What is Imperialism?

"Imperialism" is a concept that is used often enough on the Left, but what exactly does it mean? There is no doubt that it has, like many other political concepts (e.g. freedom), been cheapened by frequent misuse. Still, if one doesn't need a complete theory of imperialism to know that what Washington has done in Iraq is clearly wrong, there is a lot to be gained from clarifying the basic contours of this important political idea.

In what follows I'm going to move through the basics of Lenin's account of imperialism in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. I'm simply going to strip his approach down to its barest elements. I wont offer any analysis of the context in which Lenin was intervening, nor will I illustrate the operations of his approach by considering concrete examples of imperialism. My aim is to do no more than to put us in a position to put forward a clear, succinct statement of what imperialism is.

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As Lenin describes it,

"Private property based on the labor of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, i.e. all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants—are things of the past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or three powerful marauders armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who involve the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty."

This is a convenient starting point for our discussion of imperialism. Riffing off of what Lenin says above, we can say that imperialism refers to the division (and constant re-division) of the globe by the strongest and most powerful nations. Imperialism, therefore, involves the domination and exploitation of weaker nation-states by the more powerful ones. By "domination" we mean nothing more than a relationship in which the dominant nation exercises power/control over a weaker nation in such a way that it can interfere in its affairs on an arbitrary basis. Importantly, interference can take many forms: colonial rule, direct military coercion, "financial strangulation", explicit or implicit threats of punishment, or manipulation/agenda-fixing. Domination too comes in many forms: direct colonization, semi-colonization, debt peonage, client regimes, and so forth. By "exploitation" we mean any process whereby the dominant state extracts profit from the subjugated nation.

Broadly speaking, then, imperialism refers to the competitive struggle among stronger nations to dominate and exploit the weaker nations. But what do we mean by "stronger" and "weaker" nations? And what forces lead the "stronger" nations to struggle among one another to divide (and redivide) the globe to increase their spheres of influence and control?

In fact, this competitive struggle is not simply a struggle among nation states. It is always also a struggle among big capitalist firms for the profits to be had from the global economy. "Strength", then, has something to do with a nation state's connection to concentrations of economic power. Lenin's account here is excellent:

The capitalists divide the world, not out of any particular malice, but because the degree of economic concentration which has been reached forces them to adopt this method in order to get profits. And they divide it in proportion to "capital", in proportion to "strength", because there cannot be any other system of division under commodity production and capitalism. But strength varies with the degree of economic and political development.

What this and the earlier block quote make clear is that imperialism is rooted in the structure of the global economy. It is not, as liberals would have it, one particular school of foreign policy which, in principle, could be set aside if only the "right candidate" were elected. Lenin correctly derides the hope that imperialism could be done away with through such superficial changes as a mere "pious wish." Neither is imperialism, again, as some liberals would describe it, a purely war-mongering or purely nationalist phenomenon adopted only by right-wing politicians. And neither is imperialism always overtly aggressive or always connected to saber-rattling from heads of state and military generals (although, to be sure, it often involves its fair share of saber-rattling and aggression).

Imperialism is nothing more than a rather basic feature of global capitalism. As long as we have global capitalism, we'll have imperialism.

Of course, this is not to deny that the particular foreign policy strategies of certain states change over time, that some periods are punctuated by acute military conflict while others aren't, etc.. But these changes are only changes in the forms that imperialism takes. It's basic class content—and the object of the competitive struggle—remains the same as there is a global capitalist economy. As Lenin puts it:

...the forms of the struggle may and do constantly change in accordance with varying, relatively particular, and temporary causes, but the essence of the struggle, its class content, cannot change while classes exist... it is in the interests of the bourgeoisie... to obscure the class content of the present struggle and emphasize this or that form of the struggle...

But what is the nature of this class content? And what is it about capitalism as such that generates this kind of competitive struggle for control over the conditions for accumulation?

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The first thing we'll need to say is that capitalism has developed historically in such a way that it has become a global economic system. Capitalism is not a discrete feature of this or that nation, it is an international set of economic relations through which various nation-states—as well as non-state actors such as multi-national corporate firms—compete for control of raw materials, exploitable labor, markets for goods, investment opportunities to absorb surplus value—in short for all of the conditions necessary to accumulate profit.

Just as capitalism breeds ruthless competition for profit among various firms in a single country, it also engenders competition at a global level as well. This competition, in turn, is what fuels, for example, colonial oppression and financial strangulation of half the world's population by the wealthy industrial countries.

Intense global economic competition is not a 21st century development. Although we're often taught that "globalization" is a relatively new phenomenon, Marx and others argued that, as early as the mid 1800s, capitalism was already well on its way to becoming a global economic system. Take, for example, the following quotation from the Communist Manifesto (written in 1848):

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer suffices for the growing wants of the new markets... Modern industry has established the world market... [which] has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land... The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country... All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose... products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations...

Marx is discussing how the internal development of capitalism leads it to expand and grow into a world system. This expansionary process isn't incidental—it is a fundamental aspect of capitalism. But what exactly is it about the internal development of capitalism that leads to this globalizing development?

For Lenin, the key mechanisms driving this process are: 1) the concentration of production and capital to such a degree that massive corporations—monopolies, trusts, syndicates, etc.—come to play a dominant, decisive role in economic life, and 2) the growth of "finance capital" through the merging of big banks with industrial firms. These two developments make possible a third process, namely, 3) a big increase in the international export of capital (as opposed to the mere export of ready-made commodities). This, in turn, creates 4) the formation of international capitalist monopolies which is what drives 5) the territorial division (and constant re-division) of the whole world among the strongest capitalist powers.

Lenin identifies 1-5 above as the "essential features of imperialism". These processes are all rooted in the workings of the capitalist economic system. This is what grounds Lenin's claim that "imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed."

Still, this is all highly schematic. We need to look a little closer at 1-5 so that we can see how the argument is supposed to work.

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The concentration of capital in the hands of a shrinking number of ever larger firms is a driving force behind imperialism. Lenin's writings on imperialism date from 1916, but it is obvious that this process of concentration has accelerated greatly over the course of the last 100 years.

What happens is that the "natural" inner-workings of "free market" capitalism give rise to concentration and monopoly. Concentration is therefore not some corruption of "pure" capitalism, but an inevitable outgrowth of "free competition". This is rather intuitive if we just think for a moment about how capitalism works. Firms are privately owned and controlled and the owners are forced, by competition in the marketplace, to maximize profit. What's more, competition forces capitalists not just to maximize profit, but to reinvest a portion of yesterday's profit into expanded production for tomorrow. Those firms that don't expand and grow—other things being equal—will be run out of business through competition by those firms that do. This process, in which losers drop out or get purchased by the winners, creates an internal tendency toward concentration.

What's more, as a profit-driven system, individual firms are not motivated to preserve an overall system of "free competition" among equals. They are motivated only to maximize their own profits. But profits for any individual firm are not maximized by competition. Competition increases risk and uncertainty and, among other things, can undermine the individual market power of any particular firm. Thus, from a purely profit-seeking perspective—which is the only perspective that matters in this context—capitalist firms have an interest in reducing competition and moving toward concentration. Besides mergers, take-overs, bankruptcies and all the rest, concentration can occur through informal agreements struck between big firms in which they decide not to compete among one another for certain markets (e.g. "you can have this market, we'll have this other one, and this will make our power in each of our spheres of market influence nearly absolute"). This is akin to mobsters dividing up turf and pieces of "action". It makes sense from the perspective of each, but it is also an inherently unstable agreement (think of the threat of sudden betrayal or back-stabbing in every gangster movie you've ever seen). Because such agreements are struck for merely profit-seeking self-interested reasons, any shift in the balance of power can lead one of the parties to break the previous agreement and try to grab more "turf".

This instability arises from the fact that capitalism is a highly uneven system marked by profound contradictions. We have been considering how there is a tendency toward concentration, but it is worth pointing out that this is only one tendency in the complex web of uneven, contradictory forces that constitute global capitalism. Lenin emphasizes the fact that our theories are likely to miss the mark if they fail to capture these "profound and radical contradictions", as between "the gigantic operations of finance capital and the "honest" trade in the free market...between cartels and trusts, on the one hand, and non-cartelized industry, on the other." Competition and struggle among various groupings tends to upset the stability of large concentrations, causing fractures, splits, internal conflicts, outright confrontation and the like.

Still, it remains true that capitalism, if left unchecked, tends toward the concentration of production in the hands of a shrinking number of large firms. But this is only part of the story. Capitalism doesn't simply encourage concentration within any particular industry. It also tends toward concentration across industries and even across national boundaries. As capitalism develops, industrial capital and finance capital merge together as the forces who own and control banks and financial institutions become bound up with those who own and control industry.

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Thus, a key feature of contemporary capitalism—as opposed to early capitalism—is the "coalescence or merging of banking with industry." But, importantly, this development is not uniform or linear. It is uneven and spasmodic. In certain areas this development is advanced, others less so.

In the places where this development is furthest along, a problem arises, the problem of a "superabundance of capital" accumulated within the rich countries. Accumulation in the rich countries occurs so rapidly that the amount of surplus available far outstrips the profitable investment opportunities within the national borders of the rich nation. Capitalism becomes, so to speak, "over ripe" in the core advanced industrial nations. This drives the owners of this abundance of capital to scour the earth looking for places to absorb it profitably.

In earlier epochs of capitalism, manufacturing in the advanced industrial nations grows to an extent that industrialists start searching the globe for new markets to flood with the commodities they manufacture at home. They search the globe because they produce more commodities than they can profitable sell at home. But the growing concentration of capital and the merging industry and finance means that an overabundance of capital develops. This drives a sharp increase in the export of capital abroad. As Lenin puts it, "the necessity for exporting capital arises from the fact that in a few countries capitalism has become over-ripe and capital cannot find "profitable" investment" at home.

Why should finance capitalists with masses of surplus capital on their hands want to look abroad for profitable investments? Aside from the fact, already mentioned, that there are no such profitable investment opportunities within the "over ripe" core capitalist nations, capitalists stand to gain considerably from establishing "sphere of influence" abroad: they gain access to sources of cheap raw materials and more easily exploitable labor, places where surplus capital can be exported and absorbed, opportunities for deals, concessions and monopolist profits from loans and the like, as well as new markets to flood (or "dump") large quantities of goods at cut-rate prices (thereby wiping out any local competition and creating relations of dependence). We could go on. But we note that this isn't just an attractive way to increase profits. It is necessary for the expansion and continuing viability of capitalism as an economic system, because when capital becomes over-accumulated in the core countries it must find profitable investment opportunities or else the system stagnates and decays as profits decline.

This quest to find places to absorb surplus capital, however, is not a peaceful, harmonious process of "free trade". In reality, it creates an international competitive struggle for the control of foreign economic territory. This, in turn, drives the territorial division (and re-division) of the globe among the most powerful core capitalist countries which creates a state of affairs in which swaths of the globe come under the domination and exploitation of more powerful states.

***

Of course, by the time capitalism reaches this stage, the globe has already been divided into spheres of colonial domination or semi-colonial influence. By 1900, for example, nine-tenths of Africa had already been seized and occupied by European powers. Thus, contemporary imperialism is not about acquiring and dividing up previously "unoccupied" territories. Rather it is about the re-division of the world. As Lenin describes it,

"The colonial policy of capitalist countries has completed the seizure of the unoccupied territories on our planet. For the first time the world is complete divided up, so that in the future only redivision is possible; territories can only pass from one "owner" to another, instead of passing as unowned territory to an "owner"."

If earlier epochs of colonialism were about a mad dash to "acquire" lands hitherto unexploited by core capitalist nations, contemporary imperialism is a competitive struggle among the core nations to re-divide territories in a way more favorable to the strongest nations at any particular time. As the balance of power shifts (as a result, largely, of economic shifts), the previous configurations become unstable and more powerful elements are emboldened to contest previously stable spheres of influence. "Stability" always favors the strongest grouping at any point in time. When Washington, then, calls for "stability" in the Middle East, they are calling for no more than the preservation of the existing configuration of influence and power which they enjoy. Any instability favors other forces—whether it is anti-imperialist forces from below or other imperialist elements—and introduces the possibility of re-dividing the terrain in a different way.

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But what about violent conflict and war? Isn't war really about the "national interest", glory, honor, religion, "our way of life" and all the rest? Or isn't war really just an expression of the "inherently violent" character of human beings?

Modern war has little to do with national pride, glory, religion, honor or any of it. This is mostly window-dressing. This is how you try to drum up support for imperialism among social groups who have no direct interest in imperialist wars for the 1%. And neither is modern war an expression of some timeless impulse toward violence. The vast majority of human history has been peaceful and cooperative rather than destructive and violent. Violence and war are products of the interests of elites in class societies—that is, societies in which a minority ruling class stands over and above the toiling majority.

Modern warfare is about profit. It is about securing all of the conditions necessary for ruling classes to accumulate, which means fighting among imperial powers to secure "spheres of influence".

War and violent conflict in the international arena are merely particular forms that imperialist rivalry and competition can assume in certain conditions. As I say above, "peace" and stability don't entail a decline in imperialism whatsoever; they merely indicate the temporary stability of a certain configuration of power (both economic and military). And, what's more, beneath the surface of such superficial stability there are often subterranean forms of conflict, less severe than direct military confrontation, that involve tension and struggle nonetheless. Imperialism is not simply visible when military conflicts arise. It is manifest in virtually all of the major economic and political actions occurring at the global level.

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Let's close by examining two objections to this idea of imperialism. The hope is that this will further sharpen our highly schematic and brief overview of the concept.

The first was articulated by Kautsky in the early 1900s, but it is a favorite argument of the likes of Thomas L. Friedman and others. It goes as follows. Since capitalism is growing and expanding to such an extent that economic power is becoming more and more concentrated, huge regions of the globe that were hitherto independent are now hugely inter-dependent. This dense web of interdependence means that war will be unlikely because too expensive. Friedman once predicted that no two nations with a McDonalds would ever go to war with one another (this has, of course, been proven false many times over, but set that to one side for the moment). Although Friedman might not like to put it in such terms, his argument is that wars will cease under capitalism when economic power becomes so concentrated and intermeshed that it is more profitable for the global ruling class to join together and jointly exploit the rest of the world.

Lenin offers a trenchant critique of this argument in his text. Readers of Friedman would do well to consider it. Lenin's reply is that this view mistakes particular forms of imperialism for its basic class content. Huge international cartels only reveal the object of the imperialist struggle, that is, they only show us what it is that all the various imperialist players are fighting to win. It's the imperialist Lombardi trophy, so to speak, that we come to see when we observe huge multi-national cartels whose influence covers entire regions of the globe. Such configurations do not portend a decline in imperialism, on the contrary, they show us the basic motivation to play the imperialist game in the first place. And, as we know, it is unlikely that any one grouping will be able to hold on to the trophy forever. Sooner or later, internal fractures, economic stagnation within, shifts in the balance of power without, etc. will dislodge the stability of the configuration and the contradictions and unevenness of the world economy gives rise to conflicts.

Again, to repeat, imperialism is not a specific foreign policy preferred by certain groups and rejected by others. It is a structural feature of the global capitalist economy. Different capitalist groupings compete—utilizing the national governments which serve their interests—with one another in the global economy. They compete for control of raw materials, labor, markets for goods, that is, for "spheres of influence" which equip them with the necessary conditions for continued accumulation. The "stronger" nations, or group of nations, win larger spheres of influence—and "strength" is strongly correlated to level of economic and political development. And, inevitably, this economic struggle and competition gives rise to military struggle and competition. The two go hand in hand.

The final objection we shall consider is the following. Since imperialism is the result of concentration, what's needed is not an overthrow of the global capitalist order, but a re-introduction of the sort of "free competition" characteristic of econ 101 textbooks. This would create parity and would encourage non-violent trade interactions that would better everyone. As we know, trade always benefits the trading parties (otherwise they wouldn't engage in the transaction), so emphasizing genuine "honest" competition and "free trade" would undermine the material conditions which give rise to imperialism. To this end, we should oppose all tariffs and forms of protectionism and seek to create a maximally open, maximally "free" global market where violent conflict would be minimized.

This is frequently heard argument these days. But Lenin already refuted it in 1916. The first thing we'll say is that the opposition between "free trade" and "protectionism" is facile, abstract and highly misleading. It has nothing to do with the realities of global capitalism.

First of all, global capitalism is a highly uneven, contradictory constellation of different economic forces. In this context, one size does not fit all, not even among all of the imperialist powers. In certain circumstances, it befits one imperialist power to endorse "free trade" precisely because it undermines the influence or power of another imperialist power who, for this very reason, opposes "free trade" and opts for protections and tariffs. But the former, who pushes "free trade" in this particular circumstance, is likely to oppose "free trade" in all sorts of other instances where it makes more sense—from the imperialist point of view—to have protections, tarriffs, and all the rest.

Second, the period of high concentration, monopolies, syndicates, international cartels, etc. is one that precisely grew out of "free competition". Capitalist competition, as we saw above, naturally leads to concentration. To call for a return to "free competition" as an answer to imperialism is a mere "pious wish" that has no material basis in reality.

To pose the question as a tension between "free trade" and protectionism is to entirely misunderstand what's going on in the world. As Lenin puts it:

It is known...that the cartels add finance capital have a system peculiar to themselves, that of “exporting goods at cut-rate prices”, or “dumping”, as the English call it: within a given country the cartel sells its goods at high monopoly prices, but sells them abroad at a much lower price to undercut the competitor, to enlarge its own production to the utmost, etc. If Germany’s trade with the British colonies is developing more rapidly than Great Britain’s, it only proves that German imperialism is younger, stronger and better organised than British imperialism, is superior to it; but it by no means proves the “superiority” of free trade, for it is not a fight between free trade and protection and colonial dependence, but between two rival imperialisms, two monopolies, two groups of finance capital. The superiority of German imperialism over British imperialism is more potent than the wall of colonial frontiers or of protective tariffs: to use this as an “argument” in favour of free trade and “peaceful democracy” is banal, it means forgetting the essential features and characteristics of imperialism, substituting petty-bourgeois reformism for Marxism.

Lenin is exactly right here. The opposition is between two rival imperialisms, not between some abstract choice between "free trade" or protection. There is no neutral vessel standing above rival imperialisms who, impartially, aims to decide whether to push for universal "free trade" or universal protection. Rather, the global arena is nothing more than blocs of powerful capitalist nations (and their spheres of influence) who push for liberalization of trade or protection as needed. They have no principled preference for one or the other. Their only preference is for ever increasing control and power, because increased domination of spheres of influence means increased exploitation. All of this, of course, means an increase in accumulation, the basic driving force of the global economy.

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Socialist Politics and the City

(This is a slightly edited version of a post from September 2011).

A while back, I got into a lively debate with some comrades about the role of the city in socialist politics. The debate seemed to dwell on the question of whether the city or the urban form (it's worth noting that those very concepts were contested in the discussion) coheres with (or makes possible) the socialist ideal of a collectively self-governing society free of exploitation and oppression. I won't try to summarize the objections or positions of those with whom I disagreed, since I wouldn't be able to do them justice. But I would like to reflect a bit more about the position I found myself defending in that discussion.

Let me begin by confessing that much of my thinking about these matters is strongly influenced by an article Mike Davis wrote a couple years back for New Left Review. Here's an excerpt that is particularly emblematic of the view he puts forward in that essay:

There are innumerable examples and they all point toward a single unifying principle: namely, that the cornerstone of the low-carbon city, far more than any particular green design or technology, is the priority given to public affluence over private wealth. As we all know, several additional Earths would be required to allow all of humanity to live in a suburban house with two cars and a lawn, and this obvious constraint is sometimes evoked to justify the impossibility of reconciling finite resources with rising standards of living. Most contemporary cities, in rich countries or poor, repress the potential environmental efficiencies inherent in human-settlement density. The ecological genius of the city remains a vast, largely hidden power. But there is no planetary shortage of ‘carrying capacity’ if we are willing to make democratic public space, rather than modular, private consumption, the engine of sustainable equality. Public affluence—represented by great urban parks, free museums, libraries and infinite possibilities for human interaction—represents an alternative route to a rich standard of life based on Earth-friendly sociality. Although seldom noticed by academic urban theorists, university campuses are often little quasi-socialist paradises around rich public spaces for learning, research, performance and human reproduction.

The brilliance of Davis's argument is that he weaves together the ecological genius of urban living with the social and political importance of the city. Taking ecological concerns seriously, he argues, requires anti-capitalism. But sustainability also requires urban forms. And, independently of ecological concerns, Davis gives us reasons to think that the socialist ideal has always had a close affinity with the forms of social organization made possible by dense urban communities. All three political concerns -anti-capitalist, ecological and urban- hang together in a kind of equilibrium, each drawing support from the other. I find this to be a a highly plausible and attractive picture.

Before I say more about why I endorse this picture, let me say a little bit about what's essential to the idea of the city. Like any familiar concept, the idea of city carries with it innumerable associations and meanings, not all of which I intend to endorse. As I've noted elsewhere, the idea of "the urban" (or worse, "the inner city") is often a racialized euphemism in the United States. I've written elsewhere about the phenomenon of suburban white "fear of the city", which goes hand in hand with the racist image of black people (especially young black men) as dangerous, pathological, angry, and so on. This racist ideology, when combined with individualistic/consumerist ideologies nourished by the suburban form, yields an especially potent anti-city form of consciousness. Of course, as waves of gentrification flood into cities, expelling working class residents, most of them people of color, this generalized "fear of the city" has begun to wane among middle and ruling class whites. Still, it's fair to say that there is still plenty of animus against the urban form out there. In defending the city as an ideal, I'd like to sidestep these ideological encumbrances.

By "city", I mean nothing more than a densely populated community in which functional uses are integrated (rather than separated), that is walkable and bikable, where large numbers of people with very different backgrounds live together and share basic social institutions (e.g. libraries, parks, museums, schools, etc.). I mean an active, lively built environment that makes use of efficiencies created by density, mixed-use, and diversity. I mean a space that laid out on a human scale, not a automotive scale. Though every city fails to fully embody this ideal, big cities come the closest to approximating it. I'll elaborate more on this ideal in a moment.

Still, attractive though this ideal may be, cities continue to get a bad rap. Cities, it is often said, are dirty, cramped, polluted, dangerous, and concrete-heavy. They embody the worst of capitalist industrialization. According to this common view, if cities are gray and asphalt, suburbs and towns are green and leafy. Suburban living, the story goes, is comfortable, safe, harmonious and, most importantly for "green" politics, loaded with expansive lawns and large trees. Low density residential configurations make for a less concrete-heavy landscape, and strict separation of uses entails that residential spaces are far from industrial spaces. It follows, then, that cities, with all their iniquity, pollution and concrete, are the antithesis of sustainable living. Sustainability requires a suburban home with a Prius parked out front, a new-fangled energy efficient refrigerator full of organic produce, etc.

Though these ideas have wide currency, on reflection they have little plausibility.

As the Davis quote makes clear, we would need several additional earths for everyone on the planet to have the massive single-family McMansion with a big irrigated lawn, a couple of cars, etc. It therefore goes without saying that the McMansion lifestyle cannot be egalitarian or, for that matter, socialist in spirit since it is only possible on the assumption that the vast majority of humanity doesn't enjoy it. Now, McMansion enthusiasts might complain that I'm for levelling everyone down to shared poverty. But I'm not; I'm for privileging public wealth over private consumption. I'd rather enjoy the beauty and grandness of world-class public buildings than lock myself up in a McMansion.

Still, we know that McMansions aren't the root of the problem. The problem is one of a basic model of social/economic development that became dominant in in the postwar era. I'm talking about the low-density, use-segregated, car-heavy model of development characteristic of Postwar suburban sprawl, which has been nothing less than an unmitigated environmental (and social) disaster. It is well-known that this model was pushed by ruling classes after WWII to facilitate economic growth (think of, for instance, the impact of the suburban form on the sales of new construction homes, cars, appliances, etc.). The construction of the interstate highway system, in conjunction with huge subsidies for mortgages in low-density suburban areas, made this model hegemonic for a generation. Its dominance continues, though it is becoming increasingly contested and mired by its own contradictions.

Many readers of this blog will already know that I have no love for cars, so I'll set the issue of cars aside for the moment the problem of the environmental costs associated car-exclusive built environments. (See here for some of my own views, and see here and here for more recent socialist critiques). This leaves many other problems to be dealt with, e.g. extremely high per capita uses of energy (think of the energy spent heating a McMansion in the winter). Even the surface-level aesthetic credentials of the ideal "green" suburb are dubious. Most suburbs are monotonous nightmares where indigenous plant life is uprooted, old trees cut down to make space for useless lawns, tacky landscaping, multi-lane highways and, of course, massive parking lots. Many of the suburbs surrounding Chicago (especially the newer ones) tend to have far fewer trees than the typical street in the city. Moreover, the low density of suburbs combined with their extreme un-walkability (and un-bikability) means that you can only enjoy what green-space there is from the windows of an automobile. And let's not forget the massive, four-lane highways connecting sprawling residential subdivisions with other single-use spheres of activity. To say that these are an eyesore is an understatement.

But the problems of the suburban form aren't simply aesthetic or ecological. The social, political and economic problems are profound as well. I'll keep this point brief. The suburban form, as such, privileges individual consumption over public goods, it alienates individuals from one another, it nourishes individualist/consumerist ideologies by leaving little space for non-commercial social interactions among people. Moreover, suburbs are usually planned piecemeal in a top-down manner by developers in conjunction with national (and multi-national) corporations, they are often racially exclusive, and lots of them are little more than quasi-feudal gated "communities" meant to keep out those who aren't rich. It has also been noted (by Davis, among others) that the low-density spatial configuration of suburbs makes organization and collective action less likely to transpire (compared with a dense, urban working-class neighborhood where residents would be far more likely to unite and fight).

So much for suburbia. But what's the alternative?

The only viable alternative, I'd like to suggest, is the city. But not everyone on the Left agrees with that claim. Anarcho-primitivists, for example, argue that the city isn't the only alternative to suburbia. In fact, according to their view, city-dwellers should reject cities for similar reasons and return to pre-capitalist forms of social organization that predate the industrial revolution.

I could spend several posts saying why this view is wrong, so I'll have to be unfairly brief here. First of all, as a Marxist, I am not unequivocally negative about Modernity. I am ambivalent: modernity has brought with it all kinds of progressive possibilities for developing human potential, but it has also brought vastly increased environmental destruction and new forms of exploitation and oppression.

In classical Marxism, the ambivalence toward modernity (which, under any plausible interpretation of modern, has to be loosely identified with capitalism) expresses itself as follows. On the one hand, capitalism has developed the forces of production (e.g. technologies, productive instruments, productive techniques, technically useful knowledge) to an extremely high degree. But the highly developed productive forces and technology in capitalist society are not put in the service of human liberation. Though we can do so today in ways that would have been unthinkable in the Bronze Age, capitalism doesn't use the productive forces to eradicate all forms of poverty, suffering, and starvation. Technological innovation is not put in the service of developing human potential or creating green/sustainable living. Rather it is put in the service of generating ever growing profits. As far as the default mode of the system is concerned, it's all about the bottom line, all the time, and in the long run that the bottom line requires endless compound economic growth. It's not hard to see that this spells destruction for the natural environment.

But that destruction isn't the result of technology, industry, and cities as such (as primitivists would have it). Environmental degradation is the result of the social/political system of capitalism, i.e. an apparatus which generates and uses technology for purposes other than human need and ecological considerations. So the culprit is our political system, not technology or the urban form itself. A sustainable, green socialist society need not dispense with all technologies developed after the emergence of capitalism. That would be absurd. After the revolution, I'd still like to have modern plumbing thank you very much. And aside from improving human lives in innumerable other ways, many technologies enable efficiencies that reduce per capita energy consumption and waste.

And let us not even begin to list the incredible forms of knowledge, association, culture, and so forth that have been enabled by modern technological developments. There's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should radically change the uses that capitalism puts technology to. And we should radically change the way that technological innovation proceeds under capitalism, and put in the service of worthier goals. And, to be sure, many technologies currently in vogue in capitalist societies will need to be abandoned, chief among them the personal automobile as a primary means for each individual to get around. So much for primitivism.

So if I'm right, that leaves us with the city as an ideal form of socialist community. I've set this up as a negative, indirect argument for the city using the process of elimination. But I don't think that's the main thing the city has going for it.

Aside from the environmental gains to be made from consolidating space, eliminating waste, and creating efficiencies from the shared use of public institutions and utilities, there are social and political benefits that attach to city life as well. As Davis points out, the possibilities for spontaneous social interaction and the propensity to feel a sense of shared fate make the urban form an excellent accompaniment to the socialist ideal of a free community of equals, or an association of free producers. Furthermore, if socialist politics privilege the common good and public wealth over private gain and individual greed, then cities are an excellent physical embodiment of the socialist ideal. Rather than hiding our interdependence on one another, cities lay it bare in a way that other forms of structuring communities do not.

The close affinity between collective self-governance from below and the dense, urban form should not be overlooked either. To some extent, the Occupy movement has certainly born this out. If we want to affirm the fact that we are a community of equals who cooperate together for mutual gain, urban forms are the way to go. There is an implicit disavowal of community and interdependence in low-density suburban forms. The built environment in suburban forms creates an illusion of individual self-sufficiency that encourages toxic political forms of consciousness. At their best, however, cities make it hard to ignore our interdependence. There's something intrinsically valuable, I think, about being aware of the ways that we're profoundly connected and inter-dependent.

Cities also unleash human potential and creativity in ways that no other social form can. The sheer density of interesting and creative people living in close proximity to one another creates the possibility for endless combinations of different approaches, lifestyles, artistic endeavors, and projects. If socialism is about making human development, rather than profit, the priority of social production, I can think of no better means than the best aspects of dense urban spaces.

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Is the Property of the 1% Legitimate?

The dominant ideology in our society would have us believe that whatever results from capitalist markets is presumptively just. The idea is that whatever the 1% gets from the market is authoritatively theirs. Thus, pre-tax income appears as something "natural" and taxation appears as something alien, which swoops in from the outside to "intervene" and "interfere" with the "natural" workings of the market.

Some accept this ideology, even as they call for increased taxation on the 1%. While arguing that the present wealth of the 1% is excessive, many continue to assume that pre-tax incomes in capitalist societies are in some sense "natural" and presumptively legitimate. This is expressed in the following thought: "maybe the rich should be taxed more heavily, but at least some of they have is legitimate theirs."

Now, within the horizons of this liberal perspective, I certainly agree that the wealth of the 1% is in some sense "excessive". I also agree that unmet human needs override any ownership claims that might be invoked to argue against re-distributive taxation in a capitalist society. But this concedes far too much to the rich and powerful. We shouldn't just say that the wealth of the 1% is excessive; we should say that it is illegitimate through and through.

To talk of redistribution, after all, is to talk of altering some prior production and distribution of goods. But how does that prior production and distribution come about? And what makes it legitimate in the first place?

It's obvious that the 1% has a vested interest in making sure that the majority of the population think that their wealth is legitimate. It hardly matters whether it's aristocratic privilege, family lineage, racial or sexual supremacy that makes a group dominant. Throughout history dominant groups always try to preserve the basis of their dominance.

Now, dominant groups have at least two (analytically distinct, but in practice interwoven) means of maintaining their dominance. The first is obvious. Dominant groups typically monopolize control of the means of exerting physical repression. If you push too hard against the status quo, dominant groups will always (if possible) push back with physical repression in order to protect their dominant status. This explains the violent force used against the Occupy movement all over the country.

But dominant groups can't maintain their dominance through naked violence alone, at least not for long. Thus all ruling classes are compelled to stabilize their rule by telling stories to the ruled about why their power and privilege is legitimate. As Marx and Engels put it in The German Ideology:

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.

Think of the "divine right" of Kings, the "positive good" doctrine that purported to justify the dominance of Slave owners, the so-called "civilizing mission" that justified colonial domination, or the supposedly "scientific" expertise that justifies the power of bureaucracies. The stories the rich tell about the supposed legitimacy of their wealth are part of a long tradition of lying to the masses to the protect privilege and power of the few.

What stories do the rich tell in our society? By my count there are at least four. Now, it's worth noting that growing numbers of people don't need to be told that these stories are bogus. Millions of people are coming around to the idea that the wealth of the 1% isn't simply excessive, but fundamentally illegitimate. Still, it's worthwhile from time to time to puncture the self-image and self-justifications of those in power. It's worthwhile to go through and debunk the familiar myths handed down from above that purport to show us that the wealth of the ruling class is legitimate.

One common story is that the members of the 1% deserve what they have because they earned it. More precisely, they deserve what they get from the market because it represents their just reward for productive activity. According to this story, the market rewards productive contributions. Thus, the rich deserve their wealth because it must be their proportional reward for their productive contributions to society. Unfortunately this is nothing but a fairy tale. Set aside the bank bailouts showered upon failing financial elites. Capitalists—even the ideal capitalists of the textbook—earn from owning, not from working. The pure capitalist makes precisely zero productive contributions to society and does no productive labor. They pay others to do it and reap the rewards of what they produce. So it can't be that the profits raked in by capitalists are what they deserve for productive contributions to society, since they need not do anything productive.

The second story, related to the first, is that the wealth of the rich is legitimate because it represent their reward for having taken bold risks. The thought is this: capitalists assume risk when they invest their money, so whatever they get in profits must be legitimate. They could have lost it all, but they didn't, so what they get is legitimately theirs. But though this story is told often enough, it is actually quite obscure, even by its own lights. And then there's the fact that workers are forced to assume all of the risk (and then some) assumed by their employer, even though they are entitled to precisely zero of the benefits if the risk pays off. This story is ultimately unconvincing. Rather than proving that the wealth of the 1% is legitimate, upon reflection it undermines the legitimacy of their riches.

But there's a third story that we've yet to consider. That story is that the wealth of the 1% is legitimate because it arises from nothing except free market exchanges. If a voluntary exchange between two consenting adults is unobjectionable, and the accumulation of wealth by the rich arises from nothing but consensual market transactions, it must follow that their wealth is legitimately theirs. And anyone who disagrees must think that a third party should paternalistically "prohibit capitalist acts between consenting adults". But that can't be right. So the wealth of the 1% is legitimate.

Though this argument is rhetorically powerful at first glance, it falls apart rather quickly on closer inspection. First of all, in order for anything to be transferred or exchanged legitimately, it has to already be legitimate property. The market can't create legitimate titles; it can only circulate existing titles. But how did unowned things come to be legitimate property in the first place? How did, for example, natural resources or large swaths of lame come to be private property? By what historical process did society's means of production come to be the private property at all? A quick glance at history shows that violence, brute force, conquest, war, genocide, colonial expropriation and slavery explain the origins of this property. This is what Marx called "primitive accumulation." Insofar as the wealth of the 1% rests on a history of violence and obvious injustice, it is illegitimate, even if acquired through "voluntary" exchanges.

But there's an even deeper problem with this argument. Even if the historical legacy of "primitive accumulation" didn't undermine the legitimacy of the origins of existing property, the idea that capitalism is nothing but an aggregation of genuinely "free" market transactions is ludicrous. Unequal relations of power are constitutive of market exchanges. The equality of citizens deliberative together in a democratic general assembly is never reproduced in the market place. If I, for example, gouge you for a bottle of water during a drought, and you relent because there's nothing else for you to do but cough up $200 for the water, that is a "free" market exchange. You consent to buy the water and I consent to sell it. There are, to be sure, massive asymmetries of power between us, but the transaction satisfies the criterion of "consensual capitalist act between adults." But it is clearly illegitimate for me to profit from the misery and vulnerability of others. Less extreme cases bear the same problems. Workers, who by definition own and control no significant means of production, are forced to work for a capitalist to earn a living, even if they can choose which capitalist work for. But that mere fact gives capitalists a large degree of social power over workers. The labor contract struck between the individual, atomized worker and the employer, then, is hardly free or fair. But it fits the bill of "consensual capitalist acts between adults", because what other choice does the isolated, individual worker have except to consent to her exploitation so that she can earn a living? So much for the virtues of "free" market exchanges as a way of conferring legitimacy on the wealth of the 1%.

The fourth story is that the wealth of the rich is legitimate because it is necessary to produce the greatest overall amount of beneficial economic consequences for all. That is, massive wealth for the 1% is a necessary precondition for economic growth and prosperity. Without it, they would have no incentive to do all of the allegedly marvelous things that they do which, we're told, tend to produce jobs and prosperity for all.

For my money, this is by far the weakest argument of them all. As we've seen, capitalists don't need to do any work at all. They need not do anything productive to earn their profits. So, this argument doesn't even get off the ground, because it assumes that we actually need capitalists to have prosperity and a functioning system of social production. But the fact is that we don't. We do all the work: the boss needs us, but we don't need the boss.

The most obvious objection to this argument, however, arises out of the fact that we're in the midst of a protracted global economic crisis right now. And, perversely, profits have soared to record levels amidst sky-high unemployment and economic misery for the 99%. What's more, the misery of the 99% is directly tied to the record profits which have been largely reaped through bailouts and austerity. But this argument suggests that the cause of our misery is necessary to produce something the 99% does not presently enjoy, namely prosperity and economic security.

A more specific version of the above argument is that the wealth of capitalists is necessary to incentivize innovation. But this argument rests on nothing. It's not as if we have experimental data that prove that all non-capitalist means of generating innovations are flawed. Open-source software is an obvious counter-example, and there are too many others to name. Moreover, as I've already explained, capitalists don't actually do the innovating. That's what they pay R&D departments for (if, in fact, they pay them... often corporate R&D is public subsidized through universities). So the innovation incentive argument simply doesn't show us that the wealth of the 1% is legitimate.

Things aren't looking so good for the idea that the wealth of the 1% is legitimate. It is being undermined daily. After all, the mere fact that the State has to resort to acts of violence to repress resistance and protest from below shows that it's ideological hegemony is fractured and incomplete.

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What's the Point of Education?

If you ask Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—known locally as "Mayor 1%"—the point of education is to provide for the specific needs of the owners of big corporate firms. The owners sketch up the job descriptions, they decide what will be produced, according to what modes of organization, when and where. Schools, then, are nothing more than publicly-subsidized training centers whose curriculum matches the fleeting demands of profit-hungry corporate leaders.

In their classic, must-read book on the topic, Schooling in Capitalist America (2011, Haymarket Re-issue), radical economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis elaborate more on this perspective:

How can we best understand the relationship between education and the capitalist economy? Any adequate explanation must begin with the fact that schools produce workers. The traditional theory explains the increased value of an educated worker by treating the worker as a machine. According to this view, workers have certain technical specifications (skills and motivational patterns) which in any given production situation determine their economic productivity. Productive traits are enhanced through schooling...

...The motivating force in the capitalist economy is the employer's quest for profit. Profits are made through hiring workers and organizing production in such a way that the price paid for workers time—the wage—is less than the value of the goods produced by their labor. [If the price paid for the worker's time (i.e. the wage) wasn't less than the value of the goods the worker produces during her shift, the boss would have no reason to hire her in the first place -t]...

...Schools produce workers...Schools foster types of personal development compatible with the relationships of dominance and subordination in the economic sphere, and finally, schools create surpluses of skilled labor sufficiently extensive to render effective the prime weapon of the employer in disciplining labor—the power to fire and hire.

In short, according to the 1%, the basic goal of education—which includes everything from curriculum to methods of student and teacher evaluation—should be to foster and sustain corporate profitability. Considerations such as human development and flourishing are irrelevant. Developing the talents of students and enabling them to lead free lives doesn't even enter into the picture.

Moreover, to the extent that music, arts, and the humanities fail to provide corporate owners with the sorts of traits that the 1% is looking for, they should be completely eliminated. (Although they're less commonly the object of direct ruling-class ire, I note that the natural sciences are distorted and abused by this educational program as well—especially on the question of how grant money is allocated and so forth). This is just a way of saying that the knowledge and skills woven through disciplines such as literature, philosophy, history, art, anthropology, languages, culture and so on are—as far as the 1% is concerned—useless at best, and dangerous at worst. What's needed, instead, is a surplus of people who empathize with orders, defer gratification, respect the authority of bosses, come to work on time, who possess the technical skills needed to do whatever the boss needs them to do. (For more on this see this (esp. 6:40-onward) as well as this (as yet unreleased) book Capitalism and Education)

***

It's clear that there is no space in this educational vision for the interests of educators, parents and students to be voiced. Their job is to take orders from above. The goals are set for them in advance. Their only use lies in efficiently maximizing those ready-made goals.

It comes as little surprise, then, that more and more of the people charged with running school systems and universities are drawn directly from the corporate world. For example, in the case of the Chicago City Colleges (which used to be called "Peoples' Colleges") a corporate business executive with no specific expertise in higher education, Cheryl Hyman, has been charged with overseeing their "reinvention." In this task, Hyman been assisted by a slew of corporate consultants. As the Reader reports:

[Hyman] was assisted by consultants from McKinsey & Company and the Civic Consulting Alliance (the consulting arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago) who worked, initially pro bono, to "dig into the metrics" with her. By midsummer she'd hired former McKinsey consultant (and Renaissance 2010 Fund official) Alvin Bisarya as vice chancellor of strategy and institutional intelligence. In March 2011, Donald Laackman, a principal at the Civic Consulting Alliance, was installed as president of Harold Washington College. And last January, McKinsey was awarded a half-million-dollar contract for work on City Colleges changes this year.

The idea is that educational institutions should be completely subordinate to, and take their orders from, corporate "experts". Accordingly, the "ignorant" public—students, teachers, and parents—have no meaningful role to play in determining how schools are run. After all, as far as the corporate "experts" are concerned, the students, parents and teachers are noting more than the passive objects of "reform" rather than agents whose interests the school system should serve. For those parents, students or teachers who dare to dissent from this ruling-class consensus, the reply—which is actually a threat—is something like this:

Look, if you're going to survive in this society, you need a job. But to get a job, you have to do what exactly we say. We—the "job creators"—decide what jobs there are and who gets them. If you disobey us, we'll freeze you out of the system and leave you with nothing. So it's either a life of obedience to ready-made goals and (if you're lucky) precarious employment, or a life of destitution and marginalization.

This goes for students and parents as much as it does for teachers. Students and parents are denied a voice and threatened with marginalization if they don't do what the system asks of them. And if educators themselves speak up and try to resist the corporate re-structuring of their curriculum, they are scapegoated, threatened, attacked and punished. Rahm Emanuel and his brutal assault on the Chicago Teachers Union is a case in point.

And, aside from the fact that teachers unions are the most powerful organized labor force in the contemporary United States today—which makes them a clear target for an employing class on a warpath to smash the union movement entirely—unionized educators are also in a position to resist commands from above demanding that they teach only what corporate leaders want them to teach. Hence, the corporate elites have a clear interest in bludgeoning,discrediting and otherwise attacking teachers unions.

The most perverse part of this is that ruling elites use the threat of unemployment to make it appear as if they're performing some kind of philanthropic service by using educational institutions to shoehorn people into low-paying, precarious jobs. By exploiting high unemployment and the economic misery of the 99% (caused by austerity and the global crisis—both forced upon us by the 1%), Rahm and his goons are attempting to sell themselves as "job-creating saviors" of the 99%.

But it's not hard to see through this sham, even by their own lights. If Boeing wants 100 more workers to enter the labor market today (because, say, they want to drive wages down in order to make hiring new people maximally profitable), there's no guarantee that they'll want those 100 people next year. Maybe they'll change their mind because their profit margins aren't high enough, or maybe they'll leave Chicago in search of a more easily exploitable labor force. Though educational institutions are being forced to serve corporate interests, it's not the case that corporate elites are being asked to reciprocate. There is nothing to stop corporations from benefiting in a one-sided way from public funds in the short-run, only to pack up and leave thousands unemployed at a later date.

***

Often, political struggles within the sphere of education are struggles over the question of access: who is granted access to which schools, who isn't, and why. The struggle over access is the struggle against school closures, against teacher layoffs, against tuition hikes and user fees. It is the struggle against a university system financed through the exploitative—and fabulously profitable—student loan industry. Traditionally, working class people and oppressed minorities were completely excluded from the university system. Struggles from below created inroads for previously excluded groups to get a foothold in the university system. But today, the ranks of those being entirely excluded is growing by the day as austerity causes living standards to plummet and tuition and fees to soar. The question of access is a key question. In the context of cruel regimes of austerity being imposed from above, it is perhaps the central question facing millions of ordinary people in the 99% right now.

But the question of access, taken by itself, is only one part of the struggle. After all, what is it that we are fighting to gain access to?

The only way to answer this question is to put forward a perspective on what the point of education is. We already saw the 1%'s answer: educational institutions should either be made to subsidize corporate profits or they should cease to exist entirely. But what kind of answer should the 99% give?

***

Human beings flourish when they are able to cultivate their talents and exercise their capacities for imaginative thinking and creative activity. Living a rich and meaningful life requires that we have the space to reflect and figure out who we are and what we really care about. Leading a free life means honing one's capacity for critical thinking—for seeing the world as it really is rather than the way our leaders want us to see it. Living a free life also means learning about our own history, that is, the often untold stories of groups women and men who struggled against forms oppression and exploitation in the past—in contrast to history-as-seen-from-above which focuses on the alleged "heroics" of a small group of "Great Men". These important—indeed necessary—goals can only be accomplished through education. I don't say that education is sufficient to accomplish these goals, since that would play into the hands of those who argue that teachers and educators should be made responsible for solving all the world's problems. The only way to fully realize human potential is to fight for a different kind of society—a socialist society—where the material conditions for human flourishing could be secured for all. Nonetheless, though hardly sufficient, I do claim that education is a necessary part of fully realizing the promise of such a society.

I stress that these goals I describe above are not "luxuries". They do not describe a life that should only be available to a select few. On the contrary, the goals described above speak to basic human interests that exceed the the narrow goals imposed on us from above by capitalism. As G.A. Cohen puts it:

We have needs beyond the needs to consume and these aren't recognized by capitalism. We have a need, for example, to develop and exercise our talents. When our capacities lie unused, they don't enjoy the zest for life that comes from having one's capacities flourish. People are able to develop themselves only when they get good education. But in a capitalist society, the education of children is threatened by those who would contort education to fit the narrow demands of the labor market....We shouldn't stake our children's future on the hope that the capitalist market will need what's good for them.

...There's a lot of talent in almost every human being. But in a lot of cases that talent goes undeveloped, because people lack the time, energy, resources and facilities to develop it. Throughout history, only a leisured minority has enjoyed this fully. And they did so (and continue to do so) on the backs of a toiling majority...

...The ruling class wants education to be geared toward restoring profitability to the system... But it's dangerous to educate the young too much, because they will become cultivated people who are likely to be less satisfied with the low-paying jobs the market offers them. This might create aspirations that capitalism can't match.... Therefore, people must be "educated to know their place"...

This is a powerful diagnosis of the problem and a vision for how things should be different. The most basic claim is that we shouldn't cater to the tendency in capitalism to view people only as sources of profit, and when they can't be profitably exploited, as redundant and expendable.

Even the members of the ruling class cannot deny the power of this argument. That is why, by and large, the arts and humanities are well-funded and relatively protected at elite colleges and universities. If Rahm and the 1% in Chicago are openly and publicly calling for the complete corporatization of the City Colleges—largely populated by working-class people of color, a large number of them recent immigrants—they are not suggesting that the University of Chicago be transformed into a training facility in which professors and administrators are the mere servants of corporate leaders.

Of course, there are trends—even in the halls of so-called "elite" institutions—toward corporatization. And they need to be rooted out, criticized and fought against. The systematic underfunding and debt-financing of graduate programs in music, creative writing, visual art and film (among other endeavors) is a grave problem even at the "top schools".

But it remains true that the "plan for transformation" of the City Colleges in Chicago—and elsewhere—evinces racist and anti-working-class assumptions on the part of those at the top.

After all, Rahm isn't sending his own children to the corporatized charter schools or public military academies that he favors as models for the Chicago Public School system. He sends his kids to an expensive private school where students have full access to art, music and other "luxuries". And we can bet that he isn't going to send his children to the City Colleges when they graduate from high school. So, for the children of wealth and power, there's one kind of education. But for the children of working class people—and especially working class people of color—there's another kind of education. For Rahm and his buddies, the people at the bottom should be "educated to know their place" so that they can effectively and willingly fill the role that the 1% has selected for them—whether it's as a temporary part of the corporate workforce or as member of the unemployed industrial reserve army.

***

There's a profound contradiction between what the capitalist system—premised as it is on profitability for the employing class—requires and what flourishing human beings require. As long as the basic priorities of society are determined by forces outside of our control, we will be faced with this contradiction. The proponents of the system as it is will say that education should be a mere means for efficiently satisfying ready-made goals determined by the employing class. Proponents of the human interests of the 99% will insist that education be part of putting ordinary human beings in a position to decide for themselves what the basic goals should be.

As long as the priority of the social system is shackled to the ready-made goal of profit maximization for the rich, it will always be possible to paint "non-productive" forms of knowledge as "useless", "irrelevant" or, at best, mere "luxuries" available only to the children of the rich. It will possible to make high-stakes testing and corporatized school structures look necessary and unavoidable.

But right now these market ideologies that are regularly used to legitimize the system are ringing hollow for millions of people. Masses of people rose up and took to the streets last Fall in the US because they are sick and tired of living underneath an economic and political system dominated by the 1%. The Occupy movement awoke a sleeping giant which, although disturbed from its slumber, has yet to realize the full extent of its power to change society. Millions of people are coming around to the idea that the system doesn't serve their interests—and they are hungry for alternatives. The only way to resolve the contradictions plaguing education in a profit-based society is to fight for a different kind of society—one in which the social forces of production are controlled democratically and made to work for human ends rather than for the iron laws of profit accumulation.

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The Importance of Movement Democracy

I think it's good that there is so much debate ensuing around tactics and strategy within Occupy right now. Movements only move forward if they are able to vigorously deliberate about their own strategy and goals. Avoiding debate and discussion means leaving our views unexamined and uncriticized. It means allowing the inertia of the status quo to set in and dampen progress. When this happens, movements wither on the vine. To the extent that the arguments about Black Bloc tactics have ignited discussions of this sort, they are productive for the movement as a whole.

Still, there are several unfortunate consequences of the framing of many of the debates raised by Chris Hedge's polemic against Black Bloc tactics. Some of the debates appear to have devolved into a shrill, abstract and moralistic back and forth about non-violence/violence. Others ignore matters that deserve a lot more attention than they're getting from the media. As a result of the framing of the "Black Bloc debates", a number of crucial questions have been lost in the fray.

What do I have in mind? The question of movement democracy, on the one hand, and the related question of how consciousness changes, on the other, are two deeply important questions that are not well-served by the debate instigated by Hedges's polemic.

As many have pointed out, the "Black Bloc" is a tactic, not an organization. Many who employ the tactic seem to have a roughly similar set of politics, but there is nothing like political homogeneity among the Bloc's participants. Different people employ the tactic in different contexts for different reasons. I'm inclined to say that any sweeping, abstract assessment of the Black Bloc as a tactic is bound to get things wrong. Only by conducting, as Lenin puts it, a "concrete analysis of a concrete situation" can we hope to get things right here. But what would a more concrete assessment of the tactic look like?

In order to answer this question, we have to back up for a moment. Who is it that's supposed to be doing the assessing here? And what method or practices for assessment should be used? There has been a lot of general debate over whether Black Bloc tactics are effective or justifiable. But the question of who should make this decision (and how they should make it) has been largely ignored. Before we can know which tactics are the right ones, we have to be clear about who should make that call.

One perspective here would be the following: the question of Black Bloc tactics is a matter best handled behind closed doors by activists already committed to using such tactics. According to this perspective, Black Bloc tactics should be employed whether or not the rest of the movement is won through dialogue and debate. Perhaps an attempt to win the rest of the movement should be tried, but if, in the end, that argument isn't won at a G.A., those who prefer Black Bloc tactics should simply go ahead with their plans anyway. Thus, activists of this persuasion see movement democracy as a mere means to achieving their pre-deterimined goals, rather than a genuine deliberative process where their own minds might change in the course of collective discussion with their comrades. Ultimately, this perspective assumes that decision-making power about movement tactics should rest with a relatively narrow group of people who decide internally what to do. I use the example of Black Bloc tactics, but this perspective could just as well be employed in support of any tactic whatsoever.

I'd like to suggest that this is a deeply problematic position.

A far better perspective would be one in which movement democracy is central. It is deeply undemocratic to use democratic bodies (like a G.A.) as mere means to achieve pre-determined goals (which can be discarded if it proves to be an unreliable means). The person who approaches movement democracy in this way says, in effect, "I'm for democracy only if it means I get my way, otherwise I'm against it." In the end, this person will say "I don't care if most people disagree with me about what this movement should do, at the end of the day I don't have any obligation to justify myself to fellow activists." This is not a democratic approach in the least. This individualistic/strategic perspective brushes against the grain of the cooperative and deliberative attitudes necessary to the flourishing of movement democracy.

But why is movement democracy important? It's worth going through the most significant reasons why effective mass movements have to be internally democratic.

First of all, an internally democratic movement draws everyone involved into active participation in the determination of the goals and tactics of the movement. Rather than allowing a self-appointed clique of "experts" to issue orders from on high, vigorous movement democracy mobilizes and activates all participants and enables them to be the co-authors of the movement (rather than mere followers or sympathizers). People have a much stronger stake in a movement when they are actively involved in running it. Mass participation goes hand in hand with genuine movement democracy.

Mass participation is key because it fosters that crucial element of all successful social struggles and revolutions: self-activity. As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once put it, a "vibrant and active democracy" is needed within movements so that all members can "participate actively and consciously in working out its views and in determining its course of action." The point isn't that democracy is the most fair procedure in some abstract sense; rather, the idea that democracy is an essential political element of active social movements from below. Mass participation generates political energy and an anti-conservative spark that cannot be achieved in any other way. All of the most successful and inspiring social movements in history have created radical new forms of democracy from below that draw everyone into active participation (the revolutionary workers council is a key example). The success or failure of Occupy depends on its ability to draw the masses of people into active participation in determining its course of action.

Furthermore, a movement that eschews vigorous internal democracy risks running aground on the shoals of substitutionism. Substitutionism is the political mistake of substituting oneself (or one's small group) for a mass movement. Without vigorous movement democracy, where everyone debates publicly and openly what their common course of action should be, the door is left open for a group (or competing groups) to substitute their own perspective and goals for the perspective/goals of the movement writ large. Substitutionism is problematic for at least two reasons. First of all, it it elitist. Rather thank seeing liberation as a process in which the masses collectively emancipate themselves through their own self-activity, substitutionists assume that a minority must step in to grant the benighted masses liberation from on high. Second, substitutionism has the effect of de-mobilizing people. By drawing a sharp line of demaraction between themselves and the rest of the movement, substitutionists give others the impression that their active participation lacks value and importance. Substitutionist posturing does not win new people to the struggle. It doesn't radicalize the masses and encourage revolt from below. It tends to be perceived as top-down, insulting and de-mobilizing by those outside of the substitutionist clique.

Substitutionists aren't always self-professed radicals, although many are. Gradualist, conservative groups who have a stake in the status quo (esp. groups close to the Democratic Party) can step in and substitute themselves for the movement just as easily as ultra-left radicals. The key to preventing substitutionism is unfettered, vigorous movement democracy. That way, the direction of the movement is, ideally, determined by nothing except the unforced force of the better argument in mass deliberative bodies like G.A.'s. Of course, organized radicals can and must participate in those debates and deliberations. The experience and depth of politics they bring has a lot to offer the movement. But they must do so as participants in the collective-self governance of the movement, not as "experts" standing above and outside of the movement purporting to show the "ignorant masses" the unvarnished truth.

Finally, direct participation of the masses in intra-movement democracy is essential because of the collective learning process that it makes possible. This brings us to the question of how consciousness changes and how people are radicalized.

According to some, the best way to radicalize people is through provocative, small-scale actions that suddenly shake ordinary people from their "dogmatic slumbers". By witnessing daring examples of the "propaganda of the deed", people are radicalized and drawn into participation in struggle.

Now, I think it would be abstract and unhelpful to say that small-scale, bold actions have no progressive effect on consciousness. Everything depends on the form and content of the action and the context in which it occurs. But if there are examples of successful political interventions of this kind, there is also a long list of examples in which this approach resulted in spectacular failure. And even the most successful examples of the "propaganda of the deed" pale in comparison with the radicalizing effect of direct participation in collective struggles against the 1%. People are radicalized in the course of actively fighting back in concert with others. In a society in which people are bombarded everywhere they turn by advertisements and injunctions to buy this or that, it is unreasonable to expect that a mere slogan or image will be enough to win people to joining the fight for their own liberation. Drawing people into participating in struggle is the key to changing consciousness.

But how are people drawn into mass action and participation in struggle? Worsening material conditions and discussion/direct-engagement are essential here. Peoples daily lives are being shaken by brutal austerity from above, worsening living standards for the 99%, mass layoffs and unemployment, foreclosures and school closings, etc. They don't need a small clique to tell them that something is wrong with society. What they need is someone to engage them critically, to talk to them, to challenge them in discussion to link arms with others in struggle. Radicals need to talk to people in their own communities, to meet them half-way and engage them directly. This is all the more important if the Occupy movement is going to successfully collaborate and integrate itself with communities that face racial oppression, residential segregation and police intimidation. It's not enough to pull off creative political stunts that, in effect, fly the flag and demand that people rally to it. Direct political discussion with the 99% is essential to building mass movements.

Importantly, political discussion has to begin from where people's heads are at; if it abstractly sweeps in from elsewhere it is unlikely to get any traction. What's more, this dialogue has to draw on people's concrete experiences. Take the question of the role of the police. It would have been abstract to aggressively scold and berate new activists who were sanguine about the police in the early days of the movement. To be sure, raising objections to their attitudes toward the police was necessary, even at the beginning, because the cops never have been, and never will be, on our side. But things have changed drastically since then. After all of the repression from the police that the movement has faced, radicals are now very well-positioned to draw on those people's experience in arguing that the cops aren't on our side. Without a democratic forum for debate and dialogue that can draw on the collective experience of the movement, we can't expect to win fellow occupiers to the perspective that the police aren't a force for social justice. People's views are not set it stone; they are liable to change rather quickly on the basis of political debate and concrete experience through struggle. There's no substitute for engaging people in critical political dialogue in a way that draws on their own experience and concerns.

Now, critical dialogue doesn't mean that activists should leave people's existing views intact or simply pander to what they already think. This would be conservative and ultimately antithetical to the entire spirit of activism itself. Activists try to change the world, not merely interpret it as it is. Critical discussion and dialogue should be a combination of listening to people's concerns and questions, on the one hand, and challenging them to be more militant and active on the other. In the context of escalating attacks on the 99% from above, people's consciousness can develop extremely quickly. Seeing others engaged in mass struggles is a radicalizing force as well, which is all the more reason to build a mass, vigorously democratic movement from below.

This kind of critical discussion and debate can only flourish in the context of a democratic mass movement. If everyone simply does their own thing, without discussing among one another which way forward is best for all, these discussions may never transpire. If some groups, under the guise of a "diversity of tactics", simply opt out of democratic deliberation when they feel they won't get their way, this thwarts the capacity of the movement debate out and discuss tactics effectively. As a result, we can't generalize from each other's experience or learn from each other's mistakes.

The collective learning process that mass movement democracy makes possible is impossible to experience any other way. As socialist Norman Geras describes it, with mass movements:

"...the end must already be operative in the means employed, the liberation of the masses can only be their own work, and it it is in this very process of achieving it that they must develop those qualities which will sustain a socialist society. Thus, for Trotsky, mass participation in the political forms thrown up by a revolution is not only a manifestation of the widespread desire to assume more active control over political and economic life, it also promotes and consolidates that desire. Revolution is consistently seen as an educative process, in which the same mass actions which are necessary to destroy the existing economic and political structures, also have the effect of delivering the working class from bourgeois ideology, of making it conscious of its interest as a class, of raising its confidence in its own ability to organize and decide, and of providing it with the experience of these activities."

This educative process, where we learn from each other and radicalize through the course of struggle and collective self-determination, is impossible if some groups regularly opt out and decide that tactics are best determined by small groups who separate themselves from the movement.

So, the question of "Black Bloc: Pro or Con?" is not one that can be answered abstractly. It should only be answered by direct participants in a mass movement who collectively debate and deliberate together in an open, democratic spirit. To think that a few self-apointed "experts" could answer this question for everyone in a couple of widely-publicized internet debates misses this crucial point.

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