Ending Classism for Everyone
This article is based on my talks at an online Ending Classism for Everyone Workshop for the Eastside Area in Los Angeles, USA, in September.
Thanks for coming to this workshop on ending classism. We have done good work in RC on class issues. We have discharged about our families and class histories and how they have affected us. This workshop is going to be a little different. I want us to look at how classism is basically about economic exploitation and think about what kind of economic system we want to replace it with. This is especially crucial now that capitalism has led us into multiple crises and is clearly becoming more unworkable. We still have work to do on our backgrounds, but we need to think freshly about facing and handling the current global threats to our existence.
I expect I will learn from leading this workshop and gradually do more of this work outside the RC Community. Wide world movements for change need to be based on clear thinking. If they’re not, they may just produce a different kind of oppressive society. That has happened before. Leading this workshop is good practice for me as I go out more and more into the world. Thank you for letting me practice with you.
EXPLOITATION
The RC Goal on Ending Classism, adopted by the 2017 World Conference of the RC Communities, mentions exploitation. It states that we commit ourselves to taking certain steps to move toward a society free of exploitation. Exploitation is a key word. Capitalism is based on exploitation.
The capitalist economic system is also in the process of collapsing. This give us an unprecedented opportunity to imagine and move toward a just society. What would a non-exploitative economic system look like? We get to figure this out.
There hasn’t always been exploitation. Modern human beings have existed for about three hundred thousand years, and during almost all of that time there was no exploitation. Generally, people hunted and gathered just enough food to stay alive. There was no extra that one person could take from another to grow richer. Groups lived cooperatively.
The development of agriculture was a major turning point. It became possible to produce a surplus, to grow more food than was immediately needed. Then it was possible for a group of people to take and accumulate a surplus. That group became richer while the actual producers did not. We can say that the producers were being exploited. People who were not doing the work got the results of other people’s work.
Exploitation has existed only for the last five to ten thousand years out of three hundred thousand years of modern human existence. It grew out of people’s struggles to survive. Insecurity led people to take more than their share, and people’s access to resources became increasingly unbalanced.
Exploitation was intrinsic to slave and feudal societies, which were followed by capitalism, which has become the dominant economic system based on exploitation. Capitalism now appears to be in the last stages of breaking down due to its intrinsic irrationality.
Capitalism is at the root of much that is now coming to a head [reaching a crisis point]—racism and police brutality, the spread of the coronavirus, war, the nuclear arms buildup, climate change, and more. It is threatening the continued existence of our species.
Some people predicted the eventual collapse of capitalism. It is now happening. The process has been underway for a long time but now is rapidly accelerating. We get to experience this.
The good news is that we have an unprecedented opportunity to make transformative changes. (The Chinese word for crisis is a combination of two words: danger and opportunity.)
We need to think about what should replace capitalism. Capitalism with a “human face”? Another class system still based on exploitation that isn’t called capitalism? Or a society that is free of exploitation and oppression?
Most of us have been economically exploited. Even people with middle-class privileges work for a living, and part of what they produce goes to enrich other people.
Some owning-class people may not have been economically exploited during their lives—they have been in the role of exploiter, receiving the wealth from other people’s labor. But generations ago, their families may have been in different circumstances. They may have been exploited and passed on the effects of that to the next generations, who eventually took on the role of exploiter, which felt better than being exploited as workers.
It is important to remember that these are all just roles in an irrational society. All humans are very much the same—inherently good, intelligent, caring, powerful, and cooperative. Only the residue of trauma makes us behave otherwise.
How have you or your people been economically exploited?
(Demonstration with a woman who was raised poor and working class in El Salvador and is now middle class in the United States)
(Demonstration with an unemployed Pilipino father) [Pilipina/o is the non-colonized term for referring to the language and the people of the Philippines. There was originally no F sound in the languages of the Philippines.]
“INTERNALIZED CAPITALISM”
Most of us have lived in capitalist societies all our lives and absorbed its distress patterns to the point that we often don’t question them. We all need to discharge on and re-evaluate where our patterns agree with capitalism, where we agree with our own exploitation, and where we agree with the exploitation of other people.
Our economic system encourages us to consume more and more. Supposedly if we buy certain things, we will be happy. We can become compulsive about buying things we don’t really need.
Capitalism justifies itself as the best possible system. We tend to believe the justifications and accept living according to them.
How do we divide the wealth among us? From the perspective of our economic system, the income of people who work for a living depends on their education, skills, efforts, life choices, and decisions. Capitalist society says, “Everybody can make it [succeed] if they work hard enough,” or “Some work harder or smarter and so deserve more.” Actually, not everyone gets ahead no matter how hard they try or how smart they are because the capitalist system needs to exploit somebody. That is its essential nature. Unfortunately, many of us have gone along with its false assumptions all of our lives.
People have also questioned the justifications for the capitalist system. Protest movements against it have existed since capitalism became established in England several hundred years ago. One such protest movement, the socialist movement, has challenged the system and developed theories counter to its ideas. One piece of socialist theory states, “Each person contributes work according to their ability, and each person receives resources according to their need.” This means, for example, that if one person is less able to produce but has greater needs, they would get more resources than someone who produces more and has fewer needs. Ability to produce is based on life experiences and many other circumstances, including one’s relationship to oppression.
Investment is an aspect of capitalism. A person invests their money (capital) hoping to produce profits. Capitalism calls it “making the money work for you.” You or your family may have worked to save enough money to invest, but under capitalism the goal is to have an ongoing income from investments and do little or no work yourself after that. In fact, the money isn’t doing the work. Somebody else is working to produce the wealth. This is exploitation. It is also called unearned income. Examples of unearned income are interest on savings; investments in stocks and bonds, gold, and rental property; and the private ownership of workplaces that employ workers. Unless we stay aware of what we’re doing, we can shut down our thinking about different ways of organizing our economic lives.
(Demonstration with a middle-class white woman)
Capitalism leads to endless wars—which we support, usually without realizing it. Our taxes increase the military budget and the extremely profitable war industry. The U.S. armed forces are used to exploit other nations and transfer the control of their wealth to the United States. Standards of living in the United States have generally been substantially higher than those in poor countries—which tends to keep USers quiet about ending the exploitation.
We USers are conditioned to feel entitled to an income that is partly based on the exploitation of other people and nations. We feel entitled to privileged lifestyles. We tolerate a government and a corporate business class that exploit people and natural resources both in our own country and internationally.
The “American Dream” is the myth that someone can “make it” if they work hard, play by the rules, and make the right choices. If they don’t make it, it’s their fault. This myth is widely internalized by oppressed people, but it is not our fault that we’re oppressed. Oppressing people is the way that profits are made under capitalism. Capitalism depends on an oppressed and exploited population. Poor people who don’t work [actually can’t work] for a living are used as an example to working people of what will happen to them if they don’t cooperate with capitalism.
The coronavirus pandemic and resulting massive unemployment make it clear that we are not at fault for struggling economically. For example, programs had existed to protect the population from a pandemic. What happened? They were defunded and the money was spent on military-production corporations. The failure of the system is becoming clear and exposing the lie of the American Dream.
REFORMS
Reforms are not enough. Instead of addressing the real issues stemming from an unjust economic system, and the inherent injustice of the system itself, the government will often allow and promote small reforms. This is like putting a small bandage on someone with a serious illness. Currently many politicians and organizations are promoting weak reforms that appear to deal with the huge problems in our society but in fact don’t come anywhere near to doing that. We have to stand up for real solutions that go to the root of the problem, that take on [confront] the whole system of exploitation and oppression. We need to do this soon.
At the same time, consciously struggling to win reforms with the goal of building organization and unity can make sense. There are also policies, often called “revolutionary reforms,” that push society away from capitalism and toward a just economic and political system. An example is single-payer universal health care—which would eliminate the private insurance industry and for-profit drug companies.
CONTRADICTING INTERNALIZED CAPITALISM
Reaching out to workers in direct production, and poor people: The majority of the world’s people are working class or poor. These groups are essential to making big changes. The RC Goal on Ending Classism includes steps we can take to reach out to people currently engaged in the direct production of goods and services (“direct production workers”) and poor people, who are often underrepresented in RC.
Taking charge of our workplaces: We can create workplaces in which workers are in charge. For example, we can push for a voice for employees and make unions easier to join.
Donating unearned income: We can think about and share the idea of “each person contributing work according to their ability, and each person receiving resources according to their need.” We can donate unearned income to liberation and solidarity projects.
Working to end imperialism: We can challenge the destructive government policies that allow corporations to dominate and exploit for profit the people and natural resources of other countries and put our planet at risk—that promote the exploitation and deportation of immigrants; that try to force regime change in countries that are moving toward liberation from oppression; that promote war, violence, authoritarianism, and political repression; that promote the privatization of resources, such as water.
Embracing internationalism: We can actively care about every human being in the world. We can think beyond our own personal, family, community, and national interests. “All for one, and one for all” can be applied internationally.
People of the United States, an owning-class country in the international context, can use the RC Owning-Class Commitment for discharge: [As a USer] I promise always to remember that I and my people are completely good and I never need pretend [superiority] again. No matter how frightening it feels, I will give up the control of wealth and the justification for it. And I will come home and humbly take my own place with working-class people [everywhere] in setting the world completely to right.
(Demonstration with a U.S. woman)
Los Angeles, California, USA
(Present Time 202, January 2021)