The occupation at home

“To achieve its positive objectives a revolution must actually take place. But to achieve a negative result, to provoke a counter-revolutionary reaction, it need no more than cast a shadow”.

Isaac Deutscher

Let me first begin by declaring at the outset of this short essay, that I have great respect for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and their actions, which, criticisms and reservations aside, have served as a powerful reminder of the controversial and socially biased nature of diffuse police violence in the US. However, I have serious doubts about whether the BLM’ s character as primarily a protest organization can act as a deterrent against the continuation of mass police violence in the future. In other words, I feel that serious questions can be raised about whether the BLM can deliver on the collective promises it has taken it upon itself to fulfill. In my view, peaceful mass gatherings, petitions and carefully regimented protest meetings are nothing more than institutionalized forms of protest, which aim either to stifle, mediate or effectively control the social discontent which is innate in any heteronomous social totality based on the unequal distribution of power between individuals and social classes. The primary contradiction in the strategy of peaceful institutionalized protest is that it assumes a priori the existence of a willing and benign interlocutor at the top of the social pyramid. That is, it assumes that the elites who currently hold power are somehow vulnerable to pressures brought to bear from below, or prone to view the plight of the oppressed at the bottom of the class system with an impartial, or even sympathetic outlook. However, in my mind it is nonsensical to address a demand for the effective suspension of police violence against the black community, to those very political and economic elites who actively support repression and had a hand in instituting it in the first place. The social basis upon which these elites have erected their structures of power and domination, i.e. the social strata which are dependent on those elites for the reproduction and preservation of their privileged position vis-à-vis the subjugated social groups, does not entail the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed, who by way of peaceful demonstrations, have decided to issue a dramatic appeal to the “reason”, “kindness”, or sense of “justice” of the ruling class. Nor do the subjugated social groups have any access to the institutionalized sources of power, that would allow them to effectively influence or shape to their advantage the official decision-making process. If they had such power, we may rest assured that they wouldn’t have found themselves at the bottom layers of the social division of labor generated by heteronomous capitalist society. Institutional forms of protest impose limitations on the scope, method and content of spontaneous collective political action, which by definition transform it into an activity that can be measured, quantified and effectively absorbed by the prevalent institutional framework. Hence, the sole method of action that the oppressed classes have at their disposal to bring about radical social change, what the political philosopher T. Fotopoulos calls antisystemic collective political praxis outside and against official forms of protest, is subverted and finally appropriated by the hierarchical totality for its own benefit. [1] In the words of the anarchist philosopher Murray Bookchin, who wrote about the difference between institutionalized forms of dissent and mass uprisings as a spontaneous form of insurrectionary politics, “This shift from predictable, highly organized protests within the institutionalized framework of existing society to sporadic, spontaneous, near-insurrectionary assaults from outside (and even against) socially acceptable forms reflects a profound change in popular psychology. The ‘rioter’ has begun to break, however partially and intuitively, with those deep-seated norms of behavior which traditionally weld the ‘masses’ to the established order. He actively sheds the internalized structure of authority, the long-cultivated body of conditioned reflexes, and the pattern of submission sustained by guilt that tie one to the system even more effectively than any fear of police violence and juridical reprisal. Contrary to the views of social psychologists, who see in these modes of direct action the submission of the individual to a terrifying collective entity called the ‘mob’, the truth is that ‘riots’ and crowd actions represent the first gropings of the mass toward individuation”. [2]

At this point, one might raise the objection that the emergence of a black political class at the top levels of the social hierarchy, provides sufficient guarantees to the protest movement that friendly forces exist within the system, which are ready to introduce reforms working in concert with the grass-roots civil organizations from below. Unfortunately, I find that this notion of black “Uncle Tom” politicians and of the numerically small, but fanatically devoted to the system, black middle class, as anything other than subservient to their masters, is both unhistorical and analytically incorrect, and therefore counter-productive in terms of movement strategy. “Blackness” in the US is not simply a denomination of race or color. Instead, it is a class identity rooted in a particular mode of oppressed social existence. Any special meaning ascribed to “blackness” may only be understood in relation to those circumstances and variables of social existence, determining the underprivileged status of the black community as a social unit, i.e. as a subjugated sub-totality incorporated in the hierarchical division of labor upheld by heteronomous systemic structures. Thus, the dominant social paradigm refers to features that are characteristic of stereotypes about black cultural identity, i.e. the “tendency” for black-on-black crime, “natural affinity” of young black males for “deviant” social behavior, or their innate “irresponsibility” when it comes to conventional parenthood, to name but a few of these orientalist stereotypes, without taking under account the material conditions underlying the living standards of black communities as oppressed social units, which interact with the subjective conditions, i.e. mindsets, value systems and cultural patterns, in order to produce the trends and attitudes prevalent in the black community towards these subjects. By virtue of traditional orientalist logic, we are confronted with an effective inversion of reality, which in turn functions as an apology for the status quo. Instead of attributing “deviant” behavior to poverty and to abject social circumstances (as opposed to some abstract norm of uniform behavior which holds universal validity and to which all law-abiding members of society are expected to comply), poverty and collective immiseration are attributed to the inherent cultural inferiority of the “Negro”. We need not point out the absurdity of a social analysis which insists on ascribing uniform qualities of character to all members of a social group, overlooking individual differences on the basis of race. Such a model for the interpretation of social reality is merely a reflection on the field of social theory of the prevalent structures of class domination, which function by enslaving blacks not merely as individuals, but as a sub-totality, a collective social entity independent of the respective traits of each individual member.

By implication, there can be absolutely no affiliation between black professional politicians of the bipartisan establishment and the small, but compact, african-american neo-bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the vast mass of black lumpen proletarians inhabiting the underdeveloped urban slums of capitalist metropoles, on the other. No abstract bonds between different groups may be forged on the illusive basis of racial solidarity. Within the context of an oppressive, heteronomous society, all viable social relations take the form of class relations and even the concept of race, should be perceived as a material concept, denoting first and foremost a set of concrete and clearly definable social conditions. It is no accident that the miniscule, black neo-bourgeois class have not only taken great pains to sever all previous social connections that kept it emotionally and economically invested in the ghetto, but has undergone such a cultural transformation, that it has emerged as one of the most ardent opponents of the black proletarian class, both in terms of social entitlement, and in terms of the black discourses of liberation. As Z. Bauman has noted, black Americans who have benefited from affirmative action to the point of attaining neo-bourgeois social status, have now become the most outspoken critics of affirmative action and have vehemently denounced these programs, calling instead for their immediate withdrawal.[3] Surely, this attitude has to be attributed to the need felt by the black middle-class to believe in itself and built up its confidence by purging its social imaginary from any residual significations pointing to its former humble social origins, as well as to the heavily subsidized manner in which its social advancement took place. However, an even more compelling material factor, regulating the attitude of the black neo-bourgeois toward their disenfranchised ethnic counter-parts, would be their desire and class-interest to protect their privileged social position against any social groups aspiring to upward social mobility by virtue of subsidized government programs. Since the heteronomous totality of capitalist society encourages all-out competition among social groups as the only possible mode of social existence, simultaneously arresting any centrifugal tendencies produced by this antagonism by way of centralized hierarchy, the black neo-bourgeois are only acting in the interest of their self-preservation when they are demanding that any policies contributing to upward social mobility should be abandoned. They are also acting in conformity with the dominant social paradigm of neoliberal modernity, which conceives of any type of formalized social aid as an “anomaly”, a disruption of the dynamics engendered by the normal functioning of free-market forces. They do not have the inclination to devote part of their resources and new-amassed wealth to the funding of “benevolent” government programs combatting institutionalized racism and discrimination, nor do they have the wish to see such programs succeed, thus increasing individual competition for scarce resources.

In view of the above, black proletarians do not have any allies among the ranks of neo-bourgeois African-americans. Their natural class allies are to be found among the white and Hispanic proletarians and other subjugated and materially dependent strata of the hierarchical totality. Those impoverished segments of the population that share the same social reality and the same social conditions as they and have a vested interest in overthrowing this inhuman system of domination and exploitation.

And of course, black proletarians should by no means expect a redress of their grievances against the apparatus of repression by US magistrates, willfully upholding class-rule. It is no historical coincidence that rising levels of violence used by the forces of repression against the “unruly” poor, loosely correspond to the disintegrating situation of the social services and the welfare state apparatus in the era of neoliberal modernity. Both trends are integral parts of the more general, systemic tendency toward an even greater concentration of all forms of power in the hands of the political, economic, cultural and social elites dominating the market economy system. Open war has been declared against the poor by the extreme right, neoliberal orthodoxy. One has only to recall the horrifying cynicism of Japan’s minister of finance, who suggested that the elderly would do their country a great service if they would just “hurry up and die”.[4] Or, the neonazi mentality exhibited by the Lithuanian political elite, who have proposed that euthanasia is an option which the poor and chronically ill of the country should seriously consider.[5] The ongoing redistribution of wealth in favor of the rich can only result to the further deterioration of social relations between dominant and subjugated social groups and to the explosion of immanent social contradictions, given that even the right of subsistence of the proletarians within the present institutional framework is now being repudiated in practice by systemic restructuring on a global scale. In view of the above, repression against the masses of the poor must be stepped up and the morale of the internal army of occupation must be kept high, so no punishments or convictions will be meted out by the neo-bourgeois courts. As was the case with the formal immunity bestowed upon the US military forces of occupation in Iraq, the militarized police occupying the communities of the poor at home, must be reassured that it will never be held to account for its crimes and atrocities against an increasingly disobedient and unruly population. Therefore, liberation in tandem with other oppressed social groups and against established authority, not empowerment against other social groups in collusion with established authority is the solution to the chronic social plight of black lumpen proletarians in America.

[1] T. Fotopoulos, Class divisions today, http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol6/takis_class.htm.
[2] M. Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Black Rose Books) p. 73.
[3] Z. Bauman, Work, Consumerism and the New Poor (Open University Press).
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/22/elderly-hurry-up-die-japan.
[5] http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/bioethics_article/11071.