Aug 25 2010

How To Fight The Class War

Simulposted at Daily Kos

First of all, do NOT change the name to something “nicer.”

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I’ve got bad news for you folks, there will be no Mission Accomplished in the Class War. There will be no great and glorious victory with flags waving above the battlements.

Class war is not about defeating the Rich, it is about scaring the hell out of them enough so that they give up power.

The Ruling Class (and don’t worry we are NOT talking about YOU) only grudgingly accepted the New Deal because the idea of a true Class War, an all out uprising of the poor, the unemployed, foreclosed upon farmers, destitute Veterans, and yes….Leftist Agitators …scared the hell out of them.

And it was ONLY as a result of that fear, fear of something far worse than the New Deal, that the Ruling Class gave up a smidgen of their wealth and power to the scary peasants (and yes, now we are talking about you) at their gate.

We are NOT talking about guillotines or ripping the rich from their beds.

A violent Class war would only hurt us, the poor peasants.

(But don’t tell them that!)

The entire point of a Class War movement is to scare the Rich out of their bubble of complacency, selfishness and greed. To force them to allow the other 98% of us to have some semblance of a fair shake….to get them to stop preying on us to enrich themselves.

The goal is not to beat the Rich, because we can’t. They control (if it came to that point) the army navy, airforce, marines, local cops and of course, they can always hire Blackwater.

The goal is merely to make them understand that their greed is causing others, causing us, to suffer.

There is one thing we must always remember…they do not know they are in a Class war, that they are waging a Class War. When you are winning a war so handily, with no casualties or suffering, you forget you are waging it! The constant stae of warfare is just another facet of The New Normal

The problem isn’t that they are greedy rapacious oligarchs and plutocrats rubbing their hands together in glee at the suffering of the poor and middle class. The problem is that they are completely oblivious, in their comfy bubbles, to the struggles of the 98% of the rest of us.

With of course some notable exceptions like the Koch Brothers.

And the only way to get them out of their bubbles is to shock them out of them. To make them notice the suffering all around them. And, sadly, to make that suffering threatening to them.

Then …perhaps…they will allow us to have unemployment insurance, they will allow us to have Food Stamps, they will allow us to have a Direct Jobs program, they will allow us to have real Financial Reform, they will allow us to have real Health Care Reform, they will allow us to have access to their Capital. Everything, in other words, that they have just recently denied us as they wage Class War against us, using our own government as their weapon.

In other words, they will allow the legislators they own, our Congress, (and no, not all of them) to pass legislation that benefits….that rescues…us. Instead of them.

Class War has been raging since Reagan. Their main messaging weapon in the Class War….is that Class War is a horrible, bad, unjust, and unthinkable thing. Class war is only horrible, bad, unjust, and unthinkable for one reason, because they are justifiably afraid that they WILL be held accountable by the vast majority of The People for their rigged games and excesses and arrogance. They are, as the Aristocratic Class has always been, deathly afraid that The People will rise up and kill them in their beds. This is, lol, projection. It is what they would do, if they were us. (Just as a part of racism is the fear of what they would do, if they had been similarly and systematically wronged for hundreds of years.)

We, the poor peasants, have no desire to rise up and kill them in their beds.

We just want them to stop trickling down on us and telling us that it is raining, and that we should be grateful that we have something to drink.

We just want a system that gives us a fair shake. They are the ones who want a system that gives them an unfair advantage.

An advantage they have enjoyed for so long that they think it is their right to have the entire financial, political, and social system stacked in their favor. A Calvinistic right that they believe they have somehow earned. And they are actually and truly hurt when it is suggested that somehow they are being unfair…or cruel. After all, if you were rich and powerful, you would screw those less powerful than you too…..right?

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How To Wage Class War

   

  • Take your money out of the banks

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  • Cut up your credit cards

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  • Stop buying anything made by Corporations

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  • Patronize only small local businesses or co-ops

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  • Start a small business or co-op

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  • Divest yourself from any corporate holdings. Talk to and pressure shareholders of the Corporations to get them to press for Corporate Responsibility

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  • Vote for and donate only to those politicians who will represent your interests above the interest of the Rich and the Corporations.

    • (These are just a few suggestions, please add yours in the comments!)

    In other words, stop financially supporting those who are waging Class War on you.

    Those are extreme steps, extreme sacrifices, and in some cases, impossible to do.

    For instance, part of the Class War has been Corporations like Wal-Mart moving into small towns, destroying small businesses, and making you dependent on them for your goods and services. Giving you no choice on where or how to spend your money, except to give it to them….so that they can then use it to further wage Class War on you. your family and your neighbors. Start a co-op or small business to compete with them, even in a small way. Otherwise….they’ve got you. And they won’t let you go as long as you are feeding their machine.

    Can you function without a bank or a credit card? Well you can if you try, but it would be very difficult. Purposefully difficult. Again, you have been made dependent, purposefully so, on the mechanisms of daily life that they control and obscenely profit from.

    The alternative is to create alternate mechanisms, cooperative mechanisms, to replace their means of controlling you. That is Class War, economic war. How and where you spend your money…and your vote…is the greatest weapon you have.

    And use your only other weapon as well, your voice. Write phone and fax your Congress members, the CEO’s and Board of Directors of Corporations and your local newspaper (if you still have one) and make your voice heard!

    And yes, use the term Class war. Use it loudly. Conjure up the image of the very thing that they fear most……….Economic Justice and Equality.

    And then, when they are worried enough, nervous enough, scared enough, they will stick their heads out of their now threatened bubbles of wealth……..and allow us a little piece of their obscenely huge and destructive pie.




    Most people cannot just jump off of the economic grid.     But if you do what you can, where and how you can, that is a start. And once you have started, once you have changed your mind about how ….and why…you participate in an economic grid that is waging War on you, you can take the next step, and the next.

    All they want is your money, so stop giving it to them! And, the most important part….let them know why! That combination will be enough of a War to wake them up!

    Yes it will be hard. It will be a Long War, a war that does involve sacrifice. And commitment. And a change of lifestyle.

    But if we DON’T do it, don’t do something, the alternative will be harder, and uglier, and could lead to violence.

    Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. John F. Kennedy

    Oh and oh yeah……these are also the very same people and Corporations that are killing the planet. And if you think changing your lifestyle is hard now, just wait until your local Wal-Mart is underwater!

    38 comments

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    1. We are NOT talking about you.

      Who Are The Ruling Class?

      So relax….and join in! Economic Equality is good for everyone….even the Rich.

      • Edger on August 25, 2010 at 23:45
      • #

      Couldn’t we get bipartisan support if we called it, say, the “class difference of opinion”, or the “class friendly disagreement”, or the “we’re all on the same team here” or something?

    3. What is it that makes folks desire wealth and membership in the ruling class?

      A sense of security, physically, psychologically and, especially, socially.

      Appreciation of luxury — example:  I grew up hating asparagus because all we ever had of it when I was growing up (poor) was from out of a can.  Then I tried fresh (and more expensive) asparagus.  What a revelation.  If you even get a taste (no pun intended) of the good life, it can be utterly seductive, especially if you had no experience of it before.  And of course I’m speaking of more here than asparagus, lol.

      A high sense of dignity and peer approval — people tend to treat you better if you are of the ruling class, both overtly and in a million small ways that pass under the radar for the most part and aren’t noticed until they are gone.

      Beauty.  You can say what you will, but look at some of the amazing beauty that has been created through the power of the ruling class.  I don’t think Michaelangelo would have done that paint job just for chuckles.

      I think we can redefine these things.  I think we can actually redefine pleasure.

      We don’t have to believe that turning away from the perks of the Ruling Class means you can never have creme brulee again.  Or wonderful scents (perfume) or beauty.  Or peer approval or dignity or a sense of achievement.

      We need to recruit some of those evil genius Madison Avenue types and make them work for us, lol.

    4. “The Ruling Class …only grudgingly accepted the New Deal because the idea of a true Class War, an all out uprising of the poor, the unemployed, foreclosed upon farmers, destitute Veterans, and yes….Leftist Agitators …scared the hell out of them.”

      They were afraid of the Soviets.  They were afraid people would easily see the Communist system was far better for them and the threat of this good example, which they fought the Cold War to destroy, was the fear that drove any reform America ever got since the 1930s.

      Now there’s no Soviet communists and now that folks like you have had the idea of communism beaten out of you, they don’t fear you at all.  

      “A violent Class war would only hurt us, the poor peasants.

      (But don’t tell them that!)      ”

      Who would be afraid of you?

    5. You really are a useful idiot aren’t you?

    6. make it a movement.

      en masse, dont buy their shit, but tell them and why.

      Your Vote and your Voice dont count for much if its all LOTE and whispers. And thats all we’ve got.  Solidarity.

      And “the youth”… educate and inspire them all the time, every day.

    8. getting your steam back in a big way Budhy. I would add  don’t let them scare you into believing that this is the inevitable order of the way things are or reality. It’s just bravado and intimidation, and if people believe that their all powerfulness keeps them safe or enables progress they win the war.

      No government can exist without the consent of the governed, if we give it to them they then have to reciprocate by contributing to the common good. Changing lifestyles that are an illusion built on cheap shit for everyone, is not that hard and is the only choice we have or for that matter ever have had. The choice is not theirs to make and what they offer at this point isn’t even a good Dream it’s a mindless nightmare with no exit except the ones we create. Even the security they offer is a delusion as are the fears they emanate.        

      • jamess on August 26, 2010 at 04:14
      • #

      I need to put those bullet points, to work,

      in my own life.

      Time to,

      Unplug, from the Corporate Machine.

    10. Here’s Milan activist, organizer and theorist Alex Foti, writing in the European context, on what a 21st century class struggle movement looks like (it’s pink, green and wobbly):

      A political answer to European moderates which would take an explicitly multiethnic, egalitarian and ecological road is what I call DEMORADICAL regulation, i.e. a dramatic change in socioeconomic policy thanks to a progressive social bargain imposed from the bottom up (rather than top-down, as in demoliberal regulation) through labor protest, social conflict, participatory democracy. A progressive front that would link leftist/democratic organizations, unions, movements in their common opposition to technocrats, corporations, financial markets and the liberal regulation these would like to re-assert, in order to protect the unequal economic status quo they have gained so much from. But most of all, demoradicalism would be a clarion call to all emancipatory forces in Europe to mobilize against populist xenophobia, anti-immigration hysteria, clerical interference.

      Movements, with their faith in street-based and conflict-based democracy, are obvious candidates to be prime actors of demoradical regulation. Unfortunately, the most effective movements have developed in Europe at the nation-state level (look at the French mass mobilization against juvenile precarity), that is, in the national space of politics with its peculiar political traditions and identities. For all the efforts of the Mayday Network or the European Social Forum, both the traditional marxist and/or anarchist left as well as post-Seattle

      heretic left are deeply hostile to Europe, in whatever political incarnation, past, present or future. Communist parties, now united in the European Left, had traditionally seen the European Community as a bastion of American dominance on the Continent. Anarchists of all sorts repudiate all forms of institutional power with supranational organizations being prime targets for protest and direct confrontation (the more remote, the worse they are). Trotskyites, still blooming in spite of (or maybe because of) their rigid orthodoxy, are committed internationalists, rejecting political Europe and supporting whoever they consider to be an anti-imperialist government (such as Chavez’s Venezuela).

      On the other hand, Syndicalists, Feminists, Environmentalists, Queers, Precarious have yet to develop a coherent European discourse capable of rendering obsolete more traditional political references on the left. At the institutional level, Greens have almost invariably kept a pro-federal, pro-secular Europe position, but this has been decisively defeated in the French and Dutch referenda. They have contributed to their ineffectiveness by being too friendly with business interests and liberal élites, too much caught into their environmental PR stunts – something they share with green transnational NGOs – to worry about mounting social inequality, so they have often lost ground to neo-old-left parties such as Die Linke in Germany.

      Demoradicalism: neither party nor union, but it takes two to tango

      How should a radical European discourse look like? In three words, it should be green, wobbly, pink, in order to be effective. It should lay

      out a cogent ecological program to reform society, a creative wobbly strategy to organize and unionize the weak and the excluded, a pink emphasis on non-violent action and gender equality, so to project a queer outlook on the world. It would have to speak to the young, women, immigrants. It would have to address the grievances of the service class, and put to good use the networking talents of the creative class. It would be transnationalist in orientation and multiethnic in composition, for a truly mongrel and mulatto Europe. It would be defiant with (but tolerant of) all forms of organized religion. It would be an obvious antagonist of the securitarian state favored by bushist tendencies. And it would challenge and confront without timidity, but also with cold-mindedness, either fascist, nationalist, xenophobic forces that are resurfacing in many corners of Europe.

      But if these are widespread aspirations, antiprecarity/noborder movements lack a strong political identity to reroute the existing European left (with small “l”) and provide fresh radical political perspectives to Europe’s dissenting youth, precarized by fat corporations, regulated by ineffective technocracies, and burdened by the Continent’s rentier gerontocracy that has plunged economy and society in an acute condition of Eurosclerosis. More to point, the mayday network lacks a strong strategy to talk to the flexibilized and the unorganized. The post-cold war generation of the Left shall overcome the twin stale institutions of the XX century’s left: union and party. But can you down two old pigeons with one stone? I mean, can a networked movement be an effective substitute for both the two traditional labor and political functions? I think not. We need a substitute for a political party, in order to produce new political identity and ideological discourse, which are at the moment sorely lacking amid mounting intellectual confusion and political sectarianism. And we need a complement for the most militant and innovative sections of labor unionism, so that we can work and organize conflicts together while advancing the specific demands of Europe’s precarious generation.

    11. what a difference a day makes.

      Tipping point.

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