Assault on the Working Class

I have always accepted the political dichotomy of the U.S., even G.W.F. Hegel based his entire philosophy on a dialectical process. I agree with Hegel, it is this process of conflicting ideas butting heads against one another that creates social progress. However, it seems to me like the political arena in this country is taking a massive turn for the worse. Since the exodus of our esteemed ex-president George W. Bush from the political arena, it seems like his party has seized the opportunity to not only put his legacy behind them (though their failure to do this ideologically reminds me greatly of principles discussed by Jean Baudrillard), but to take it one step further and push through the agenda that has been so impossible to sell to voters wholesale over the past sixty years. What really disturbs me is how easy it seems for them to sell this systematic dismantling of the working class in America to the working class itself, yet again reminiscent of Baudrillard. While this dynamic has been recognized for quite some time (Thomas Frank wrote a book on it in 2004), it seems to be even more insidious in its present form, no longer concerned with simple profiteering at the expense of the working class but in the complete and utter subjugation of the working class, a return to industrial revolution era corporate despotism.

One recent turn of events that brought this to the forefront of my concern is the new commission on deficit reduction and their recent report. Glancing over the bullet points I saw a couple of items that sounded like a good idea, a reduction in military spending for instance. It was nowhere near the amount needed to cripple the military industrial complex our country has become so enamoured with, a phenomenon which we received due warning about by the way, but it was a start. However, what really struck me were the suggestions targeting the middle class. A restructuring of the tax code, an increase in social security age to almost seventy, and eliminating tax deductions and entitlements. The first thing that jumped out at me was how difficult it would be for an average voter to understand all this, it would seem a beneficial proposal to anyone not particularly well-versed in politispeak. A language comparison is perhaps most fitting, as I read the suggestions in the same manner I read French: un chien-dog, du café-coffee, my mind must go through a process that is absent when I am reading English. In the same way I had to look at these recommendations and think to myself what they really meant: restructuring the tax code-passing a greater tax burden on to the working class; increasing the social security age-making it harder for young workers to break into an industry. With tax deductions and entitlements they did not even list what was specifically on the chopping block, I had to do some digging to find that out. It's not surprising either, go to the voters with the proposal to cut student loan subsidies or employer-based health care benefits and they may lash out against you politically, even in their current domesticated state. However, call such cuts entitlements or discretionary spending and they'll cheer you all the way to the capitol building to vote against their own interests.

In addition, the absolute apathy, no, contempt with which the bourgeoisie and their supporters treat those who oppose such "reforms" makes the words of Karl Marx resound with more vigor than they did in the supposed golden age of communism. 176 years ago, Karl Marx wrote that "The non-worker does everything against the worker which the worker does against himself; but he does not do against himself what he does against the worker." In the same manuscript he describes the relationship of the worker to his labor, "The more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more value he creates, the more valueless, the more unworthy he becomes; the better formed his product, the more deformed becomes the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker; the more powerful labor becomes, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more ingenious the labor becomes, the less ingenious becomes the worker and the more he becomes nature's slave." It is amazing how relevant his words are almost two centuries after they were written, even the language they use to describe worker benefits seems to denigrate the worker, "entitlements." It is not such a stretch to go from the original connotation of that word, that workers actually are entitled to such benefits, to the pejorative connotation that is almost universally accepted today, that the worker feels entitled to what he does not deserve. And when we go beyond the surface, deeper into the culture of modern-day capitalism, we find even more comparisons to the warnings of Marx. Today the product of the worker's labor is eminently ingenious, as technology has progressed to a point where we view such inconveniences as paging through a dictionary as archaic; it is eminently well-formed, as the industrial process leaves nothing to the fallibility of human craftsmanship; it is supremely powerful, having infiltrated every corner of our lives and completely dominating our desires. So too is the worker eminently deformed and powerless. As the worker creates these modern marvels, the capitalist demands the cutting of entitlements in order to increase, what else, capital. Certain corporations now post record profits, and they concurrently demand more of their workers in terms of paying for benefits and forgoing cost of living increases. "The more the worker produces, the less he has to consume; the more value the worker creates, the more valueless he becomes."

Strange also how Marx's relevance reaches a critical point just as his legacy has all but buried his political relevance. A slur of being a Marxist, founded or not (and not even taking into consideration that Marx himself did not consider himself a Marxist), is enough to immediately invalidate your opinion among a good deal of citizens, and yet so many of them exist as Marx described: alienated from their labor, alienated from each other, slaves to nature. Perhaps more interesting is how relevant his prophecies are becoming so far from his death. Marx once lamented that Britain was, "the rock against which the waves of revolution break," disappointed in the ability of British communist movements to gain political power. Perhaps this is the reason some were initially so dismissive of Marx, they believed the worker would never dare to challenge this state of being so long as he is wooed by the temptations of capitalism. What they underestimated, perhaps, is the tenacity of the capitalist in pursuing capital, the absolute extremes that he would go to in search of more. What they thought impossible, Marx thought inevitable. Such behavior will invariably turn on itself he predicted, and such a system is bound to fail. What Marx may have underestimated is the amount of time it would take for this to take place. While he lamented to his grave that Britain's proletariat could not gain traction in his adopted homeland, what he failed to realize was the amount of time such occurrences take to manifest themselves. Today the capitalist economy is hit by a recession that destroys proletariat and bourgeoisie alike, ignited by a drive for more capital. Once that drive threw a monkey wrench into the economy it was the worker who valued his capital, who hoarded it in fear of losing it entirely, and the capitalist system which suffered by virtue of not being able to secure more capital. Today's capitalist model represents the pinnacle of an insatiable hunger, cost/profit projections. As Baudrillard outlined, representations go through a progression of simulacra until they have no referential. The numbers on a cost/profit projection do not represent workers, they do not represent a person with a family to feed, with costs to bear, or even one who produces capital. It is a self-representing simulacra, a representation that is believed to represent the worker, but instead represents only the idea of the worker contained in itself, a cost. Profit, capital, is the ultimate goal and the worker a necessary expense. In this mentality cost is cut wherever possible, and the worker becomes not a producer of capital, but a hindrance in achieving capital, one that must be minimized. Thus the prediction of Marx comes into full realization, the worker becomes the scourge of the capitalist, a cost to be minimized. The worker becomes eminently deformed and powerless.

Herein lies the process of the system turning on itself, as the worker is the producer of labor and the system is obsessed with consuming labor. It will consume labor until there is nothing left to consume, and it will fall upon itself. We have been given a cautionary warning from the system itself, as the refusal of the worker to part with his capital perpetuated the downward spiral of the economy just a handful of months ago. Still we do not learn, still we use the pejorative "entitlement," still we persist in decreasing the tax burden on the rich and increasing that of the poor, still the worker and even now the consumer are treated with malevolence, as creatures that inhibit the accumulation of capital. These are the more subtle signs, even the obvious signs of Marx's prediction go unheeded. Middle management, once part of the bourgeois, is now being cut in the name of capital. Those that survive reap the benefits-capital, larger salaries-then turn their attention to the government to attain even more capital. Even those who experience these ill effects continue in their alienation. A wage earner goes from $300,000 to $250,000 and laments his own strife, his inability to pay for the costly amenities he and his family had grown used to. This, against the backdrop of a single mother with the same size family, earning below the national average and having to live out of her car. She is still the leech to the earner, still not able to pull her own weight in society, still alienated from him. Even that now they have a common enemy, the capitalist who is alienated from them both, they refuse solidarity. The system rejoices, even in their collective misery they can not bring themselves to turn against the system, but the system again overlooks its one damning trait, its Achilles' heel: insatiability.

The system will never be satisfied, it will always hunger for more, and such a hunger inevitably leads to cannibalism. Even now as so many workers rejoice and revel in the bask of what is supposedly a resurgent conservatism, the system that masks itself as such has its sights set on them. It eyes their entitlements, it eyes their unions, it eyes all of their labor and capital, and it salivates. Get rid of their health care, get rid of their education, get rid of their ability to bargain for a fair wage, and then maybe the worker will finally fit Marx's dystopic unideal, truly deformed, barbarous, and the furthest thing from ingenious.

The ironic part is that I do not believe in the abolition of private property as Marx did, I do not believe that capitalism must go through this stage of self-imposed destruction. As people like myself send out calls of urgency, calls to preserve stability, calls against the harsh style of progress which this insatiable hunger will lead to, we become more and more like the worker: marginalized. President Obama calls for level-headedness, he strives for negotiation, and is met with harsh rebuke. "We are out to destroy him," the other entity freely admits, it has no concern but that of sating its hunger. The more this happens, the more akin such people feel to Daedalus. We cry out to Icarus that he is flying to high, that he risks destruction, that such turmoil is unnecessary, but he ignores us. Ever looking for a higher horizon, ever in search of a greater thrill, such behavior is analogous to the unending desire for capital, the constant taint of avarice. "Do not fly too close to the sun," Daedalus has called out, all that is left is for him to watch to see whether or not Icarus comes down in flames.