Since I work in healthcare and have strong opinions on the economic structure of the US and much of the rest of the world, of course I have thoughts about the murder of United Healthcare’s CEO. I honestly don’t think anyone cares about them, but I need to get them out anyway. To start with, I have to include the disclaimer that everyone has to put out that I don’t condone assassinating people. I don’t want to promote or glorify violence as a solution as I think there are always better ways to deal with socio-economic issues. That said, I hope this incident makes people think more about the context of the world they live in and how it affects people.
In general, CEOs are people who run corporations, and these people often jump from company to company, often making millions of dollars whether that company does well or not, then jets off to a different company to do whatever it is they do for millions of dollars. As just one of many, many examples, the CEO of Spirit Airlines, Edward Christie, made $6.6 million last year and received a $3.8 million bonus right before the company went bankrupt. Brian Thompson, United Healthcare’s CEO was making $10-11 million a year in total compensation. No big deal, right? The problem is, many of the companies make their money by exploiting their workers and/or shorting the people they purportedly serve.
Healthcare companies essentially try to make profit from providing healthcare to people. The system makes people purchase insurance individually or through their employer, and then they pay out money to the people who happen to need it. Problem is, it’s hard to make lots of profit by doing this unless you limit what you spend. And they do this by denying care or claims, whether it’s procedures or medications or whatever. And the more they can skimp on reimbursing providers and denying people trying to access their own healthcare, the more money the company makes, the shareholders make, and the administrators make. The people actually providing the care don’t make a killing themselves. In fact, they’re often pushed by their employers to do more, faster, and charge for every little thing by their employers while the insurers are pushed to deny as much as possible and pay out as little as possible. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s the patients who generally suffer.
United Healthcare’s CEO was murdered, and many outlets are reporting that written on the bullets were words like ‘delay,’ ‘deny,’ defend,’ ‘depose.’ If true, they are likely referencing the way insurance companies “delay paying claims, deny valid claims in whole or part, and defend their actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation,” which according to the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It, is the way these companies operate to maximize profit, the “Moses and the prophets” of capitalism as Marx would call this insatiable drive to accumulate. There are countless cases of United Healthcare alone delaying, denying, and defending their limitations of people’s arguably necessary healthcare, many anecdotal examples being shared on social media following the news of Thompson’s assassination. Untold numbers of people have been harmed by the reluctance of insurers to approve or pay for medical needs, and this anger and frustration is shown by the insanely disproportionate reactions on social media in the aftermath of the shooting. Last time I checked before going to sleep last night, there were 20,000+ laugh reactions to less than 2,000 sad reactions on United Healthcare’s Facebook post regarding Thompason’s death. And new articles and Twitter/X are no different.
The sad fact is that our healthcare system alone contributes to unimaginable suffering and death due to delays in care or outright refusals to approve the care needed because it basically costs the insurance companies too much. The purpose of healthcare isn’t the care itself–it’s the possibility of others to make as much fucking money as possible by providing it or denying it. And this simple fact, as much as people try to defend it as being ‘fiscally responsible’ and in line with the supposedly wholesome, benevolent, and enlightened aims of the capitalist market’s invisible hand, is absolute bullshit and an indictment of the very system they seek to defend, much the same as insurers try to defend their delays and denials. It’s a fucking con.
The economy itself – i.e., the way we organize production and distribution – is how we reproduce society; it forms the material foundation on top of which our political and legal superstructures are built. And under capitalism, that foundation is controlled via property rights and other coercive means by capital in conjunction with the state (forming the 'ruling class'), which in turn gives shape to the 'markets' in which the economy manifests itself. But the economy isn't some magical creation of capital or the state or some unseen, guiding hand of Providence beyond our keen; it's created by all the labour of working people–we, collectively, are the economy. And its manifestation isn't preordained, either. Rather, it takes its shape based on how economic life is organized.
I don’t rejoice in this one CEO’s death, even if I detest what he and his company ultimately stands for–making money at the expense of others who lack the power and resources to defend themselves and their health and that of their families. The way our economy is currently configured, CEOs and capitalists are the predators, and workers and consumers are the prey, and I’m sick and tired of it. And I think many others are just as sick and tired as me. My one and only hope is that we can find a way to communicate and come together to change things for the better in a collective and constructive way instead of the resolution coming from the end of guns held by angry and desperate people who have nowhere else to turn.
Thursday, December 5, 2024
Friday, August 11, 2023
fuck the prison industrial complex
I was bored and decided to watch 60 Days In. All I'll say is that, while it's exploitative of the prisoners, I think it also highlights how absolutely inadequate, inhumane, and exploitative our corrections system is; and it only reinforces my abolitionist tendencies. Prison does next to nothing to rehabilitate anybody, but does a lot to physically and psychologically torture them and teach them how to be more violent and selfish and live as an animal rather than a human being. It's disgusting how the system treats and tries to profit off of prisoners while doing little to improve them, better their lives, and keep them from harming others or themselves.
Thursday, June 8, 2023
the trinity as an expression of queer love
On Trinity Sunday, which also happened to be the first Sunday in pride month, my pastor gave a homily on the diverse language about God in the bible and early church literature, making the case that the expression of the trinity in both representation and reality is genderly diverse and, in my opinion, queer.
Despite God, as the ground of being, not having a sex or gender as God is not a being but Being itself, modern western language about God throughout literature and liturgy focuses almost exclusively on the masculine and, in the process, makes the feminine subordinate, which has had the unfortunate effect of supporting patriarchal theology and social relations for generations. The default, of course, has been to gender God as male — while limiting God’s earthly representatives to men — but the language used to talk about God varies from the masculine to the feminine and even plural/gender neutral, thus our theology of God, Truth, Nature, Ultimate Reality, etc., should reflect that.
For example, beyond being spoken of using masculine pronouns and as a father, God is also described as a woman in labor (Isaiah 42:14), a nursing mother (Isaiah 49:15), a comforting mother (Isaiah 66:13), a mother bear (Hosea 13:8), a mother bird sheltering her children (Ruth 2:12), etc., and in the story of creation creates humanity male and female in their (plural) image (Gen 1:26-27). The Hebrew words for the wisdom (chokmah) and spirit (ruach) of God are feminine nouns, while the Greek word for spirit (pneuma) is neutral. Jesus compares himself to a mother hen (Mt 23:37), and many early church leaders spoke of God and Jesus in more than masculine terms. An early liturgical work, Odes of Solomon, portrays God as the mother of believers (and all of humanity), nurturing them with "holy milk" (8:17). Clement of Alexandria writes of Jesus, "The Word [Christ] is all to the child, both father and mother and tutor and nurse" (The Instructor). John Chrysostom's Christ says, "Be thou in need of nothing, I will be even a servant, for I came to minister, not to be ministered unto; I am friend, and member, and head, and brother, and sister, and mother; I am all; only cling thou closely to me" (Homilies on Matthew, 76). Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Julian of Norwich, among others, also compare Jesus to a mother. God is essentially nonbinary or genderfluid.
All of this serves to highlight that the imagery and understanding of God historically transcends the simplistic and patriarchal presentation we're often presented with, illustrating that God both transcends gender while simultaneously encompassing all modes of gender. And our understanding should, as well. The trinity represents the relational and diverse nature of reality; and to more clearly perceive that reality, we must love and accept it in all its multiplicity because love is our first principle.
Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, who takes a more mystical approach to the subject, has often described the trinity as a circular dance and the deepest flow of life, noting that each 'person' of the trinity relates by "living in an eternal self-emptying (kenosis), which allows each of them to let go completely and give themselves to the other. They are simultaneously loving and totally loveable, one to another." And that love is the very nature and shape of divine being: "This deep flow is then the pattern of the whole universe, and any idea of God’s 'wrath' or of God withholding what is an infinitely outflowing love is theologically impossible. Love is the very pattern with which we start and the goal toward which we move. It gives energy to the entire universe, from orbiting protons and neutrons to the social and sexual life of species, to the planets and stars. We were indeed created in communion, by communion, and for communion (Genesis 1:26 calls it being 'created in the image and likeness of God')."
Love, then, is wrapped into the very fabric of creation. And perhaps even more controversially, and while probably not their intention, Deacon Matthew Newsome make a great case/argument that God is profoundly queer and polyamorous when he writes:
Just think about it for a moment. God is described as a trinity of three gender-fluid persons who, in their loving relationship and communion with each other, are one. Creation is nondual yet diverse. Creation is composed of relationships. Creation rests on love. And we mirror creation. As shocking as it may seem to some at first glance, God is clearly and profoundly queer and polyamorous—i.e., a template that holds within itself all other possible configurations of love, including that of our LGBTQIA+ siblings.
In the end, what I've come to believe — and what I think apparent in both scripture and tradition — is that the universe itself is alive with love, and any theology expressing its nature can't limit our understanding or our expression of love to fit inside of some restrictive and oppressive box without doing violence to nature itself.
Despite God, as the ground of being, not having a sex or gender as God is not a being but Being itself, modern western language about God throughout literature and liturgy focuses almost exclusively on the masculine and, in the process, makes the feminine subordinate, which has had the unfortunate effect of supporting patriarchal theology and social relations for generations. The default, of course, has been to gender God as male — while limiting God’s earthly representatives to men — but the language used to talk about God varies from the masculine to the feminine and even plural/gender neutral, thus our theology of God, Truth, Nature, Ultimate Reality, etc., should reflect that.
For example, beyond being spoken of using masculine pronouns and as a father, God is also described as a woman in labor (Isaiah 42:14), a nursing mother (Isaiah 49:15), a comforting mother (Isaiah 66:13), a mother bear (Hosea 13:8), a mother bird sheltering her children (Ruth 2:12), etc., and in the story of creation creates humanity male and female in their (plural) image (Gen 1:26-27). The Hebrew words for the wisdom (chokmah) and spirit (ruach) of God are feminine nouns, while the Greek word for spirit (pneuma) is neutral. Jesus compares himself to a mother hen (Mt 23:37), and many early church leaders spoke of God and Jesus in more than masculine terms. An early liturgical work, Odes of Solomon, portrays God as the mother of believers (and all of humanity), nurturing them with "holy milk" (8:17). Clement of Alexandria writes of Jesus, "The Word [Christ] is all to the child, both father and mother and tutor and nurse" (The Instructor). John Chrysostom's Christ says, "Be thou in need of nothing, I will be even a servant, for I came to minister, not to be ministered unto; I am friend, and member, and head, and brother, and sister, and mother; I am all; only cling thou closely to me" (Homilies on Matthew, 76). Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Julian of Norwich, among others, also compare Jesus to a mother. God is essentially nonbinary or genderfluid.
All of this serves to highlight that the imagery and understanding of God historically transcends the simplistic and patriarchal presentation we're often presented with, illustrating that God both transcends gender while simultaneously encompassing all modes of gender. And our understanding should, as well. The trinity represents the relational and diverse nature of reality; and to more clearly perceive that reality, we must love and accept it in all its multiplicity because love is our first principle.
Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, who takes a more mystical approach to the subject, has often described the trinity as a circular dance and the deepest flow of life, noting that each 'person' of the trinity relates by "living in an eternal self-emptying (kenosis), which allows each of them to let go completely and give themselves to the other. They are simultaneously loving and totally loveable, one to another." And that love is the very nature and shape of divine being: "This deep flow is then the pattern of the whole universe, and any idea of God’s 'wrath' or of God withholding what is an infinitely outflowing love is theologically impossible. Love is the very pattern with which we start and the goal toward which we move. It gives energy to the entire universe, from orbiting protons and neutrons to the social and sexual life of species, to the planets and stars. We were indeed created in communion, by communion, and for communion (Genesis 1:26 calls it being 'created in the image and likeness of God')."
Love, then, is wrapped into the very fabric of creation. And perhaps even more controversially, and while probably not their intention, Deacon Matthew Newsome make a great case/argument that God is profoundly queer and polyamorous when he writes:
Being made in the image of God means that we are made to be in relationship. The fact that God has within Himself relationship, while being a mystery above our reason, nevertheless is compatible with reason. God, after all, is love (1 Jn 4:8). And love requires both a lover and a beloved. Love requires relationship. You and I must look outside of ourselves for this; but God, perfect in every way, has this within His very being. This is why instead of saying "God is loving," we say "God is love." God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is both the Lover and Beloved and the Love between them. (The Trinity: Lover, Beloved, and the Love between them)
Just think about it for a moment. God is described as a trinity of three gender-fluid persons who, in their loving relationship and communion with each other, are one. Creation is nondual yet diverse. Creation is composed of relationships. Creation rests on love. And we mirror creation. As shocking as it may seem to some at first glance, God is clearly and profoundly queer and polyamorous—i.e., a template that holds within itself all other possible configurations of love, including that of our LGBTQIA+ siblings.
In the end, what I've come to believe — and what I think apparent in both scripture and tradition — is that the universe itself is alive with love, and any theology expressing its nature can't limit our understanding or our expression of love to fit inside of some restrictive and oppressive box without doing violence to nature itself.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
a marxist god in the here and now
A fellow leftist Christian recently said, "I've long since made my bed alongside Dostoyevsky saying something to the effect, 'even if it were incontrovertibly proven to me that Jesus was not the Christ, still I would choose to believe in him.' Because for me faith in this arena is never based on the veracity of an historical theory but on a choice." But the same person also then asked, "What does it mean to believe in Christ while adhering to a materialist conception of history?" Indeed, how can one be both a Christian and a materialist at the same time? Do they just shrug and say, like Whitman, 'so I contradict myself! Contradiction is the bugaboo of mankind'? It's a question worth pondering, and it got me thinking about my own answer as both a Christian and someone who adheres to a materialist conception of history with leftist politics.
There's a line from Brian Sanderson's novel Oathbringer I rather like: "One can believe in a story without believing it happened." It's a powerful statement that holds a lot of truth. I can't count the number of stories I've read that have deeply affected me over the years despite being works of fiction or not historically accurate, many shaping the very person I am today because of how strongly I believed in them and their message. The story of Jesus is no different. While I believe much of the story of Jesus is true and/or represents truth, I'm also ok if it's not historical because of how it inspires me to think and act, along with the hope it instills and the support of his teachings designed to make us more loving to all of creation even if we're not always loved back by it in return. History or myth, fact or fiction, it has the same impact.
When I read the bible, what I see is the story of a people who, on the one hand, are struggling with the world they live in, full of greed, oppression, and violence, yet dreaming of a world that's filled with equality, abundance, and peace. It's a story of historical progress towards something better and the successes and failures that a particular people found worth remembering and sharing. And Jesus himself embodies the spirit of this dream. His name means "God liberates" or "God is liberation." His message was destined to be revolutionary, as Mary proclaims in Luke 1:52-53, "He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing." His birth was announced to poor workers (shepherds), not the wealthy or kings. His life was spent trying to bring a new and more egalitarian world into being through acts like healing the sick, feeding the hungry, opposing economic exploitation, chastising the rich to distribute their wealth to those in need, and working to bring those on the margins back into the heart of the community. He opposed Roman imperialism, religious hypocrisy, persecution, and violence. He spoke of compassion, forgiveness, universal kinship, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, making concern for others the entry fee to the kingdom of heaven. And he did all of this because he was inspired by universal love and compassion for the human condition, choosing to be part of, and actively lead, a revolutionary Jewish movement of oppressed and economically-underprivileged classes against the layers of economic, political, and religious exploitation and domination imposed upon them by the ruling elites of the Roman empire.
It's a dream that I share, and just as this revolutionary spirit helped guide the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, I believe it'll also help guide all of us out of the bondage of our current system that's idolized and globalized greed, oppression, and violence. And for me, Christ is a living symbol of that spirit—a spirit that's present throughout the course of human history.
That spirit is also present in many other places, like social and political movements and monasteries—the former reflecting the active aspects of revolution and the latter reflecting the contemplative aspects and desired outcomes of equality and community. I think Ernesto Cardenal touches upon these contradictions and their synthesis when he wrote In Cuba:
To me, God is love. God liberates. God is the spirit of revolution. And Christ loves. Christ is a liberator. Christ is a revolutionary. And as Marcus Borg wrote, Christ "revealed what can be seen of God in a human life" through his words and actions. God is among us when our hearts are full of this revolutionary spirit born out of love for the world. I consider myself Christian because I follow Christ's example—not the Christianity of imperialism, wealth, white supremacy, etc., but the revolutionary Christianity of Jesus and the liberation of the poor and oppressed.
All that said, God is also the ground of being and the laws of nature underlying the causal relationships present throughout the universe—i.e., mental and physical actions and results, causes and effects, etc. And historical materialism is simply the study of the material causes and conditions that shape human society and the ways we're encouraged (and forcefully prodded) to think and live, as well as who benefits from and suffers under those social relations. Here, Jesus is clearly on the side of making those social relations egalitarian and challenging the authority of exploitative classes, while his story emphasizes the ways in which God works with us and through us if we truly know and embody love.
There are undoubtedly mystical and supranatural elements to his story that point towards something that lies beyond our material world — to what we call God, transcendence, ultimate reality, the divine, the unconditioned, etc. — and our ability to achieve union with the divine, from his contemplative and intimate connection with God and frequent times of solitary prayer to the miracles he performed such as walking on water, healing the sick, multiplying food for the hungry, and raising the dead, including his own resurrection after being executed by the state in a method reserved for those who opposed the authority of Rome in some shape or form. His own resurrection story may have been literal or simply expressing the resurrection of what he lived and died for in the lives of those who carried on his message, but many seem to miss his mission here on earth and the way he represents God manifest in human form, acting within history. As David Inczauskis, SJ writes, "Many Christians, jumping straight to spiritual reality, transcendence, and the afterlife, forget that God reveals in matter, in this world, in history. They look to the sky for a God who came to earth." Whichever way we may choose to view the resurrection narrative, whether as history or myth, the story of Jesus is ultimately the story of a human being embodying the presence of the divine on earth who bridges the gap between the transcendent and the concrete by centering their spiritual message on how we treat one another (particularly the poor and marginalized), and hence the rift between humanity and itself created by our tendency to, in the words of Feuerbach, "suppose the essence of nature outside nature, the essence of humanity outside humanity, the essence of thought outside the act of thinking."
Jesus' life and teachings stress unequivocally that our beliefs and convictions in a 'heavenly kin-dom' should be reflected in our actions; and our actions shouldn't cause harm, but act as seeds for happiness and liberation. That to me is what matters most. Because whatever happens after this life is over, if we live righteously right here and now, then not only will this world be left a little better than we found it after we're gone, but we've also served to store up treasure in heaven.
There's a line from Brian Sanderson's novel Oathbringer I rather like: "One can believe in a story without believing it happened." It's a powerful statement that holds a lot of truth. I can't count the number of stories I've read that have deeply affected me over the years despite being works of fiction or not historically accurate, many shaping the very person I am today because of how strongly I believed in them and their message. The story of Jesus is no different. While I believe much of the story of Jesus is true and/or represents truth, I'm also ok if it's not historical because of how it inspires me to think and act, along with the hope it instills and the support of his teachings designed to make us more loving to all of creation even if we're not always loved back by it in return. History or myth, fact or fiction, it has the same impact.
When I read the bible, what I see is the story of a people who, on the one hand, are struggling with the world they live in, full of greed, oppression, and violence, yet dreaming of a world that's filled with equality, abundance, and peace. It's a story of historical progress towards something better and the successes and failures that a particular people found worth remembering and sharing. And Jesus himself embodies the spirit of this dream. His name means "God liberates" or "God is liberation." His message was destined to be revolutionary, as Mary proclaims in Luke 1:52-53, "He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing." His birth was announced to poor workers (shepherds), not the wealthy or kings. His life was spent trying to bring a new and more egalitarian world into being through acts like healing the sick, feeding the hungry, opposing economic exploitation, chastising the rich to distribute their wealth to those in need, and working to bring those on the margins back into the heart of the community. He opposed Roman imperialism, religious hypocrisy, persecution, and violence. He spoke of compassion, forgiveness, universal kinship, and loving our neighbours as ourselves, making concern for others the entry fee to the kingdom of heaven. And he did all of this because he was inspired by universal love and compassion for the human condition, choosing to be part of, and actively lead, a revolutionary Jewish movement of oppressed and economically-underprivileged classes against the layers of economic, political, and religious exploitation and domination imposed upon them by the ruling elites of the Roman empire.
It's a dream that I share, and just as this revolutionary spirit helped guide the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, I believe it'll also help guide all of us out of the bondage of our current system that's idolized and globalized greed, oppression, and violence. And for me, Christ is a living symbol of that spirit—a spirit that's present throughout the course of human history.
That spirit is also present in many other places, like social and political movements and monasteries—the former reflecting the active aspects of revolution and the latter reflecting the contemplative aspects and desired outcomes of equality and community. I think Ernesto Cardenal touches upon these contradictions and their synthesis when he wrote In Cuba:
At breakfast some Marxists asked me about our community at Solentiname. I explained that we try to lead a life in common, with no "thine" or "mine," a life of voluntary poverty—free from the desire for money and from the demands of a society of consumption. We live in brotherly union, all working for the community. We are all equal. And then I stopped. I understood that what may seem very novel in the capitalistic world is a daily reality in Cuba. (I couldn't talk to them about prayer because it would be misinterpreted, and I wouldn't know how to explain mystic union to people who don't believe in God.) I was afraid that they were going to ask me what need there is for such communities in a socialist society. At that moment I would not have known what to say.
I kept thinking of the question that the young Marxists might have asked me. It seems to me that in a perfect socialist society it would not be necessary to "flee from the world" in order to live the Gospel. In any case, the material life of those communities would be the same as that of all the others. And I remembered what St. John Chrysostom said (in a letter to a rich man): "If cities were Christian, monasteries would be unnecessary."
To me, God is love. God liberates. God is the spirit of revolution. And Christ loves. Christ is a liberator. Christ is a revolutionary. And as Marcus Borg wrote, Christ "revealed what can be seen of God in a human life" through his words and actions. God is among us when our hearts are full of this revolutionary spirit born out of love for the world. I consider myself Christian because I follow Christ's example—not the Christianity of imperialism, wealth, white supremacy, etc., but the revolutionary Christianity of Jesus and the liberation of the poor and oppressed.
All that said, God is also the ground of being and the laws of nature underlying the causal relationships present throughout the universe—i.e., mental and physical actions and results, causes and effects, etc. And historical materialism is simply the study of the material causes and conditions that shape human society and the ways we're encouraged (and forcefully prodded) to think and live, as well as who benefits from and suffers under those social relations. Here, Jesus is clearly on the side of making those social relations egalitarian and challenging the authority of exploitative classes, while his story emphasizes the ways in which God works with us and through us if we truly know and embody love.
There are undoubtedly mystical and supranatural elements to his story that point towards something that lies beyond our material world — to what we call God, transcendence, ultimate reality, the divine, the unconditioned, etc. — and our ability to achieve union with the divine, from his contemplative and intimate connection with God and frequent times of solitary prayer to the miracles he performed such as walking on water, healing the sick, multiplying food for the hungry, and raising the dead, including his own resurrection after being executed by the state in a method reserved for those who opposed the authority of Rome in some shape or form. His own resurrection story may have been literal or simply expressing the resurrection of what he lived and died for in the lives of those who carried on his message, but many seem to miss his mission here on earth and the way he represents God manifest in human form, acting within history. As David Inczauskis, SJ writes, "Many Christians, jumping straight to spiritual reality, transcendence, and the afterlife, forget that God reveals in matter, in this world, in history. They look to the sky for a God who came to earth." Whichever way we may choose to view the resurrection narrative, whether as history or myth, the story of Jesus is ultimately the story of a human being embodying the presence of the divine on earth who bridges the gap between the transcendent and the concrete by centering their spiritual message on how we treat one another (particularly the poor and marginalized), and hence the rift between humanity and itself created by our tendency to, in the words of Feuerbach, "suppose the essence of nature outside nature, the essence of humanity outside humanity, the essence of thought outside the act of thinking."
Jesus' life and teachings stress unequivocally that our beliefs and convictions in a 'heavenly kin-dom' should be reflected in our actions; and our actions shouldn't cause harm, but act as seeds for happiness and liberation. That to me is what matters most. Because whatever happens after this life is over, if we live righteously right here and now, then not only will this world be left a little better than we found it after we're gone, but we've also served to store up treasure in heaven.
Saturday, December 31, 2022
A brief summary of capitalism's logic, its consequences, and our need to build an alternative
Just for fun, I jotted down a brief summary of capitalism's logic, its consequences, and our need to build an alternative:
Socioeconomic inequality
1. Capitalism is an economic mode of production that, on the most basic level, functions as a circulatory process in which money is utilized to produce commodities (e.g., goods, services, etc.) that can be sold for a profit within markets of exchange: money -> commodity -> money + extra, repeat ad infinitum.
2. Living human labour expended in the production process adds/creates much of the additional value that forms the profit realized in the exchange process.
3. Due to private property rights, capitalists own and control the means of production (e.g., factories, equipment, land, etc.), as well as the products of the production process and any surplus value created. As such, labourers are forced to relinquish their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated into and created by the production process. Workers, in turn, generally receive the value of their labour power and little else in the form of wages, ultimately alienating them from their labour and its products, and limiting the choices available to them in the sphere of their socioeconomic environment, hindering them from fully realizing themselves or their potential.
4. Capitalism itself has its beginnings in violence, oppression, and theft as well as innovations and industriousness. Countries with emerging mercantile markets enclosed local common land; colonized other lands; stole land, wealth, and resources; and exploited slave labour in what Marx called the process of 'primitive accumulation.' Then after the industrial revolution, those in power further forced their own people off of communal land and into the cities to work in the factories under new social relations, one in which they were forced to sell their labour power to someone for a wage, not fully realizing that the person who now owns that labour power owns the products of that labour and all the extra value added by their labour, and pitting them against one another for the jobs needed for their survival and comfort.
5. We now live under a predominantly capitalist, worldwide socioeconomic system in which a small minority own and control the means of production and the majority must work for a wage to survive, pitting competing capitals and workers across the globe against one another forming tiers of exploitation, particularly among members of the working class and poor.
6. The logic of this process leads to capital accumulation (i.e., the accumulation of wealth) on the part of capital as opposed to labour due to the former's ownership of the means of production and finance and the value created in the production process, creating and sustaining inequality.
7. The logic of capitalism tends to favour owners in that it seeks to increase the amount of profit extracted by capital while at the same time keeping the amount of wages received by workers as low as possible, as well as by giving the owners control over the production process, conditions of labour, labour hours, etc. In addition, workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.).
8. Capitalism contains within itself multiple contradictions that lead to unequal social relations between capital and labour and causes cyclical economic crises. For example, the logic of capital accumulation tends to lead to cyclical crises of overaccumulation that effectively causes the economy to stall by stopping the circulation of capital and preventing it from ultimately realizing profit, i.e., capital's own self-interest (accumulation for accumulation's sake) destabilizes the economy and creates things like violent economic crises, social and political inequality, unemployment, etc.
9. The logic of capitalism also depends upon the drive to continuously grow and the consumerism needed to feed that growth — resulting in negative impacts to the environment and compelling capitals and capitalist states to compete for markets, resources, cheap pools of labour, etc., often at the expense of the environment and workers — while simultaneously creating artificial scarcity to maximize profits. This generates privation for the dispossessed and national conflicts over land, raw materials, markets, labour pools, etc.
Political inequality
10. Money, as a representation of value and medium of exchange, is a form of social power. As a form of social power, money is also a driving force in the political process and the shape of states, whose access to and control of markets is important for their geopolitical success.
11. The more money one possesses, the more influence one potentially has in this socioeconomic system. The capitalist class, then, logically has a disproportionate advantage within this system, especially when it comes to influencing and shaping society, than the working class and poor.
12. Those in positions of power make the rules (i.e., laws and loopholes) and tend to do so with a view to their own preservation and well-being. Their own preservation and well-being depends upon serving the interests of capital and finance, who fund them and control key areas of the economy. Democracy is also often limited to voting in occasional elections, with most working-class people priced out of running, and almost completely absent in the workplace.
13. Due to owning the means of production (material as well as mental), the capitalist class has the ability to shape the dominant ideas and ethics of society as well as its material shape and social relations. So not only do they have an enormous amount of control over the strings of political and economic power, they have an incredible amount of control over the ideas that we're exposed to and consume — which serves to influence our perceptions of the world we live in and even one another — ultimately helping to "manufacture our consent" for the status quo.
Implications/Addressing socioeconomic inequality
14. It follows, therefore, that substantive changes in the political-economic arena that benefits the working class and poor rather than capital and finance needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down because their interests are diametrically opposed.
15. This form of political-economic opposition requires the working class, poor, and marginalized to expand their class consciousness, unite in common cause, and use their superior numbers and indispensable place in the capitalist mode of production to offset the disproportionate and essentially undemocratic influence of monied interests.
16. The greater the solidarity amongst the working class and the dispossessed, the greater the potential opposition to the power of capital (this is the power of things like unions and strikes). And the greater the opposition, the greater the potential for substantive, systematic change that favours the majority of the citizenry rather than the wealthy, ruling elite.
17. Radical change, then, necessitates a coordinated, working-class mass movement, particularly one geared towards more fully democratizing our economic system and institutions. As such, anti-capitalists (e.g., socialists, communists, etc.) seek alternatives to this logic and fight for revolutionary changes that'll help lay the foundation for a more egalitarian society by critiquing capitalism, attempting to expand working people's understanding of capitalism, and organizing them to challenge the capitalist mode of production and its logical outcomes. There have been both successes and failures in this historical struggle, with plenty of painful lessons learned as a result. But many of these failures have at their root a concerted effort by capitalist states and those who benefit the most from capitalist social relations to prevent alternatives to capitalism from emerging, let alone succeeding, through military and economic violence. And we shouldn't let these missteps and setbacks prevent us from continuing to try and assert our political autonomy, democratize the economy, and create a world in which all that we produce belongs to everyone and we're capable of providing for the needs of all.
Conclusion
Capitalism has undoubtedly helped us reach a point of technological advancement and innovation sufficient to achieve material abundance. But to fully realize that abundance, we must transition to something new, something characterized by the maxim: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
Socioeconomic inequality
1. Capitalism is an economic mode of production that, on the most basic level, functions as a circulatory process in which money is utilized to produce commodities (e.g., goods, services, etc.) that can be sold for a profit within markets of exchange: money -> commodity -> money + extra, repeat ad infinitum.
2. Living human labour expended in the production process adds/creates much of the additional value that forms the profit realized in the exchange process.
3. Due to private property rights, capitalists own and control the means of production (e.g., factories, equipment, land, etc.), as well as the products of the production process and any surplus value created. As such, labourers are forced to relinquish their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated into and created by the production process. Workers, in turn, generally receive the value of their labour power and little else in the form of wages, ultimately alienating them from their labour and its products, and limiting the choices available to them in the sphere of their socioeconomic environment, hindering them from fully realizing themselves or their potential.
4. Capitalism itself has its beginnings in violence, oppression, and theft as well as innovations and industriousness. Countries with emerging mercantile markets enclosed local common land; colonized other lands; stole land, wealth, and resources; and exploited slave labour in what Marx called the process of 'primitive accumulation.' Then after the industrial revolution, those in power further forced their own people off of communal land and into the cities to work in the factories under new social relations, one in which they were forced to sell their labour power to someone for a wage, not fully realizing that the person who now owns that labour power owns the products of that labour and all the extra value added by their labour, and pitting them against one another for the jobs needed for their survival and comfort.
5. We now live under a predominantly capitalist, worldwide socioeconomic system in which a small minority own and control the means of production and the majority must work for a wage to survive, pitting competing capitals and workers across the globe against one another forming tiers of exploitation, particularly among members of the working class and poor.
6. The logic of this process leads to capital accumulation (i.e., the accumulation of wealth) on the part of capital as opposed to labour due to the former's ownership of the means of production and finance and the value created in the production process, creating and sustaining inequality.
7. The logic of capitalism tends to favour owners in that it seeks to increase the amount of profit extracted by capital while at the same time keeping the amount of wages received by workers as low as possible, as well as by giving the owners control over the production process, conditions of labour, labour hours, etc. In addition, workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.).
8. Capitalism contains within itself multiple contradictions that lead to unequal social relations between capital and labour and causes cyclical economic crises. For example, the logic of capital accumulation tends to lead to cyclical crises of overaccumulation that effectively causes the economy to stall by stopping the circulation of capital and preventing it from ultimately realizing profit, i.e., capital's own self-interest (accumulation for accumulation's sake) destabilizes the economy and creates things like violent economic crises, social and political inequality, unemployment, etc.
9. The logic of capitalism also depends upon the drive to continuously grow and the consumerism needed to feed that growth — resulting in negative impacts to the environment and compelling capitals and capitalist states to compete for markets, resources, cheap pools of labour, etc., often at the expense of the environment and workers — while simultaneously creating artificial scarcity to maximize profits. This generates privation for the dispossessed and national conflicts over land, raw materials, markets, labour pools, etc.
Political inequality
10. Money, as a representation of value and medium of exchange, is a form of social power. As a form of social power, money is also a driving force in the political process and the shape of states, whose access to and control of markets is important for their geopolitical success.
11. The more money one possesses, the more influence one potentially has in this socioeconomic system. The capitalist class, then, logically has a disproportionate advantage within this system, especially when it comes to influencing and shaping society, than the working class and poor.
12. Those in positions of power make the rules (i.e., laws and loopholes) and tend to do so with a view to their own preservation and well-being. Their own preservation and well-being depends upon serving the interests of capital and finance, who fund them and control key areas of the economy. Democracy is also often limited to voting in occasional elections, with most working-class people priced out of running, and almost completely absent in the workplace.
13. Due to owning the means of production (material as well as mental), the capitalist class has the ability to shape the dominant ideas and ethics of society as well as its material shape and social relations. So not only do they have an enormous amount of control over the strings of political and economic power, they have an incredible amount of control over the ideas that we're exposed to and consume — which serves to influence our perceptions of the world we live in and even one another — ultimately helping to "manufacture our consent" for the status quo.
Implications/Addressing socioeconomic inequality
14. It follows, therefore, that substantive changes in the political-economic arena that benefits the working class and poor rather than capital and finance needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down because their interests are diametrically opposed.
15. This form of political-economic opposition requires the working class, poor, and marginalized to expand their class consciousness, unite in common cause, and use their superior numbers and indispensable place in the capitalist mode of production to offset the disproportionate and essentially undemocratic influence of monied interests.
16. The greater the solidarity amongst the working class and the dispossessed, the greater the potential opposition to the power of capital (this is the power of things like unions and strikes). And the greater the opposition, the greater the potential for substantive, systematic change that favours the majority of the citizenry rather than the wealthy, ruling elite.
17. Radical change, then, necessitates a coordinated, working-class mass movement, particularly one geared towards more fully democratizing our economic system and institutions. As such, anti-capitalists (e.g., socialists, communists, etc.) seek alternatives to this logic and fight for revolutionary changes that'll help lay the foundation for a more egalitarian society by critiquing capitalism, attempting to expand working people's understanding of capitalism, and organizing them to challenge the capitalist mode of production and its logical outcomes. There have been both successes and failures in this historical struggle, with plenty of painful lessons learned as a result. But many of these failures have at their root a concerted effort by capitalist states and those who benefit the most from capitalist social relations to prevent alternatives to capitalism from emerging, let alone succeeding, through military and economic violence. And we shouldn't let these missteps and setbacks prevent us from continuing to try and assert our political autonomy, democratize the economy, and create a world in which all that we produce belongs to everyone and we're capable of providing for the needs of all.
Conclusion
Capitalism has undoubtedly helped us reach a point of technological advancement and innovation sufficient to achieve material abundance. But to fully realize that abundance, we must transition to something new, something characterized by the maxim: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
proletariat blues
Is it just me, or is our society grinding many of us into exhaustion, depression, and hopelessness while forcing us to find any sort of rest, pleasure, or distraction we can just to get us through the day and the next after that and the one after that, etc.? A society where workloads are too heavy because it's not profitable enough if we have enough people to do the job. A society with rents and mortgages many of us can't afford. A society where more of our taxes go to the military weapons of war to kill the workers and poor of other countries when we can't even house or feed those in need at home. A society where the rich are getting richer and shooting themselves into space while everyone else struggles more and more to make ends meet, making us fight each other for the scraps left over. A society where we wake up each day dreading the commute and having to spend the majority of our waking hours trying to earn a wage rather than spending them with our family and friends and enjoy the amazing world we're born into. Is it just me who wakes up every day tired, beaten, and wishing for something better for all of us but only has the time and energy to heat up dinner in the microwave and watch a couple of episodes of something mind-numbing before going to bed to do it all over again tomorrow? Am I the only one who truly believes it could be better than it is if we actually had a real voice and choice in how our society was shaped instead of it being shaped for us by those who benefit from it the most, sitting on their thrones of money, power, and privilege?
Saturday, October 15, 2022
sex work is work, but is it revolutionary?
I've been thinking about sex worker lately from an anti-capitalist lens. I've known a number of sex workers in my life, and while I don't have anything inherently against sex work in the sense that I view sex work as real labour and believe those engaging in it should be able to do so freely and safely (as opposed to being pushed into the shadows, risking increased exposure to violence or criminal records), I do have reservations about the industry itself and the way capitalism has the tendency to commodify everything, including making human emotional and sexual relationships transactional, alienating labour, exploiting labourers, etc.
On the one hand, within the context of capitalism, we need sources of income to make a living and have access to necessities, not to mention luxuries and things generally needed for enjoying our free time, and sex workers perform emotional and sexual labour in order to acquire or supplement that income — labour which our society has made sordid and dangerous because of puritan taboos and patriarchal power dynamics — so I support the rights and safety of sex workers and the normalization of sex in general. The labour, autonomy, and humanity of sex workers all need to be respected, as with every other worker, and I feel like people (mainly men) in our society have been conditioned to not respect these things in women, sex workers, etc. So that obviously needs to change, and we should support sex workers as well as our own sexuality.
One the other hand, I find the expansion of capitalism and the omnipresent commodification and unequal social relations it engenders within all spheres of human life disturbing from a leftist point of view, and I wonder what the best way of balancing my support of sex workers with my desire to revolutionize capitalism and the ways it's shaped our world might be. The push to expand, protect, and normalize sex work in order for sex workers to make a living more safely is paradoxically a push to expand the commodification of our world and relationships and the general prostitution of labourers, thus making it that more difficult to create an alternative to the current state of capitalist wage labour and the exploitation inherent to it.
I find myself in the position, then, of supporting sex workers but not so much the industry they find themselves a part of, which transforms their bodies and emotions into the commodities being consumed. And not all sex workers choose to be sex workers, so they need to be taken into consideration too when discussing sex work in the aggregate. But obviously outlawing sex work isn't the answer since it'll still happen, just within an even more coercive and violent arena than that of the marketplace. So the question I'm pondering is, what's the middle way here? How can I best support sex workers while also seeking to dismantle the socio-economic system fuelling the commodification of people's bodies, attention, and labour-power?
I was curious if anyone else has had the same thoughts and has come up with a resolution to these antagonisms, so I mentioned this on a friend's FB page about sex work who's also involved in sex work hoping that someone in their large network might have some insights. And my friend's answer was essentially that sex workers are the foot soldiers of socialism:
Definitely some provocative ideas that are worth considering. I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea of marginalized people making a living and not struggling. And I'm also sympathetic to the way that sex workers cooperate and help support themselves, other artists, etc. But I'm not convinced that the expansion of the sex industry under capitalism is necessarily good or revolutionary. For one, capitalist social relations are still in effect, even if not always directly, so the wealthy (often white men) are ultimately profiting off of it as much as (or even more) than the sex workers. Here, it can be anyone from the owners of content platforms like OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. to sites like Twitter and Instagram where they advertise, owners of brothels and strip clubs, etc. So capital, landlords, etc. are taking their cut where they can even if many sex workers are independent performance artists with some level of personal control and freedom.
In addition, while web-based platforms have made it safer and easier for sex workers to work, that's just one subset of sex work. And creating larger markets for sex and sex work also helps to increase demand in the black market economy underlying capitalism that's also fuelled by the very same wealthy (generally white) men, which in turn finds support in other areas and side hustles, from the mild to the brutal/domineering (e..g., men working behind the scenes who are often not exposed; pimps and madams; sex traffickers; the concierge at the expensive hotel who knows where one may find a child prostitute, like the pedophile ring accidentally uncovered by Sasha Baron Cohen, etc.). Then there's the increased level of objectification and alienation of labour that sex work (and wage labour in general) entails, where the commodity being consumed is the person's body and emotions, and these are in some way divorced from the person, being sold to their consumer, not only normalizing and expanding sex work (which isn't inherently negative) but also transactional relationships and consumerism (which may not necessarily be good).
Essentially, I'm not entirely convinced sex work itself is a revolutionary form of labour that can instigate a transition away from capitalism and towards a more egalitarian and less exploitative alternative moreso than other forms of labour, nor am I convinced that the majority of sex workers are anti-capitalist and actively seeking to upend capitalism. In so far as expanding sex work can expand solidarity among different types of workers, I can see how it may contribute to this, as well as from the activity of radical sex workers. And I do think they have a current need and right to make a living. But on a broader, more theoretical level I still have issues with the appearance sex work takes under capitalism. I don't see how simply taking and redistributing money from the wealthy will do any more good than other means of wealth redistribution such as taxes, or how it's qualitatively different from other places the rich spend their cash. And my concern is still the same, that it's ultimately just making sex work more easily exploitable by capital while doing little to challenge current social relations and power dynamics.
Consequently, I support the decriminalization of sex work, as well as the bodily autonomy of sex workers, since it does no good to penalize people who are often already marginalized and struggling (although middle-class women are a growing demographic, as well) from making a living that doesn't harm anyone. And I support normalizing it in the sense of removing the stigma and shame of being a sex worker or enjoying sex, allowing them to be more open about it and utilize community resources, modern technology, and their social circles to advertise and work rather than seedier and more exploitative options. Hence, I'm cautiously optimistic about it improving from what it once was. But I'm not yet comfortable idealizing sex work as an inherently revolutionary occupation, nor one free from danger and exploitation. Just as the relative comfort and security of workers in more developed countries like the US is dependent upon more oppressive and exploitative conditions of labour in less developed countries, effectively subsidizing our higher wages and standard of living despite our own inequalities, the relative comfort and security of some sex workers likely comes at the cost of others who are less fortunate and more marginalized.
On the one hand, within the context of capitalism, we need sources of income to make a living and have access to necessities, not to mention luxuries and things generally needed for enjoying our free time, and sex workers perform emotional and sexual labour in order to acquire or supplement that income — labour which our society has made sordid and dangerous because of puritan taboos and patriarchal power dynamics — so I support the rights and safety of sex workers and the normalization of sex in general. The labour, autonomy, and humanity of sex workers all need to be respected, as with every other worker, and I feel like people (mainly men) in our society have been conditioned to not respect these things in women, sex workers, etc. So that obviously needs to change, and we should support sex workers as well as our own sexuality.
One the other hand, I find the expansion of capitalism and the omnipresent commodification and unequal social relations it engenders within all spheres of human life disturbing from a leftist point of view, and I wonder what the best way of balancing my support of sex workers with my desire to revolutionize capitalism and the ways it's shaped our world might be. The push to expand, protect, and normalize sex work in order for sex workers to make a living more safely is paradoxically a push to expand the commodification of our world and relationships and the general prostitution of labourers, thus making it that more difficult to create an alternative to the current state of capitalist wage labour and the exploitation inherent to it.
I find myself in the position, then, of supporting sex workers but not so much the industry they find themselves a part of, which transforms their bodies and emotions into the commodities being consumed. And not all sex workers choose to be sex workers, so they need to be taken into consideration too when discussing sex work in the aggregate. But obviously outlawing sex work isn't the answer since it'll still happen, just within an even more coercive and violent arena than that of the marketplace. So the question I'm pondering is, what's the middle way here? How can I best support sex workers while also seeking to dismantle the socio-economic system fuelling the commodification of people's bodies, attention, and labour-power?
I was curious if anyone else has had the same thoughts and has come up with a resolution to these antagonisms, so I mentioned this on a friend's FB page about sex work who's also involved in sex work hoping that someone in their large network might have some insights. And my friend's answer was essentially that sex workers are the foot soldiers of socialism:
You always approach everything from a "how do I destroy capitalism" standpoint: but you can't expect it to be destroyed from the bottom up. You can't expect the most marginalized classes to participate in the dismantling if they are simply trying to survive. The middle path here is to understand something important:
Sex workers are a major participant in the attack of capitalism from the grassroots; from the ground up. Support them as much as possible. Pump capital and fuel their work because they do something extremely important: They FUNNEL capital from the wealthiest and most privileged classes and, in general, fuel the economies of their own: they support each other, they support artists and revolutionaries and progressive politicians. They are an extremely efficient vehicle to funnel money from (generally wealthy, generally white) men into these marginalized areas. They are footsoldiers.
Definitely some provocative ideas that are worth considering. I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea of marginalized people making a living and not struggling. And I'm also sympathetic to the way that sex workers cooperate and help support themselves, other artists, etc. But I'm not convinced that the expansion of the sex industry under capitalism is necessarily good or revolutionary. For one, capitalist social relations are still in effect, even if not always directly, so the wealthy (often white men) are ultimately profiting off of it as much as (or even more) than the sex workers. Here, it can be anyone from the owners of content platforms like OnlyFans, ManyVids, etc. to sites like Twitter and Instagram where they advertise, owners of brothels and strip clubs, etc. So capital, landlords, etc. are taking their cut where they can even if many sex workers are independent performance artists with some level of personal control and freedom.
In addition, while web-based platforms have made it safer and easier for sex workers to work, that's just one subset of sex work. And creating larger markets for sex and sex work also helps to increase demand in the black market economy underlying capitalism that's also fuelled by the very same wealthy (generally white) men, which in turn finds support in other areas and side hustles, from the mild to the brutal/domineering (e..g., men working behind the scenes who are often not exposed; pimps and madams; sex traffickers; the concierge at the expensive hotel who knows where one may find a child prostitute, like the pedophile ring accidentally uncovered by Sasha Baron Cohen, etc.). Then there's the increased level of objectification and alienation of labour that sex work (and wage labour in general) entails, where the commodity being consumed is the person's body and emotions, and these are in some way divorced from the person, being sold to their consumer, not only normalizing and expanding sex work (which isn't inherently negative) but also transactional relationships and consumerism (which may not necessarily be good).
Essentially, I'm not entirely convinced sex work itself is a revolutionary form of labour that can instigate a transition away from capitalism and towards a more egalitarian and less exploitative alternative moreso than other forms of labour, nor am I convinced that the majority of sex workers are anti-capitalist and actively seeking to upend capitalism. In so far as expanding sex work can expand solidarity among different types of workers, I can see how it may contribute to this, as well as from the activity of radical sex workers. And I do think they have a current need and right to make a living. But on a broader, more theoretical level I still have issues with the appearance sex work takes under capitalism. I don't see how simply taking and redistributing money from the wealthy will do any more good than other means of wealth redistribution such as taxes, or how it's qualitatively different from other places the rich spend their cash. And my concern is still the same, that it's ultimately just making sex work more easily exploitable by capital while doing little to challenge current social relations and power dynamics.
Consequently, I support the decriminalization of sex work, as well as the bodily autonomy of sex workers, since it does no good to penalize people who are often already marginalized and struggling (although middle-class women are a growing demographic, as well) from making a living that doesn't harm anyone. And I support normalizing it in the sense of removing the stigma and shame of being a sex worker or enjoying sex, allowing them to be more open about it and utilize community resources, modern technology, and their social circles to advertise and work rather than seedier and more exploitative options. Hence, I'm cautiously optimistic about it improving from what it once was. But I'm not yet comfortable idealizing sex work as an inherently revolutionary occupation, nor one free from danger and exploitation. Just as the relative comfort and security of workers in more developed countries like the US is dependent upon more oppressive and exploitative conditions of labour in less developed countries, effectively subsidizing our higher wages and standard of living despite our own inequalities, the relative comfort and security of some sex workers likely comes at the cost of others who are less fortunate and more marginalized.
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