar deportations and separations as those that manifested under the Trump administration happened under the Obama administration and are currently happening under the Biden administration – and while the intent behind this obfuscation and deflection of responsibility is completely disingenuous, they are nevertheless factually correct. One could point to the Dakota Access Pipeline fiasco, the intentionally bungled response to Ferguson and Baltimore, and the ongoing Flint Crisis for similar examples. The horrific conditions present in I.C.E. concentration camps were made possible by the willful ineptitude and ethical compromises enacted by previous administrations.
Nothing about Trump was anomalous, and this cuts to the heart of the futility of Democrats’ pale imitation of resistance. These fascistic tendencies bubbling to the political surface did not arise ex nihilo but are in fact the logical conclusion of the internal contradictions upon which the United States was founded. Donald Trump is the American Dream stripped of its intellectual facade. In order to defeat Trumpism, America must confront its racist, settler-colonialist, genocidal origins. To eradicate the plague of white supremacism and the so-called stochastic acts of reactionist violence that follow in its wake, we must at long last confront the reality that naive idealists have continually ignored whenever these reactionary ideologies raise themselves against any semblance of progress: this is America.
White supremacism is not a fringe element that has crept into and infected the heart of the American Dream. The American Empire was built of, by, and for the benefit of white supremacists, and was birthed in blood and tears. From the genocide of Indigenous peoples to the enslavement of Africans, this is America. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to internment camps for Japanese-Americans in World War II, this is America. From Jim Crow to COINTELPRO, this is America. From the KKK to the NRA, this is America. From the Red and Lavender Scares and McCarthyism to the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, this is America. From the School of the Americas to Dark Ops and Extraordinary Rendition, this is America. From the Dirty Wars to the Iran-Contra Affair, this is America. From segregation to mass incarceration, this is America. From private schools to private prisons, this is America. From lynchings to forced assimilation, this is America. From the conditions that led to the Birmingham Uprisings to those that led to the Detroit Uprisings, this is America. From Timothy McVeigh to Dylann Roof, this is America. From George Wallace to Richard Spencer, this is America. From the repression of the Stonewall Uprising to the hatred behind the Orlando mass shooting, this is America. From Columbine to Charlottesville, this is America. From reservations (concentration camps), residential schools (assimilation camps), and plantations (death camps) to deportations, detainment centers, and overflow facilities, this is America. From George Washington to Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to William Clinton to George W. Bush to Donald Trump, this is America.
Don’t speak to us of the American Dream. The American Dream is Manifest Destiny. The American Dream is the Monroe Doctrine. The American Dream is the Roosevelt Corollary. The American Dream is the Pequot Massacre. The American Dream is the Trail of Tears. The American Dream is Wounded Knee. The American Dream is Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The American Dream is Tuskegee. The American Dream is Operation Paperclip. The American Dream is Operation Gladio. The American Dream is the Gehlen Organizaition. The American Dream is MK-ULTRA. The American Dream is Operation Condor. The American Dream is the Cold War. The American Dream is Haymarket and May Day and Bloody Thursday. The American Dream is the House of Unamerican Activities. The American Dream is Abu Ghraib. The American Dream is Guantanamo Bay. The American Dream is napalm in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The American Dream is using Agent Orange in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The American Dream is using white phosphorus in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. The American Dream is using depleted uranium in Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait. The American Dream is using tear gas and rubber bullets used on civilian protestors. The American Dream is the Tulsa Massacre. The American Dream is Blair Mountain. The American Dream is Utuado. The American Dream is the MOVE bombing. The American Dream is Flint. The American Dream is Ferguson and Baltimore. The American Dream is Pine Ridge. The American Dream is Standing Rock. The American Dream is border walls. This is America.
Don’t speak to us about the American Dream. The American Dream is a white supremacist lie. The United States has never been a democracy. It is the most autocratic dictatorship in human history. The United States is a white supremacist settler-colonial apartheid regime, founded upon the genocide of Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island and the enslavement of Africans. It is a genocidal empire, birthed in blood and tears, occupying stolen land with stolen labor.
It absolutely makes sense that white supremacist settler-colonial apartheid regimes like the United States and Canada would go to great lengths to silence the truth about the genocides of the Indigenous, because those genocides are ongoing. The United States and Canada are still committing genocide, right now.
The United States is the largest purveyor of genocide in the history of the world. To deny this is to deny history itself. The United States was formed through genocide, grew through genocide, and has been sustained through genocide.
The American Empire is a shroud of terror that strangles the whole earth. Death and destruction are its only language, hegemony and domination its only diplomacy, and blood and tears its only export.
If the world is to know prosperity, America’s capitalism-imperialism must end. If the world is to know peace, the American Empire must fall. If the world is to know healing, the American Empire must be held accountable for its crimes against humanity.
Capitalism-imperialism must be systematically dismantled and replaced with actual, universal democracy and worker control of the means of production, and with self-determination and liberation by any means necessary from all oppression and exploitation. The system isn’t broken, it’s working exactly as intended.
What Is to Be Done?
So, as Vladimir Lenin famously asked, what is to be done? Karl Marx said that philosophers had previously been content to merely interpret the world, while the whole point was to change it. Once the task of analyzing the historical and material realities of the issues at hand has been accomplished, the next step is the education, organization, and mobilization necessary to enact real change. Helping others learn about the realities of systematic exploitation and oppression is a prerequisite to any action taken to confront that oppression. Not only does this enable others to challenge their social conditioning, but it serves to build solidarity, and provides an opportunity for people to learn how exploitation and oppression affects different people differently. Once an intersectional understanding of exploitation oppression has been established, different groups of people can unite in their individual and collective struggles and work together to confront the system.
It is vital to plan and strategize before any direct action, such as a protest or a demonstration, can be mobilized. Sporadic, undisciplined, and unorganized opposition, while to some degree necessary for the self-education of the exploited and oppressed and for the raising of class consciousness, is easier to suppress, and throwing oneself headlong into those types of situations without any sort of preparation is ineffective at best, and potentially disastrous at worst. It is also crucial to develop a sense of community bolstered by mutual aid and support if any movement aims to challenge the status quo. Building coalitions, forming cooperatives, forming and joining unions, and participating in community outreach can be effective ways to mold support networks for organizations and can help provide a sense of belonging and camaraderie. Once action plans and support networks have been put into place, mobilization to enact change becomes much more likely to succeed.
In order to change the direction of social outcomes, based on the above-mentioned conditions, steps must be taken to alter the social priory filters in a manner that facilitates equity. The issue then is collectively committing to coexisting as a part of a community, as a part of society, as part of a species, and as part of a global ecosystem in the face of the ever-worsening climate and financial crises and pandemics amidst the reemergence (or rather, resurfacing) of fascism. Any solutions must involve building a network of resistance and empowerment with which to implement real social change, while designing and implementing the infrastructure necessary to access, develop, distribute, and consume resources sustainably, equitably, and ethically.
It is plain that drastic transformational changes are needed to address the problems of sustainability in the context of the existential threat that currently grips the entire planet. It is a fact that, even if every possible systemic, structural, institutional, and infrastructural change necessary to reverse the climate crisis is implemented immediately, no one who is alive today will live to see the Earth fully heal and recover. The stark reality is that, even we do not act now, every day for the rest of our lives will be lived under the climate crisis. Because we delayed, we will witness, each year for the rest of our existence, more extreme heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires, and weather events. Because we put off change, we will live to see more and more species go extinct, more ecological tipping points passed, and more ecosystems collapse. Because we have done nothing, no one alive today will ever see the environment fully recover.
In light of this harsh reality, it’s all too easy to look at our current global circumstances and despair. We are seeing so much suffering and catastrophe and death. We know that things are going to get even worse, and it’s tempting to lose hope.
We know that the capitalist-imperialists and the ruling class will do everything they can to entrench their hegemonic grip and protect private property. We know that their only interest is maintaining the status quo, which is to say maintaining their power and privilege, their profit margins, and their control over the means of production and access to the extraction of resources.
We have seen how our bourgeois politicians have responded to the COVID-19 crisis. We were provided the bare minimum until this provision cut into profits margins. After that, the moratoriums were largely lifted, and we have been largely left to fend for ourselves. We have seen how those beholden to capitalism and imperialism would sooner allow mass death than have their profits and class interests threatened.
We can surely expect that those same bourgeois politicians will only continue to enact these racist, classist, and ableist austerity measures into the climate crisis. We cannot depend upon bourgeois politicians to enact any degree of social change that would endanger their bottom line or their class interests. They do not care about us. They will not save us.
Even so, we must not lose hope, and we must not give up. Our hope lies in each other. Our hope lies in building mutual aid and support networks, in building intersectional international solidarity, and in building what Lenin called dual power. We must continue to fight for equity and sustainability, even if we have to build the necessary infrastructure ourselves. We must continue to struggle for decolonization and self-determination, and for liberation by any means necessary for the exploited, oppressed, dispossessed, the marginalized, disadvantaged, impoverished, and disabled, through intersectional solidarity and international cooperation, even when it is no longer fashionable to do so.
The co-occurrence of renewed interest in socialism and the rise of movements surrounding social change, like the movement for Indigenous self-determination and liberation by any means necessary and the movement for climate activism, provide the solution to the existential crises we face. In presenting the issues concurrently, as well as in demonstrating their interconnectedness, we can elucidate a path forward to addressing these challenges, by combining these movements to effect real social change.
This connection is important because the seemingly disparate Marxian critiques of economic growth and concerns about human development’s devastating impact on the environment are in fact interdependent issues, as evidenced by Karl Marx’s theory of ecological crises and metabolic rift.
The ecological crisis theory and environmental destruction, discussed by Marx in relation to capitalist accumulation, are especially relevant to the climate crisis currently being faced. Indeed, Marx’s concept of ecological crises and metabolic rift has the potential to provide great explanatory insight into the mechanisms by which the drive for exponential economic growth, through constant commodity production, inevitably leads to environmental degradation.
Because the profit motive inherent to capitalist accumulation is prioritized over social needs like quality of life and sustainability, “externalities” like social and environmental destruction are not factored into production costs.
This point about environmental degradation is further substantiated by Marx’s insights into the complicated effects and negative impact that industrialized agriculture has had on rural soil health (as in nutrient depletion and subsequent reduction in soil fertility) and that pollution from industrialized manufacturing has had on urban social health (as in disparities in those disproportionately affected by sickness, disease, and immiseration).
Coupled with the motivation to ever-increasing accumulation, this means that there exist no direct feedback mechanisms within the capitalist mode of production to prevent ecosystems from collapsing or species from going extinct. By excluding the detrimental effect that resource extraction has on the environment and social well-being from the calculation of production costs, capitalist accumulation inexorably leads to environmental destruction and social degradation.
The existential threat collectively faced due to the climate crisis essentially leaves but two choices: either continue down the path of pursuing exponential economic growth, with all of the catastrophic destruction it risks (including mass extinction and mass death) or else choose to transform the entirety of existing societal structures to meet human social needs in sustainable homeostasis with the ecosystems in which those societal structures exist, which of necessity requires planned economies. To put the matter bluntly, the choice is between either a global environmental revolution establishing an ecological socialist mode of production, or else mass extinction, mass death, and global ecosystem collapse.
In other words, the push for exponential economic growth and capital accumulation inherent in the capitalist mode of production is directly driving the climate catastrophe, and this realization permits but one path to escape mass extinction, mass death, and entire ecosystem collapse: to prioritize meeting human social needs in sustainable homeostasis with the environment, through planned economies and the equitable and ethical production and distribution of social goods and services, to move beyond capitalism.
Because capitalism is driving the climate crisis, anti-capitalism is necessary; however, it is not sufficient. For anti-capitalism to be truly meaningful, it must also be anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, which *necessitates* Indigenous Land Back, right of return, self-determination, and liberation by any means necessary.
Additionally, Indigenous peoples have millennia of collective knowledge on how to manage ecosystems, and implementation of ideas like reforestation and soil decontamination and restoration would require not only extensive Indigenous input, but Indigenous leadership, which is part of why Indigenous Land Back, right of return, self-determination, and liberation by any means necessary are vital components to fighting the climate crisis.
Similarly, renewable energy and sustainability are essential to combating the climate emergency. Again, necessary, but not sufficient. This means that steps taken to transition to renewable energy and sustainability must be done in a way that centers the socioeconomic and sociopolitical needs and rights, such as Land Back, right of return, self-determination, and liberation by any means necessary, of the exploited, oppressed, marginalized, impoverished, disadvantaged, and disabled, particularly among Indigenous peoples and within the Global South.
Sustainability without equity is a travesty. We cannot simply have a socioeconomic system that is “nicer” to and “greener” for the Global North but that is still predicated on grotesque inequities for the rest of the world, with amenities for workers domestically but exploitation, oppression, and dispossession elsewhere. It’s simply not possible to elect the “right people” to change the system when the system itself is the problem. Lasting change will not be won through petitions to bourgeois politicians or corporations, especially when any progress or reform can be revoked after the following election cycle. When the motivation for industry is based on profit margins, real change is impossible, because equity isn’t profitable. It isn’t enough to stop at concessions as if we were protesting to beg for pittance. We must not merely ask for reform; we must demand revolution.
Capitalism-imperialism’s socioeconomic and sociopolitical hegemony is global, and it’s not enough to simply make conditions better for the Global North but continue exporting exploitation and oppression abroad and externalizing social and environmental degradation under capitalist neoliberalism. The world-system of capitalism, and the imperialist neocolonialism that maintains it, must be completely dismantled. Capitalist exploitation and oppression, neocolonial resource extraction, neoliberal hegemony, and imperialist aggression must end.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the inherent instability of capitalism is becoming increasingly obvious. To turn an infamous quote by Ronald Reagan (may he rot in piss) on its head, in our present crisis, capitalism isn’t the solution to our problem; capitalism is the problem. As a socioeconomic system focused on infinite growth in the reality of finite natural resources, while relying on manufactured demand, planned obsolescence, and mass overproduction, capitalism is by nature not sustainable. As a socioeconomic system that prioritizes the maximization of profit margins over people, while treating the detrimental social and environmental side-effects as mere externalities, capitalism is by definition not equitable. As a socioeconomic system that is enforced through exploitative and oppressive power structures and maintained by dehumanizing social narratives of prejudice and hatred, while privatizing and commodifying the basic means of survival, capitalism is intrinsically not ethical.
As a society, we can choose to continue justifying a socioeconomic system that is inherently unsustainable, inequitable, and unethical. We can continue to endorse crass survivalism and brutal individualist competition while the planet burns, ecosystems collapse, and the people othered through prejudice and hatred die from the effects of catastrophe. Or we can choose to embrace mutual aid, solidarity, intersectionality, and cooperation in the fight for self-determination and liberation by any means necessary from all exploitation, oppression, and dispossession, and to prioritize sustainability, equity, and ethicality in the meeting of social needs and in the provision of social goods and services.
Overproduction, waste, environmental destruction, social injustices, and the unethical, inequitable, and unsustainable utilization of resources under capitalism are not bugs to be fixed or patched: they are features. To reiterate, the system isn’t broken, it’s working exactly as intended. There is no sustainable production under capitalism. There is no equitable distribution under capitalism. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. In light of the climate crisis, the choice before us is plain: either we choose international cooperation, intersectional solidarity, and revolutionary ecosocialism under planned economies, or we choose mass extinction, mass death, and global ecosystemic collapse.
The Marxist Metalhead 
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