Rebel Minds 9780995985476

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
It’s a mad, mad world
Part I. The cause of mass suffering
1. A world of needless pain
2. Class war
Part II Concealing the cause of mass suffering
3. The managerial class
4. Is ‘mental illness’ real?
5. How important is biology?
6. Eugenics then and now
Part III. Containing rebellion
7. The drive to standardize
8. Rebel minds
9. The State of institutions
Part IV. The battle for freedom
10. Inspiring victory, long decline
11. We are in deep shit
12. We need real socialism
What now?
References

Citation preview

Rebel Minds

Class War, Mass Suffering and the Urgent Need for Socialism

Susan Rosenthal

Copyright © 2019 Susan Rosenthal All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. ISBN: 978-0-9959854-7-6 Registered with Library and Archives Canada Cover design by Flamingo Graphics Printed and bound in Hamilton, Canada by J. H. French & Co., Ltd. First printing July 2019 Published by ReMarx Publishing

Contents Acknowledgments It’s a mad, mad world Part I. The cause of mass suffering 1. A world of needless pain 2. Class war Part II Concealing the cause of mass suffering 3. The managerial class 4. Is ‘mental illness’ real? 5. How important is biology? 6. Eugenics then and now Part III. Containing rebellion 7. The drive to standardize 8. Rebel minds 9. The State of institutions Part IV. The battle for freedom 10. Inspiring victory, long decline 11. We are in deep shit 12. We need real socialism

What now? References

Acknowledgments We’re not supposed to be perfect. We’re supposed to be useful1 — Leonard Peltier

We understand the world on the basis of our experience. How can we know if our experience is unique to us or common to many? I was fortunate to have a job that required me to listen to many, many people’s experiences. Their stories of suffering enabled me to perceive social patterns that otherwise would have remained hidden. I owe my deepest gratitude to those who trusted me with their pain. Theory is necessary to explain the meaning of experience. Countless people have sacrificed a tremendous amount to reveal the class basis of modern society and how it shapes people’s lives. I hope that I have done justice to this legacy and that Rebel Minds will help a new generation to achieve the liberation of humanity. For patiently reading, editing, and commenting on the manuscript, I thank Linda Page, Malika Hollander, Glen Manery, Patricia Campbell, Gzhibaeassigaekwe (GG) Meunier, and Martha Gruelle. Your comments were invaluable. Thank you to Alison Bennie for designing a beautiful book cover. A special thank you to Linda Page, who supported every step of this project and also designed the book’s interior. I dedicate Rebel Minds to the memory of revolutionary socialist Chris Harman (1942-2009), who showed me that, while academics strive to be right, marxists strive to be useful. Susan Rosenthal June 2019

It’s a mad, mad world Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.1. —Bob Marley (1945-1981)

People all over the world want the same things: effective shelter, nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, and access to information, tools, technology, and medical care. We also have social needs: to contribute and know that our contribution matters; to be heard, accepted, and included; and to know that others will support us in times of need. Capitalism delivers the opposite: deprivation, disrespect, distrust, disconnection, discrimination, meaningless work, social insecurity, pain, disease, premature death, and fear for the future. Capitalist rule is a long con. For several hundred years, capitalists have insisted that only they are qualified to manage society. Their actions say otherwise. Their drive to accumulate capital has caused incalculable human suffering, environmental destruction, and never-ending wars. None of these problems can be solved as long as they remain in power. The capitalist class are in crisis. Their rate of profit continues to fall,2 their economies are sliding into recession, and social rebellion is growing. They cannot fix the mess they have created, and they try to hide their lack of solutions by blaming everyone else. The majority did not choose to live in a social system that fails to meet their needs. Before they can replace it with one that does, they must clear the fog of lies and deceits that keep them divided and confused. That is the purpose of Rebel Minds. Because we are born under capitalist rule, we tend to accept as ‘normal’ that a few are obscenely rich and many more are desperately poor, that humanity is divided into ‘races’ and separated by borders, and that conflict and war are

inevitable. It is difficult to imagine how an equitable, cooperative, and supportive society could actually be achieved. I teach a psychology course. On the first day of class, I ask my students if they think that society is healthy or promotes health. Almost no one raises their hand. Then I ask if they think that society is sick or makes people sick. Almost everyone raises their hand. I then ask, “If society makes people sick, why do we treat individuals? Why do we not ‘treat’ society? And what would that look like?” The resulting discussion raises another question: If a handful of individuals command as much wealth as the poorest half of humanity, what prevents those billions of people from ending this arrangement and creating one that will meet their needs? My students’ answers are versions of the circular argument that people live the way they do because that is the way things are. In other words, they do not know. We are discouraged from thinking about such questions, let alone answering them. How do we find the words to describe what we are not supposed to acknowledge? The capitalist view of the world conflicts with most people’s experience. If we trust their view that anyone can make it, then we must deny our experience that the system is rigged against ordinary people. If we trust our experience, then we are in conflict with society and risk being labeled as ‘deviant’ or ‘sick.’ We are neither. We are suffering. We are rebels. This book began as a critique of ‘mental illness’ and psychiatry, until I realized that ‘mental illness’ is a subset of suffering, and psychiatry is a subset of capitalist rule. The only way to understand either is to apply the marxist method of analysis. Capitalists and their supporters mock marxism as a rigid set of commandments or a wacky religion. It is neither. Marxism is a method for understanding society from an historical and class perspective. Marxists believe that working-class people could run the world much better than billionaire capitalists. It is that simple.

The ruling class fear marxism because it exposes them as a class who are leading humanity to extinction, a class who cannot change course, and a class who can be removed from power. Rebel Minds is organized in four parts and 12 chapters: Part I. The cause of mass suffering Chapter 1. A world of needless pain explains that mass suffering is necessary for capital accumulation and why the ruling class punish people who are in pain instead of relieving their suffering. Chapter 2. Class war reveals that the extent of social suffering depends on the relative power of the two classes. As the capitalist class gain power, suffering increases. As the working class gain power, suffering decreases. Part II. Concealing the cause of mass suffering Chapter 3. The managerial class are a middle layer of professional and non-professional managers who enforce capitalist policies at work and in society. Because they are pulled between the warring classes, they tend to advocate compromise and reform. Chapter 4. Is ‘mental illness’ real? explains how the concept of ‘mental illness’ is unique to capitalism and how it hides the role of the capitalist class in creating mass suffering. Chapter 5. How important is biology? explains why biological and ‘race’ explanations for social problems dominate society, while the damaging impact of social conditions is ignored. Chapter 6. Eugenics then and now explains that using biology to understand human behavior is inherently racist, and how racism, eugenics, and genocide are essential to capitalist rule. Part III. Containing rebellion Chapter 7. The drive to standardize explains how the mathematical concept of ‘normal’ was transformed into the social value of ‘expected,’ and

how the definition of what is socially acceptable becomes narrower the more the capitalist factory system permeates society. Chapter 8. Rebel minds describes how the capitalist class have used psychiatry to counter rebellion from the 19th century to the present. Chapter 9. The State of institutions explains why every ruling class need a State to secure their rule. The State is more than an administrative or governing body; it is a complex web of social institutions that keep the majority ‘in their place.’ Part IV. The battle for freedom Chapter 10. Inspiring victory, long decline explains how the Russian Revolution inspired a generation of workers to fight for their liberation and how their defeat cast a long shadow that reaches into the present day. Chapter 11. We are in deep shit explains why the life-threatening crises that confront humanity cannot be solved by moral outrage, personal change, or reforming the existing system. Chapter 12. We need real socialism explains how genuine socialism differs from fake forms of socialism and how the working class can steer humanity away from oblivion, end mass suffering, and win our freedom. What now? We must build democratic organizations that will work together to end capitalist rule.

My examples come primarily from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom because I am most familiar with these nations. However, global capitalism reproduces itself in similar ways everywhere, and I encourage you to contribute your own experience here: Rebel Minds Regarding language: The ruling class load common words and phrases with political meaning. For example, ‘mental illness’ implies that a mind can be diseased, even though there is no agreement on what the mind is, let alone whether it can be diseased in the same way as a physical organ. I have

identified such controversial words and phrases with single quotation marks. Black and White are capitalized to emphasize that these are political labels. Under capitalist rule, suffering is treated as a consequence of individual circumstances. Rebel Minds argues that mass suffering is built into the capitalist system and can be eliminated only by removing the capitalist class from power. Some will object to my blaming the capitalist class for human suffering. I say that they control society, so they are responsible for what happens. We are responsible for allowing them to keep us down and for liberating ourselves from their rule. You are not crazy. The world is crazy, and we can change the world.

Part I. The cause of mass suffering

1. A world of needless pain Accumulation of wealth at one pole [of society] is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.1 — Karl Marx (1818-1883)

While some degree of suffering is inevitable, the way we organize society can increase or reduce it. This chapter explains how mass suffering is built into the capitalist system.

Exploitation God, I hated that assembly line. I hated it. I used to fall asleep on the job standing up and still keep doing my work. There’s nothing more boring and repetitious in the world. On top of it, you don’t feel human. The machine’s running you, you’re not running it.2

This comment from Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family (1976) captures the misery that results when human beings are compelled to do meaningless, mindless work for someone else’s profit. Capitalism is a global system that is based on such exploitation. Exploitation occurs when workers are paid less than the value of what they produce, and the capitalists take the difference as profit. There would be no profit if workers’ wages equaled the value of what they produce.3 Capitalism could be described as a system that turns human suffering into gold. In order to maximize profits, capitalists raise the level of exploitation by lengthening the workday, increasing the days worked per year, removing skill from the job, using labor-reducing technology, increasing the speed of production, busting unions, and pushing down wages and benefits. In short, higher profits for capitalists are based on greater suffering for workers. Capital is profit that is invested to produce more profit, or suffering that is invested to create more suffering. The result is a vicious cycle where the majority are compelled to work every day “to build for themselves more

‘modern,’ more ‘scientific,’ and more dehumanized prisons of labor.”4 Capitalist production disconnects workers from their creativity by denying them any choice over what they produce, how they produce it, and what happens to what they produce. The worker is reduced to “nothing but a placeholder for machines that have already been invented but aren’t yet profitable enough to permanently replace you.”5 While it appears that most workers adapt to life under capitalism, their minds and bodies say otherwise. The impact of exploitation can be measured in rising levels of mental and physical distress. As long as the working class does not rebel against these new and intensified forms of exploitation, heart, stomach, and circulatory diseases of individual workers will rebel for them. Even though the worker may still ‘go along,’ his circulation, in any event, will not. Even if he says, “actually I feel alright,” his stomach ulcer will prove the contrary.6

Employers can neither respect nor appreciate workers’ contributions without raising their expectations of better conditions and more pay, which would lower profits. To maximize profits, workers must be dehumanized. I work for a retail chain in Canada. In the past three months I have worked there, two of my fellow employees have been put on anti-depressants, one has developed a bleeding ulcer and the rest just plod along like dairy cattle. The ‘lifers,’ as I refer to them (ten+ years) are the most miserable lot of women (and three men) I’ve ever met.7

Disengagement As work is degraded, life’s fulfillment becomes life’s drudgery. Meaningless work leads to high staff turnover, work avoidance, and emotional disengagement. Disengagement is a global phenomenon, with 85 percent of all employees feeling “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from their work. Worldwide, the percentage of adults who work full time for an employer and are engaged at work – they are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace – is just 15 percent. Though engagement levels vary considerably by country and region, in no country does the proportion of the employed residents who are engaged in their job exceed about four in ten.8

In Britain, half of all working adults think that their job does not make a meaningful contribution to the world, or they are unsure if it does.9 Seventy

percent of American workers report feeling “emotionally disconnected” at work, and nearly one in five report feeling “actively disengaged.” Disengagement is so distressing that 90 percent of employees would be willing to trade up to 23 percent of their entire future earnings in order to have jobs that are always meaningful.10 Worker disengagement is a catch 22 for the capitalist class. Measures that raise productivity alienate workers, who respond by disengaging, which lowers their productivity. Active disengagement costs the U.S. economy between $450 billion and $550 billion every year.11 To address this problem, capitalists hire experts in medicine, pharmacology, psychology, sociology, and human relations to serve as the maintenance crew for the human machinery. These professionals cannot remedy the alienation of workers and the degradation of work; they are assigned to manage workers’ reactions to alienation and degradation. The worker, not the system, becomes the problem.12, 13

Inequality Marx described capital as a social relationship between the capitalist class and the working class, in which the former grow richer by exploiting the latter, who become increasingly impoverished in relation to the rising value of what they produce. The proof is in the numbers. In 2018, the monetary value of all goods and services produced in the world was ten times greater than it was in 1950. Most people did not enjoy a tenfold rise in living standards, because the capitalist class claimed most of that wealth for themselves. By 2017, just eight men held the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of humanity.14 Around four billion people remain in poverty today, and around two billion remain hungry – more than ever before in history, and between two and four times what the U.N. would have us believe.15

In 2017, the top 1 percent took 83 percent of all the wealth created that year, with nothing going to the bottom 50 percent. That portion taken by the 1

percent could have ended extreme global poverty, seven times over.16 Inequality breeds resentment. Human beings are a social species with a builtin sense of fairness. Even the youngest child will protest, “It’s not fair!” and “He got more than I did!” Among modern developed societies, inequality is not primarily a matter of the actual amount of money people have. It is, rather, people’s sense of where they stand in relation to others. Feeling poor matters – not just being poor.17

Because cooperation aids survival, pre-class societies emphasized fairness. Hunter-gatherers were not passively egalitarian; they were fiercely egalitarian. They would not tolerate anyone’s boasting, or putting on airs, or trying to lord it over others. Their first line of defense was ridicule. If anyone – especially if some young man – attempted to act better than others or failed to show proper humility in daily life, the rest of the group, especially the elders, would make fun of that person until proper humility was shown.18

On North America’s west coast, Indigenous people organized regular gatherings where desirable goods were given away, exchanged, and even destroyed to prevent the resentment that results when some have more than they need while others go without. European conquerors outlawed such equalizing practices as ‘uncivilized,’ and they imposed a class system based on inequality. Inequality is a social poison. Societies with more inequality are more competitive and status-conscious, rewarding the few who ‘win’ and shaming the many who ‘lose.’19 Greater inequality is linked with more theft, assault, addiction, suicide, and murder. Societies with the greatest inequality invest more in prisons than in social supports,20 and their working-class youth face a lifetime of mindless low-paid jobs or chronic unemployment. Society has withdrawn its contract from these young people. Can they now be expected to live by its rules? The sense of aimlessness and pent-up frustrations are reaching critical levels where they will be transformed into an explosive anger, directed against the establishment that has been so careless of their hopes and needs.21

Oppression Oppression is the systematic subjugation of groups of people based on characteristics such as class, gender, skin color, nationality, religion, sexual

orientation, ability, and political beliefs. The working class are not only exploited to produce capital, they are also oppressed. The existence of a ruling class requires the existence of an oppressed class that is deprived of social and economic power. The working class are not only the largest social class, they are also the largest oppressed group in society. Working-class oppression manifests in worse health, shorter lifespans, inferior schools, more exposure to toxic chemicals, more poverty, and higher stress.22 Almost half of American workers report that they are “often or always exhausted due to work,” a 32 percent increase over the past 20 years.23 Working-class oppression is unique. All other forms of oppression cut across class lines, so that individuals from those oppressed groups can be found in every social class. However, the discriminatory nature of oppression keeps most oppressed people in the working class. This means that the working class are not only the largest oppressed group, they also include the largest numbers of people from every other oppressed group. Most people do not view workers as an oppressed group, or even as a distinct group at all, because their identity as producers is hidden by false descriptions like ‘middle-class,’ ‘consumers,’ or ‘the public.’ However, the oppression of workers is glaringly obvious when they rise up, and the combined forces of the State are mobilized to put them down. The mass media depict working-class people as ignorant, crude, bigoted, lazy, deviant, unattractive, and laughable.24 These degrading caricatures create shame. Children know when their teachers are contemptuous of their [working-class] family background. They know that there are no factory workers, no truck drivers, no construction workers who are the heroes of the television shows they watch. They know their parents are not those who ‘count’ in America. And perhaps most devastating of all, they know that their parents know these things as well. Why else would they urge their children to do ‘better,’ to be ‘more’ than they are? Why else would they carry within them so much generalized and free-floating anger that lashes out irrationally at home, anger that is displaced from the world outside where its expression is potentially dangerous?25

Pain Over two million Americans are estimated to be dependent on opioids, and an additional 95 million used prescription painkillers in the past year – more than used tobacco. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50.26

To understand why one person is in pain, you need to know their story. To understand why millions of people are in pain, you need to know their social conditions. While capitalism makes work difficult to tolerate, the unemployment it creates is unbearable. For every 1 percent increase in unemployment in America, deaths from opioid overdose rise nearly 4 percent, and emergency department visits for opioid overdose rise 7 percent.27 There is clearly a link between economic distress, working-class representation, and drug, alcohol, and suicide mortality. Nationally, mortality rates are lowest in the least economically distressed counties and highest in the most economically distressed counties.28

The capitalist class are responsible for creating this economic distress and the resulting pain. They establish profitable industries, destroy the environment in the process, then relocate to more profitable areas, abandoning entire regions to rot. This happened in Detroit, the former heart of the American auto industry. It happened in the Industrial Midwest, now called the Rust Belt, and it happened in Appalachia, a former mining and metalworking region known as ‘Ground Zero’ of the opioid epidemic. In these places, good jobs and the dignity of work have been replaced by suffering, hopelessness, and despair, the feeling that America isn’t so great anymore, and the belief that people in power don’t care about them or their communities.29

Pain is pain Like all social creatures, human beings thrive in supportive communities. When we bond with others, our bodies release natural opioids that produce a sense of safety and comfort.30 Disconnection causes internal opioid levels to drop, causing fear and distress31 that are relieved when we reconnect. Human biology evolved this way in order to promote connection, cooperation, and survival.

In the 1970s, researchers observed a similarity between human bonding and the effects of heroin, a powerful opioid.32 The feelings that infants or adults feel when being nurtured – warmth, calmness, and peacefulness – come from a combination of opioids and oxytocin. These are the same feelings that people who take opioids report: a feeling of warmth and being nurtured or loved.33

Social connection is so important that the human brain does not distinguish between physical pain and emotional pain.34 Pain is pain. Losing a loved one can hurt as much as a broken leg, and whatever reduces physical pain will also ease emotional pain. Solid social connections cushion us against pain, and people with larger social networks can tolerate more pain.35 Unemployment shatters social networks. As people migrate to find work, towns disappear, cities shrink, and families disintegrate. In the United States, counties with the lowest levels of social support suffer the highest death rates from drug overdose.36 Ultimately, at the core of increasingly common ‘deaths of despair’ is a desire to escape – escape pain, stress, anxiety, shame, and hopelessness.37

Addiction Over the past decade, nearly 400,000 people in the U.S. died from accidental drug overdoses and drug-induced diseases. Nearly 400,000 more committed suicide, and over 250,000 died from alcohol-induced diseases like cirrhosis of the liver.38

In 2017 alone, drug overdoses killed a record 72,000 Americans.39 By 2018, the odds of an American dying from an accidental opioid overdose (1 in 96) exceeded the odds of dying in a motor-vehicle collision (1 in 103).40 Exploitation, inequality, and oppression have created a tidal wave of physical and psychological pain that is falsely called a ‘killer drug’ epidemic.41 Placing the emphasis on the drugs ignores the question of why so many people are suffering so much pain. People turn to drugs when their pain becomes intolerable. The capitalist class do not treat drug use as a means to ease suffering, because they would have to acknowledge their role in creating that suffering. Instead, they blame

addiction on ‘killer drugs’ that supposedly ‘hook’ a person from the first exposure. The ‘killer-drug’ model of addiction is based on laboratory experiments where caged rats are given a choice between plain water and water containing heroin or cocaine. The rats tend to prefer the drugged water and indulge to the point of death, so it seems that the drug is both irresistible and lethal. In the 1970s, Bruce Alexander wondered if the laboratory rats were simply bored out of their minds. So he built a Rat Park stocked with food, toys, and companion rats. When he offered the rats in Rat Park a choice between plain water and water containing drugs, they took very little drugged water and never overdosed. Alexander concluded that addiction is not caused by the drug or by the user’s personality, but by a deprived social environment. As he stated, “It’s not your brain; it’s your cage.” Alexander compared the addictive behavior of deprived rats with high rates of addiction among some Indigenous peoples. In both cases there is little drug consumption in the natural environment. In the case of rats, social and cultural isolation is produced by confining the rats in individual cages. In the case of native people, the social and cultural isolation is produced by destroying the foundations of their cultural life. Under such conditions, both rats and people consume too much of whatever drug that is made easily accessible to them. In both cases, the colonizers or the experimenters who provide the drug explain the drug consumption in the isolated environment by saying that the drug is irresistible to the people or the rats. But in both cases, the drug only becomes irresistible when the opportunity for normal social existence is destroyed.42

Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream (2015), used Alexander’s Rat Park model to explain why 20 percent of American troops used heroin in Vietnam, yet most quit when they came home. If you’re taken out of a hellish, pestilential jungle, where you don’t want to be and you could be killed at any moment, and you go back to your nice life in Wichita, Kansas, with your friends and your family and a purpose in life, it’s the equivalent of being taken from the first cage to the second cage. You go back to your connections.43

Portugal offers more evidence for the social-deprivation model of addiction. In the late 1980s, almost 1 percent of the population were addicted to heroin, and Portugal had the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. The country’s punitive, law-and-order response to addiction was clearly failing.

In 2001, Portugal decriminalized the possession and use of all drugs. The money that had been spent on arresting and jailing addicts was invested instead in providing secure housing, supportive counseling, and jobs. Fifteen years later, injection drug use had been cut in half, and deaths from drug overdose had dropped to the second lowest in Europe.44 Throughout Europe and other regions where opioids are readily available, people are not dying at comparable rates as those in the U.S., largely because addiction is treated not as a crime but as a public health problem. In many countries, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, opioid treatment may include daily injections of heroin, just as a diabetic may receive daily insulin injections, along with treating the patient’s medical and psycho-social issues. These patients hold jobs, pay taxes, and live long, healthy, productive lives. Yet in the U.S., such programs are not even discussed.45

Punishment The capitalist class refuse to invest in enriching the cages of the working class. Their alternative is punishment. In some countries, people addicted to drugs are summarily executed in the street. In the United States, police are stepping up drug raids, employers are screening workers for drug use, and people who share drugs that result in death can be charged with manslaughter or murder.46 In Canada, some provinces have enacted ‘secure care’ legislation that permits the apprehension, detention, and forced treatment of youth engaged in ‘highrisk substance use.’ These punitive, blame-the-victim policies deter people from seeking help, increase their pain, increase their need for drugs, and increase the number of drug-related deaths.47 Some American politicians want to execute drug dealers. They do not mean the pharmaceutical executives who aggressively and profitably marketed opioids under false pretenses48 or the physicians who over-prescribed opioids in exchange for substantial financial kickbacks.49 On the contrary, the National Institutes of Health announced a partnership with the pharmaceutical industry to develop new drug treatments for opioid addiction, which the New York Times described as “channeling money for more meds to drug companies, from the pockets of Americans whose pain was the industry’s gain.”50

Policy makers cannot raise living standards to prevent or reduce drug addiction,51 because doing so would conflict with society’s most lethal addiction: the drive for profit.

No safe harbor Global capitalism is rendering climate-related stresses and ‘natural’ disasters more frequent and severe in nature.52

In a heartless capitalist system, people seek comfort in family and personal life. However, there is no escape from the destructive impact of capitalist rule. Imperialism, war, and environmental crises are forcing millions of people to flee their homes.53 By 2014, 60 million people on the planet were internally displaced, or refugees seeking asylum.54 Children are one-third of humanity, yet more than half of all refugees are children. In 2015, over 100,000 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in 78 countries, triple the previous year’s number.55 Each year, the U.S. government locks up roughly 440,000 immigrants in over 200 immigrant prisons. These facilities have grown into a highly privatized, lucrative, and abusive industry that profits off the misery of immigrants awaiting deportation.56

Shattered bonds Weakening the parent-child bond and disintegrating families within a group are a means of subordinating the entire group.57 — Dorothy Roberts

Indigenous peoples did not surrender easily to colonial domination. To crush their resistance, Church and State deliberately and systematically tore their communities apart. Indigenous children were forcibly incarcerated in ‘residential schools’ to block the inter- generational transmission of language and culture.58 ‘Adoption’ and foster-care programs were used to place, and continue to place, Indigenous children with non-Indigenous families, even in distant countries.59

The ‘scooped’ children lost contact with their families. They lost their language, culture, and identity. Neither the children nor their foster or adoptive parents were given information about the children’s aboriginal heritage or about the various educational and other benefits that they were entitled to receive. The removed children vanished ‘with scarcely a trace.’60

The system of Black slavery was also sustained by tearing families apart. Enslaved children were sold separately from their parents, and enslaved parents were punished in front of their children. Slave law installed the White master as head of an extended plantation family that included his slaves. Slaves, on the other hand, had no legal authority over their children. Naming a slave after his owner reinforced the child’s ultimate subservience to his master rather than to his parents.61

Today, working-class families are shattered by the police, prison, and ‘child welfare’ systems.62 The U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Almost half of all Americans have an immediate family member who has been in jail or prison. One in four adults has had a sibling incarcerated. One in five has had a parent in jail or prison, and one in eight has had a child imprisoned.63 There exists a psychological and emotional torture that stems from being separated from one’s loved ones either by death or by detention.64

Poor communities of color are disproportionately targeted. A Black person is 50 percent more likely than a White person to have a family member incarcerated, and three times more likely to have a family member in prison for more than ten years. An astonishing 71 percent of Black people without a high school diploma have been incarcerated, and 60 percent of Indigenous people have had an immediate family member in jail or in prison.65 In Canada,66 and most other nations, Indigenous people are also disproportionately incarcerated. More than half the American prison population are parents, and more than half of them were the primary wage-earners for their families. Losing their primary source of income can push families into financial disaster, and the destabilizing and traumatic effects of incarceration on family members is magnified the longer their loved one is incarcerated. Having an incarcerated family member has been shown to increase the risk of depression, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes.67

An estimated ten million American children will lose a parent to prison at

some point in their lives,68 causing long-term suffering.69 Between 1991 and 2007, the number of under-age children with a mother in prison more than doubled.70 Across the country, an estimated 1.5 million children have a parent behind bars – an increase of more than half a million since 1991. No one knows the exact number, because in virtually every jurisdiction nationwide, no official body – not police, courts, or prisons – is responsible for even asking if prisoners have children.71

In the U.S., six million children have a parent who is an undocumented immigrant at risk of deportation. Between 2011 and 2013, half a million American children experienced the arrest, detention, and deportation of at least one parent. Immigration enforcement actions – and the ongoing threats associated with them – have significant physical, emotional, developmental, and economic repercussions not only for the deported individuals, but for the many children who stay behind.72

In Canada, close to 90,000 people, including children, are being held in immigration detention centers for indefinite periods of time, despite having committed no crime.73 Children in immigration detention live like prisoners, in punitive conditions, in immigration holding centers and, in some cases, jails. They spend their days in secure facilities, exposed to guard pat-downs and barbed-wire fences, with minimal access to outdoor areas, education and play. They lack healthy food and have sleep difficulties. Unaccompanied minors are routinely held in solitary confinement. Detained children suffer extreme distress, fear, and a deterioration of cognitive, physical and emotional functioning both during and long after detention, including anxiety, selective mutism, and post-traumatic stress symptoms.74

In 2017 alone, the American government spent $1 billion to detain migrant children. Currently [in mid-2018], more than 11,800 children, from a few months old to 17, are housed in nearly 90 facilities in 15 states.75

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that it would punish asylum-seekers by separating parents from their children.76 According to John Kelly, White House chief of staff, “all parents who try to cross without papers will be treated as presumptive criminals, and thus as unworthy of having custody of the children they bring with them.”77 Fleeing violence in Honduras, Marco Antonio Muñoz “lost it” after U.S.

border agents physically tore his 3-year-old son from his arms. When Muñoz continued to protest, he was transferred to a nearby jail, where he killed himself.78 Thousands of children were taken from their parents and scattered across the United States. No procedures were put in place for tracking them, enabling contact with their parents, or reuniting the families.79 By early 2019, authorities confessed that they had no idea where these children were or how to find them.80

Foster care If you came with no preconceptions about the purpose of the child welfare system, you would have to conclude that it is an institution designed to monitor, regulate, and punish poor families of color.81

The U.S. federal government spends almost $9 billion a year on foster care and adoption, compared with a mere $38 million to prevent child maltreatment by supporting families.82 Poor families are singled out for scrutiny by the State. In Canada, only 7 percent of all children are Indigenous, yet they are half of all children in foster care.83 In some provinces, up to 90 percent of children in foster care are Indigenous.84 In the United States, 37 percent of all children and 53 percent of Black children have parents who were investigated for child abuse.85 Far more common than a child who comes into care because he was beaten are children who come into foster care because the food stamps ran out or because an illness went untreated after parents were kicked off Medicaid or because a single mother trying to stay off welfare could not provide adequate supervision while she worked. Some children are taken just because their parents are down on their luck, out of work, or unable to provide adequate shelter.86

The ‘child welfare’ system does not protect children.87 For every child placed in foster care because she was malnourished or unsupervised, there are hundreds more who suffer the same deprivations. The system haphazardly picks out a fraction of families to bludgeon, while it leaves untouched the conditions that are really most damaging to children.88

Children of detained, imprisoned, or deported parents can also be placed in foster care. In the United States, if a child has not been in the parent’s custody for 15 of the previous 22 months, that parent’s rights can be permanently terminated. The average length of imprisonment in America is 29 months, so most incarcerated parents risk losing their children unless a family member takes custody.89 In 2007, Encarnacion Bail Romero was arrested in an immigration raid at a chicken processing plant in Missouri. Over her objections, her 11-month-old son was taken from her and adopted by an American family. A judge terminated Bail Romero’s parental rights on the basis that she had abandoned him while she was incarcerated. A second judge ruled that she had no legal right to see her child.90

Childhood trauma The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study is the largest ongoing investigation into the connection between traumatic childhood experiences and adult mental and physical health.91 More than 17,000 random adults undergoing medical examinations completed a one-page questionnaire that inquired if, as children, they had experienced: emotional or physical neglect; emotional abuse; parental divorce or separation; physical or sexual assault; witnessing domestic violence; alcoholism or drug addiction; depression or attempted suicide in the home; or a family member in prison. The lowest possible score was zero. Endorsing all ten items would result in a maximum score of ten.92 Almost two-thirds of respondents reported at least one adverse childhood experience, and 1 in 4 reported three or more such experiences. Researchers compared each respondent’s score with their current medical status and found something unexpected. As the ACE score rose, there was a corresponding increase in physical, psychological, and social problems including lung disease, heart disease, liver disease, diabetes, obesity, intimate partner violence, unemployment, adolescent pregnancy, bone fractures, cancer, chronic pain, premature death, smoking, alcohol and drug addiction, attempted suicide, and all forms of ‘mental illness.’93

An even larger ACE survey found that people of color, poor people, those with less education, the unemployed, and non-heterosexuals have significantly higher ACE scores.94 Simply asking about adverse childhood experiences reduced outpatient visits by 35 percent and ER visits by 11 percent – a tremendous cost saving. The ACE findings have not been incorporated into the medical system because they link mental and physical suffering with health-damaging social conditions that cannot be remedied under capitalist rule.

Preventable suffering The capitalist class refuse to end mass suffering because building wealth and power matter more to them than human lives.

Ending poverty The United Nations estimates that it would cost $10 billion a year to provide everyone in the world with clean water and $30 billion a year to end world hunger. Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, could pay for both with little more than a quarter of his $150 billion fortune. The trillions of dollars spent on war alone would provide more than enough for everyone on the planet to have a decent standard of living.95

Stopping opioid deaths Accidental opioid deaths are caused by their illegal status which makes potency uncertain and increases the risk of toxic contamination. Providing free, pharmaceutical-grade opioids to those who need them would quickly end these accidental deaths.96 People who depend on opioids can be healthy and function well when they have a reliable supply.97

Ending HIV/AIDS

The global HIV/AIDS epidemic has taken between 29 and 41 million lives. In 2016 alone, two million people were newly infected, including 160,000 children.98 An estimated 37 million people remain infected, yet only 14 million are being treated. Treating everyone could end this epidemic.99 An expert describes the steps: Offer HIV screening to everyone as part of routine doctor’s appointments. Approve HIV selftesting kits and make them as accessible as a home pregnancy test. Make sure all people living with HIV can get the treatment and care they need to stay healthy and remain unable to transmit the virus.100

Social murder When it is possible to eradicate life-threatening conditions, yet the people in power refuse to do what is required, then they are responsible for all subsequent diseases, impairments, and premature deaths.101 In 1845, Frederich Engels called this premeditated, social murder. When the capitalists place workers in such a position that they inevitably meet a premature and unnatural death, when they deprive thousands of the necessities of life, place them under conditions in which they cannot live – know that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permit these conditions to remain, their deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.102

Conclusion The more capital accumulates, the more inequality grows, the more impoverished workers become, the more barren our cages, and the greater our suffering. Capitalism is not a broken system; it is a system that breaks human beings.

2. Class war I won’t just be an unquestioning part of a machine. I will stop the machine if that is what it takes to win better standards for my patients.1 — striking New York nurse

The capitalist class and the working class are locked in combat, and the extent of social suffering depends on which class is winning.

Balance of power The balance of power between the capitalist class and the working class is like a seesaw. One class can gain power only by reducing the power of the other. One class can increase its share of wealth only by reducing the share of the other. The balance of class forces can be measured by the portion of workers in unions (union density) and the extent of class inequality. As more workers join unions, they shift the balance in their direction. Rising inequality indicates that capitalists have shifted the balance in their favor by taking more of what workers produce. The capitalist class are stuck on the seesaw because their profits depend on the working class. In contrast, the working class can dismount the seesaw and create their own future without the capitalist class.

Reforms Reforms are measures that improve something considered faulty. Right-wing reforms, such as tax cuts, benefit the capitalist class and hurt the working class. Left-wing reforms, such as restricting pollution, do the opposite. The balance of class forces sets the context for reform. When the working class are ascending, reforms are more progressive and reduce inequality. When the capitalist class are ascending, reforms are more regressive and

increase inequality. The balance of class forces also determines how much is invested in social programs. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the level of funding for such programs does not reflect the highest level of benefits obtainable within the socially determined level of resource boundaries. It is rather the result of successive negotiations about how much nations consider reasonable to allocate to [these services].2

How much is ‘reasonable’ depends on your class interests. Capitalists benefit from social programs that support a more productive labor force; however, they want to pay as little as possible for them. In contrast, workers want fully funded, comprehensive social programs that are universally accessible. The balance of class forces determines the actual outcome. An ascending working class can force more investment in social programs. Under threat of revolution, Germany established Europe’s first national medical program in 1883. In 1911, the National Insurance Act was rushed through the British Parliament during a massive strike wave. In 1948, Britain’s National Health Service was conceded to calm a surge of postwar militancy. In Sweden, a powerful labor movement in the 1930s won a major investment in social programs.3 Over the past several decades, a less-confident working class have accepted the austerity policies imposed by the master class, leading some people to dismiss the working class as a force for social change. This is short-sighted, because periods with low levels of struggle are temporary.

A New Deal No one expected a mass working-class rebellion to erupt during America’s Great Depression, and yet it did. During the 1930s, socialist immigrants played a central role in organizing industrial unions that challenged capitalist rule in America. In 1934, a Teamsters’ strike against Minneapolis trucking companies grew into a general strike that lasted more than three months.4 That same year,

12,000 longshore workers struck West Coast ports for three months,5 and 1,500 auto workers in Toledo fought their employer and the National Guard to unionize the Electric Autolite company.6 These and other class battles laid the groundwork for a national union federation in 1935, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In the two years following the end of [World War II], the CIO launched the greatest strike wave in the history of the United States. Millions of workers in the steel, auto, railroad, mining, maritime, and tobacco industries were among those who took part.7

One strike leader recalled, The initials CIO stood for power. You’d see posters in homes and posters on cars proudly proclaiming, “I am CIO.” Those three letters, CIO, had great significance. I’ve never known of anything else as powerful.8

The early CIO was more than a federation of unions, it was a mass movement of the working class. “At its founding convention in 1936, the CIO, in competition with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), pledged to organize workers with no distinction to race or color and opposed all forms of segregation.”9 As it gained momentum, this movement brought with it new political attitudes toward the corporations, toward police and troops, toward local, state, national government. Now we’re a movement, many workers asked, why can’t we move on to more and more? Today we’ve forced almighty General Motors to terms by sitting down and defying all the powers at its command, why can’t we go on tomorrow, with our numbers, our solidarity, our determination, to create a new society with the workers on top, to end age-old injustices, to banish poverty and war?10

With the balance of power shifting toward the working class, the Roosevelt administration passed a series of reforms called the New Deal. The Roosevelt reforms had to meet two pressing needs: to reorganize capitalism in such a way as to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system; also to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion in the early years of the Roosevelt administration – organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self-help and general strikes in several cities.11

Taming the unions As part of the New Deal, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act made it easier to organize unions. At the same time, it emphasized labor-management cooperation and gave the State a role in settling labor disputes.

The goal was to move class struggle from the streets, where armies of workers battled armies of cops, to office buildings and courtrooms, allowing production to go on unobstructed.12

Legislation granted the ‘closed shop,’ where all workers are in the union and their dues are automatically deducted from their paychecks. This gave union officials a reliable income, regardless of how well or how poorly they represented workers on the job. Such measures made it appear that the State was on the side of labor, when the opposite was true. The State was grooming labor officials to become its servants. When the U.S. entered World War II, top labor executives agreed to ban strikes for the duration of the war. The strike is the workers’ most powerful weapon, and forbidding its use gives the advantage to the employer. By disarming the working class, union officials showed that their first loyalty was to the capitalist class.13 To cement their partnership, labor executives were given a seat at the bosses’ table. The 1942 National War Labor Board was composed of State representatives, capitalists, and top labor officials. Together, they imposed contracts and wage controls on ‘vital’ industries to prevent strikes from disrupting production, even as profits soared. A record number of workers refused to go along. Over the four years of the war, more than eight million American workers, one-quarter of the entire labor force, launched unofficial, wildcat strikes.14

Class war is war Go reckon our dead by the forges red And the factories where we spin. If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, Good God! We have paid it in!15 —Anonymous worker (1919)

The worst working conditions can generate the highest profits. This conflict lies at the core of the class war. As with all wars, it is fought to the death. In the United States, thousands of workers are killed on the job every year, and millions more are seriously injured or die of work-related diseases.16

In 2012, 21-year-old Lawrence Daquan Davis was crushed to death within 90 minutes of starting his first job at a Bacardi bottling factory in Florida. The employer faced no criminal charges, even though the plant had operated with “intentional disregard” for safety protocols. Instead, Bacardi was fined $110,000, which means nothing to a company with annual revenues of close to $5 billion.17 The daily war that the capitalist class wage against the workers is not generally understood as a war; it is accepted as ‘normal.’ This ‘normal’ is punctured when workers withdraw their labor and stop the flow of profit. A strike is both an economic conflict and a political battle over whose rights matter more, the capitalists’ right to make a profit or the workers’ right to preserve life and limb. A strike is an organized cessation from work. It is the collective halting of production or services in a plant, industry, or area for the purpose of obtaining concessions from employers. A strike is labor’s weapon to enforce labor’s demands.18

Profit is the lifeblood of their system, so the capitalist class respond to strikes as a declaration of war and summon all the forces at their command: the law, the courts, the media, the police, and the military. In his book Strike Strategy (1950), union organizer John Steuben describes the military preparations used by American capitalists to break strikes during the 1930s and 1940s: building private arsenals of tear gas, machine guns, rifles, and pistols; employing armed strike-breakers; using the mass media to disparage strikers as lawless thugs and Communists; using the courts to impose injunctions, jail terms, and massive fines on strikers and unions; and mobilizing the army. In 1919 President Wilson sent troops to Seattle during the general strike. Soon after, President Harding ordered federal troops into Southern Virginia to break a strike of coal miners. President Roosevelt used federal troops to break the aircraft workers’ strike in Englewood, California, in 1941. In 1946 President Truman threatened the striking railroad workers with the use of armed forces. The use of the National Guard against strikers has been even more frequent. In 1937 alone, at least twenty cities in nine States were occupied by 10,000 Guardsmen, and another 6,000 were mobilized and ready for strike duty.19

Steuben advises workers to prepare well in advance for a strike. They should study past strikes to learn what works and what does not. They must decide

where and when the company is most vulnerable and concentrate their forces there. They must engage 100 percent of the workers in strike activity for the duration. They must protect their picket lines. They must win the support of strikers’ families and communities, other workers in the same industry, and the wider working class. And they must secure their victory by extending union organization and preparing for the next battle. In case of defeat, they must prepare an orderly retreat that preserves their ability to fight another day. Steuben concludes his book with a roll call of men and women strikers who were murdered by the bosses between 1934 and 1949. Open class warfare is less common today, not because the warring classes have reconciled, but because there are less disruptive ways to keep workers down, including a peace-seeking union bureaucracy and legislation that prevents unions and strikes from being effective. In time, such methods inevitably fail to contain workers’ grievances, and open class warfare resumes.

Post-war rebellion During the post-war period, a new wave of rebellions climaxed in nearrevolutions in France (1968), Chile (1972-73), Portugal (1974-75), Iran (1979), and Poland (1980-81).20 In the United States, a record number of strikes in the 1970s shifted the balance of power towards the working class. This included the massive, illegal strike of 150,000 postal workers, which was the largest wildcat strike in US history. Miners struck for 110 days. There were huge Teamsters strikes and airline strikes. Seventy-five thousand independent truck drivers struck and left vegetables rotting up and down the nation’s highways.21

Millions of Americans were demanding higher wages, safer working conditions, racial equality, women’s liberation, Indigenous rights, gay liberation, more affordable housing, better schools, and more access to medical care. There was organized opposition to poverty, environmental pollution, nuclear power, the arms race, the death penalty, and America’s barbaric war in Vietnam. To counter mass rebellion, the ruling class granted progressive reforms such as affirmative action, which increased employment and educational

opportunities for oppressed groups. The 1965 Voting Rights Act removed barriers to Black people voting. In 1967, laws against ‘mixed-race’ marriage were repealed, a moratorium was placed on State executions, and children won the right to due process. The Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in 1970, and women won the legal right to abortion in 1973. That same year, American forces were defeated in Vietnam, and the following year, President Nixon was forced to resign. The post-war rebellions marked a low point for the capitalist class and a high point for the working class. In 1954, the portion of American workers in unions reached 35 percent. In 1979, the absolute number of unionized workers in America peaked at 21 million.22 As workers’ living standards rose, poverty and inequality dropped to their lowest level in the 20th century.23, 24

The capitalist offensive During the post-war economic boom, employers were willing to pay higher wages to keep profits flowing. When the 1973-75 global recession caused profits to plummet, the capitalists launched an economic and political offensive against the working class called ‘neoliberalism.’25 Neoliberal policies aim to raise productivity by scrapping government regulations, privatizing public assets, cutting corporate taxes, slashing social programs, and gutting unions. Resistance is blocked by massively expanding police and prison systems and disparaging poor people as ‘freeloaders,’ drug users, and criminals. Employers cut the workforce to the bone, eliminating millions of good jobs. The workers who remained suffered longer hours, heavier workloads, more surveillance, and less job security.26 ‘Outsourcing’ and concession contracts lowered wages, scrapped benefits, and weakened unions. Many workers took second and third jobs to make ends meet and still sank into debt.27 Some courageous union locals refused to sacrifice their hard-won wages, benefits, and job protections. They were abandoned to fight alone,28 actively sabotaged by union executives,29 and even fired en masse.30 The lack of working-class solidarity, or even union-wide protest, emboldened the bosses

to escalate their attacks. When profits began to rise in the 1980s, workers were not rewarded for their sacrifice. Having shifted the balance of power in their favor, the bosses demanded even more concessions, simply because they could.31 When Caterpillar finally broke the eighteen-month United Auto Workers strike of 1995, it banned workers from wearing union clothes and fired those who refused to shake hands with scabs or open their lunch boxes for inspection. Twelve workers committed suicide. “The battle with Cat is win or lose,” the workers’ Kick the Cat newsletter would say several years later. “There is no middle ground.”32

As the number and strength of unions declined, wages fell, inequality deepened, oppression intensified, and social explanations for suffering gave way to racist ones in the form of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, biological psychiatry, and eugenics. That onslaught against labor was accompanied by the racist politics of the 1980s, beating the drums of racism. That’s the time when every form of racism was deployed. With that deployment we saw the return of race to science in a way that had been absent for several decades.33

With the working class in retreat, the capitalist class could use the computer revolution, technological innovations, and automation to increase the level of exploitation. Even as profits soared, workers suffered higher unemployment, deteriorating working conditions, and falling wages. In 2005, the New York Times reported, The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826 compared with $7,047 – which is roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia. Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents.34

Shrinking the State Today we are witnessing a frontal attack to the welfare states.35 — Vincente Navarro

Capitalism is an aging system in prolonged economic decline. The global rate of profit (the return on investment) has been falling since the mid-1800s.36 Between 1946 and 2015, the rate of profit in the United States dropped 30 percent.37 This may not appear to make sense because profits today are so

huge. However, a much larger investment is required to reap any profit at all. A falling rate of profit makes it harder to compete, so the capitalist class rely on the State for financial support and to open new areas for profit-making. Their push to cut State-funded social programs achieves both goals. Publicly funded benefits and services are a ‘social wage’ that provides what most workers cannot afford to purchase privately. As with individual wages, they represent the power of the working class to force concessions from the capitalist class. Neoliberal policies attack both forms of wages. Less money spent on individual wages means more profit. Less money spent on social programs enables more funds to be transferred to the capitalist class in the form of tax cuts, subsidies, and bailouts. Neoliberal policies can be slowed, stopped, and even reversed by mass resistance. In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to ditch his entire budget strategy to appease hundreds of thousands of enraged protestors.38

Public pain, private gain Cuts to State-funded social programs create new opportunities for profitmaking, as more people are forced to pay out of pocket for services that used to be publicly provided. The greatest hardship falls on those who need the most support and are least able to pay. Most people rely on State-funded social services and programs and oppose measures that reduce their quality and availability. To soften public opposition, the capitalist class implement ‘death by a thousand cuts.’ Over the past few decades, billions of dollars have been drained from social programs to create profit-making opportunities for private companies. In the U.K., in 1993, the independent [for-profit] sector provided just 5 percent of care services. By 2013, this had risen to 89 percent.39

In the United States, Medicare and Medicaid are two government-funded medical insurance programs. Medicare covers people aged 65 or older, and Medicaid covers more than 40 million poor Americans who suffer the greatest burden of illness. If you are poor, you are more likely to develop many illnesses, more likely to become injured, more likely to become disabled, and more likely to die early. You are more likely to live in communities with hazardous outdoor and indoor air pollution. Your children are more likely to have elevated lead levels and resultant problems, such as lower IQ scores and reading levels, attention deficits, and behavioral problems. You are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, and when able to get a job, you’re more likely to work in an unhealthful or unsafe workplace with hazardous chemical or physical exposures.40

Every year, more than 45,000 Americans die because they cannot afford medical treatment.41 During Trump’s first year as president, the number of adults without medical insurance rose by more than half a million.42 President Trump’s 2018 federal budget proposed cutting $5.4 trillion in State spending over 10 years, including $537 billion in cuts to Medicare and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and other social programs.43 These cuts represent a massive assault against the working class. In order to stop them, workers need to organize enough opposition to shift the balance of forces back in their favor.

Divide and conquer Capitalism brings increasing numbers of workers together in urban centers, giant factories, and international supply chains. To prevent workers from uniting against them, bosses use the tactic of divide-and-conquer. Workplace managers are instructed to pay some workers more than others; promote some over others; give the hardest, dirtiest jobs to some and not others; demand two-tier contracts; pit younger workers against pensioners; and so on. The capitalists also pit employed and unemployed workers against each other. Maintaining a permanent layer of unemployed workers enables employers to increase competition for jobs and keep wages down. When a booming economy threatens to create full employment and push wages up, capitalists open the door to immigrant workers who can be paid less and who

also make convenient scapegoats. To deflect workers’ anger against falling living standards, the capitalists falsely blame immigrants and other oppressed groups. Their attacks on any section of the working class serve as a wedge to divide and weaken the entire class. “The targeting of immigrants is intimately linked to a long record of labor repression and civil liberties violations.”44 The same public universities in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina that banned Black students in the 1960s are banning undocumented students today.45 Threatening immigrants with loss of access to legal residency if they use social services is a deliberate strategy for reducing or eliminating those services. When fewer people use social services, smaller agencies lose government funding and are forced to close, reducing everyone’s access.46 Similarly, demanding citizenship status on census forms means that fewer people will submit their forms. Census data is used to calculate government funding for social programs,47 and fewer people counted means less funding for their communities.48 The racist and sexist divisions imposed by employers can be overcome by a labor movement that actively champions the rights of all workers, regardless of their immigration status, skin color, gender, or impairments. Workers who stand together have more power to push wages higher and win more social benefits for everyone.

Rising inequality The extent of social inequality reflects the balance of class forces. Much of the decline in inequality from 1940 to 1960 can be explained by the eleven-percentagepoint rise in union density, and much of the increase in inequality between 1970 and 2004 can be explained by the twelve-percentage-point decline in [union] density.49

When union density was at its peak in America, top corporate executives made 25 times the annual compensation of the average worker. Today, union density is much lower,50 and the average CEO makes 350 times as much as the average worker, with ratios of 2,818 to 1 reported.51 Every 11.5 seconds, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos rakes in as much as one of his $15-an-hour

employees makes over an entire year.52 Before World War I, the 1 percent received around a fifth of total income in both Britain and the United States. By 1950 that share had been cut by more than half. But since 1980, the 1 percent has seen its income share surge again – and in the United States it’s back to what it was a century ago.53

Globally, the richest 1 percent own 48 percent of all personal wealth, the richest 10 percent own 85 percent of all personal wealth, and the poorest twothirds of the world’s adults have no personal wealth at all.54 In the United States, the three richest people, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett, own as much wealth as the poorer half of the American population, while more than 30 percent of Black households and 27 percent of Hispanic households have zero net worth or less.55 The impact of transferring wealth from the working class to the capitalist class can be measured in human misery. Since 1991, the portion of older persons in the U.S. bankruptcy system has increased almost five times.56 Forty percent of non-elderly Americans cannot afford one of the following necessities: food, medical care, housing, or utilities.57 And life-spans in the hardest-hit sections of the working class are falling in both the U.K.58 and the U.S.59 The working class will not accept such conditions for long. The struggle for a $15-an-hour minimum wage enjoyed broad public support and won $62 billion in raises for 22 million low-wage workers in the U.S.60 According to a 2018 Gallup poll, fully 62 percent of Americans support unions. That number has increased 14 points over the past ten years. And, among young adults (18 to 29-year-olds), 68 percent hold a favorable view of unions compared to 46 percent who feel the same about corporations. As corporate power has increased and union membership has decreased, millions of workers have come to understand that the only way to get ahead is through collective action.61

Left and Right The war between the capitalist class and the working class pulls society apart, and the basic question becomes, “Which side are you on?” meaning, “Which class do you support?”

The political terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ came from revolutionary France, where commoners sat on the left side of the National Assembly, and aristocrats sat on the right. In general, the Left promote social fairness, and the Right promote authoritarianism. The Left blame the system or how it is managed for social problems, and the Right blame individuals. For the Right, the problem is your neighbor, your neighbor is a different color, your neighbor is cooking food that smells different, your neighbor is taking your job, your neighbor is in your house.62

The back-and-forth of the class war shapes social values. As workers ascend, Left-wing ideas gain influence. As capitalists ascend, Right- wing ideas gain influence. The capitalist attack that began in the mid-1970s was accompanied by the rise of the ‘New Right,’ although there was nothing new about it. Right-wing nationalism and opposition to unions, abortion, homosexuality, affirmative action, and social services never disappeared. It was sidelined during the postwar rebellion and reemerged during the capitalist offensive.63 Because the capitalist class are threatened by the Left, they encourage the Right, including the far-Right forces of White supremacy, militarism, and fascism.64 In times of social crisis, the capitalist class prefer a far-Right regime, however unstable, to a workers revolution that could oust them from power.65

A world of war War is falsely presented as an aberration, a departure from the normal functions of society, a temporary disturbance that is followed by a restoration of peace. In reality, war is a permanent feature of class society, as competing capitalists fight to the death in a ceaseless battle for wealth and power. The advantage goes to those who are supported by the strongest States. Stronger States use their superior power to shape the economies of weaker States to their own advantage.66 The fact that the U.S. State dominates the world militarily enables American corporations to dominate the world

economically. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technology is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.67

After America won the Cold War with Russia, many people hoped that the arms race would wind down. Instead, the major powers continue to build their military might as they battle for global dominance on every continent.68 The United States military has a staggering 883 [overseas] military bases in 183 countries. In contrast, Russia has ten such bases – eight of them in the former USSR. China has one overseas military base. There is no country with a military footprint that replicates that of the United States. [This] massive infrastructure allows the U.S. military to be hours away from armed action against any part of the planet.69

The world’s largest employer is the U.S. Department of Defense, with 3.2 million employees. The world’s second-largest employer is the Chinese military, employing 2.3 million people.70 A world that invests so much in war will inevitably have it in some form.71 The capitalists insist that war is built into human DNA. The Christian fable of Cain and Abel attributes war to ‘original sin.’ Discussions of war typically end with resigned comments such as, “People have always warred against each other,” and “It’s survival of the fittest.” Books and films depict human beings as greedy, competitive, and aggressive. Prominent academics like Samuel Huntington, Steven Pinker, Edward Wilson, Jared Diamond, Richard Wrangham, and Francis Fukuyama insist that war has deep roots in the human psyche. The debate over the deep-roots theory [of war] matters, because many people think that if war is ancient and innate, it must also be inevitable. President Barack Obama implied as much when he stated in 2009 that war “appeared with the first man” and “we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.”72

War is built into capitalism, not human DNA. Despite Hollywood fictions, there is no scientific evidence of warfare for most of human history. In The Birth of War, anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson explains, The global archaeological record contradicts the idea that war was always a feature of human existence; instead, the record shows that warfare is largely a development of the past 10,000

years.73

Why did war appear after millennia of cooperative living? Anthropologist Richard Leakey concludes, I believe that warfare is rooted in the need for territorial possession once populations became agricultural and necessarily sedentary. I do not believe that violence is an innate characteristic of humankind, merely an unfortunate adaptation to certain circumstances.74

War is the inevitable consequence of capitalist competition. If war were in our genes, soldiers would return from battle energized, not traumatized. There would be no need to disguise war as humanitarian intervention75 or to censor gruesome images of slaughter. We don’t find people spontaneously rushing to make war on others. What we find instead is that governments must make the most strenuous efforts to mobilize populations for war. They must entice soldiers with promises of money, education, must hold out to young people whose chances in life look very poor that here is an opportunity to attain respect and status. And if those enticements don’t work, governments must use coercion – they must conscript young people, force them into military service, threaten them with prison if they do not comply.76

Workers pay for war War causes massive suffering. People are killed, maimed, and traumatized; communities are destroyed; societies are demolished; populations are uprooted; and environments are rendered uninhabitable. The capitalist class are addicted to war, yet they cannot wage it without the consent of the working class. Workers’ taxes are used to fund the war machine instead of improving conditions at home.77 The rise in war-related military expenditures entails losses for other areas of federal funding. Pick your issue: crumbling bridges, racial justice, housing, healthcare, education, climate change – and it’s all being affected by how much this country spends on war.78

Workers produce and transport the means of waging war. They are forced to the front lines of battle and suffer the greatest casualties on all sides.79 Between 480,000 and 507,000 people have been killed in the United States’ post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This tally does not include the more than 500,000 deaths from

the war in Syria.80

All wars come home in the form of wounded veterans and the transfer of military surplus to police,81 along with war-tested methods of surveillance, apprehension, interrogation, and torture.82 Former military analyst Chelsea Manning notes, It’s not just the military. It’s not just the intelligence community. It’s not just the police and the justice system. It’s also immigration. All these systems are overlapping, and they’re suffocating people, deliberately and methodically, over decades. People have been building this whirling death machine of power for decades.83

War and the threat of war deepen racist divisions inside the working class. During World War II, Japanese people living in North America were herded into concentration camps. Today, Muslims and Arabs are targeted to support America’s wars in the Middle East.84 World War II claimed 85 million lives and launched the nuclear age. The economic decline of America, the rise of China as a global power, and a new arms race85 that includes ‘useable’ nuclear war-heads,86 are laying the foundation for a third world war that could end life as we know it.87 In the spring of 1917, Lenin was asked how the terrible slaughter of World War I could be ended. He replied, There is no easy way out of this terrible war. The war has been brought about by the ruling classes, and only a revolution of the working class can end it. Whatever sentimental things may be said, however much we may be told, “Let us end the war immediately,” the war which the capitalist governments have started can only be ended by a workers revolution.88

Conclusion The extent of social suffering depends on the relative power of the two classes. As the capitalist class gain power, suffering increases. As the working class gain power, suffering decreases. There are two possible outcomes to the class war. Either the capitalist class prevail until human life becomes unsustainable, or the working class end capitalist rule and construct a cooperative, classless society.

Part II Concealing the cause of mass suffering

3. The managerial class The ‘networks’ that bind exploited classes to existing society are not made of metal or stone, but of human beings who argue with people to direct their activities in a certain direction.1 —Chris Harman (1942-2009)

The class distinction between capitalists and workers is clear. Capitalists own or control the means of production. Workers can survive only by working for a wage. The middle class float between the other two classes. Having no distinct boundaries, they blend into the capitalist class at one end and the working class at the other. Marx’s genius lay in his ability to recognize social patterns in capitalism before they were fully established. However, early marxists did not foresee the rise of a layer of middle-class managers who would sustain capitalist rule into the 21st century. As a result, many marxists today mistakenly believe that the middle class are a relic from the past, or that most people in the middle class are actually working class. Either way, they dismiss the middle class as politically insignificant. This chapter explains how the managerial middle class play a key role in supporting capitalist rule at work and in society.

The changing middle class The capitalist class developed inside the feudal economy, emerging from the class of artisans, merchants, innkeepers, accountants, religious and legal advisors, teachers, healers, money-lenders, and entertainers. Being neither landed aristocracy nor landless peasants, they were designated as ‘middle class.’ The term bourgeois originated in medieval France to describe someone who lives in a town. As urban economies developed, small businesses grew large enough to hire non-family workers, and the resulting profits enabled those firms to expand.

By the 18th century, the capitalist economy had become too dynamic to be contained within feudal society, and it burst through feudal restrictions in a series of violent capitalist revolutions. Under capitalist rule, the definition of middle class changed to describe those who were neither capitalists nor workers. However, this was not the same middle class that existed under feudalism. As predatory capitalists swallowed small businesses, most of the traditional middle class were forced into the working class. Capitalist production concentrated wealth in fewer hands at the top of society and greatly expanded the number of workers at the base. This raised the problem of how a numerically shrinking ruling class could control a rapidly growing subordinate class. The solution was to expand the middle layer of professional and non-professional managers. Non-professional managers supervise workers at the point of production. Often referred to as ‘middle management,’ they hire and fire, promote and discipline, schedule shifts, assign tasks, set the pace of work, review performance, manage workplace conflict, and divide workers by assigning tasks on the basis of ‘race,’ sex, national origin, immigration status, etc. Union bureaucrats are a special group of non-professional managers. Although their salaries are paid by union members and not by the boss, they play an important role in managing the working class.

Union managers American workers today have seen the unions turned into their opposite, from representatives of the workers to an independent power that imposes its discipline over the workers.2

The horrors of 19th-century industry compelled workers to organize in selfdefense. Over time, these democratic, class-struggle unions transformed into bureaucratic businesses that ‘service’ their members and work with management to maintain ‘labor peace.’ Lenin insisted that whether an organization is actually an organization of

workers does not depend solely upon its working-class membership, but also upon those who lead it and how they lead it.3 While most unions are composed of workers, they are generally headed by union bureaucrats who are part of the managerial middle class. Their role is to assist employers to manage the labor force by setting the terms and conditions of worker exploitation. As one union executive put it, Good unions work to defuse [workers’] anger – and they do it effectively. Without unions, there would be anarchy in the workplace. Strikes would be commonplace, and confrontation and violence would increase. Poor-quality workmanship, low productivity, increased sick time, and absenteeism would be the preferred form of worker protest. By and large, unions deflect those damaging and costly forms of worker resistance. If our critics understood what really goes on behind the labor scenes, they would be thankful that union leaders are as effective as they are in averting strikes.”4

Because they stand between the classes, union bureaucrats wear two hats. Under one hat, they represent the workers who pay their salaries. Under the other hat, they help the capitalists manage the workforce. This class conflict is typically expressed as conflict between rank-and-file workers and union officials. At times, union members are so determined to fight the boss that they can pull union officials along with them. However, union bureaucrats and bosses share the same goal of keeping the company in business, which means keeping it profitable. So when bosses insist that the company can survive only by paying workers less, union bureaucrats tend to go along. Union bureaucrats generally fear strikes as displays of class power that could escape their control. They prefer to use the threat of a strike as a negotiating tool to get a better deal from the boss.5 To avoid strikes, union officials will sign contracts that workers have rejected.6 When a strike cannot be avoided, officials will let workers ‘blow off steam,’ then pull them back to work before they can win their demands.7 Conflict between union bureaucrats and members is rarely recognized as a class struggle; it is simply assumed that the wrong people are in charge or have the wrong ideas, when the problem actually lies in the bureaucratic system of union management itself. The solution is for members to kick out the bureaucrats and take collective, democratic control of their unions.8

The union hierarchy is similar to every managerial hierarchy. One climbs the union ladder, not by demonstrating one’s ability to lead a fight against the boss, but by demonstrating loyalty to one’s superiors. Higher rungs confer more power. Top union executives with the power to hire and fire staff can barely be distinguished from corporate management, while paid union staff at the base of the ladder can barely be distinguished from the workers they represent. Just as union bureaucrats partner with employers, top union executives partner with the State. Without the awareness or consent of their members, union officials have helped the American State overthrow democratically elected governments, back anti-union dictators, and support Right-wing unions against progressive governments. The AFL-CIO established its own Latin American operation in 1962, the American Institute for Free Labor Development. Among other activities, AIFLD helped lay the groundwork for the military coups against democratically elected governments in Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, and Chile in 1973. These efforts in Latin America were paralleled in Africa and Asia.9

In 1999, the Advisory Committee on Labor Diplomacy was established as a forum for top labor leaders to advise the U.S. federal government. Then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described this relationship: When you undertook your lives as labor leaders, becoming a part of the U.S. Government may have not have been something that you intended, but I do think it has been a very important partnership. I think that is the best way to describe it.10

Union power Even though union managers collaborate with the capitalist class, it is a mistake to dismiss unions as a force for social change. Organized workers have power, and joining a union is the most effective way for workers to improve their lives. Compared with non-union workers, the average union worker in America enjoys 28 percent higher wages and is more likely to have medical insurance, paid leave, a pension, and other benefits.11 Oppressed groups reap the greatest benefits from unions. The wage gap

between union women and men is significantly smaller than it is for nonunion workers.12 Unions raise wages more for lower-paid than for higher-paid workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers without a college degree. When private-sector unionization was at its peak in the mid-1950s, low-skill workers and African Americans made up a disproportionately high share of the unionized workforce. This means that, to the extent the ‘union premium’ redistributes wealth between workers, this redistribution was progressive when unions were most prevalent.13

For all these reasons, most Americans approve of labor unions,14 and nearly half of non-unionized workers would join one if they had the chance.15

Managerial professionals All societies draw a line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior and establish consequences for those who cross the line. Egalitarian societies make such decisions democratically. Under class rule, these decisions are made by the ruling class, in their own interest, and imposed on everyone else. The capitalist class are too small in numbers to enforce their rules in person. They need a larger managerial class to promote capitalist values throughout society, restrict the choices available to the working class, and prevent or punish rebellion. Workers are not allowed to have real choices because they might choose to end capitalist rule. To prevent that outcome, capitalists disparage ordinary people as incapable of making good decisions and in need of professionals to do this for them. However, the decisions that professionals are allowed to make are restricted to those that support the capitalist order. Most people do not view professionals as social managers who help to keep the working class ‘in their place.’ Instead, professionals are portrayed as ‘experts’ whose superior knowledge gives them the right, even the duty, to restrict people’s choices, ignore their wishes, and impose decisions on them whether they like it or not, ‘for their own good.’ People are not allowed to decide for themselves what they need, because their

needs typically exceed what the system allows. Unconditional support for people to make their own choices is considered ‘unprofessional’ behavior that can jeopardize one’s career. As a young doctor, I encountered this capitalist commandment when I agreed to help healthy women deliver their babies at home. When the authorities questioned my decision, I explained that I had no medical reason to deny their requests. Nevertheless, I was reprimanded for behaving ‘unprofessionally,’ meaning that I had used my expertise to support choices that threatened the medical profession’s monopoly on childbirth.

Secret The managerial role of professionals is capitalism’s best-kept secret. Professionals are portrayed, and view themselves, as dedicated to improving society for everyone. However, restrictions on what they are allowed to do keep them in a managerial role. • Professionals design technology and systems that promote capital accumulation, including surveillance and tracking systems, logistical systems, computer and robotic systems, and measures of quality control. • The ‘public relations’ (PR) profession formed in the early 20th century to whitewash the crimes of the capitalist class.16 Today, the mass media direct social anger against the oppressed, promote capitalism as the best possible system,17 and support the capitalist agenda at home and abroad.18 • Professional bureaucrats neutralize dissent by pushing dissenters to complain ‘through proper channels.’ • Legal-system professionals police social behavior by targeting dissidents and the oppressed. • Social-service professionals manage the distressed and ration access to social benefits. • Professional academics conduct research and produce information that support capitalist rule. Research or conclusions that challenge the capitalist class are neither funded nor published.19

• Professionals in sports and entertainment are well-paid to create enjoyable diversions for the masses. Those who challenge the status quo, like antiracist footballer Colin Kaepernick, are blacklisted. Managerial professionals include doctors, nurses, engineers, academics, scientists, journalists, entertainers, athletes, bureaucrats, accountants, lawyers, lower-level judges, military officers, police, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and teachers.

Professionals or workers? Non-professional employees follow assigned procedures. Professional employees follow assigned ideologies.20

The ruling class rely on professionals to manage workers, so they need them to be loyal. They need them to embrace the goals of superiors as their own and not defect to the side of the working class. Where the worker has the boss in her face, the professional has the boss in her head. Some claim that deteriorating working conditions, increasing alienation, falling incomes, and being in a union mean that professionals have become working class.21 Post-war capitalism ‘proletarianized’ much of white collar work, eroding any remaining privileges and subjecting white collar workers to the same pressures over pay and working conditions that manual workers had long experienced.22

This claim is based on a misunderstanding of class. The primary difference between workers and professionals is that workers must follow instructions to the letter, while professionals are allowed to exercise a degree of judgment. The State and its regulatory bodies grant professionals the power to choose how to proceed in a given situation, within the limits imposed by the capitalist class. Unlike workers, professionals can make decisions that affect other people’s lives. Nurses can declare a mother ‘unfit’ and put her new- born in foster care.23 Social workers can declare parents ‘unfit’ and remove their children. Teachers can pass or fail students, suspend or expel them, and call on police

and psychiatrists to manage them. Workers have no such power. The drive to standardize professional work has eroded the power of some professionals, just as mandatory sentencing has eroded the power of some judges. However, professionals cannot be classified as workers until they are completely stripped of decision-making power and must do exactly what the bosses want, how they want it, without question. This is the plight of factory workers, hospital cooks, school cleaners, and office clerks. The capitalist class need professionals to play a managerial role, so their decision-making power cannot be removed entirely. At the same time, attacks on professional working conditions erode professional loyalty,24 prompting lower-level professionals to identify as workers, join unions, and go on strike.25 Capitalists respond to this challenge by creating additional layers of higher-paid managers to discipline the lower ranks.

The professional hierarchy Professionals are not a uniform group but are layered in a power and loyalty hierarchy. They can ascend the professional ladder and gain more power by proving their loyalty to the system. Those at the top have so much power over others that they can barely be distinguished from the capitalists above them. Those at the bottom have so little power over others that they can barely be distinguished from the workers below them. Upper managers typically claim that they ‘have no choice’ but to implement austerity policies handed down ‘from above.’ In fact, they do have a choice. They choose to protect their managerial benefits at the expense of other people’s welfare.

Constructing the professional When the professional training system does not malfunction, it selects and produces people who are comfortable surrendering political control over their work, people who are not deeply troubled by the status quo and are willing and able to do work that supports it.26

Applicants to professional schools are put through a rigorous selection

process to weed out social rebels. After admission, student training emphasizes capitalist values and priorities. Social-work students are presented with dilemmas where they must choose where to direct ‘limited resources.’ Should they support the impaired youngster in a distressed family or the elderly person with dementia? If the boat is sinking and you can rescue only one person, who will it be? Such exercises reinforce the capitalist mantras that there is not enough to go around, that some are more worthy than others, and that giving to one person means taking from another.27 Anyone who objects is reminded that ‘there is no alternative.’ In the medical system, the open instruction to ‘put the patient first’ comes with the hidden instruction to violate this ethic if putting the patient first would compromise your superiors or discredit your profession. I learned this in medical school. One of my patients almost died from an anesthetic to which she was known to be allergic. To avoid a potential lawsuit, my superiors were not going to tell her that the anesthetic was the problem, even though she would surely die if she were given it again. I told her the truth, because I had been taught, and I believed, that the patient always comes first. Apparently, I had learned wrong. A committee formed to determine if I should be allowed to graduate. One of my professors reassured her colleagues that the problem was ‘a lack of professional socialization,’ and she would take care of it. In private, she cautioned me that I had to learn how to ‘play the game.’ That was when I learned that professional schools have two functions: to impart the skills necessary to do professional work and, more important, to ensure loyalty to the chain-of-command. Although most students enter professional schools with the hope of making the world a better place, by the time they graduate, deep down something has changed. Students who once spoke critically of the system are careful not to be provocative – not to do or say anything that might displease individuals in authority. Any opposition is now sufficiently abstract and theoretical to not be provocative.28

The professional degree, diploma, or certification testifies that the

professional has been indoctrinated to the values of the capitalist system and can be entrusted with its management. After graduation, the professional’s compliance continues to be monitored by regulatory bodies that discipline those who ‘break ranks.’ This is necessary because professionals have inside information about the capitalist system and can inflict significant damage when they blow the whistle. In 1962, biologist Rachel Carson warned that pesticides were causing widespread environmental destruction. In 1971, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked secret documents exposing Washington’s lies about its war in Vietnam. Carson and Ellsberg were hounded mercilessly, and Ellsberg barely escaped assassination. More recently, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning have been, and continue to be, persecuted for publicizing government war crimes, and journalists who document government and corporate wrongdoing are regularly targeted for murder.29

Class conflict Professionals are expected to promote the values and enforce the policies of the capitalist class. They are also expected to meet social needs. These are conflicting expectations. Professionals can identify with the system to deny people’s needs, they can challenge the system in order to meet those needs, or they can vacillate in political paralysis. Because they stand between the classes, professionals gravitate to whichever class is gaining power.30 When capitalists are ascending, as they have been over decades of neoliberal rule, professionals tend to become more conservative. When workers are rising, lower-level professionals will join them in challenging the capitalist order. Most of the time, the middle class move like seaweed in the ocean, swaying back and forth with the shifting balance of class forces. During revolutionary crises, the middle class are torn apart. One section will join the revolution, and another will join the counter-revolution to ‘restore law and order.’31

Oppressed professionals For members of oppressed groups, the price of admission to a profession is the willingness to accept the capitalist system as it is. The infamous Tuskegee ‘study’ is a brutal example of how professionals are pressured to collude in racist practice. In 1881, Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to train Black teachers. In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service chose the Tuskegee Institute to be the site of its Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.32 The study enrolled 600 Black men, more than half of whom were infected with syphilis. The men were falsely told they would be treated for ‘bad blood.’ They were never treated; they were ‘studied’ until they died. The project was supposed to last six months but continued for 40 years. In 1947, penicillin was discovered to cure syphilis, yet the Tuskegee subjects were neither offered this treatment nor advised to seek treatment elsewhere. For 25 more years, the infected men continued to be monitored as they sickened and inevitably died. One can understand how such an outrageous ‘study’ could be conducted in one of the most racist states in a racist nation. It is more difficult to explain why so many Black physicians, nurses, and medical students participated. As part of their training, 127 Black medical students rotated through the Tuskegee ‘study,’ yet no one blew the whistle. As late as 1969, support to continue the project was obtained from the National Medical Association, the largest organization of Black physicians in the United States. The Tuskegee ‘study’ produced nothing of medical or scientific value. Its purpose was to teach all professionals that they must serve the system as it is. That means discriminating against people on the basis of class, ‘race,’ and gender, or going along with that discrimination. This is the only way to explain why Black professionals participated in the Tuskegee project, why both White and Black physicians deliver inferior medical care to non-White

patients,33 and why both Black and White cops disproportionately target nonWhite victims.34

Professionals in unions Deteriorating conditions are compelling some lower-level professionals to join unions. This can be a benefit or a problem for the labor movement. While socialists encourage all professionals to identify as workers and to unionize, it is important to distinguish who is, or could be, on the side of the working class and who is clearly on the other side. The Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL) includes the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the collective bargaining agent for more than 8,000 Chicago police officers.35 Including a police union has had a paralyzing effect on the CFL. It cannot support striking workers and also support police escorting scabs through picket lines. Having police members has blocked the CFL from publicly supporting demonstrations against police violence. In spite of what [AFL-CIO President] Trumka said during the Ferguson uprising about how the unions should be supportive of the Black Liberation Movement, we haven’t seen any evidence of that here in Chicago with the CFL. They haven’t come out in support of us because the Fraternal Order of Police is part of that Federation, and they’re using that union card to paralyze the rest of the trade union movement from supporting us.36

Police are middle-class professionals who are paid to protect capitalism by terrorizing the exploited and oppressed. In revolutionary situations, police have been known to join the working class; however, they are more likely to join the counterrevolution. Police should not be included in the labor movement. In contrast, front-line teachers, nurses, and social workers have much in common with the people they serve. Those who challenge management to improve services should be welcomed into the labor movement.

Soldiers

The military is the ultimate management machine for the capitalist class. However, the ordinary soldier is typically recruited from the working class and, like all workers, is expected to follow instructions with no deviation. Soldiers are forbidden to unionize because doing so would interfere with the ability of officers to control the ranks. That is precisely why soldiers need to organize. During the American war in Vietnam, dissident soldiers’ newsletters, coffee shops, and underground organizations were vital to building an anti-war movement inside the military. The military is the weapon of last resort for the capitalist class, so any successful challenge to their rule must have majority support among the working-class base of the armed forces.

Class politics The capitalist class exist to accumulate capital, so their politics are based on greed. They will always push for measures that increase their wealth and power. The working class are exploited by the capitalist class, so their politics are rooted in the desire for freedom. The middle class are squeezed between the other two classes, so their politics are based on compromise, conciliation, and appeasement. Middle-class professionals have no independent social power. Their power is bestowed upon them by the capitalist class, and they retain it only so long as they remain loyal.37 As a result, professionals tend to be politically cautious. Whatever they think about the capitalist class, they rarely think about removing them from power. Because professionals are trained to view working-class people as incompetent and needing management, they have great difficulty imagining workers running society without bosses. Even Left-leaning professionals tend to favor compromise between the classes. In his book, Disciplined Minds (2000), Jeff Schmidt describes the professional mindset: Professionals are angry about abuses of power, but having no vision of how power in the schools,

in the workplace and in the larger society could be distributed more democratically, they naturally look for ways to make the present hierarchical power structures work. Here the choices are limited – re-staff the hierarchy with ‘better people’ or give those at the top even more power so they can ‘act decisively.’ So even the most well-meaning individuals end up reinventing some such elitist or authoritarian solution.38

Because of their expertise and class confidence, professionals tend to assume leadership roles in Left organizations and social protest movements. However, the skills that professionals learn in order to serve an oppressive system are the opposite of those needed to challenge it.39 Individuals who call themselves radical professionals, but who think of themselves as professionals first, are in essence liberals. Such people make the social reform movement unattractive by bringing to it the same elitism, the same inequality of authority and ultimately, the same hierarchy of ‘somebodies’ and ‘nobodies’ that turns people off to the status quo in the first place.40

As Schmidt points out, “When professionals have good politics, it is not because of their professional training, but in spite of it.”41 Whatever the issue, the rebel and the expert stand out in sharp distinction to each other. In any discussion, the expert’s lack of political independence – his [class] loyalty – becomes apparent immediately, as he confines his thinking to technical solutions– making adjustments, fine-tuning the system. He may offer a multitude of ways to deal with a problem, but, as if by magic, not a single one would reduce the flow of profits or otherwise disturb the hierarchical distribution of power.42

Service professionals Service professionals are called upon to manage the victims of capitalist rule: the sick, injured, impaired, destitute, and distressed. However, the capitalist class cannot bring together people who are suffering and people who want to relieve suffering without sabotaging the outcome by prioritizing cost and imposing control.43 This creates a class conflict for front-line service professionals. As one Canadian nurse explained, I am expected to please the manager and save the hospital money more than I am expected to make sure that my patients get quality care.44

As with union managers, class conflict compels front-line service professionals to wear two hats. Under one hat, they provide life-saving support. Under the other hat, they impose controls that are experienced as

oppressive and even traumatic.45 In the United States, medical professionals serve as agents of a punitive State. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia require health care professionals to report suspected prenatal drug use, and eight states require them to test for prenatal drug exposure if they suspect drug use.46

The targeted women are mostly poor, disproportionately Black, and typically tested without their knowledge or consent.47 The harsh treatment imposed on the pregnant women, including being taken straight from their hospital beds and arrested shortly after delivery, being taken in handcuffs, sometimes shackled around the waist, and at least one woman being shackled during labor, is consistent with a long and disturbing history of devaluing African American mothers.48

As social conditions deteriorate, the pressure on service professionals intensifies. While some pursue individual advancement, others organize to improve social conditions. An example of the former is Mark Janus, a unionized social worker in the United States who (with corporate funding) challenged the right of unions to collect dues from those they represent.49 An example of the latter is the West Virginia teachers, who went on strike to stop public funds from going to private, for-profit schools.50

Divide by labeling The personal histories of most professionals in the ‘mental-health’ industry are similar to those who seek their services.51 Most of them have been (or still are) service users, or they have close friends or relatives who have used ‘mental-health’ services.52 As a result, these professionals tend to support patients’ rights. To drive a wedge between professionals and the people they will be expected to ‘manage,’ student professionals are taught to view suffering as a form of deviance or biological malfunction.53 This is accomplished through the practice of labeling. In psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, nursing, and social work, a great deal of time is spent teaching students how to label people, on the assumption that the correct label or ‘diagnosis’ will guide treatment. This is not true. The

best treatment for human suffering is a caring, supportive relationship and interventions that meet the specific needs of the person.54 The actual purpose of psychiatric labeling is to divide those who label from those who are labeled.55 Through the lens of the label, the service provider judges the service user who, in turn, is shamed by this judgment. Treating everyone with the same label in the same way obliterates the person’s social context and their individuality. Professionalism cuts the professional off from authentic knowing and relating. It at once distances the professional from the ‘othered’ person, nullifies the humanity of both, and subverts understanding. And, inevitably, it damages those hypothetically being served.56

To enforce the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ regulatory and licensing boards require service professionals to report their own personal use of the psychiatric system, no matter how brief or how long ago.57 Professionals who acknowledge such use can have restrictions placed on their ability to practice and even lose their careers58 on the false assumption that emotional distress equals ‘mental illness’ equals mental incompetence.59

The psychiatric team The relations between people with mental-health problems and those responsible for their care have often been characterized by the most extreme powerlessness on one side and on the other a degree of control – both legal and ideological – over body and mind which goes beyond that permitted in any other area of adult social care or medicine.60

Most people who seek work in the ‘mental-health’ industry sincerely want to help others, understand their suffering, and support them through crises. However, the industry demands something quite different. One psychiatrist recalled how he gave in to the pressure to administer electroconvulsive shock. As I look back on my career, one shame seems unforgivable – my involvement with electroshock. As a resident, I prescribed electroshock, I supervised a ward on which patients were given the treatment, and for a long time I personally administered it. Why did I do it, even when I knew it was wrong? One of my fellow psychiatric residents refused to give the treatment, and he was summarily fired.61

The non-medical professional is made complicit by means of a ‘multidisciplinary team’ that is typically dominated by a psychiatrist and can include a psychologist, psychiatric nurse, psychotherapist, and social worker. Psychiatry manages people whose thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are socially disruptive. To prepare for this role, psychiatric staff are given wearable panic buttons to reinforce the false belief that distressed people are dangerous and to justify violating their rights. One of the first things that new team members learn is how to physically restrain an inmate and forcibly inject them with drugs. This initiation ritual, referred to as ‘getting your hands dirty,’ is a collusion in group violence that cements loyalty to the team.62 ‘Take-down’ exercises assume that inmates are violent, and staff must act in self-defense, that violence toward inmates is ‘therapeutically necessary,’ and that inmate violence is pathological and never a response to the violence inflicted upon them. None of these assumptions are supported by research.63 Compulsory ‘debriefing’ sessions after ‘take-downs’ justify staff violence as necessary, therapeutic, even heroic. By such means, service professionals are desensitized to their own brutality and their role as agents of oppression. At the same time as a person is constructed as ‘a patient,’ as ‘dangerous,’ as ‘violent,’ as ‘in need of control,’ the team is constructed as a unit that must stand together, that must back each other up, that must jointly take control.64

What generally provokes inmate violence is the instinct to protect one’s self against harmful interventions. Denying a person’s right to refuse or even discuss alternatives to brain-altering drugs, electroconvulsive shock, and other intrusive measures is a violence practiced daily in every psychiatric institution. According to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Forced interventions, often wrongfully justified by theories of incapacity and therapeutic necessity, are legitimized under national laws, and may enjoy wide public support as being in the alleged ‘best interest’ of the person concerned. Nevertheless, to the extent that they inflict severe pain and suffering, they violate the absolute prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.65

Professional burnout

When service professionals are denied the resources to provide effective support, many will stretch themselves to cover the gap. Teachers will personally purchase needed school supplies. Nurses work overtime and extra shifts. These high-demand, low-control jobs are very stressful and lead to physical illness, depression, ‘burnout,’66 and suicide. Service professionals who work beyond safe limits risk their own welfare and that of the people they serve. Exhaustion and short-staffing are not considered valid legal defenses for substandard care, and overworked service providers have been charged with clinical negligence and even manslaughter.67 One consultant for the British Medical Association warned that physicians should stop working extended hours to cover staffing shortfalls. Instead, they should assert their right to work only the hours stated in their contracts.68 This is easier said than done. Fear of overburdening co-workers, reluctance to abandon those in your care, and concern that protest will harm your career make it nearly impossible for professionals to self-limit. Workers can improve their conditions only by pulling together. In contrast, professionals are trained to act as individuals. When work becomes intolerable, professionals tend to think that they alone can change their conditions, or that they are alone and can change nothing. Suicide is the ultimate individual protest. American physicians suffer the highest suicide rate of any profession, with one physician suicide every day.69 Nurses are similarly affected.70 This high rate of suicide reveals two things: Conditions in the medical industry are deeply oppressive, and most professionals do not view their suffering as a collective problem that demands a collective solution. Even experts who raise the alarm that “American health-care workers are committing suicide in unprecedented numbers”71 respond as professionals, calling for more personal support instead of challenging a heartless system that creates so much suffering.

Fight as workers

The answer to injustice is not a memorandum of understanding or a new strategic plan. It is public resistance and solidarity.72

In 2016, junior doctors in Britain’s National Health Service launched a series of strikes to protest long hours, low pay, irregular shifts, high stress, and under-staffing. The strike enjoyed widespread public support. However, when political pressure mounted, the British Medical Association called off the strike, leading the junior doctors to a crushing defeat. One striker described it as “the most spectacular failure of union representation in a generation.”73 Striking nurses have suffered similar outcomes.74 Most professionals are reluctant to identify as workers or to organize with non-professional staff. This weakens their ability to challenge management. Far more powerful are strikes that include everyone who works in an industry, professional and non-professional alike. The National Union of Health Workers (NUHW) organizes ‘health workers’ in the medical sector,75 including at Kaiser Permanente, the largest medical corporation in America. Despite record profits and billions of dollars in cash reserves, Kaiser refused to employ sufficient staff to meet the needs of people in crisis. When ‘mentalhealth’ services are the only option available, then it is only fair that everyone have access. To that end, NUHW members struck Kaiser in 2015, mounting 65 picket lines in 35 cities for an entire week. It was the world’s largest strike of ‘mental-health’ service providers. Threatened with escalating action, Kaiser accepted the union’s demands: the right to advocate for patients, wage and pension protection, a scheduling ratio that enables patients to be seen more often, and new hires to fill the demand.76 After five years and multiple strikes, 3,000 mental- health clinicians – psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, and psychiatric nurses – won a major victory.77

Brutal austerity policies are compelling more front-line professionals to identify and fight as workers. They bring to the labor movement valuable inside knowledge about how the system functions, information that all

workers should have. Those who provide services, those who use existing services, and those who want completely different services are all demanding the same thing: that society provide everyone with what they need.

Conclusion The capitalist class use professional and non-professional managers to bind workers and employers together in the social arrangement of capitalism. Without this buffer layer of managers, the other two classes would battle for social control, and the advantage would go to the working class with their superior numbers and their hands on the wheels of production.

4. Is ‘mental illness’ real? The capitalists have made progress in the art of hiding the distress of the workingclass.1 —Frederich Engels (1820-1895)

Suffering is a painful, inescapable part of life. Intense suffering can make it difficult, even impossible, for a person to function. In caring, cooperative societies, people who are incapacitated by pain are provided what they need to recover. This does not happen under capitalist rule. The capitalist class can neither acknowledge nor remedy mass suffering without ending their pursuit of profit and putting themselves out of business. Instead, they insist that suffering is not a social or systemic problem, but a medical problem requiring intervention at the individual level. While capitalists and their supporters have done an excellent job of selling this concept to the public, much doubt remains. When people ask, “Is mental illness real?”, they are asking if mental suffering is a medical condition with a physical cause that can be identified by tests and treated in the same way that diseases like cancer or arthritis are treated.

The mind is not the brain Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926), the founder of modern psychiatric diagnostic systems, argued that ‘mental illnesses’ are distinct biological diseases and that an accurate diagnostic system could identify a common cause, course, and outcome for every one of them. At the time, Kraepelin was criticized for not defining ‘mental illness,’ for assuming that outcomes can be predicted from symptoms, for ignoring social factors, and for claiming that different expressions of mental distress represent distinct disease states.2 These criticisms are still made today. A brain can be healthy, sick, or diseased because the brain is a physical

organ. The mind can be none of these things because the mind is not a thing. ‘Minding’ is what the brain does. The human brain receives, references, and interprets information in order to initiate action. To help us navigate through life, we create mental models of ourselves, others, and the world. These mental models do not exist physically within the brain; they are created by brain activity. When the body dies, the brain remains, and ‘the mind’ vanishes. Consider the relationship between the dancer and the dance. The dance is not a thing; it is the activity of the dancer, just as the mind is the activity of the brain. If we declare the dance or the mind to be healthy, sick, or diseased, then we are using these terms as stand-ins for acceptable and unacceptable, which makes them value judgments, not medical assessments. The claim that the mind can be diseased only makes sense if the mind is reduced to the brain. The concepts of ‘mental health,’ ‘mental illness,’ and ‘mental disease’ do just that. While funding is slashed for social supports that are known to reduce suffering,3 the U.S. government authorized $4.5 billion over ten years for the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies),4, 5 described as a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.6

What have these billions of dollars achieved? According to the chief scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, “We don’t even understand the brain of a worm.”7

A fraudulent model The State grants psychiatrists extraordinary legal authority to force interventions on unwilling individuals, based on the claim that psychiatry is grounded in medical science. There is no reliable evidence for this claim.

In 2003, six members of MindFreedom International, a patients’ rights organization, notified the American Psychiatric Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General that they would be on hunger strike until scientific evidence was produced to verify a) that ‘mental illnesses’ are biologically-based brain diseases or b) that any psychiatric drug actually corrects a chemical imbalance.8 Despite substantial media coverage of their Fast for Freedom, this evidence was not produced because it does not exist. There is no reliable way to measure the balance of chemicals in the living brain. There is no theory to explain how brain chemicals might become imbalanced, and there is no evidence that a ‘chemical imbalance’ creates a ‘mental disorder.’ No consistent biological changes have been identified for any ‘mental illness,’ apart from the changes caused by medical interventions themselves. The theory that ‘mental illness’ is caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain is no more credible than the theory that physical disease is caused by an imbalance of humors in the blood.9 In 2002, the American Psychiatric Association admitted that decades of effort and billions of research dollars had failed to produce even one biological marker or one physical test that could identify a ‘mental disorder.’ They had failed to produce a diagnostic system with distinct categories that do not overlap. And they had failed to discover a specific treatment for any ‘mental disorder’ listed in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM).10 Despite continuing criticism,11 the capitalist class cannot abandon the disease model of suffering. A 2009 review of all recorded studies of ‘schizophrenia’ found that 40 percent focused on biological or physical causes. Just 0.9 percent investigated the impact of poverty, and a mere 0.3 percent considered childhood abuse or neglect.12 Even though no genetic cause has been confirmed for any ‘mental disorder,’13 researchers continue to search for genetic factors.14 In 2017, the former head of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health confessed, I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded at getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs – I think $20 billion – I don’t think we

moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness.15

In 2015, the American Psychiatric Association cemented its commitment to biology with a new logo featuring the human brain.16 This is ironic. When a biological cause is found for a psychiatric ‘disorder,’ it can no longer be classified as such.

Catch 22 Nineteenth-century asylums did not distinguish between physical and mental afflictions. They housed together epileptics, addicts, syphilitics, the ‘feebleminded,’ ‘lunatics,’ the brain-damaged, rebellious, deviant, unwanted, and unfortunate. Over time, physicians began to identify physical diseases that cause distressing experiences and strange behaviors. Syphilis was one of the first. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection that can attack the brain and nervous system to cause mental deterioration, antisocial behavior, impaired judgment, euphoria, mania, depression, tremors, disorientation, delusions, and seizures. Before syphilis was identified as an infectious disease in the late 1880s, it was called General Paresis of the Insane. GPI was common among asylum inmates and was thought to be a form of madness caused by a weak or degenerate character. In time, more physical diseases were identified as causing ‘psychiatric’ symptoms, including pellagra, epilepsy, brain injury, meningitis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. In 1948, the medical specialty of neuropsychiatry split into two branches. Neurology specialized in physical diseases of the nervous system, and psychiatry specialized in emotional and behavior problems with no known physical cause. For over 70 years, psychiatry has been based on the premise that ‘mental disorders’ do not have physical causes. When a physical cause is discovered

for a ‘mental disorder,’ it is moved out of psychiatry and into its appropriate medical specialty: neurology, immunology, endocrinology, oncology, etc. This is psychiatry’s catch 22. Psychiatry can maintain its position as a branch of medicine only so long as it claims a physical basis for mental illness and never actually finds one.

Mind and body Human suffering is an all-encompassing experience that includes mind, body, and social relationships. In order to treat it as a medical problem, suffering must be broken into subsets: physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, financial suffering, and social suffering, with each subset treated in isolation from the rest. The medical separation of mind, brain, and body is historically recent. Preclass and early class societies viewed the person as a totality. Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle wrote, Psyche and body react sympathetically to each other. A change in the state of the psyche produces a change in the structure of the body, and conversely, a change in the structure of the body produces a change in the state of the mind.

In theory, modern medicine acknowledges the human being as an integrated organism. In practice, mind-body integration challenges the class divide between those who make the decisions (‘the brains of the operation’) and those who carry them out (‘the hired hands’). This class divide is reproduced in the mind-body split of capitalist medicine. However, separating mind and body ignores two established facts: physical illness causes psychological suffering; and mental distress gives rise to physical symptoms. More than 60 physical diseases are known to produce psychological symptoms.17 An estimated 83 percent of people who are treated for ‘mental illness’ are actually suffering from undiagnosed physical diseases, including infections, cancers, organ malfunction, and adverse drug reactions.18 A common example is the persistent fatigue and low mood caused by a lowfunctioning thyroid gland. Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) results when an infection causes the immune

system to mistakenly attack the brain. For instance, a ‘strep throat’ infection can cause otherwise healthy children to suddenly develop ‘psychotic’ symptoms and bizarre behaviors. Early treatment with penicillin can eliminate these symptoms completely. AE symptoms are so commonly mislabeled ‘psychosis’19 that scientists advise that everyone who experiences a ‘first-episode psychosis’ be tested for autoimmune antibodies.20 Bladder infections in the elderly can cause sudden-onset dementia that clears when the infection is treated. A national study in Denmark found that patients hospitalized for an infection had a 62 percent greater risk of later being labeled with ‘depression’ or ‘bipolar disorder.’21 Severe infections requiring hospitalization increased the risk of ‘mental disorders’ in children and adolescents by 84 percent.22 Mental suffering also gives rise to physical symptoms: insomnia, restless legs, excess stomach acid, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, constipation, headache, backache, chest pain, abdominal pain, pelvic pain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, fibromyalgia, allergies, neurodermatitis, and other ailments that form the bread and butter of family medical practice. Legal and illegal drugs can also cause ‘psychiatric’ symptoms.23 In 1989, the U.S. military began injecting soldiers with mefloquine to prevent malaria. When some soldiers reported hallucinations, ‘paranoia,’ suicidal thoughts, delirium, and ‘psychosis,’ military authorities mislabeled them with ‘posttraumatic stress disorder.’ In 2002, mefloquine toxicity was implicated in rising military suicides and a specific series of murder-suicides at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Finally, in 2013, the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged that mefloquine can cause severe and permanent brain damage.24

So what is ‘mental illness’? Regardless of the kind of hardship or trauma a person has suffered, the human organism can respond in only a limited number of ways. Danger activates the body’s threat response. A persistently activated threat response will cause the nervous system to remain on ‘high alert’ to the

slightest hint of danger. This hyper-arousal is experienced as restlessness, anxiety, or panic. Hyper-arousal inevitably leads to exhaustion that is experienced as fatigue, numbness, and depression. Both hyper-arousal and depression are intensely uncomfortable, leading some people to self-medicate with alcohol and other drugs. Distracting activities in the form of obsessions and compulsions can also provide temporary relief. When hyper-arousal becomes overwhelming, a person’s sense of self begins to disintegrate, making it difficult to know what is real. Such ‘altered states’ can feel extremely threatening and contribute to further hyper-arousal and more disintegration. When there is no hope of relief, death can seem preferable to endless suffering. The remedy is to provide the sufferer with a safe space, where their autonomy is assured and their needs are met, for as long as necessary. The capitalist class do not offer this option because they refuse to acknowledge that mental distress is socially created. Instead, they label suffering as an illness or disorder. What does that mean? The American Psychiatric Association’s fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders offers the following definition: A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.

This ‘definition’ only muddies the water. As one critic pointed out, A mental disorder is a psychological thing, or maybe it isn’t. A mental disorder is a biological thing, or maybe it isn’t. You can rail about your society unless you have a ‘dysfunction,’ at which point your railing is a mental disorder. You can have a conflict with your politicians unless you have a ‘dysfunction,’ at which point you are a mental deviant.25

It is impossible to define ‘mental illness’ because suffering means different things at different times in different societies.

‘Mental illness’ is specific to capitalism While suffering exists in all societies, how we express suffering, what we think it means, and how we respond to it are all shaped by specific social conditions. The language used to describe suffering conveys a message. The terms ‘mental illness,’ ‘mental disorder,’ and ‘mental disease’ imply that suffering is a medical or biological problem and not a reasonable response to loss, hardship, or trauma. This concept of suffering as a medical problem is specific to capitalism. Native peoples generally do not have a notion of ‘insane’ or ‘mentally ill.’ I have been unable to locate a Native Nation whose Indigenous language has a word for that condition. The closest I can come is a word more closely aligned with ‘crazy,’ which means someone is either very funny, or too angry to think straight.26

The English term ‘lunatic’ first appeared in the 14th century.27 The terms ‘insane’28 and ‘crazy’29 appeared in the 16th century, the term ‘mental illness’ appeared in 1724,30 the term ‘psychosis’ appeared in 1847,31 and the term ‘schizophrenia’ was first used in 1909.32 During the Middle Ages, mental distress was viewed as a religious crisis or possession by a spirit or devil. Under capitalism, “madness, previously viewed as an interesting, if inconvenient, manifestation of humanity, comes to be seen as a social problem in need of correction.”33 To insist that ‘mental illness’ has always existed is misleading. Suffering has always existed. However, ‘mental illness’ did not exist before capitalism because, before capitalism, suffering was not viewed as a medical problem. Until the mid-20th century, the concept of ‘mental illness’ was limited to ‘madness’ or ‘insanity.’ Today the label of ‘mental illness’ includes many people who function reasonably well, those who process the world differently, and those who experience alternate realities, including many who do not suffer from their experiences except for the suffering that comes from being treated as ‘mentally ill.’

DSM Catalogue Despite providing no reliable definition of ‘mental illness,’ the DSM offers detailed criteria for ‘diagnosing’ hundreds of ‘mental disorders.’ How valid are these criteria? Two individuals can be labeled with ‘schizophrenia’ even though they experience completely different symptoms that overlap with other ‘mental disorders.’ According to DSM-5, a ‘diagnosis’ of ‘schizophrenia’ can be made if two or more of the following five symptoms are present, including one of the first three: 1) delusions, 2) hallucinations, 3) disorganized speech, 4) disorganized or abnormal behavior, and 5) negative symptoms such as restricted or flat emotions and low motivation. The person’s functioning must be significantly affected, the symptoms must have lasted more than six months, and there cannot be a medical or substance-related cause for the symptoms.34 There are serious problems with this approach. The process of determining how many symptoms are required, and in what combination, is not based on medical evidence; it is decided by committee votes35 that change with each new version of the DSM. In 1983, the World Psychiatric Association published 15 different ‘diagnostic criteria’ for ‘schizophrenia.’36 To show how arbitrary psychiatric labels are, a 1992 tongue-in-cheek article in the Journal of Medical Ethics proposed that happiness be added to the DSM as ‘major affective disorder: pleasant type.’ Happiness meets all reasonable criteria for a psychiatric disorder. It is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, and it is associated with various cognitive abnormalities – in particular, a lack of contact with reality.37

Symptoms and causes A symptom is the subjective experience of the sufferer, while the cause is the reason the symptom exists. A basic rule in medicine is that no cause can be identified reliably on the basis of symptoms alone. Symptoms can occur in the absence of disease, disease can be present without symptoms, and the

same disease can produce different symptoms at different times in different people. Consider the symptom of pain. Imagine telling the doctor that you have pain in your side, and she responds, “You are suffering from pain. Take this medicine and come back in a week.” You would not accept that. You would want to know what is causing the pain. Is it appendicitis, gallstones, infection, cancer, or constipation? Knowing the cause is essential to determine the correct treatment. Physical medicine relies on objective evidence to identify the cause of a symptom. As a result, most physicians would agree that pneumonia is pneumonia and not lung cancer. Because no objective evidence can identify ‘mental illness,’ let alone any specific ‘mental disorder,’ the likelihood of two psychiatrists agreeing on a psychiatric ‘diagnosis’ is little better than chance.38 Although the DSM is called a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, it is actually a catalogue of labels. The DSM groups symptoms together, gives them a label, and then claims that the label explains the symptoms. This is not diagnosis; it is circular logic. People who feel bad are told they have ‘depression.’ When they ask why they have ‘depression,’ they are told they have ‘depression’ because they feel bad. This is like saying that your head hurts because you have ‘headache,’ and you have ‘headache’ because your head hurts. Although symptoms cannot reveal the cause of a problem, it is commonly assumed that symptoms like delusions and hallucinations are sure signs of ‘mental illness.’

Delusions A delusion is a belief that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as real. Some delusions are treated as a sign of ‘mental illness,’ while others are accepted as normal. Who decides, and on what basis?

Entire communities can share delusions. Religious delusions include the belief that God created the world in seven days. Paranoid delusions include the belief that the U.S. government orchestrated the 9-11 attacks. Patriotic delusions cause many Americans to believe that their country is the best in the world. Desperate delusions compel poor people to buy lottery tickets. In Mexico, the spirits of the deceased are invited home to feast on the Day of the Dead. Capitalism promotes many delusions, including the delusion that anyone can make it if they try hard enough and the delusion that workers have more in common with their rulers than they have with foreign workers. These delusions are long lasting, have no medical or substance-related cause, and significantly impair the ability of ordinary people to defend their interests. Delusions cannot be used to identify ‘mental illness’ when there is no scientific way to distinguish common delusions from ‘pathological’ ones.

Hallucinations A hallucination is the sight, sound, smell, or touch of something that cannot also be perceived by others. Hallucinations are not uncommon. A 1991 survey, the largest of its kind, found that 10 to 15 percent of people in the United States experience some form of sensory hallucination within their lifetime.39 Amputees report ‘phantom limb’ hallucinations where they experience movement and sensation in the missing limb. People who are grieving may see the image or hear the voice of the departed. Deaf people report hearing voices, and older people with failing eyesight can experience complex visual hallucinations, a medical condition called Charles Bonnet syndrome.40 Hallucinations can also be caused by high fevers, sleep deprivation, malnutrition, prescription41 and nonprescription drugs, drug withdrawal, and social isolation. In extreme or ‘altered’ states, people may hear voices, see visions, and lose a sense of boundaries. The medical system views such states as pathological and labels them ‘psychotic.’

However, hallucinations can actually help people heal. While substances that cause hallucinations were banned in the 1960s to contain social rebellion,42 recent research has found them useful to treat anxiety, depression, and addiction, and to calm patients with life-threatening diseases.43, 44, 45 Hallucinations can also be experienced as an aid to creativity. In the ancient world, voices and visions were welcomed as gifts from Muses or Gods.46 The Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato and the mathematician Pythagoras all reported visions. None reported suffering from their experience, and none were labeled ‘mentally ill.’ Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism were all founded by prophets who experienced visions. Today, some religious groups deliberately evoke hallucinations as a way to merge with the divine. Some Indigenous cultures welcome altered states as a connection to the spirit world and an invitation to personal transformation. The person is not treated as sick or diseased but is supported through their experience. Afterwards, they may mentor other people going through similar experiences.47 Organizations like the Hearing Voices Network,48 the Spiritual Crisis Network,49 and #Emerging Proud50 also support sufferers to find meaning in their distress and safely transition through it. The concept of personal crisis as a temporary situation requiring compassion and social support could not be more different from the concept of ‘mental illness’ as a chronic brain disease requiring lifelong psychiatric intervention.

Joan of Arc One of history’s most famous hallucinators was born into a peasant family over six hundred years ago. At age 13, Joan of Arc saw, heard, smelled, and physically felt the presence of angels and saints who told her to raise an army to place a French king on the throne. She was not distressed by these experiences but embraced them as blessings from God. When her prophecies supported the ascension of the uncrowned king, Joan was praised as an emissary from heaven, an angel, and an unbeatable Christian knight. When she became a political liability, she was burned at the stake as an emissary from the devil, a heretic, and a witch. When it was

politically useful to restore her respectability, she was rehabilitated as a martyr and later made a saint. Despite her many labels, Joan was never labeled ‘mentally ill’ or ‘psychotic.’ Her story illustrates the difference between what people experience and how society responds to their experience. While Joan’s experience remained constant, society’s response repeatedly changed to suit the changing political landscape. A person’s social class also affects how their experiences are labeled. Members of the ruling class are rarely labeled ‘psychotic,’ no matter how bizarre their behavior. Like Joan of Arc, President George Bush claimed to be on a mission from God. God would tell me, “George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.” And I did. And then God would tell me, “George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.” And I did.51

Stigma Negative attitudes toward people with mental health problems lead to discrimination in many domains, including the workplace and housing, and to rejection by family and friends. They can also lead to decreased life satisfaction and self-esteem, and to increased alcohol use, depression, and suicidality.52

Stigma is a form of discrimination against an individual or group who are viewed as inferior or unworthy. Anti-stigma programs insist that discrimination against mental suffering would lessen and more people would seek treatment if ‘mental illness’ were viewed in the same way as physical illness. Stigma, however, is not caused by ignorance; it has an economic and social function. The capitalist class stigmatize some groups in order to divide and weaken the working class as a whole. Stigmatizing poor people makes it easier to cut social programs, stigmatizing Black people and immigrants justifies expanding the prison system, and stigmatizing the mentally distressed sends the message that suffering is shameful and will not be allowed to disrupt the social order.53 The medical model of distress increases stigma. The emphasis on biology

implies that the ‘mentally ill’ cannot control their behavior and are therefore dangerous. Medical professionals, who are most wedded to the biological model, display the most negative attitudes and the most punitive responses toward people who are psychiatrically labeled.54 In contrast, those who believe that suffering has social causes are less fearful of people labeled ‘mentally ill.’55 Everyone can relate to someone who is experiencing extreme pain, because we have all been there, or will be. Campaigns to ‘get more people into treatment’ assume that ‘treatment’ is the answer to human suffering, not more support or a better life. In reality, ‘treatment’ reinforces stigma. The true ‘stigma’ happens when someone is unable to confess the magnitude of their pain without facing the consequence of involuntary incarceration. The true ‘stigma’ happens when someone wants to die because of how powerless and trapped they feel in this world, and the system’s response is to hastily grab their last remaining drops of power away. The true ‘stigma’ happens when our pain that is based on so very many real things in our world is magically transformed into a ‘lifelong illness’ for which society bears no blame.56

Contradictions The public cannot be expected to treat mental distress as ‘an illness like any other,’57 when medicine and the law do not. Physical health is understood as a spectrum, with fully healthy people on one end and dying people on the other. Everyone is somewhere on this spectrum, and our position changes through life. You can be well one day, sick the next, and well again a week later. Even people who are terminally ill have good and bad days. In physical medicine, a diagnosis does not define the person, and people are ‘patients’ only so long as they need treatment. In contrast, ‘mental health’ is presented as a binary: people are either well or sick. There is no consideration for the ups and downs of life, the tragedies that visit us all, and the fact that severe distress is usually time limited. Once people are psychiatrically labeled, everything about them is viewed through their ‘pathology,’ and they are designated ‘mental patients’ for life. Physical medicine relies on objective evidence like physical examinations and laboratory tests to determine if someone is sick or not. Psychiatry offers

no clear definitions of ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ that would enable clinicians to distinguish reliably between the two. In physical medicine, diagnosis is based on the principle of Occam’s Razor, that the simplest explanation that accounts for all the evidence is most likely correct. Psychiatry systematically violates this principle. DSM categories are regularly renamed and regrouped, so that a person can acquire multiple psychiatric labels that change with different psychiatrists over time.58 Effective medical research requires subjects to be separated into distinct diagnostic groups, for example, people with hepatitis, kidney disease, or broken limbs. Psychiatric research is fundamentally flawed because DSM ‘disorders’ do not have distinct boundaries.59 It is impossible to validate the claim that ‘schizophrenia’ is genetic without a reliable definition of ‘schizophrenia.’ The same holds true for every other ‘mental disorder.’ Physical medicine treats brain damage as a pathological condition to be avoided. Psychiatry promotes brain-damaging interventions such as electroconvulsive shock60 and lobotomy 61 62 as therapeutic. In 1949, the originator of the lobotomy was honored with a Nobel Prize in medicine, and by 1952, an estimated 50,000 people in the United States and Canada had been lobotomized.63 Medical patients have the right to informed consent and can legally refuse a recommended treatment. When someone is thought to be mentally incompetent because of a physical illness like Alzheimer’s, their incompetence must be confirmed by a third-party expert before someone else can legally make medical decisions for them.64 A psychiatrist can declare someone mentally incompetent without a second opinion or a formal assessment of competence. Simply disagreeing with a psychiatric ‘diagnosis’ or recommended ‘treatment’ can be used as evidence that a person is ‘not in their right mind’ and to overrule their choices.65 Over the objections of sufferers and their families, people labeled ‘mentally ill’ can be forcibly institutionalized, injected with toxic drugs, subjected to electroconvulsive shock, physically immobilized, forcibly catheterized, and

kept in social isolation.66 The distinction between physical medicine and psychiatry is not simply a distinction between science and pseudo-science. Physical medicine falls into the same trap as psychiatry when it claims that health differences have a ‘racial’ origin.67 This claim cannot be validated because, like psychiatric categories, ‘racial’ categories have no clear boundaries, making it impossible to define who belongs to what ‘race.’ This matter is addressed in the next chapter. Suffice it to say that psychiatry is the only branch of medicine whose practitioners regularly question the scientific basis of their practice and where large numbers of patients demand the right to refuse treatment.

Insane places What makes mental patients different is not the nature and severity of their problems but that their difficulties have been redefined as psychiatric ‘symptoms,’ requiring professional help.68 — Judi Chamberlin (1944-2010)

Despite their inability to clearly define ‘mental illness’ and ‘psychosis,’ psychiatrists claim that both can be reliably diagnosed. To test this claim, Stanford University professor David Rosenhan sent eight volunteers to eight different psychiatric hospitals across the United States. All of them posed as people concerned about their ‘mental health’ because they heard voices. All were admitted to hospital solely on that basis. Immediately after being admitted, all eight volunteers reported that the voices had stopped, they had no other symptoms, and they felt fine. Nevertheless, seven were labeled with ‘schizophrenia,’ and one was labeled with ‘manic depression.’ They were kept in hospital for up to 52 days. After being released, none were considered cured; all were labeled ‘in remission.’ During their time in hospital, no staff member discovered that any of the phony patients was an imposter, although some of the other patients figured it out. When staff at a prestigious psychiatric hospital insisted that such errors would never occur on their watch, Rosenhan proposed a second experiment, where one or more phony patients would seek admission to that hospital

sometime over the following three months. In preparation, each staff member rated each new patient according to the likelihood that the patient was phony. Ratings were obtained on 193 patients. One or more staff members identified 41 new patients as phony. Twentythree were considered suspect by one or more psychiatrists, and 19 were suspected by one psychiatrist and another staff member. In fact, no phony patients were ever sent to that hospital. Rosenhan drew two conclusions from these experiments. First, It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals. The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meaning of behavior can easily be misunderstood. The consequences to patients hospitalized in such an environment – the powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, mortification, and self-labeling – seem undoubtedly counter-therapeutic.69

His second conclusion was that psychiatric ‘diagnoses’ reside in the minds of the observers and not in the behaviors of the observed. However, he cautioned, It could be a mistake, and a very unfortunate one, to consider that what happened to us derived from malice or stupidity on the part of the staff. Quite the contrary, our overwhelming impression of them was of people who really cared, who were committed, and who were uncommonly intelligent. It would be more accurate to attribute their failures to the environment in which they, too, found themselves than to personal callousness. Their perceptions and behaviors were controlled by the situation, rather than being motivated by a malicious disposition. In a more benign environment, one that was less attached to global diagnosis, their behaviors and judgments might have been more benign and effective.70

In summary, Rosenhan suggests that “we refrain from sending the distressed to insane places” and focus instead on helping people to solve their problems.

Psychiatric imperialism Biological psychiatry has proved so useful at masking social suffering that it is aggressively marketed in poor nations.71 The 21st century Movement for Global Mental Health72 promotes psychiatry around the globe73 on the presumption that, most low-income and middle-income countries currently devote far too few resources to mental health. The World Bank, country donors (such as the U.S., U.K., and European Union),

foundations (such as the Gates and Rockefeller foundations), research funding bodies (such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health), and professional associations all share a duty to make mental health a central theme of their strategies and financial flows.74

Imposing a medical model of suffering on poor countries75 ignores the real conditions of people’s lives76 and expands the market for psychiatric drugs. Britain has oppressed Ireland for centuries. During the British occupation of Northern Ireland that began in 1969, children were systematically targeted for interrogation, beatings, and torture.77 Since then, suicide rates have doubled.78 Instead of acknowledging the devastating impact of British imperialism,79 the suffering of the Irish people is characterized as ‘a mental health crisis’ requiring psychiatric drugs80 and electroconvulsive shock.81 In India, 300,000 peasant farmers have killed themselves over the past 20 years. This crisis has been blamed on ‘untreated mental illness,’ lack of access to ‘mental-health’ services, and easy access to pesticides, the main method of farmer suicide.82 In fact, the root cause is imperialism. In 1988, the World Bank demanded that the Indian government deregulate the seed sector. Seeds that had traditionally been shared among farmers became the ‘intellectual property’ of Monsanto, for which it demanded royalties. Monsanto also pushed its genetically modified hybrids that were more vulnerable to pests, disease, drought, and crop failure than hardier traditional seeds. Locked into Monsanto’s system, many farmers fell into debt. Monsanto’s seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of super-profits in the form of royalties, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures has created a context for debt, suicides, and agrarian distress which is driving the farmers’ suicide epidemic in India. As Monsanto’s profits grow, farmers’ debt grows. In this systemic sense, Monsanto’s seeds are seeds of suicide.83

Conclusion Distressed people need support. While some are helped by the ‘mentalhealth’ industry, many others are made worse. The capitalist class offer no alternative.

The ‘mental-health’ industry was not established to support people, but to individualize and medicalize the social misery created by capitalist rule. A United Nations report concluded, The longstanding biomedical tradition of medicalizing various forms of psycho-social distress and human suffering has cast a long shadow over the importance of addressing the social and underlying determinants of health.84

The U.N. recommends shifting the focus away “from chemical imbalances to power imbalances.” However, the medical model of suffering dominates society precisely because it conceals the social sources of suffering.

5. How important is biology? People make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances already existing, given and transmitted from the past.1 —Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Is suffering a biological condition, as the capitalist class would have us believe, or does society bear some responsibility? The socialist concept that human beings shape and are shaped by society conflicts with the capitalist concept of a ‘natural order’ where human behavior and social structures are biologically determined. These two opposing beliefs reflect the interests of two antagonistic classes. Aspiring to power, the working class press for social change. Being in power, the capitalist class resist it. This chapter explains how the capitalist class use biology to support their rule, how racism plays a central role in this process, and how racism shapes society’s response to suffering.

Betting on genetics DNA is a complex molecule that contains the basic information required for an organism to develop and function. In human cells, long strands of DNA form structures called chromosomes. When organisms reproduce, they pass some of their DNA to their offspring. A gene is a segment of DNA that is thought to determine the inheritance of basic physical characteristics. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, “Genes do more than just determine the color of our eyes or whether we are tall or short. Genes are at the center of everything that makes us human.”2 In recent decades, close to half the budget of the National Institutes of Health has gone to genetic analysis of human populations. That is likely in excess of $100 billion dollars in the U.S. alone.3

This emphasis on genetics is propaganda, not science. The $3 billion Human Genome Project revealed that 99.9 percent of all human DNA is identical from one person to another.4 Human beings share so much genetic material because our common ancestors originated in Africa some 300,000 years ago.5 Much later, small groups of people migrated out of Africa to populate the rest of the world.6 Despite the fact that just 0.1 percent of human DNA varies from person to person, then U.S. President Bill Clinton crowed, Genome science will have a real impact on all our lives – and even more, on the lives of our children. It will revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases.7

Billions of dollars’ worth of genetic research have advanced our understanding of a few genetic diseases yet have made no difference to the vast majority of human maladies. Malnutrition, infectious disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and most cancers are not caused by faulty genes; they are linked with class, oppression, poverty, and pollution. This is why the greatest improvements in health come from raising living standards.8 The State funds science, and it stands to reason that the science it gets will help it, not hurt it. Once we realize that science is political, the question of morality becomes particularly relevant.9

The capitalist class do not fund research that might expose the harmful effects of their system or support demands to raise living standards.10 When social conditions are taken off the table, only biology remains. The result is biological determinism, the belief that people and society are the way they are because of biology, not because the ruling class profit from the existing social arrangement. Biological determinism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Emphasizing gene research leads to genetic explanations that spawn more gene research, and so on.

Epigenetics While DNA is similar to an architectural blueprint that lays down the basics,

the characteristics of the adult organism also depend on social and environmental factors. After astronaut Scott Kelly returned from a tour on the International Space Station, researchers discovered significant changes in his DNA. Although most of those changes reversed over time, some did not, indicating “possible longer-term changes in genes related to his immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia, and hypercapnia.”11 A more down-to-earth example is the fact that identical twins begin life with the exact same genetic material, yet all are born with different fingerprints. This happens because each twin interacts with the uterine environment in a unique way.12 Complex interactions between nature and nurture explain why human beings can share so much genetic material and also be unique individuals.13 The concept of epigenetics was created to emphasize the role of genes over all other factors. ‘Epigenetics’ literally means ‘that which relates to genetics,’ and efforts to define it more specifically have been compared to “chasing a ghost.”14 Epigenetics could be called ‘epi-environment’ and mean the same thing. However, acknowledging that social and environmental conditions can shape biology would increase pressure to improve those conditions. Instead, the term ‘epigenetics’ emphasizes the genetic side of the equation. Consider a typical example: Today, a wide variety of illnesses, behaviors, and other health indicators already have some level of evidence linking them with epigenetic mechanisms, including cancers of almost all types, cognitive dysfunction, and respiratory, cardiovascular, reproductive, autoimmune, and neurobehavioral illnesses. Known or suspected drivers behind epigenetic processes include many agents, including heavy metals, pesticides, diesel exhaust, tobacco smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hormones, radioactivity, viruses, bacteria, and basic nutrients.15

In other words, social and environmental factors interact with human biology to produce disease. However, if it were phrased this way, we would look for social and environmental solutions. Using the term epigenetics directs us to genetic solutions. The question is not whether genes are involved in human suffering, because

genes are involved in all human processes. Society is also involved in all human processes. Human beings are 100 percent biological and 100 percent social. All living organisms are shaped by a complex and dynamic dance between their biology and their social and physical environment. Whether society or biology matters more is not a scientific question; it is a political conflict. The working class stress social conditions because they need them to change, and the capitalist class stress biology to justify their resistance to change. This is the political root of the conflict between the emphasis on improving social conditions and the emphasis on improving the ability of human beings to manage existing conditions. Not everyone who gets hit by a car breaks their bones. I would guess there is some variation in genetic bone strength that makes some able to withstand a greater impact. Does it make sense to diagnose people whose bones break from impact with ‘weak bone syndrome?’ Should we research the genetics of bone weakness so we can provide extra protection to the weak-boned? Or should we try to reduce the number of cars hitting people?16

A natural order? My bigoted father was fond of arguing that women and Black people are intellectually inferior. His evidence was that no woman and no Black person had ever become a world chess champion. He believed, as many do, that merit determines who rises in society.17 The capitalists insist that class differences arise not because their system is rigged to favor the few, but because some people are ‘naturally’ more intelligent, more skilled, and work harder, so they ‘naturally’ rise to the top. However, there is nothing natural about class divisions. Human beings thrived for several hundred thousand years in egalitarian societies without them. A genuine meritocracy would require a level playing field. However, the capitalist system is totally rigged. Wealthy families pay millions for their children to succeed because they do not think them capable of winning a fair competition.18 With few exceptions, the class in which you are born is the class in which you will die.19

The concept of a ‘natural order’ is supported by biological determinism, the belief that those at the top of society are biologically superior to those below them, that men are superior to women, that White people are superior to people of color, and so on. The emphasis on genetics has assumed the character of a religion that cannot be questioned. Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene (1976), argued that genes strive to reproduce, and we are simply vehicles for their ambition, making human choice irrelevant and social change impossible. Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) insisted that poor people are less intelligent and should not be supported to reproduce.20 J. Philippe Rushton’s book Race, Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective (1999) linked ‘racial groups’ by brain size, intelligence, temperament, sexual behavior, and fertility. More recently, Nicholas Wade’s book A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014) claims that humanity is divided into biologically distinct races with different levels of intelligence and that this ‘forbidden knowledge’ has been suppressed by marxist academics. Wade promotes White supremacy and suggests genetic tendencies for violence in Africans, obedience in Chinese, and capitalism in Jews.21 Advocates for biological determinism are favored with academic positions, published in scientific journals, awarded ample funding, and provided a public platform to advance their claims, no matter how absurd.22 A 2013 multi-national study found that 98 percent of all variation in educational achievement could be accounted for by social or environmental factors, and the remaining 2 percent might be genetic. The 98 percent figure was not mentioned in the title of the study,23 the summary abstract, or the press release.24 Nor did the study conclude with recommendations to improve learning environments. Instead, it called for more research to identify genetic barriers to learning. Why did more than two hundred scientists emphasize a 2 percent result and bury a 98 percent result? Genetic researchers look for genetic factors, and

they cannot obtain research funding or advance their careers unless they find them.

Biology reflects society If you want to get a sense of how social status affects health [in the U.S.], then take a ride on Washington’s metro system. Start in the blighted southeast section of downtown. For every mile traveled to tony Montgomery County in Maryland, life expectancy rises about a year and a half. By the time you get off, you will find a 20-year gap between poor Blacks at one end of the journey and rich Whites at the other.25

Class inequality leads to health inequality. In Canada, there is up to a 21-year gap in life expectancy between the highest-income and the lowest-income neighborhoods.26 In the United States, the average gap in life expectancy between the highest-earning 1 percent and the lowest-earning 1 percent was found to be 14.6 years for men and 10 years for women.27 Engels documented similar patterns in the mid-1800s.28 Income inequality and life-span inequality both increase over time. Between 2001 and 2014, life expectancy in America’s highest-earning 5 percent increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women, and by only 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women in the lowest-earning 5 percent.29 The wealthy not only live longer, they live longer in good health. This holds true even in nations with universal access to medical services, like Canada. If you are in the bottom 10 percentile of income in [Canada], your disease-free life expectancy at birth – the period you can expect to live before developing chronic disease – is 52 years. The Canadian average is 68 years. And if you are in the top 10 percent in terms of family income, your average disease-free life expectancy at birth is 78 years. That’s a difference of 26 years, best to worst.30

In their book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (2010), Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett compared income inequality in 23 of the world’s richest nations and all 50 American states. They found that, at every income level, people living in less-equal societies suffer more mental, physical, and social problems, including lower life-spans, higher infant mortality, and more school-age bullying, teen pregnancies, homicides, suicides, addiction, anxiety, and ‘mental illness’.

People living in more-equal societies enjoy better emotional, physical, and social health at every income level. And the more equal the society, the greater the benefits. Inequality affects a person’s health more than individual factors like diet, smoking, exercise, and access to medical treatments.31 A 1998 study of 282 metropolitan areas in the United States found that greater income inequality was directly linked with higher death rates at all income levels, not just for the poor. Researchers calculated that simply reducing inequality to the level found in the areas with the lowest inequality would save as many lives as would be saved by eradicating heart disease or by preventing all deaths from lung cancer, diabetes, motor vehicle crashes, HIV infection, homicide, and suicide combined.32

Why inequality kills Your social class determines how much control you have over your life.33 Those with less control are exposed to more hardship and danger and experience a pervasive sense of not being safe. The result is chronic stress. Under capitalism, a great many people are not safe: people of color, immigrants and refugees, prisoners, soldiers, people living in war zones, victims of family violence, the poor, the precariously employed, and workers in high-demand/low-control jobs. While healthy organisms can manage short-term stress, long-term stress is damaging.34 The human body interprets lack of safety as a threat, and it responds to every threat in the same way, by activating the immune system. The resulting inflammation can affect every organ system in the body. Even low levels of stress can, over time, increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, infection, lung disease, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, and mental distress. The greater the stress, the greater the damage.35 The toxic effect of not being safe and the need to maintain your guard at all

times is one of the reasons why people exposed to systemic oppression live sicker, shorter lives 36 and why childhood adversity is linked with medical problems in later life.37

A capitalist medical model Social conditions are virtually ignored in modern medicine, which is based on a model of infectious disease – one cause, one treatment. This reductionist approach breaks down complex problems to their simplest parts, then treats the parts. Commonly called the ‘medical model’ or ‘Western medicine,’ it is actually a capitalist model. Traditional healing emphasizes the relationship of all things. Capitalist medicine treats the human being as a machine with faulty parts that need fixing. In real life, infectious diseases have social causes. Germs thrive where immunity is weakened by the conditions of poverty and where people cannot afford medical care. For instance, tuberculosis can be cured with antibiotics,38 yet it remains the leading global cause of death from an infectious agent39 in poor countries and also in wealthy ones.40 The capitalist model of medicine assumes existing conditions as given. Physicians can treat a worker’s injuries, yet they have no authority to make work safer. They can lecture patients on proper nutrition, yet they have no power to make nutritious food affordable. They can prescribe medicine to lower blood pressure, yet they cannot end the racist oppression that raises blood pressure.41 Similarly, physicians can ‘treat’ the ‘mentally ill’ with no knowledge of their social conditions and no ability to change them. In 2013, the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health announced plans to incorporate genetics into a new classification system for ‘mental disorders,’ on the basis that mental disorders are biological disorders involving brain circuits that implicate specific domains of cognition, emotion, or behavior.42

Racism Race is a social fact, not a genetic reality.43

Racism is the false belief that humanity can be divided into distinct subgroups that share physical, psychological, or behavioral characteristics that they do not share with people in other groups. Racism is also the practice of discriminating against people based on their presumed membership in such groups. Racism erases individuality by insisting that a person’s membership in a particular group reveals more about them than can be discovered by getting to know them as a person. There is no scientific basis for any of these claims. Human genetics are remarkably uniform. Only 0.1 percent of human genetic material is variable, and more than 85 percent of that 0.1 percent difference is found within human groups, not between them, and the remainder varies with geography and location.44 In 1871, Charles Darwin argued that people cannot be divided into distinct ‘races’: Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke.45

The discovery that humanity is one biological family should have made the concept of ‘race’ obsolete and ended the practice of racism. It has not done so, because racism is financially and politically necessary for capitalism.

Racism is profitable Racism began with Indigenous ‘Americans’ and developed out of our murder, our enslavement, and the theft of our properties.46

Racist practice spawned the concept of ‘race.’ Capitalist expansion required land. Taking that land from Indigenous peoples by force, and slaughtering them in the process, was justified by depicting them as non-human.47 The United States was founded on the declaration that “all men are created equal,” so Black slavery could only be justified by depicting Africans with different languages and cultures as a single, subhuman, ‘Black race.’ It was the prevalence of freedom rather than the fact of slavery that created [American racism]. English people might find Africans and their descendants to be heathen in religion, outlandish in

nationality, and weird in appearance but that did not become an ideology of racial inferiority until Africans and their descendants were incorporated into a society in which they lacked rights that others claimed as self-evident natural law.48

Indigenous genocide and Black slavery financed the rise of the first capitalist empires.49 Today, the capitalist class rely on racism to divide the working class, making it easier to drive down wages and prevent workers from uniting against them.

The flexibility of racism Race is a power relationship made flesh.50

When Germans, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Scandinavians, Finns, Russians, French, and Jews first came to America, they were all treated as non-White. Today, Spanish-speaking people in America are labeled a ‘Hispanic race,’ and President Trump’s immigration laws target Muslims as a ‘race.’ The capitalist class have used the ‘race’ label to disparage the poor, unemployed, refugees, the deviant, and the impaired. In 1798, Thomas Malthus warned that ‘the race of laborers’ was reproducing faster than the food supply, and measures should be taken to reduce their numbers.51 To justify their bloody conquest of Ireland, the British portrayed the Irish as a degenerate ‘race.’52, 53 Nazi Germany cast Jews as ‘parasitic vermin,’ a ‘race’ unworthy of existence, and Israeli leaders do the same to Palestinians today.54 During WWII, the American and Canadian governments interned more than 120,000 people in concentration camps simply for being of Japanese descent. ‘Race’ is a generic term that can be used to justify any form of bigotry, prejudice, and dehumanization. As a result, many people experience multiple forms of racist-based discrimination. Homophobia is a form of racism when it claims that homosexuals are fundamentally different from heterosexuals. Sexism is a form of racism when it claims that women are fundamentally different from men.55 Discrimination against people labeled ‘mentally ill’ also takes the form of racism when the distressed are depicted as having

fundamentally different, defective brains. To maintain racist divisions, the capitalist class emphasize and exaggerate superficial human variations. Consider how the labels Black, White, Red, and Yellow exaggerate differences in skin tone. In reality, White people are not really white, Black people are not really black, and the same is true for those labeled Red and Yellow. These concepts are recent social constructions.56 In reality, all human beings are varying shades of brown, from light beige to dark chocolate.57 Because racist designations are socially defined, they are subject to change. In the United States, people were labeled as Black if they had even one African ancestor. In Brazil, people are not labeled as Black if they had even one European ancestor. Skin color is not a permanent trait, nor is it linked with other traits such as intelligence, criminality, or fertility, as racists would have us believe. Dark skin evolved to protect the body from excessive sun rays. Light skin evolved when people migrated away from the equator and needed to make vitamin D in their skin. To do that, they had to lose pigment. Repeatedly over history, many people moved dark to light and light to dark.58

Nationalism as racism Nationalism is based on the racist belief that everyone in the nation shares, or should share, a common ‘national identity’ and common ‘national values’ that are not shared by people in other nations. To enforce this concept, school-age children are required to sing patriotic songs or recite patriotic pledges every morning. Nationalism and patriotism insist that people on one side of the border are fundamentally different from people on the other side. This racist myth is used to justify any atrocity that produces a win for ‘our side.’ When we read, watch, and tell stories of good guys warring against bad guys, we are essentially persuading ourselves that our opponents would not be fighting us, indeed they would not be on the other team at all, if they had any loyalty or valued human life. In short, we are rehearsing the idea that moral qualities belong to categories of people rather than individuals.59

Nationalism serves to bind the working class to their national capitalist class and divide them from workers in other countries, including immigrants and minorities in their own communities. Insisting that ‘those people’ lower ‘our’ living standards diverts attention away from the massive, everyday robbery committed by the capitalist class.

Medical racism There is a long tradition in medicine and other professions of using racial groups to categorize individuals, and these categories are deeply embedded in the legal and social systems of the United States as well as the national psyche.60

Dr. J. Marion Sims (1813-1883) is credited as the father of modern gynecology. In the mid-1800s, Sims performed experimental surgeries on enslaved Black women, without anesthesia, in the belief that they do not feel pain.61 In 1900, the different blood types were discovered and, shortly after, found to be distributed in all human populations in no particular pattern. Nevertheless, on the eve of World War II, African Americans were not allowed to donate blood. When protest reversed this racist policy, the blood of Black and White donors was segregated until 1950.62 However, the American Red Cross did not abandon racism. In 2018, it falsely stated, Certain blood types are unique to specific racial and ethnic groups. Therefore, it is essential that the donor diversity match the patient diversity.63

There is no scientific basis for this racist statement, or for the equally racist statement that “transplant success rates increase when organs are matched between members of the same ethnic and racial group.”64 Genetic variation within ‘racial groups’ is much greater than the variation between them, so that someone who looks very different from you and lives on the other side of the world could be a better organ donor for you than someone who looks like you and lives on your street.65 Medical research and practice are thoroughly steeped in racism.66 Medical surveys and studies use ‘race’ categories as variables,67 different measures of

normal are recommended for different ‘racial groups’,68 and people of color systematically suffer inferior medical care.69 In 2002, a drug to treat heart disease, BiDil, was granted the first U.S. patent for a ‘race-specific’ medicine.70 The drug trial had enrolled only Black subjects, and subjects were categorized as Black if they said they were Black. By approving BiDil as a ‘race-specific’ medicine, the American government declared Black Americans to be a distinct biological group. In the end, the drug company’s marketing scheme failed. For one thing, Black patients were understandably wary of using a drug just for Black people. One elderly Black woman stood up in a community meeting and shouted, “Give me what the White people are taking!”71

‘Race-based’ medicine fails to address the social conditions that make so many people sick. In America, most poor people are White, most people without access to medical care are White, most homeless people are White, and most welfare recipients are White. In deprived areas where more Black babies die, more White babies also die. Unquestionably, non-White people are disproportionately affected.72 However, the medical focus on skin color avoids the larger question of why so many people are forced to live in healthdestroying conditions.73

Racist health disparities While much of the public-health world is lamenting and documenting Black women’s higher chances of dying or being injured during or after pregnancy, we’re not doing the tough work of really talking about racism.74

Dark skin does not increase the risk of illness and death; being a victim of racism does.75, 76 This reality is obscured by the terms ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ health disparities77 that imply a biological defect in people of color, when the actual defect lies in a deeply racist society. The more accurate term is ‘racist’ health disparities,78 or the difference in health caused by racism, including systemic discrimination, segregation,79 poverty, inferior medical treatment,80 greater exposure to toxic pollution,81 and the impact of targeted police killings on entire communities.82 In 2014, Eric Garner was brutally killed by police in New York City. His

daughter Erica and other activists demanded justice for Garner. However, her father’s very public death, the fact that his killer was not held accountable, and the unrelenting stress of being a Black woman in a racist society took their toll. At age 27, Erica Garner suffered a massive heart attack and died.83 Like many Black women, her heart had been damaged during pregnancy.84 Black women are 2 to 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than White women. The infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black mothers is roughly twice that of non-Hispanic White mothers and rival the infant mortality rates of some war-torn countries, such as Libya and Bahrain.85

At every income level, Black Americans live sicker, shorter lives than White Americans.86 The same is true for Indigenous people living in the U.S. and Canada. Such inequality can be explained by the toxic impact of racist discrimination, or it can be explained by blaming ‘defective biology.’ This second, racist explanation is promoted by those who prefer to blame the oppressed than to alleviate their oppression.87 Similarly, people labeled ‘mentally ill’ live sicker, shorter lives. In the U.S.,88 the U.K.,89 and Canada,90 the mortality rate for adults labeled ‘schizophrenic’ is from 2 to 3.5 times higher than for those not so labeled. This can be explained by the toxic impact of past and present trauma, social discrimination, and the damage caused by medical interventions, or it can be explained by claiming that the mentally distressed are biologically defective. This second, racist explanation is promoted by those who refuse to acknowledge the psychological damage caused by capitalist rule.

The benefit of doubt Capitalism needs biological determinism.91 The claim that human maladies are genetic lets the system off the hook. The claim that inequality, poverty, crime, and war are rooted in genetics makes them seem normal and natural. The claim that ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’ is genetic shifts attention from overcrowded, underfunded, public schools. And the claim that ‘mental illness’ is genetic disregards the many ways that the class system pushes people over the edge. DNA directs the construction of proteins; it does not determine behavior.

Nevertheless, virtually every human behavior has been attributed to genes, including a happy marriage92 and a preference for sweets.93 Over the past 15 years or so, researchers have announced the discovery of ‘genes for’ ‘attentiondeficit disorder,’ ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder,’ ‘manic depression,’ ‘schizophrenia,’ ‘autism,’ ‘dyslexia,’ alcoholism, heroin addiction, high IQ, male homosexuality, sadness, ‘extroversion,’ ‘introversion,’ novelty seeking, impulsivity, violent aggression, anxiety, anorexia, ‘seasonal affective disorder,’ and pathological gambling. So far, not one of those claims has been confirmed.94

An endless repetition of lies can seem like the truth. Consider the Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative, billed as “the largest and most rigorous genetic investigation of eating disorders ever conducted.” According to the study director, The disease ‘anorexia nervosa’ has long been misunderstood. To suffer from anorexia is not a choice you make, it is a genetic disease.95

Anorexia is a serious, life-threatening problem. However, treating it as a genetic disease dismisses the established role of social factors including childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and the impossible expectations that society imposes on young people. While social supports that actually improve health are eliminated as too expensive, the U.S. government authorized $1.5 billion over ten years to sequence the genetic profiles of one million Americans.96

Genetic astrology In the new millennium, genetics has become more than just a scientific authority for political positions; it has also become a scientific cash cow.97

Corporations like 23andMe, LivingDNA, and MyHeritage invite people to send their DNA for analysis to reveal their risk of disease. DNA analysis can identify some genetic diseases, determine parentage, and assist in prenatal counseling. However, with few exceptions, genetic analysis cannot predict whether or not you will develop a disease. In Canada, 56 healthy people volunteered for whole-genome sequencing. All

56 subjects showed “medically relevant findings” that would have warranted further investigation.98 This high rate of ‘false positives’ (identifying problems where none exist)99 is based on the incorrect assumption that genes determine what happens. In real life, social factors are equally important. DNA ancestry tests are based on two racist assumptions: that people can be divided into distinct genetic subgroups and that a person’s identity is based on their ancestry. There is no scientific basis for either assumption.100 Genetic ancestry testing is a form of astrology that looks to the past instead of the future. We know for certain that everyone alive today descended from the same group of people who originated in Africa. Identifying who migrated where after leaving the Motherland, and how they might be related to you, cannot be determined with any scientific accuracy, and the commercial ancestry industry make no such claim. They state that their services are for recreational purposes only. However, their compelling infomercials imply otherwise, inviting you to discover ‘who you are.’ The game is not in the science, which is real high-tech DNA sequence data, but in the fabrication of meaning for those data. What is for sale is neither science nor facts of nature, but a contrived feeling of connection to others and to a mythic history.101

In exchange for a fictional story, the company profits twice: from direct sales and from the commercial potential of an expanding DNA database.102

National genes? Belief in the power of DNA to ‘prove identity’ has real-world implications. White supremacists are using DNA analysis to support their belief in fundamental differences between ‘races,’103 and States are using genetic tests to deny refugee claims. In 2009, the U.K. Border Agency initiated the Human Provenance Pilot Project (HPPP) with the aim of using genetic ancestry testing to vet refugee claims. Somali applicants escaping persecution were eligible for asylum, so if the tests indicated someone was from Kenya, he or she was scheduled for deportation.104

There are no biologically distinct human subgroups, let alone sub-groups defined by national borders.

The HPPP stands as a salutary warning of the ways in which supposedly objective technologies of identification are increasingly being used at national borders as a way of further disempowering the already vulnerable.105

While some Indigenous groups believe that DNA ancestry-testing can validate their claims to treaty rights and compensation,106 other groups reject it as fake science. Suspicious of Toronto-based laboratory Viaguard Accu-Metrics, Louis Côté sent in his DNA for analysis along with a swab from his girlfriend’s pet Chihuahua. When the tests came back, the results indicated both man and dog shared the same 20-percent Indigenous ancestry.107

Indigenous identity is not based on biology, but on the shared experience of kinship, culture, language, and colonial oppression.108

Conclusion Despite the fact that humanity is one biological family, racist divisions dominate society. The more genetic theories of human behavior are accepted, the more acceptable racism becomes. The concept of ‘racial equality’ is a contradiction. As long as humanity is divided into ‘races,’ there can be no equality.

6. Eugenics then and now For the capitalist class, nothing exists in this world except for the sake of money. They know no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.1 —Frederich Engels (1820-1895)

Biological determinism provides the theoretical foundation for racism, eugenics, and genocide. This chapter examines the social roots and continuing impact of eugenics and genocide.

Roots of eugenics ‘Eugenic’ literally means ‘well born.’ Eugenics is based on the assumption that people in the upper classes are biologically superior to everyone else. The roots of eugenics stretch back to early class societies. Landowners believed they were superior beings, entitled to wealth and power, and they treated landless peasants as unworthy and expendable. Inheritance laws added a biological factor to this entitlement hierarchy. Fast forward a few thousand years to ancient Egypt, where the ruling class claim to be descended from gods with the ability to pass their inborn superiority to their descendants. Unworthiness was also thought to be inherited. In the Christian myth, Adam and Eve disobey God and pass this ‘original sin’ to all their descendants. Throughout the feudal period, ruling families upheld the ‘right of birth’ also called birthright, blue blood, or royal blood, and they waged bloody battles over who was the ‘legitimate’ heir. For the capitalist class to defeat feudalism, they had to challenge the right of birth. The French Revolution (1789-99) did so by beheading the aristocracy, and the American Revolution (1765-83) proclaimed that “all men are created equal.” However, class rule is incompatible with genuine democracy.

The feudal aristocracy had used religion to justify their rule. Having broken the power of the Church, the capitalist class needed something different that was powerful enough to justify class inequality, wealth inheritance, imperial conquest, Indigenous genocide, Black slavery, and lack of support for the growing number of sick, injured, and destitute workers. Their solution was racist eugenics.

Malthus Having harnessed science to build their industrial economy, the capitalist class looked to science to secure their political rule. The British Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) argued that population growth will always outstrip food production and, even if society could feed everyone, feeding the poor would only cause them to multiply. Either way, there will always be “a race of poor people,” and the problem is not how to support them, but how to reduce their numbers. This was not science, but pseudoscience – ruling-class propaganda made to look like science. As Marx observed, The hatred of the English working classes for Malthus was thus fully justified and the people’s instinct was correct, in that they felt he was no man of science, but a bought advocate of their opponents, a shameless sycophant of the ruling classes.2

Malthus was wrong. Poverty is not caused by poor people having too many children; it is caused by capitalists hoarding the wealth. To hide this unpalatable truth, the capitalist class embraced and popularized Malthus’ theory.

Galton and Spencer Nineteenth-century Britain was rocked by working-class revolt against the brutality of industrial capitalism. In 1845, Frederich Engels attributed poverty, drunkenness, crime, disease, and disability to capitalist exploitation.3 Three years later, The Communist Manifesto4 called on workers to solve their problems by overthrowing the capitalist order.

To defend their rule, the capitalists argued that poverty, drunkenness, crime, disease, and disability were signs of biological inferiority, and their solution was to reduce the number of ‘biological defectives.’ Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) coined the term ‘eugenics’ in 1883. In 1907, he founded the Eugenics Education Society to promote “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.”5 Everyone wants to improve society; however, the two classes have different ideas about what this means. Does it mean providing all children with the means to thrive? Or does it mean eliminating children that rulers deem ‘undesirable’? Does it mean directing social resources to improve everyone’s life? Or does it mean restricting resources to improve only some people’s lives? As a member of the ruling class, Galton blamed social problems on biological defects. He argued that society could be improved if those of ‘superior breeding stock’ had more children and the ‘biologically defective’ were blocked from reproducing. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution explained that the organisms most likely to survive are not necessarily the strongest or the smartest, but those best suited to their environment. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) perverted Darwin’s theory to argue that poor people are biologically defective, so helping them survive disrupts the process of ‘natural selection’ and undermines the robustness of the species. Spencer used faulty logic. The concept ‘survival of the fittest’ applies to animals who cannot change their environment but must adapt to it. In contrast, human beings can create different environments to elicit different behaviors. Pre-class societies were structured to reward compassion, cooperation, and sharing. Under capitalist rule, selfishness, callousness, and greed are rewarded in business and politics. That is how people like Trump, Bezos, and Gates built their wealth and power.

Malthus, Galton, and Spencer’s arguments are all circular. They begin with the assumption that those who rule are biologically superior.6 It follows that the suffering of the exploited and oppressed is not caused by their social conditions but by their inferior biology. This eugenic argument was extended to justify British imperialism.

Imperialism Where there is Indigenous land, there is wealth underneath it.7

Imperialism is the stage of capitalism in which corporations have grown so large that they escape their national borders in search of new lands, cheaper labor, and larger markets.8 However, ‘new lands’ are typically inhabited by Indigenous people.9 The capitalist class do not share, and compensation would reduce profits, so conquerors take what they want by force. Their moral justification is the racist belief that ‘savage barbarians’ are no more entitled to the land, or compensation for its loss, than animals in the forest. The model for British imperialism in North America was the earlier conquest of Indigenous Celtic tribes inhabiting Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The English invaders “saw themselves as conquistadores subduing the barbaric and pagan Irish, just as their Spanish counterparts were bringing the Indians to subjection.”10 Certain traits of the Gaelic way of life were accepted as evidence that the Irish were barbarians, and the English thus satisfied themselves that they were dealing with a culturally inferior people who had to be subdued by extralegal methods.11

To destroy a society, one must separate people from their land, prohibit their language and customs, and prevent the transmission of social values and cultural practices to subsequent generations. This recipe for imperial conquest has been repeated countless times around the world. The military force Indigenous people from their lands, then State officials do the rest. In Canada, For years, government officials withheld food from Aboriginal people until they moved to their

appointed reserves, forcing them to trade freedom for rations. Once on reserves, food placed in ration houses was withheld for so long that much of it rotted while the people it was intended to feed fell into a decades-long cycle of malnutrition, suppressed immunity, and sickness from tuberculosis and other diseases.12

“Within a generation, Aboriginal bison hunters went from being the ‘tallest in the world,’13 due to the quality of their nutrition, to a population so sick, they were believed to be racially more susceptible to disease.”14 The State outlaws the use of Indigenous languages and customs and forcibly separates children from their communities. The Church demands submission to capitalist values, insisting on individuality instead of community; submission to authority instead of collective decision-making; subordination of women instead of gender equality; premarital chastity, heterosexual marriage, and marital fidelity instead of free sexual choices; punishment for unconventional behavior instead of embracing differences; and control of children instead of encouraging their creativity. Throughout North America, Indigenous children were taken from their families and incarcerated in child prisons euphemistically named ‘residential schools.’ In Canada, between 1883 and 1998, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were imprisoned in these institutions of genocide, whose stated purpose was to “kill the Indian” inside the child.15, 16 Indigenous children were assigned English names, or simply numbers, and forbidden to use their real names. Their long hair was cut, and they were not allowed to speak their language, wear their own clothes, pray to their gods, or communicate with their families, including any siblings who were incarcerated with them. They endured a constant stream of racist slurs, were systematically starved, subjected to physical and sexual assault,17 and used in barbaric medical experiments.18 To teach them their place in capitalist society, they were put to work in local mines, mills, and laundries as slave labor. Thousands perished. The exact number is unknown because no one cared to keep track.19 20 Every imperial power has used the ‘residential school’ model in an effort to destroy Indigenous communities, and the outcome is always the same. As a result of the boarding-school system, children became fully State-dependent in many places

and deprived of a family upbringing. They also lost their native mother-tongues. At the age of 15 or 17, they returned to their families as complete strangers, with no knowledge of traditional native culture or of home life.21

Genocide As early as 1928 Hitler was [admiring how] Americans had “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage.”22

‘Genocide’ was first defined in international law after World War II. Because the victors make the rules, Germany was the only nation prosecuted. None of the Allied nations were held accountable for their acts of mass murder, including the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.23 The 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “any of [five] acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.”24 These five acts are: • killing members of the group. • causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. • deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. • imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. • forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Genocide does not require all members of a group to be killed. The Nazi Holocaust qualified as genocide even though it did not eliminate the Jewish population. A group that has suffered genocide can also grow in numbers, as Indigenous peoples have done in North America. Genocide is shockingly common and typically denied by using substitute terms like ‘ethnic cleansing.’ The 20th century alone includes the Nazi Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Balkan genocides, the Indonesian genocide, the Guatemalan

genocide, the Bangladesh genocide, the Cambodian genocide, the Kurdish genocide, the Darfur genocide, and the Rwandan genocide. Genocide continues today against Indigenous peoples, ‘ethnic minorities,’ and rebellious populations on all continents, including Palestinians in the Middle East, Roma in Europe, Irish in the U.K., Maori in New Zealand, Aborigines in Australia, Uyghurs in China, and Rohingya in Myanmar, to name just a few.

Genocide is genocide The purpose of genocide is to destroy the ability of the targeted group to function as a coherent, self-governing community. Once this is achieved, the remaining victims may be given a place in society on terms set by the conquerors who benefit from their continued subjugation. That place is at the bottom of the social ladder. In 1952, Canada ratified the U.N. Genocide Convention even though “Canada’s treatment of Native Peoples in general, and its creation and operation of residential schools in particular, was and continues to be nothing short of genocide.”25 Canada tries to sanitize its past genocidal policies by calling them ‘cultural genocide’ or ‘psychological genocide’. There are no such things. Genocide is genocide. Not only do these terms imply a lesser crime, they undermine efforts to end continuing genocidal policies and to compensate for the damage caused.26 The present-day treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States still meets the definition of genocide: imposing substandard and health-destroying conditions, forcibly removing children, sterilizing people against their will, and systematically restricting the number of people ‘entitled’ to legal Indigenous status.27 Indigenous people are only 5 percent of the Canadian population, yet 25 percent of the men and 36 percent of the women in Canadian prisons are Indigenous.28 Government benefits provided to Indigenous people are used against them. In

exchange for the loss of ancestral lands, the U.S. government established the Indian Health Service (IHS). Its stated purpose is, “to raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest level.”29 In practice, the IHS is an agent of State-imposed genocide. Between 1970 and 1976, the IHS coercively sterilized between 25 and 50 percent of Indigenous women in America.30 Fewer Indigenous people lowers the cost of mandated services as well as the risk of rebellion. The capitalist class still profit from the expropriation of Indigenous lands and natural resources, and they still meet resistance, so they must continue their genocidal attacks. Returning Indigenous lands or paying fair compensation would bankrupt the capitalist class. Instead, they attack the ability of Indigenous peoples to defend their communities, treaty rights, land, and water – even their right to exist.31 Deliberately and systematically deprived of clean water, safe housing, nutritious food, and other necessities, Indigenous communities suffer the highest infant mortality rates, the lowest lifespans, and the most severe medical and social problems. These impoverished conditions, imposed by their imperial masters, are then used as ‘evidence’ in a circular argument that Indigenous peoples are culturally backward, mentally inferior, and incapable of governing themselves.

Black genocide The United States waited 40 years to ratify the U.N. Genocide Convention out of fear that America would be held liable for its own genocidal practices.32 Not only did America’s treatment of Indigenous people meet the legal criteria for genocide, so did its treatment of Black Americans. In 1951, the American Civil Rights Congress, represented by lawyer William Patterson, presented a petition to the U.N. entitled We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United

States Government Against the Negro People. The petition indicted the president; Congress; the Supreme Court; the Attorney General; the Department of Justice; 11 Southern states; the Ku Klux Klan; the Morgan, Rockefeller, Du Pont, and Mellon corporations; and seven individuals accused of promoting White supremacy and inciting racist violence. At a time when Washington was charging the U.S.S.R. and its allies with all manner of human rights deprivations, Patterson’s indictment hit with the force of a rifle shot between the eyes and set U.S. foreign policy back on its heels. No wonder that Patterson’s passport was confiscated upon his return from Paris after having presented the petition.33

Patterson’s petition was squashed by U.S. emissaries including Eleanor Roosevelt, head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.34 In the 1960s, Malcolm X and his Organization of Afro-American Unity prepared another petition to the United Nations, charging genocide against Black Americans. The charges included killings by police, killings by incited gangs, killings by the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Councils on the basis of ‘race,’ which violate the Constitution of the United States, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human’ Rights and the Genocide Convention.35

Before he could present the petition, Malcolm X was assassinated. The FBI was concerned about Malcolm X’s growing influence in America, and the CIA was concerned over his efforts to link the struggle of African Americans with national liberation struggles in Africa and the Third World.36

Eugenics and psychiatry Capitalist production results in the accumulation of wealth at one end of society and an accumulation of misery at the other. The capitalists want the first part of this equation while rejecting any responsibility for its consequences. They want to extract wealth with no threat of rebellion from those they exploit and no obligation to those they harm. Under capitalist rule, the sick, injured, disabled, and destitute are treated as a financial liability. This ‘surplus population’ cannot be profitably employed,

and the wealthy resent the cost of caring for them. Their solution is eugenics. By the late 19th century, the belief that the ‘socially dependent’ were biologically defective was accepted as ‘common sense.’37 Eugenic policies to restrict their reproduction were endorsed by physicians, scientists, engineers, academics, policy makers, and social workers. Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger, who campaigned for birth control, argued that restricting the fertility of the working class would reduce poverty, crime, and social dependency.38 Prominent intellectuals including George Bernard Shaw, Havelock Ellis, Bertrand Russell, Helen Keller, and H. G. Wells39 also believed that rising rates of poverty, criminality, and ‘madness’ were caused by ‘degenerate races’ having too many children. By the 1920s, eugenics courses were listed on the curricula of most American colleges and universities, and more than 9,000 research papers on eugenics had been published. A 1925 American college textbook, Principles of Genetics, warned, Even under the most favorable surroundings there would still be a great many people who are always on the border line of self-supporting existence and whose contribution to society is so small that the elimination of their stock would be beneficial.40

The largest group of people dependent on public support were the ‘feebleminded’ and ‘mentally ill,’ and eugenic campaigns to reduce their numbers were motivated by three factors: the belief that ‘mental defectiveness’ is inherited, concern that rising numbers of ‘mental defectives’ threatened society, and the growing cost of institutional care. Eugenics was built into psychiatry from the start. The founder of modern psychiatric diagnostic systems, Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) promoted eugenics in Germany, warning that the ‘Aryan race’ was degenerating into ‘mental illness’ because of ‘race’ contamination. Kraepelin publicly supported The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, which was used to justify medical executions of the ‘mentally ill’ and the subsequent Nazi Holocaust.41 In America, asylum psychiatrists stood at the forefront of the eugenics movement. The theory that mental impairment is inherited appeared to explain their failure to cure their patients. The belief that ‘inferior breeds’ had

more children appeared to explain why the number of patients kept rising. Unless something were done, psychiatrists feared that overcrowded asylums would reduce them to the role of simple jailers. Support for eugenics was much weaker among psychiatrists with wealthy patients who were offended by suggestions that they came from ‘inferior stock.’42 Genocidal policies against ‘mental defectives’ included sexual segregation, marriage restrictions, sterilization, and euthanasia.

No right to reproduce Eugenicists argued that ‘mental defectives’ should be sexually segregated in institutions until they were too old to breed. A flurry of asylum building followed, and in 1929 the American Journal of Heredity announced that “segregation of the insane is fairly complete.” By 1933, there were no states where they could marry.43 Seeking tougher measures, psychologist Lewis Terman, an advisor to the American Eugenics Society, proposed a national sterilization campaign for “curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and eliminating an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency.”44 In 1907, the state of Indiana passed the world’s first compulsory sterilization law on the basis that “heredity plays a most important part in the transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility.” In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of forced sterilization on the basis that, it is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from breeding their kind.45

In 1931, the president of the American Psychiatric Association advised, I believe the time has arrived when we should, as an association, again most strongly express our approval of the procedure of sterilization as an effective effort to reduce the number of the defective population.46

A total of 30 states allowed the forced sterilization of epileptics, alcoholics, drug addicts, orphans, inmates of institutions, and those labeled insane,

idiotic, imbecilic, moronic, or ‘feeble-minded.’ The ‘feeble-minded’ included juvenile delinquents, the ‘morally defective,’ anyone who performed poorly on an I.Q. test, and people from ‘inferior races.’ Patient records from the 1920s document hundreds of individuals in their late teens and early 20s sterilized for dementia praecox (‘schizophrenia’), epilepsy, manic depression, psychosis, feeblemindedness, or mental deficiency.47

The unemployed were also targeted. In response to the Great Depression, the 3rd International Congress of Eugenics met in New York City to plan the mass sterilization of unemployed workers. As one speaker declared, A major portion of this vast army of unemployed are social inadequates, and in many cases mental defectives, who might have been spared the misery they are now facing if they had never been born.48

‘Race’ purity In the early 1930s, Nazi lawyers were engaged in creating a race law founded on antimiscegenation law and race-based immigration, naturalization, and second-class citizenship law. They went looking for foreign models and found them – in the United States of America.49

In his book Hitler’s American Model (2017), James Whitman reveals how the Nazis’ 1935 Nuremberg Laws banning marriages between Germans and Jews and revoking German citizenship for Jews, Romani, and Black people were modeled on American law. In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that enslaved Black people were not citizens of the United States but were “of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the White race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the White man was bound to respect.”50 The United States also stood at the forefront in the creation of forms of de jure and de facto second-class citizenship for Blacks, Filipinos, Chinese, and others; this too was of great interest to the Nazis, engaged as they were in creating their own forms of second-class citizenship for Germany’s Jews. As for race mixing between the sexes, the United States stood at the forefront there as well. America was a beacon of anti-miscegenation law, with 30 different state regimes – many of them outside the South, and all of them carefully studied, catalogued, and debated by Nazi lawyers. 51

When Germany used America’s model sterilization law to draft its 1933 Nazi Act for Averting Descendants Afflicted with Hereditary Diseases, the New England Journal of Medicine proclaimed, “Germany is perhaps the most progressive nation in restricting fecundity among the unfit.”52 The American Neurological Association praised German sterilization laws, and the Rockefeller Foundation donated more than $400,000 to German eugenics research, a huge sum at the time. Over the following 12 years, Nazi Germany sterilized an estimated two million people and physically exterminated millions more. Euthanasia of the mentally and physically impaired was standard hospital practice. At the Nuremberg trials after the war, Nazi doctors accused of eugenics practices pleaded that they had only followed the American example. The American Journal of Psychiatry had published numerous articles supporting euthanasia for mentally disabled children, who “should never have been born – nature’s mistakes.”53

Population reduction When the horror of the Nazi genocide discredited talk of ‘race purity,’ the eugenics movement rebranded itself. The poor would still be condemned as a blight on society, not for being genetically defective, but for being too numerous. In 1943, four million people in India were deliberately starved to death when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered food to be exported from India and stockpiled elsewhere. When reminded of the suffering of his Indian victims, his response was that the famine was their own fault, he said, for “breeding like rabbits.”54

In his book The Road to Survival (1948), William Vogt warned that the greatest threat to humanity is too many poor people, and the United Nations “should not ship food to keep alive ten million Indians and Chinese this year, so that 50 million may die five years hence.”55 Like Malthus, Vogt condemned advocates of the poor who, “through medical

care and improved sanitation are responsible for more millions living more years in increasing misery.” Every argument, every concept, every recommendation made in The Road to Survival would become integral to the conventional wisdom of the post-Hiroshima generation of educated Americans, would for decades to come be repeated, and restated, and incorporated again and again into streams of books, articles, television commentaries, speeches, propaganda tracts, posters, and even lapel buttons.56

In his book The Population Bomb (1968), Paul Erlich warned that global disaster could only be prevented by restricting population growth. His malthusian rant became an American best-seller.

Malthusian fraud Threats of societal collapse, claims that carrying capacity is fixed, and demands for sweeping restrictions on human aspiration are neither scientific nor just. We are not fruit flies, programmed to reproduce until our population collapses. Nor are we cattle, whose numbers must be managed.57

Poverty and environmental destruction are not caused by too many people on the planet. The global birth rate has been falling for decades,58 yet environmental destruction is escalating. Nor is hunger the result of too many people and not enough food.59 The world already produces more than 1½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s enough to feed ten billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050.60

People starve because food is produced for profit, and the poor cannot afford it because the capitalist class hoard the wealth. They also hoard the food. In the United States, a record surplus of 2.5 billion pounds of chicken, turkey, pork, and beef are preserved in cold storage, along with 1.39 billion pounds of cheese.61 The cry of ‘overpopulation’ serves to hide the crimes of the capitalist class: beggars crowding the streets of prosperous cities; millions starving while surplus food is destroyed; people dying because medicine is priced out of reach; one part of the population working too much, while the rest are desperate for work; obscene wealth growing alongside desperate poverty.

Culling the poor After World War II, national independence movements challenged imperial domination in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. Because the needs of the oppressed conflict with the needs of corporations, and because suffering encourages the spread of socialist ideas,62 the capitalist class launched ‘population reduction’ programs to reduce the numbers of poor people. The United States began testing mass anti-fertility measures in its territory of Puerto Rico. By the end of the 1960s, more than one-third of Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been sterilized.63 Billions of dollars poured into foreign and domestic sterilization programs.64 The men chosen to lead these programs included prominent eugenicists like Frederick Osborn, former director of the American Eugenics Society. Between 1966 and 1979, Dr. R. T. Ravenholt served as director of the Office of Population for the U.S. Agency for International Development. An enthusiastic advocate for mass sterilization, Ravenholt stated that one-quarter of all fertile women on the planet would have to be sterilized in order to maintain “the normal operation of U.S. commercial interests around the world.”65 He was referring to poor women, not wealthy women. When India was stricken with famine in the mid-1960s, the U.S. government offered food support on the condition that India sterilize its poor. Over the following decades, millions of people were coerced into accepting sterilization. Many of the contraceptive drugs and devices that the U.S. sent to poor nations had been banned in America. Technicians were poorly trained, sanitary conditions were virtually non-existent, and the reuse of needles to inject contraceptives contributed to the spread of HIV. Because poor nations were forced to prioritize ‘population control’ measures, there were insufficient funds to care for the infected, mutilated, and dying victims of this global campaign of genocide against the poor.

Eugenic economies Eugenics was an international movement, and coercive sterilization laws were also adopted in Denmark, Switzerland, and Norway. In Sweden, from the 1930s through the 1970s, up to 60,000 people were sterilized on the grounds of having ‘undesirable’ racial characteristics or otherwise ‘inferior’ qualities, such as very poor eyesight, mental retardation, or an ‘unhealthy sexual appetite.’ Most were in mental institutions or in reform schools.66

Over the same period in Finland, an estimated 11,000 women were sterilized and 4,000 forced to have abortions on the grounds of ‘racial cleansing’ or because of mental or physical impairments.67 A 1971 survey of American gynecologists found that 94 percent supported compulsory sterilization for mothers on welfare with three or more children.68 The majority of physicians were White, Euro-American males who believed that they were helping society by limiting the number of births in low-income, minority families. They assumed that they were enabling the government to cut funding for Medicaid and welfare programs while lessening their own personal tax burden to support these programs. Some of them did not believe that American Indian and other minority women had the intelligence to use other methods of birth control effectively, and [they believed] there were already too many minority individuals causing problems in the nation, including the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.69

In 1974, a U.S. federal judge estimated that 100,000 to 150,000 low-income persons had been “improperly coerced into accepting a sterilization operation under the threat that various federally supported welfare benefits would be withdrawn unless they submitted to irreversible sterilization.”70 Between 1909 and 1979, California sterilized 20,000 inmates in state institutions. California defined sterilization not as a punishment but as a pro- phylactic measure that could simultaneously defend the public health, preserve precious fiscal resources, and mitigate the menace of the ‘unfit’ and ‘feeble-minded.’71

In 1976, the U.S. Hyde Amendment cut 98 percent of federal funding for abortion yet continued to fund 90 percent of the cost of sterilization. Black women were so commonly sterilized that the procedure was nicknamed, “the

Mississippi appendectomy.”72

Eugenics today The attack against reproductive rights continues.73, 74 Between 2006 and 2010, more than 150 female inmates in California were coercively sterilized.75 In 2012, Project Prevention boasted that sterilizing 4,000 women had saved U.S. taxpayers up to $13 billion in social support.76 In 2017, a Tennessee judge promised 30-day sentence reductions to inmates who agreed to vasectomies or contraceptive implants.77 The ongoing eugenic sterilization of people with disabilities, prisoners, poor people, people from certain racialized ethnic groups and Indigenous people (especially women) affects precisely the same sorts of people explicitly targeted by eugenics before 1945. These sterilizations are not a reminder of a eugenics past. They result from continuing and new eugenics pipelines.78

The return of biological psychiatry in the 1980s revived the eugenic concept of mental suffering as a biological defect, the eugenic quest to identify the faulty genes responsible, and eugenic policies that strip the psychiatricallylabeled of their rights. While the ‘mentally ill’ are no longer labeled ‘a race of mental defectives,’ they are still treated as such. Today, anyone labeled ‘mentally ill’ can be indefinitely confined, drugged, and electroshocked against their will. Anyone labeled with a psychiatric ‘disorder’ can be denied entry into the United States, even as a visitor.79 Thirty-eight American states authorize or require ‘mental-health’ records to be reported to the national system for checking criminal backgrounds,80 and police are 16 times more likely to kill people labeled ‘mentally ill.’81 Troy Duster is a Black sociologist. His book Backdoor to Eugenics (1990) warned that using genetics to address social problems is inherently racist because there is no scientific basis for dividing people into biological subgroups. Duster is right. Efforts to divide people genetically lead inevitably to racist, eugenic, and genocidal conclusions. This is not because people fail to learn from the past, but because the past is still present, because biological determinism in all of its forms is necessary to justify the capitalist system.

This is evident in racist immigration restrictions, militarized borders, the relentless march to war, and deepening discrimination against people whose only ‘crime’ is the location of their birth, their poverty, appearance, beliefs, or behaviors. Today, eugenicists teach in colleges and universities, direct Right-wing think tanks, publish best-selling books, and populate the highest levels of government. U.S. President Donald Trump is a eugenicist, not only because he treats immigrants as criminals and Muslims as terrorists, and not only because he described El Salvador, Haiti, and African countries as “shitholes.” In a 2010 CNN interview, Trump stated, Well I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene. I’m a gene believer. Some people cannot genetically handle pressure. Winning is something innate. You have the winning gene. I’m proud to have that German blood.82

Conclusion It is a mistake to assume that eugenics and genocide occur only in extreme Right-wing conditions. Both are embedded in everyday capitalism and always have been. Since the beginning of colonization, every capitalist regime has practiced racism, eugenics, and genocide against populations who stand in the way of capital accumulation.

Part III. Containing rebellion

7. The drive to standardize We can change people so they fit in, or we can change the world so it accommodates people.1 —Rachel Perkins

What does it mean to be normal? What does it mean that someone’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are abnormal? Does it mean they are simply different, or does it mean that something is wrong? Who decides? This chapter explains how industrial capitalism transformed the mathematical concept of ‘normal’ into the social value of ‘expected,’ and how the definition of what is socially acceptable becomes increasingly narrow as the capitalist factory system permeates society.

What is normal? When something is measured many times, then the measurements that occur most often are likely to be correct. This observation led to the concept of the ‘normal distribution,’ which describes how most results are distributed when things are counted, weighed, or measured.2 If you could line up every adult in the world against a wall marked with heights, most would cluster in the middle. The few who were significantly shorter would trail to one side, and the few who were significantly taller would trail to the other side. A line drawn along the ground to contain this crowd would run close to the wall at the one end, bulge at the middle where most people are standing and return to the wall at the other end. This is a normal distribution, also called a ‘bell curve’ because of its shape. Using this concept, one can predict that the height of any random person on the street will likely fall near the center of the human height distribution curve. In mathematics, normal describes what is common, typical, or expected. It can be positive (most people love their children). It can also be negative (most people are in debt).

In mathematics, abnormal describes what is uncommon, atypical, or unexpected. It can also be positive (winning a lottery) or negative (an unexpected injury). The mathematical concept of normal is value-free, because it simply describes what is common. Normal only becomes positive or negative, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, when people give it a social value.

Values Social values are not universal; they are rooted in time and place. In ancient Greece, it was normal and accepted for upper-class men to take male lovers. The same behavior was illegal in Victorian England. At times in the past it was normal and accepted that men beat their wives. Today, such behavior is condemned in some societies and promoted in others. In cooperative societies, values like humility, compassion, and sharing predominate. In class-divided societies, the dominant values are those that serve the ruling class. Feudal values were based on the belief that one’s social position is determined by God and cannot be challenged: God had placed the feudal aristocracy at the center of society, just as He had placed the Earth at the center of the universe. Galileo’s evidence that the Earth revolved around the Sun threatened the feudal order, and he was convicted of heresy. When the capitalist class overthrew the feudal aristocracy, social values changed dramatically. The capitalist class claim that anyone can rise in society through perseverance and hard work, and those who insist that the system is rigged are treated as ‘heretics.’

Double standard Ruling classes define ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ as whatever serves them and ‘abnormal’ and ‘unacceptable’ as whatever challenges them.

It is considered normal for police to kill unarmed people and abnormal for civilians to protest such killings. It is considered normal to blame immigrants for social problems and abnormal to blame the capitalist class. It is considered normal to be subordinate at work and abnormal to strike. It is considered normal to work all your life to make others rich and abnormal to question this arrangement. Any challenge to dominant beliefs is a challenge to the social order that requires them. The capitalist class have a double standard, where behavior that is rewarded in their class is punished in the working class. A president who launches a war is celebrated as a patriot, while a worker who kills one person is imprisoned. A capitalist whose products kill thousands retires with a generous pension, while a person who has injured no one can be imprisoned for life. The ruling class strive to control every aspect of our lives, yet the person who reports being controlled by outside forces is labeled ‘paranoid.’ The practice of forcibly confining people who are labeled ‘a danger to themselves or others’ does not apply to politicians who eliminate vital social programs, corporations that destroy the environment, or media hosts who spew racist hatred.

Standardization To ‘standardize’ is to bring someone or something into conformity with an expected state, to make consistent or uniform, bring into line, regulate, equalize, homogenize, regiment, or normalize. In some situations, this can be useful. We need buildings, bridges, airplanes, and vehicles to meet safety standards, and we expect air, water, and food to meet health and environmental standards. The concept of standardization originated with the capitalist factory system. Making unique objects by hand takes time and effort. Standardizing production enables large numbers of identical objects to be produced more quickly, with less labor. To produce thousands of identical screws, the metal must have a uniform composition and the production process must be consistent. The machines

and those who work them must perform the same moves, in the same order, repeatedly, day after day. Maximum profit results from eliminating ‘unnecessary’ steps in production and ‘unnecessary’ human movements. The main obstacle to standardization is nature, which is organic, complex, and diverse. Nature includes natural resources, the workers who transform them into commodities, and the people who purchase those commodities. To maximize profit, the capitalist class engineer plants and animals to eliminate variation,3 reduce workers to the status of interchangeable cogs in a machine and convince people of all nations to desire the same things. The more the capitalist factory model permeates society, the less tolerance there is for deviation from ‘the norm,’ and the more people are labeled as deviant, defective, or sick.

Standardizing work Chinese businesses and the military are fitting workers with headgear that monitors their brain waves and emotions to increase productivity and profits.4

In the late 19th century, mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) developed a system of ‘scientific management,’ later called ‘taylorism,’ to increase profits by standardizing production. Taylor’s first principle was the elimination of skill by reducing the traditional knowledge of workers to simple rules and formulas. Managers could then redesign the work for maximum efficiency. As one 19th-century writer observed, It is not, truly speaking the labor that is divided, but the men: divided into mere segments of men – broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.5

Taylor’s second principle was the separation of thought from action. All mental work is removed from the shop floor to the planning department, so those who make the decisions do none of the work, and those who do the work make none of the decisions.

Removing the thinking, creative aspect of work reduces the worker to ‘a hired hand’ that serves the machine. One plant manager boasted, “We hire Chevrolet workers from the neck down,” and Henry Ford complained, “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” In this way the remarkable development of machinery becomes, for most of the working population, the source not of freedom but of enslavement, not of mastery but of helplessness, and not of the broadening of the horizon of labor but of the confinement of the worker within a blind round of servile duties in which the machine appears as the embodiment of science and the worker as little or nothing.6

Taylor’s third principle was control of every step of the labor process. Management gives each worker detailed instructions describing the tasks to be accomplished, the method to be used, and the time allotted for each task. In the 1930s, [Detroit auto plants] were notorious for their speed-up systems. They had men with stopwatches timing the workers to see if they could squeeze in one or two more operations. It was so oppressive that there were several cases of men just cracking up completely and taking a wrench and striking their foreman. When that happened, the worker was sentenced to an insane asylum in Pontiac, Michigan.7

This dehumanizing process reduces the worker to an animated tool of management, a general-purpose machine that can be adapted to a variety of simple tasks or replaced with a robot that makes no demands.

Lean production In the mid-20th century, Toyota launched what is now called ‘lean production,’ or taylorism on speed. Lean production aims to eliminate every second that reduces productivity. Workers call it ‘management by stress’ where a worker’s performance is measured against rising expectations of output over shorter periods of time. Those who are not ‘up to standard’ are pushed to keep pace with those who are, who in turn are pressed to work even faster. Those who cannot maintain the pace are simply replaced. The relentless drive for profit has pushed the speed of production beyond human limits. U.S. poultry plants are allowed to process up to 175 birds per minute, yet the industry wants to push that number higher.8 As it now stands,

Routinely, poultry workers say they are denied breaks to use the bathroom. They urinate and defecate while standing on the line; they wear diapers to work; they restrict intake of liquids and fluids to dangerous degrees; they endure pain and discomfort while they worry about their health and job security. Once a poultry plant roars to a start at the beginning of the day, it doesn’t stop until all the chickens are processed. Workers are reduced to pieces of the machine, little more than the body parts that they hang, cut, trim, and load – rapidly and relentlessly.9

Between 1973 and 2000, the hourly output-per-worker nearly doubled in the U.S. That is, all the goods and services produced in 1973 could be produced in half the time by 2000. If the benefits of doubling productivity had been shared, We actually could have chosen the four-hour day. Or a working year of six months. Or every worker in the United States could be taking every other year off from work – with pay.10

This did not happen because the capitalist class claimed all the benefits of rising productivity, leaving workers to suffer more stress, lower pay, and more part-time, precarious work, all of which contribute to mental distress. The assembly-line model of production has been adopted by parcel delivery companies, call centers, schools, hospitals, warehouses, and restaurants. Today, it is difficult to find any job where workers’ movements are not monitored and controlled to eliminate ‘inefficiency.’ Amazon has patented designs for a wristband that can precisely track where warehouse employees are placing their hands and use vibrations to nudge them in a different direction.11

The factory school The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows best. All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots.12

Standardized workers require standardized education. Unlike upper-class schools that emphasize initiative and creativity, working-class schools emphasize docility and obedience. To that end, working-class schools are run like factories with rigid curricula, total surveillance, zero tolerance for mistakes, and standardized testing that requires all students to answer the same questions in the same way.13

An emphasis on standardized testing restricts learning to what will improve student test scores, and scripted teaching programs aim to control “everything that happens in the classroom, right down to instructions on the appropriate hand gestures to make while teaching.” As one principal instructed his teachers, When I stand in the hallway, I should be able to hear all fourth grades saying the same thing. Do not deviate from the scripted program and do not fall behind in the pacing plan.14

Children naturally rebel against being forced to learn rote material that has nothing to do with their lives. Being distracted, rebellious, and energetic used to be considered normal childhood behaviors. Today’s factory-model schools treat these behaviors as pathological. Under ‘zero tolerance’ policies, even minor acts of defiance can provoke punishment15 or psychiatric labeling.16 To control child behavior, schools and parents turn to strategies motivated by both the criminal justice and mental health systems. For example, school suspension and expulsion rates in the United States have increased alongside the use of therapy or medication for children diagnosed with behavior disorders.17

Schools that emphasize standardized behavior stigmatize students who are different for any reason. These children get the message that they are not ‘normal,’ and their distressed parents are forced to navigate adversarial, bureaucratic processes to prevent their kids from being excluded from school and society altogether.18

‘Special needs’ Children of color in the United States are more than 3 times more likely than White children to be labeled cognitively impaired.19

It is considered more ‘cost-effective’ to segregate students with diverse needs and abilities than to accommodate them. Children in ‘special-needs’ classrooms or facilities rarely get the support they need, especially when they are poor or not White.20 Instead, they are given meaningless tasks, and when they protest, they are punished for ‘misbehaving.’21 The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) in Canton, Massachusetts, describes itself as “a special needs day and residential school” for ages five and up that

serves “disturbed students with conduct, behavior, emotional, and/or psychiatric problems, as well as those with intellectual disabilities or on the autism spectrum.”22 JRC is notorious for inflicting punishment through an electronic device that is worn by students at all times. Using a remote control, staff can activate the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED) to deliver a shock more powerful than a police Taser. JRC also uses prolonged restraint, food deprivation, deep muscle pinching, and sensory assault techniques to ‘manage’ student behavior. In 2002, a video surfaced showing a Black teenager, Andre McCollins, being shocked for not removing his jacket. When he screamed in pain and tried to hide under a table, he was shocked again. When he cried out for help, he was shocked again. For more than seven hours, McCollins was strapped face down to a four-point restraint board and shocked 31 times, while he screamed and begged and apologized. All but two of the shocks were for “tensing up” or for “screaming.” When his mother visited three days later, Andre was unresponsive. She took him to hospital, where he remained for five weeks.23 She later testified, “I never signed up for him to be tortured, terrorized, and abused. I had no idea that they tortured the children in the school.”24 Protests organized by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Disability Rights International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and even the United Nations have failed to stop the use of electroshock at JRC.25 In 2018, a judge ruled that JRC could continue using the GED because its use does not violate “the accepted standard of care for treating individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”26

Medical assembly lines Healing is replaced with treating, caring is supplanted by managing, and the art of listening is taken over by technological procedures. Doctors no longer minister to a distinctive person but concern themselves with fragmented, malfunctioning biological parts. The distressed human being is frequently absent from the transaction.27

Regardless of how medical systems are funded, they all strive to raise productivity by moving people through the system more quickly. Modern hospitals function like factories, where different departments attend to different parts of the body in assembly-line fashion, moving patients through the system within predetermined time limits. Health Information Technology (HIT) is the key to raising medical productivity.28 HIT includes electronic health or medical records (EHRs or EMRs), computer-based diagnostic and treatment protocols, and radiofrequency identification tracking badges that reveal the wearer’s location and how much time is spent on each task. Skilled workers have more leverage on the job, and HIT degrades skills. Complex tasks are broken into smaller units that can be completed by lessskilled, lower-paid staff: physicians are replaced with nurse practitioners, registered nurses with practical nurses, practical nurses with orderlies, and so on, to the point that clerks with no medical training approve or deny access to medical treatments.29 This process of ‘deskilling’ reduces the complexity of tasks, making it easier to speed up the work or automate it. The result for medical staff is exhaustion and emotional burnout.30 EMRs and EHRs are a major source of frustration for clinicians who must follow preprogrammed decision trees and check numerous boxes.31 “For every hour that physicians interact directly with patients, they spend almost two additional hours on EHR and desk work.”32 Apart from the obvious perceived lack of caring and empathy that EMRs in patient rooms may exacerbate, there also should be serious concerns about what a physician might miss by being distracted by data entry and prompts from [the computer].33

A standardized, one-size-fits-all approach is medically dangerous. If only both RNs and patients could be replaced by machines, managers would finally be satisfied. Of course, patients can’t be replaced by machines, so management wants to do the next best thing: treat them like machines. An information technology can’t recognize differences among patients that weren’t programmed into it beforehand. It can only treat patients like machines, as if they always behaved as expected.34

Standardized medicine can help the average patient with the average problem; however, it can be disastrous when patients fall outside the norm, as many do. No medical problem follows a fully predictable course, and people

can respond very differently to the same treatments. Standardization, under-staffing, and speedups combine to make ‘medical error’ the third leading cause of death in the United States.35

Standardized suffering Patients crave a partnership with physicians who are as sensitive to their aching souls as to their malfunctioning anatomy.36

There is no room for compassion in standardized medicine.37 Income is not generated when staff take time to speak with patients and their families or to consult with colleagues. From management’s perspective, this is ‘wasted’ time that could be more profitably spent moving more patients through the system. A psychiatrist described how kindness is discouraged in his hospital. Every few months, all staff psychiatrists receive a compilation of length-of-stay statistics, “savable days,” and other related data, listed by individual staff member. Through this process, staff are openly ranked according to the speed with which they discharge their patients, the worst offenders (those who keep their patients in hospital the longest) appearing at the top of the list. These reports, masquerading as “information,” represent an example of public shaming. I wait in vain for rankings of humanistic parameters such as compassion, empathy, and supportiveness toward patients, or even simpler measures such as providing good treatment or treating other staff well.38

Effective psychological support is tailored to the individual, helping them to identify the source of their suffering, make meaning of their experience, and move safely through their crisis. Such individualized care takes time and patience.39 The capitalist class want distressed people returned to work as quickly and cheaply as possible. To meet this demand, psychiatry standardized the response to suffering by grouping distressed people into DSM categories and treating everyone in the same category the same way. DSM checklists, Structured Clinical Interviews, tick-box questionnaires, and scripted interventions can be administered quickly, by non-experts, at low cost. For those who can pay, individualized psychotherapy is available. Everyone else gets assembly-line ‘therapy’ based on standardized interventions.

‘Evidence-based psychotherapy’ is a code word for manualized therapy – most often brief, onesize-fits-all forms of cognitive behavior therapy. ‘Manualized’ means the therapy is conducted by following an instruction manual. Empirical research shows that ‘evidence-based’ therapies are weak treatments. Their benefits are trivial, few patients get well, and even the trivial benefits do not last.40

When patients do not improve, and they typically do not, they are told that therapy does not work for them, and they need drugs. The drugs are also standardized, so that everyone in the same DSM category is prescribed similar drugs. Standardized, assembly-line ‘therapy’ is dehumanizing for both service users and providers. People in distress need someone to listen patiently, empathize with their situation, and help them with their problems for as long as it takes.41 Such individualized care is impossible when the provider is not allowed to deviate from the manual in order to hear a story or explore a person’s needs. Erasing the human connection turns a caring service provider into a technician and a distressed service user into a faulty machine that needs ‘fixing.’

Divorcing cause and effect DSM-2 (1965) signaled psychiatry’s full surrender to standardization. The first DSM (1952) used the term ‘reaction’ to reflect the belief that a ‘mental disorder’ develops in response to adversity. Removing this term from the second edition marked a colossal shift in psychiatry’s response to suffering. Diagnoses like ‘schizophrenic reaction,’ which in DSM-1 had referred to sporadic psychiatric incidents, evolved almost overnight into ‘schizophrenia,’ even if the person’s symptoms were rare or not especially violent. The same was true for terms like ‘paranoid reaction,’ which the DSM-2 task force determined henceforth would be known simply as ‘paranoia.’42

Eliminating ‘reaction’ from the DSM means that the sufferer’s story and their situation no longer matter. Only their ‘symptoms’ matter. Behavior has meaning in the context of people’s lives; psychiatric labeling separates out certain behaviors and calls them part of a disease process. It is impossible to understand what is going on in the life of a person in crisis if his or her behavior is discredited in this way.43

Behavior modification

‘Behavior modification’ is a method for standardizing behavior by rewarding desired actions and ignoring or punishing undesired ones. The reasons for the behavior do not matter. The person’s feelings, needs, and wants do not matter. The person does not matter. Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Do not touch another child, even if that child is your little brother or sister. Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-bystep instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.44

These demands placed on migrant children in U.S. detention are indistinguishable from the demands placed on Indigenous children imprisoned in ‘residential schools.’ Behavior modification is widely used in prisons and psychiatric institutions.45 Inmates are reduced to a powerless state, denied their clothing and personal effects, refused access to the outside world, forbidden to question anything, and closelymonitored. When they display submissive behavior, they may be rewarded with small ‘privileges’ such as using the telephone or wearing their own clothes. Defiance is punished or subdued with drugs. If we accept that children can and should be heavily drugged on a regular basis for purposes of control, then it should be no surprise when this happens on a massive scale with dehumanized children from another country.46

Without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and with little or no medical supervision, distressed children at immigrant detention centers are injected with powerful psychiatric drugs. One child was prescribed ten different shots and pills, including the antipsychotic drugs Latuda, Geodon, and Olanzapine; the Parkinson’s medication Benztropine; the seizure medications Clonazepam and Divalproex; the nerve-medication and antidepressant Duloxetine; and the cognition enhancer Guanfacine.47

When normal is treated as sick Since 1948, the World Health Organization has defined health not as the absence of disease or impairment, but as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. Health and well-being cannot be seen, touched, or

measured; they are social concepts that mean different things to different classes. The working-class definition of ‘well’ includes freedom from pain and exhaustion. The capitalist class define workers as ‘well’ if they are able to work and ‘unwell’ when they cannot work.48 You could be in terrible pain for any reason and still be declared ‘fit to work.’ The class conflict over what it means to be well further victimizes workers, while creating a lucrative business for doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies. Under capitalist rule, any state of being that prevents you from ‘meeting your obligations’ can be labeled an illness. Grieving the death of a loved one for longer than your employer will grant you bereavement leave will qualify you for a psychiatric label of ‘major depressive disorder’ or ‘prolonged grief disorder.’ Because health is defined as the ability to work, the medical system strives to return people to work as quickly as possible, even when work endangers their health. A prime example is ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD), a psychiatric label that is commonly applied to traumatized soldiers. Trauma symptoms are the expected result of traumatic experience. The ‘disorder’ lies in the trauma-inducing event, not in the person’s response. We should expect soldiers to be mentally and emotionally shattered after killing people, witnessing killings, or experiencing life-threatening situations. In the cockeyed world of capitalism, war is treated as ‘normal,’ and the soldier who fails to return from the killing fields intact and ready for the next round of slaughter is stigmatized with a psychiatric label.49 The ‘PTSD’ label shames all trauma survivors. Instead of validating their experiences, psychiatry labels them ‘mentally ill’ and stifles their pain with mind-numbing drugs.50

Disability

As with health and sickness, disability is also socially defined. The more society accommodates different abilities, the fewer people are labeled ‘disabled.’ During World War II, men left the factories for the battlefields, creating a need for other workers to take their place. A 1943 Firestone worker-recruitment film showcased how innovations were making factory work accessible to a diverse labor force. Heavy tools were suspended to make them easier for women to use. Blind workers unraveled the ends of parachute straps. A one-armed man operated a one-handled machine. Deaf workers used sign language to communicate in the noisiest parts of the factory. A man with an impaired leg inspected parts, and an 82year-old cleaned them.51 Everyone benefits when different abilities are accommodated. Redesigning production opened higher-paid industrial jobs to people who had previously been excluded. These innovations also benefited traditional male factory workers by relieving them of the strain of repeated heavy lifting. It takes creativity to accommodate everyone, and the result is more creativity. Scientist Wanda Diaz Merced studies the light emitted by gamma-ray bursts. When she lost her sight, she found a way to translate light into sound waves. She insists, “Science is for everyone. It has to be available to everyone, because we are all natural explorers.”52

Difference as pathology The more life is standardized, the less tolerance there is for human diversity. In the past, people who were ‘different’ were thought of as interesting, eccentric, colorful, or characters. Today, such people are more likely to be feared as ‘suspicious’ or ‘mentally ill.’ Leonard Roy Frank graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and sold real estate in New York City. He then moved to San Francisco where he began reading politics, history, religion, and philosophy. My parents did not appreciate the changes that I was going through. They were very, very

concerned, urging me to see a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist to get some help. I proceeded to tell them that I didn’t need that kind of help. Then, in October of 1962, they insisted that I see a psychiatrist. And when I wouldn’t, they had the psychiatrist visit me by sending the psychiatric police and arresting me. I was removed from my apartment and taken to a local hospital.53

Frank was labeled ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ and forcibly confined for almost eight months, solely because he wore long hair and a beard and had become a vegetarian. Frank’s ‘crime’ was living his life as he wanted, not as his parents and doctors wanted. In a letter to Frank’s parents, his psychiatrists wrote, He still has all his delusional beliefs regarding his beard, dietary regime and religious observances that he had prior to treatment. We hope that in continuing the treatments we will be able to modify some of these beliefs so he can make a reasonable adjustment to life.54

Frank’s ‘treatment’ included 50 insulin coma shock ‘treatments’ and 35 electroconvulsive shocks, many of which were administered while he was in an insulin coma. As he said, “There was nothing worse that they could have done to me, short of a lobotomy.”55

Neurodiversity Many people who meet DSM criteria for a ‘mental disorder’ do not think of themselves as sick. In his book NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (2015), Steve Silberman describes how people labeled ‘autistic’ were persecuted, forcibly sterilized, euthanized, or abandoned in institutions to die of neglect. Today, they are labeled as ‘mentally disordered.’ The DSM-5 criteria for ‘autism spectrum disorder’ are “persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts.”56 The DSM neglects to mention some of the amazing things that people with this label can accomplish. Henry Cavendish was a brilliant scientist and prolific 18th-century inventor who was considered an eccentric recluse. Today, he would be labeled ‘autistic.’ Being wealthy, Cavendish did not need to keep a job or fit in; he was free to theorize and experiment. He was never considered ‘mentally ill,’

and there is no indication that he was distressed by his ‘symptoms’ or would have wished them away. Temple Grandin is a contemporary industrial designer with a rare ability. She can examine complex processes in her mind and identify design defects before anything is actually built. Grandin describes herself as ‘autistic’ and attributes her talent to the different way her mind works. Many ‘autistic’ people insist that they are not sick; their brains are simply wired differently, and their differences are not deficits, but enable them to make unique contributions. They do not want ‘treatment.’ They do not want to be ‘normal.’ They want environments that meet their needs and support their abilities. In that sense, they are no different from everyone else. In cooperative societies, different ways of being and different points of view are useful in solving complex problems. Under capitalism, diversity is a threat because it disrupts the uniformity required to extract maximum profit.

Standardizing perfection Perfectionism, the striving to eliminate all flaws, reflects the capitalist drive for ever-more productivity and ever-higher profits. Its application to human beings is dangerous and damaging. British eugenicist Francis Galton (1822-1911) insisted that humanity could achieve perfection by eliminating its ‘inferior’ members. American eugenicist Charles Davenport (1866-1944) believed that genetic manipulation could produce a harmonious social order with enslaved races serving master races. His model of perfection was the beehive, where every worker-bee does the correct thing at the correct time.57 Today, the demand for perfection dominates society, from zero tolerance for mistakes to the widespread social shaming of less-than-perfect appearance, behavior, and performance. From the 1980s onward, neoliberal governance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has emphasized competitive individualism and people have seemingly responded, in kind, by agitating to perfect themselves and their lifestyles.58

A mass survey of American, Canadian, and British college students found a steady rise in the level of perfectionism from 1989 to 2016.59 Increasingly, young people report that others expect more of them, they expect more of others, and they expect more of themselves. ‘Normalizing’ perfection creates despair that one will fail to measure up. In a 2016 survey of more than 33,000 American college students, 60 percent reported “overwhelming anxiety,” 41 percent reported “overwhelming anger,” 38 percent reported “feeling so depressed that it was difficult to function,” 10 percent had seriously considered suicide, and 2 percent had attempted it. Three-quarters of the students reported a traumatic event over the previous year with more than half reporting three or more traumatic events.60 The same survey administered in Canadian colleges revealed even higher numbers on all counts, with 83 percent of students reporting a traumatic event over the past year and over 60 percent reporting three or more such events.61 We would expect young people to be overwhelmed, even terrified, by a crisis-ridden world where their parents seem powerless to make things right or even protect them.62 Instead of addressing their legitimate concerns, authorities label them ‘mentally ill.’63 Between 2009 and 2015, the number of American students increased by less than 6 percent, while visits to student counseling centers increased 30 percent.64 In Canada, between 2007 and 2016, child and youth visits to emergency departments for “mental health concerns” rose 66 percent and hospital admissions rose 55 percent.65

Self-determination Self-determination is the ability to make your own decisions. It is the opposite of standardization, where those with more power impose their decisions on you. During the 18th century, the right to self-determination was raised in the French Revolution against the aristocracy, the Haitian Revolution against

slavery, and the war to free American colonies from British rule. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, socialist and national-liberation movements also demanded the right to self-determination. In the 1960s, the gay and women’s liberation movements demanded the right to personal self-determination with slogans such as ‘Our bodies. Our choice’ and ‘Not the Church, and not the State. Women will decide our fate.’ While the U.N. Charter includes the right to self-determination, the capitalist class systematically violate this principle in order to profit from seizing Indigenous lands and natural resources, exploiting the working class, oppressing minorities, and subjugating weaker nations. It is impossible to deny the right to self-determination and also relieve suffering. Every year, more than 6,000 American veterans take their lives.66 Calling veteran suicide “a tragedy of staggering proportions,” President Donald Trump established a high-level task force to create more effective anti-suicide programs.67 These programs are likely to fail for the same reason that previous billion-dollar anti-suicide programs have failed: they treat veteran suicide as the problem, instead of addressing the conditions that lead to suicide, and they impose a top-down, standardized solution that ignores what veterans say they need. If reducing veteran suicide were approached on the basis of selfdetermination, we would give veterans what they are asking for: housing, jobs, timely medical care, effective pain relief, personal and family counseling, and an end to wars that create wounded veterans.68 In practice, the capitalist class show no interest in solving veterans’ actual problems, or even easing their pain. Many veterans suffer chronic pain, and they are twice as likely as nonveterans to die from accidental opioid overdose.69 Where medical cannabis is available, the use of opioids drops dramatically.70 An American Legion poll found that 81 percent of veterans and 83 percent of their caregivers support the federal legalization of cannabis to treat physical or mental conditions.71 Nevertheless, veterans are prohibited from accessing medical cannabis

through federally funded programs. Under capitalist rule, more money buys more choices and more selfdeterminism in every area of life. The majority only have real choices when they are provided socially. For example, women with money can always get safe abortions, while working-class women can do so only when safe abortion is available to all. Fortunately, more people are questioning the restriction of personal choices and the demand for standardized behavior. As one young woman put it, We need a revolution. Not only because we don’t have enough jobs, not only because the public health system is no longer functional, not only because our politicians are corrupt or because our teachers are not getting paid. We need a revolution because this system is not a system where people can live the way they are meant to live. This is not a system created by or for the people, but a system created by the untamed power of money alone.72

Conclusion The capitalist class demand standardized behavior in order to raise productivity and secure social compliance. This leads to more people being labeled as deviant, disabled, and sick. As society changes, so does the concept of ‘normal.’ Yesterday’s outliers (like Galileo) become today’s role models. Today, it is abnormal to demonstrate for your rights. Tomorrow, when most people are demonstrating, it will be abnormal not to.

8. Rebel minds There is no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced and the preferably unheard.1 —Arundhati Roy

Capitalism is the most unequal social arrangement in history. Individuals command more wealth than entire nations, while billions struggle to survive. As a few people accumulate evermore wealth, entire generations are being born without vaccinations, without education, and without any sense that their lives are valued. In light of such staggering poverty, a society built on the hoarding of wealth is not only inhumane but inherently unsustainable.2

Injustice provokes protest. From the slave revolts of the ancient world, through the peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages, to the working-class rebellions that rock the modern world, people have always fought for an equal say and an equal share. Today’s protests are unprecedented in size and international in scope, with millions of people demonstrating against exploitation, oppression, war, and environmental destruction. A tiny capitalist class cannot control society by force alone. They must convince the majority that the way things are is the only way they can be.3 To that end, they direct their managerial class to promote capitalism as the best possible system and to convince the majority to go along: to work their entire lives to enrich others, purchase products and services they do not need, go without what they do need, support endless wars, and accept all of this as normal and inescapable. When capitalist propaganda proves inadequate, the gloves come off to reveal the iron fist of the ruling class: total surveillance, militarized police, zerotolerance, and expanding systems of social control. This chapter describes the use of psychiatry to ‘manage’ rebellion, from the 19th century to the present.

The deliberately silenced Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) is considered the father of American psychiatry. Rush authored the first psychiatric textbook published in the U.S., and from 1921 to 2015 his image adorned the official seal of the American Psychiatric Association. Rush supported the American Revolution and signed the Declaration of Independence. However, he was concerned that radicals wanted to push the revolution further to abolish slavery and end other forms of oppression. As Rush put it, The excess of the passion for liberty, inflamed by the successful issue of the war, produced, in many people, opinions and conduct which could not be removed by reason nor constrained by government.4

Rush suggested that this “excess of the passion for liberty” was “a form of insanity” that he labeled ‘anarchia.’ This use of psychiatry to discredit rebellion would prove immensely useful for the capitalist class.

Racist psychobabble Antebellum doctors described an illness typical of enslaved people sold away from their families, which anyone can recognize as rage and grief. By medicalizing their condition, the culture was able to refuse the meaning of their suffering.5

By the mid-1800s, opposition to slavery was growing in America. To defend the slave system, Dr. Samuel Cartwright argued that Black people were biologically suited to bondage, and freeing them would damage their mental health.6 To explain why enslaved people wanted to escape, Cartwright invented the ‘diagnosis’ of ‘drapetomania,’ or ‘runaway fever.’ Another figment of his twisted imagination was ‘dysaesthesia aethiopica’ or ‘lack of work ethic,’ which he used to describe those who were too sick or injured to work. Cartwright’s remedies included physical punishment and respect for God’s plan. As he wrote, If the White man attempts to oppose the Deity’s will, by trying to make the Negro anything else

than “the submissive knee-bender,” (which the Almighty declared he should be), by trying to raise him to a level with himself, or by putting himself on an equality with the Negro, the Negro will run away; but if he keeps him in the position that we learn from the Scriptures he was intended to occupy, that is, the position of submission, the Negro is spellbound, and cannot run away.7

This racist psychobabble was embraced by slave-owners, politicians, academics, and physicians who refused to acknowledge the brutality of slavery and preferred to judge its victims as defective. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, these ‘experts’ linked Black skin with ‘mental disease’ in prestigious publications such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and Psychoanalytic Review.

Psychiatric coercion Colonizers who seized Indigenous lands attempted to crush resistance through the use of genocide, religious conversion, and psychiatric coercion. Indigenous people who rebelled against the destruction of their way of life were regularly declared ‘insane’ and incarcerated in asylums. As long as the Bureau [of Indian Affairs] had the power to declare tribal members insane, they maintained an illegal, inhumane, and unparalleled level of control over the sovereign Nations, and as long as the Canton Asylum was supplied with ‘patients,’ the money rolled in, and the local business folk were happy and ensured the Bureau a place to send their troublemakers, cementing their omnipotent power over our Nations.8

In 1913, a Lakota man, Alvin Abner Big Man, was ‘diagnosed’ with ‘horsestealing mania’ by a reservation agent and forcibly committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC. He was later transferred to the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians, where the ridiculous ‘diagnosis’ of ‘constitutional inferiority’ was added.9 The Crazy Indian would continue to be regularly institutionalized until the 1950s, when Thorazine and other psychiatric drugs made it easier and cheaper to sedate and chemically restrain these oppressed, reactive, rejected or merely disturbing people.10

The State still treats Indigenous suffering as psychiatric pathology, using contrived ‘diagnoses’ like ‘residential school syndrome.’11 Let’s get this straight: A group of people invade our lands and steal our property. They take away our children, sending them off to be beaten and exploited as a labor force, ‘brainwashed’ into

rejecting their rights and their ways of life, and, at least occasionally, forced to serve the sexual appetites of their warders. Now, in order to get some kind of action addressing all of this, we must stand up and prove how sick we are! If it is sickness you seek, don’t look for it in the victims of genocide: It resides in the minds and hearts of the people who planned, designed, implemented, and operated the machinery of genocide and who now seek to cover it up. The ‘meaning’ of Indian residential schooling is not the pathology it may have created in some Native Peoples; it is the pathology it reveals in the ‘system of order’ giving rise to it.12

Social discipline Labeling someone ‘mentally ill’ enables the State to bypass legal procedures for establishing guilt or innocence, hold people against their will for indefinite periods, and demand social and political conformity as a condition of release. The justification for such extreme measures is that the person poses ‘a risk to self or others.’ What constitutes a risk, and who decides? Many people engage in risky behaviors such as smoking, binge drinking, drug taking, and extreme sports. Such people are rarely labeled ‘mentally ill’ or placed in psychiatric detention to stop their ‘risk to self or others.’ ‘Mental health legislation’ exists to manage, at times very robustly, some people but not others. If a societal norm is to perceive young, Black men as being abnormally dangerous, then that will be mirrored in admissions to psychiatric units and risk-averse staff decision-making, thereafter, about discharge and security levels.13

In 1958, Black pastor Clennon W. King, Jr. tried to enroll at the all-White University of Mississippi. Police took him to a psychiatric hospital where he was held for twelve days on the grounds that, “any nigger who tried to enter Ole Miss must be crazy.”14 In 2009, New York City police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was abducted by senior officers and held in a psychiatric facility for exposing corrupt police practices.15 In 2016, police took Rutgers University professor Kevin Allred to hospital for a psychiatric assessment after he made anti-Trump statements in class and on Twitter.16 In 2017, Canadian lawyer Veronica McCaffrey was removed from her job on

the false premise that she was ‘mentally ill’ and unfit for work. McCaffrey had blown the whistle on systemic failures in the medical system that put staff and patients at risk.17 The World Psychiatric Association expelled the Soviet Union in 1983 for confining dissidents in psychiatric hospitals. On that basis, it also should have expelled the United States.

Mind control After World War II, the Scientific Intelligence Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began to fund mind-control research. Hallucinogenic drugs and other chemicals, magnetic fields, sound waves, electroconvulsive shock, sensory and sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, electrical brain stimulation, brain surgery, and other methods were applied to human subjects in order to create amnesia, new identities, hypnotic triggers, and false memories. One project created multiple personalities in two 19-year old girls.18 Another project used hypnosis to create ‘split personalities’ in American spies to help them be more convincing.19 CIA mind-control experiments involved more than 80 American institutions (including colleges, universities, hospitals, pharmaceutical corporations, and prisons) and 185 independent researchers, including leading psychiatrists and psychologists.20 In Canada, the CIA funded psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron to conduct mindcontrol experiments in Montréal.21 His techniques were incorporated into the CIA’s first torture manual, the Counterintelligence Interrogation Handbook (1963).22 Cameron’s ‘research’ was published in academic journals that raised no objection to his CIA funding, the damage caused to his human subjects, or the vile purpose of his work. On the contrary, Cameron was honored as a pillar of North American psychiatry, serving as president of the Québec, Canadian, American, and World psychiatric associations.

In the later 1950s, the Canadian government funded psychologist, John Zubek, to build one of the largest sensory-deprivation laboratories in the world. Zubek’s torture techniques were used by the British military to subdue rebellion in Northern Ireland23 and continue to be used in Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers around the world.24 These are not past ‘mistakes.’ During the Bush administration, the American Psychological Association approved the involvement of psychologists in military torture programs.25 The Canadian government continues to deny compensation to victims of its torture programs,26 and the torture continues. In 2017, a judge ruled that Canadian physicians had tortured 1,260 psychiatric inmates between 1966 and 1983, using solitary confinement, hallucinogens, brainwashing techniques, and other “unethical and degrading” methods developed by the CIA. According to the judge, It is a breach of a physician’s ethical duty to physically and mentally torture his patients even if the physician’s decisions are based on what the medical profession at the time counts for treatment for the mentally ill.27

Black ‘pathology’ The capitalist class defend their own violence as noble and necessary, while condemning the violence of their victims as criminal or sick. After mass rebellions rocked American cities in the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson assigned the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate. The resulting Kerner Report concluded that the riots were a response to “an explosive mixture of discrimination and deprivation in the poor Black ghettos of the big cities”28 and recommended more support for Black employment, education, and housing.29 The White House ignored this advice. Instead, the 1965 Crime Commission and the subsequent ‘War on Crime’ criminalized, and continues to criminalize, generations of Black Americans.30 Even as members of both commissions mentioned racial discrimination and inequality as factors contributing to crime and disorder, they took for granted the guiding principle of domestic urban

policy in the 1960s: that Black community pathology caused poverty and crime.31

In 1967, three Harvard professors wrote a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “Role of Brain Disease in Riots and Urban Violence,” in which they asked, If slum conditions alone determined and initiated riots, why are the vast majority of slum dwellers able to resist the temptations of unrestrained violence? Is there something peculiar about the violent slum dweller that differentiates him from his peaceful neighbor?32

Labeling this ‘peculiarity’ a “brain dysfunction,” the professors warned that tens of millions of Americans could be violence prone as a result of brain damage and that “mass violence might be touched off by leaders suffering from temporal seizures of the brain.” The professors advised calming violent people by implanting and stimulating electrodes in their brains 33 and recommended large-scale studies of inner-city populations to “pinpoint, diagnose, and treat those people with low violence thresholds before they contribute to further tragedies.”34

Protest ‘psychosis’ In his book The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease (2010), American psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl documents how “race gets written into the definition of mental illness” and how psychiatry treats rebellion against racism as a form of ‘insanity.’ In the 1950s, the DSM-1 described ‘schizophrenia’ as a condition marked by disturbances in thought, emotional sensitivity, and infantile behavior. From the 1920s to the 1940s, ‘schizophrenia’ was associated with dreamy intellectuals, eccentric geniuses, and depressed White housewives. None were considered dangerous or threatening. As the Black freedom movement grew more militant, medical publications joined with the mass media to transform the racist stereotype of the ‘crazy Black man’ into a new and socially dangerous form of ‘mental illness.’ In 1953, the FBI labeled Malcom X with ‘pre-psychotic paranoid

schizophrenia’. In 1968, two psychiatrists published an article, “The ‘Protest’ Psychosis: A Special Type of Reactive Psychosis,” in which they claimed that the rhetoric of the Black Power movement literally drives Black men insane, causing a “delusional anti-Whiteness” that makes them a threat to “Caucasian values” and “White civilization.”35 That same year, DSM-2 (1968) changed the criteria for ‘schizophrenia.’ Where DSM-1 (1952) had used gender-neutral terms, DSM-2 used masculine pronouns and emphasized hostility, violence, and aggression as key ‘symptoms.’ While activists blamed systemic racism for the suffering of Black people, the DSM-2 added ‘projection’ (blaming one’s problems on others) to the criteria for ‘schizophrenia.’ Using circular logic, this racially skewed DSM was used in population surveys to ‘discover’ that Black people are more likely to suffer from ‘schizophrenia.’ This ‘evidence’ was then used to strengthen the racist myth that ‘crazed violence’ is embedded in Black DNA. By the mid-1970s, ‘schizophrenia’ had been transformed from a label applied primarily to White middle-class women and intellectuals to one applied primarily to Black working-class men and women. This psychiatric racism accompanied the transformation of American asylums into prisons.36 Metzl concludes, It is far from happenstance that the category of the angry Black male schizophrenic appeared in [patient] charts at precisely the historical moment when angry Black men and women protested in the streets. Defining Black protest as insane was far more advantageous than taking seriously the content of that protest or allowing it to disrupt the functioning of White bourgeois society.37

Although later DSM editions removed hostility, projection, and gender references from the criteria for ‘schizophrenia,’ psychiatry did not abandon racism.38 A 2004 survey of the medical files of 134,523 American veterans labeled “severely mentally ill” found that doctors were labeling Black patients with ‘schizophrenia’ four times more often than White patients. Black patients were more frequently described as hostile or violent, and they were prescribed higher doses of neuroleptic drugs. The researchers found no evidence that the Black veterans were any sicker or more violent than the

White veterans. ‘Race’ was the only factor that accounted for the difference.39 The racist practice of linking ‘psychosis’ with violence stigmatizes everyone labeled ‘mentally ill,’ regardless of their skin color. Public attitudes toward ‘mental illness’ show a distinct shift from the 1950s. Today, a much larger portion of the population view people labeled ‘mentally ill’ as violent and dangerous when, in reality, they are more likely to be the victims of violence.40, 41 It has become common practice to attribute extreme acts of violence to ‘mental illness.’42 In 2019, a self-proclaimed White supremacist massacred worshipers in a New Zealand mosque. Media depictions of the killer as ‘mentally ill’ hide the racist context that promotes such violence. If we let mental illness be the scapegoat here, we let ourselves and our country off the hook from reckoning with the racism, White supremacy, and anti-immigrant sentiments that directly led to these attacks.43

Violent initiatives The United States has a long and terrible history of racist medical experiments conducted on Black men, women, and children.44

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dr. O. J. Andy, director of neuro-surgery at the University of Mississippi, conducted unauthorized brain-surgery experiments on dozens of Black children, aged 5 to 12 years, who were housed in a segregated institution for the ‘developmentally disabled.’45 In 1972, the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health partnered with the Justice Department to plan a nationwide network of ‘anti-violence’ centers to identify children who might become violent and enroll them in psychosurgery experiments to prevent this. While anti-racist activists blocked these plans, it was a temporary victory.46 In 1992, the U.S. federal government unveiled its own ‘Violence Initiative,’ a program of screening and psychiatric drug ‘treatment’ aimed at Black innercity children with “presumed genetic and biochemical predispositions for

violence.”47 In 1993, the U.S. National Research Council recommended mass psychiatric screening of Black children as young as four months of age to identify those who might be “violence-prone” and to treat them with “medications that reduce violent behavior.” The argument used to be that Blacks were docile and hence biologically predisposed to slavery. Now, in a few generations, they’re supposed to be genetically predisposed to rebellion. This is not science. This is the use of psychiatry and science in the interest of racist social policy.48

The capitalist class continue to search for ways to neutralize rebellion. A 2018 study reported that electricity applied to the brain might reduce aggressive behavior.49 One researcher concluded, When most people think of crime, they think bad neighborhoods, poverty, discrimination, and those are all correct. But we also believe that there’s a biological contribution to crime which has been seriously neglected in the past. What this shows is that there could be a new, different approach to try and reduce crime and violence in society.50

Women’s oppression Psychiatrists become increasingly important throughout the industrial period, as initially incarcerators of deviant working-class women and then as moral enforcers of gender roles, ‘respectable femininity,’ and the sanctity of the family. In this way, the institution of psychiatry takes over the moral role previously performed by religion in feudal society.51

Women were committed to psychiatric institutions for accusing family members of sexual abuse, for mothering an ‘illegitimate’ child, for suspected lesbianism, or for simply being unruly. In her book Women and Madness (1972), Phyllis Chesler explained, Twentieth-century female patients (and sometimes male patients) were imprisoned against their will – sometimes for up to 30-40 years; medicated against their will; lobotomized against their will; given electroconvulsive and insulin coma shock treatments against their will; denied medical treatment for other ailments; and were, afterwards, stigmatized as ‘mentally ill’ when they sought employment and housing or pursued legal actions.52

Little has changed. In 2017, a young woman who thought she was being sent to Dublin for an abortion was forcibly confined in a ‘mental health unit’ until a second psychiatrist pronounced her ‘sane.’53

In the United States, thousands of women soldiers are being labeled with ‘personality disorders’ and given ‘less-than-honorable’ discharges for simply reporting a sexual assault. This form of discharge is deeply stigmatizing, blocks access to veterans’ benefits, is nearly impossible to reverse, and is linked with higher rates of homelessness, imprisonment, and suicide.54 The capitalist class profit by keeping women ‘in their place,’ servicing the current generation of workers, raising the next generation, and caring for the impaired, sick, injured, and distressed for free in the home. Those who rebel or break under the strain are labeled sick, not oppressed. In 2012, psychologist Paula Caplan recalled, About a year ago, a young mother called me, extremely distressed. She had become seriously sleep-deprived while working full-time and caring for her dying grandmother every night. When a crisis at her son’s day-care center forced her to scramble to find a new child-care arrangement, her heart started racing, prompting her to go to the emergency room. After a quick assessment, the intake doctor declared that she had ‘bipolar disorder,’ committed her to a psychiatric ward, and started her on dangerous psychiatric medication.55

Homosexuality To support the capitalist family structure, psychiatry promotes traditional gender roles and heterosexual orientation by treating nonconformists as ‘mentally ill.’ Until 1973, the DSM listed ‘homosexuality’ as a ‘mental disorder,’ and psychiatric journals recommended drugs, aversive conditioning, electroconvulsive shock, chemical castration, and lobotomy to ‘cure’ it. This changed when the gay liberationmovement compelled the American Psychiatric Association to remove this listing from the DSM. Psychiatrists who made a living ‘treating’ homosexuals were threatened by this change. While the APA could no longer label homosexuality as a ‘mental disorder,’ it could pathologize feeling bad about being gay, so it added ‘sexual orientation disturbance’ to the DSM, followed by ‘ego-dystonic homosexuality.’ An APA position paper at the time stated, No doubt, homosexual activist groups will claim that psychiatry has at last recognized that homosexuality is as ‘normal’ as heterosexuality. They will be wrong. This change should in no way interfere with or embarrass those dedicated psychiatrists and psychoanalysts who have

devoted themselves to understanding and treating those homosexuals who have been unhappy with their lot.56

Critics asked if people unhappy with their skin color, height, or age should also be psychiatrically labeled.57 One former consultant for the DSM wrote, In a culture that scorns and demeans lesbians and gay men, it is hard to be completely comfortable with one’s homosexuality, and so the DSM-3 authors were treating as a mental disorder what was often simply a perfectly comprehensible reaction to being mocked and oppressed.58

The preferably unheard People are still being punished for being in pain, for feeling their pain, and for trying to speak their pain.59 — Judi Chamberlin (1944-2010)

My mother was an independent, working-class woman who was horrified by the thought of losing her mind. When she began to develop Alzheimer’s disease, she left specific instructions that she was not to be kept alive once her mind was ‘gone.’ Her legal guardian ignored her instructions. As my mother’s dementia progressed, she became increasingly agitated. When she could no longer speak or move, she loudly gnashed her teeth. Her guardian had all her teeth removed so he would not be disturbed by her anguish. Like my mother, the ‘preferably unheard’ are trapped in intolerable situations and express their protest in the form of physical, psychological, and behavioral ‘symptoms.’

Subduing youth Falling living standards are pushing more families over the edge. In highly stressed families, children signal their protest with disruptive behaviors that challenge overburdened parents and teachers. These children may retreat into fantasy realms, lash out against others, or distract themselves with repetitive movements such as head banging, body rocking, excessive thumb sucking, nail biting, hair pulling, skin picking, persistent masturbation, and disordered

eating. The DSM does not view child protest as a cry of distress but as a mental or character defect.60 Instead of investigating why the child is protesting, the protest itself is viewed as the problem, and the goal is to stop the protest. As a child, Lucy signaled her protest through behaviors. At age eight, she developed panic attacks. At age ten, she was labeled with ‘anxiety neurosis.’ At age fourteen, she was labeled with ‘major depressive disorder.’ At age sixteen, she stopped eating and was labeled with ‘anorexia nervosa.’ Her ‘treatment’ included being hospitalized, drugged, and subjected to insulin shock. It later came out that Lucy’s father was sexually abusing her. She feared him too much to tell anyone, and she feared that no one would believe her if she did. Unable to escape her situation, Lucy signaled her distress with disruptive behaviors. Instead of investigating the cause of her distress, Lucy’s doctors treated her as ‘mentally ill,’ and her parents blamed her for ‘bringing trouble’ on the family. Children are powerless to challenge hurtful adult behavior, and ‘outsiders’ are reluctant to ‘interfere.’ With few exceptions, the legal system treats victims of family violence as manipulating liars, and psychiatry re-victimizes them with stigmatizing labels of ‘mental illness.’

School-to-psychiatry pipeline [Schools] have been transformed into “hubs for the early diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in children.” Instead of providing children with better health, social, and economic supports that provide a better future, children are lied to, told they have a brain disorder and need pharmaceutical drugs to fix their defects.61

Psychiatry has consistently portrayed unwanted behavior in the classroom as a ‘mental disorder,’ from the label of ‘moral imbecile’ at the start of the 20th century, through ‘encephalitis lethargica’ (sleepy sickness) in the 1920s, to ‘hyperkinesis’ in the 1950s, to ‘minimal brain dysfunction’ in the 1970s, to ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’ (ADHD) today. There is no medical or scientific basis for any of these labels.62

Younger children have more difficulty managing their emotions. The refusal to acknowledge children’s different needs and abilities results in younger children in a classroom being labeled as ‘ADHD’ much more often than older classmates.63, 64 ‘Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’ can also be understood as the agitation that results when children are not getting their needs met. ‘Going stupid,’ goofing off, and being restless are typical ways that children protest when adults insist that they focus on matters that hold no interest for them. Most ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the ‘disease’ routinely goes away.65

By 2011, more than six million American high-school students, one in five boys and one in eleven girls, had been labeled ‘ADHD.’ The average age for acquiring this label was seven years.66 By 2012, almost 8 percent of all American children between ages six and seventeen were being prescribed one or more psychiatric drugs for “emotional or behavioral difficulties.”67 This is a massive uncontrolled experiment because no one knows the long-term effects of these drugs on developing children, including thousands of toddlers under age three.68 ‘ADHD’ as a diagnosis blinds children, parents, teachers, doctors and other practitioners to a variety of context-related factors such as immaturity, learning difficulties, exposure to violence, dietary factors, lifestyle, lack of family support, lack of confidence in parenting, and so on. It also blinds them to a whole variety of other approaches that may prove beneficial for such children.69

In the past, a teacher might send a troubled or troubling student to the school nurse or guidance counselor, who might alert a social worker to speak with the family. Funding cuts have eliminated these social supports. Instead, schools have turned into referral factories for psychiatry. The Canadian Institute for Health Information advises, The school setting can be a cornerstone of mental health literacy, mental health promotion, identification of mental health problems and disorders and delivery of much-needed care for children and youth.70

With the full support of governments and school boards, the medical and pharmaceutical industries are recruiting teachers, guidance counselors, public

health nurses, social workers, and students to promote the medical model of suffering, that is, to identify youngsters in distress and “get them into treatment.”71 One educator advised, Head teachers should demand mental health training for all new teachers. And before a school takes on a new or trainee teacher, they should ask to see what mental health training they have. This could include an understanding of the risk and resilience factors for their students, how to spot the signs of mental ill health, along with how to support and get help for students at risk.72

The U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. currently fund ‘Mental Health First Aid’ courses73 and ‘mental-health awareness training’ in schools, programs that are basically infomercials for psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.74 By 2017, more than nine million children in North America were on psychiatric drugs for newly found disorders, such as depression, anxiety, panic disorder, autism, bipolar disorder, and even school avoidance disorder. Many were identified within the school system.75

‘Mental illness’ or poverty? A living wage is an antidepressant. It is a sleep aid, a stress reliever. It prevents premature death. It shields children from neglect.76

As wealth accumulates at the top of society, poverty increases at the base, and the mental suffering caused by poverty is identical to ‘symptoms’ of ‘mental illness.’77, 78 The United States is a wealthy nation with an exceptionally high rate of child poverty. Instead of campaigning to reduce child poverty, American physicians prescribe children more psychiatric drugs than all other nations combined.79 Children who need extra support cannot get this in large classrooms with standardized curricula. Instead, the distressed child is treated as a ‘behavior problem.’ This leads to poor children being labeled ‘hyperactive’ four times more often than children who are not poor.80 In Canada, boys aged six to eleven with a parent on welfare are almost three times more likely to be given a psychiatric label.81 In Ontario group homes, more than 70 percent of youth aged ten to fifteen are prescribed psychiatric

drugs.82 Psychiatric drugs do not make children healthier or more successful; they make them more manageable. When children with ADHD took stimulants, parents and teachers rated their academic performance as vastly improved. But objective measurements showed that the quality of their work hadn’t changed. What looked like achievement was actually manageability in the classroom.83

In fact, the use of stimulating drugs to ‘treat’ ‘ADHD’ is associated with increased unhappiness and a deteriorating relationship with parents. Educational achievement also suffers, with more grades repeated, lower math scores, and an increased risk of dropping out of school.84 Children who are psychiatrically labeled get the message that they do not have problems – they are the problem. The belief that they need mindaltering drugs to function turns them into life-long customers of the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries. If the goal were to help children, rather than manage their behavior, social support would produce much better outcomes. A North Carolina study found that poor children displayed more than four times as many psychiatric ‘symptoms’ as non-poor children. Midway through the study, a casino opened, and annual bonuses raised 14 percent of the families out of poverty. Psychiatric ‘symptoms’ among the children who were no longer poor fell to the same level as those who had never been poor. In contrast, ‘symptoms’ remained high among the children who remained poor.85 Why did this happen? Higher family incomes reduce adult anxiety and lower reliance on alcohol and other pain-relieving drugs. When parents’ needs are met, they are more able to meet their children’s needs, and children do better in safer, calmer homes.86 Raising family incomes is the most effective way to eliminate poverty, improve adult and child health, and reduce a great deal of suffering.87 A major U.S. study found that a $1 rise in the minimum wage was associated with an average 2 percent decline in the annual suicide rate.88

The ruling class refuse to compromise profits by raising wages or investing in social supports. It is more ‘cost-effective’ for them to blame poverty on the supposed defects of the poor.89

On strike with depression Electroconvulsive shock (ECT) is approved to treat ‘depression,’ even though it causes brain damage and memory loss,90 and there is no reliable evidence that it relieves depression.91 Every year, ECT is used on several hundred thousand people. The recipients are mostly older women, and a significant number have it administered against their will.92 ‘Depression’ in older women has well-documented social causes including poverty, loneliness, loss, trauma, and abuse. One study found that workingclass women with children are four times more likely to suffer depression than middle-class women with children.93 People labelled as ‘depressed’ are emotionally and physically ‘on strike.’ When one feels overwhelmed and can see no way forward, there is no point in continuing to function.94 Treating depressed older women as ‘mentally ill’ prevents any discussion of what needs to change in their lives and in society. One older woman with grown children and an unhappy marriage became despondent and refused to leave her bed. Sinking into despair was her rebellion against a life she no longer wanted yet was socially and financially unable to leave. Drugs cannot solve social problems. Despite drug-company hype, the drugs prescribed for ‘depression’ are not effective95, 96 and can do more harm than good.97 Their value lies in their ability to medicalize and silence protest.

Suicide as protest The history of Jewish suicide during the Holocaust, like the histories of suicide in the Arawaks, the Home Children, the Marshallese Islanders, and countless other oppressed groups, teach us that suicide is in part a normal human reaction to conditions of prolonged, ruthless domination.98

When one person kills themself, that is an individual tragedy. When hundreds of thousands of people kill themselves, that is a mass protest against intolerable conditions. According to the World Health Organization, Close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. Many more attempt suicide. Suicide occurs throughout the lifespan and is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds globally.99

In the United States, deaths by suicide have increased 30 percent over the past two decades. In 2016, nearly 45,000 people died by suicide, twice the number who died by homicide.100 By 2014, more ten- to fourteen-year-old children were killing themselves than were being killed in traffic collisions.101 Explanations for rising rates of suicide blame everything but a capitalist system that makes life feel unbearable.102 The most oppressed suffer the highest suicide rates. In Canada, suicide is the leading cause of death for Indigenous youth and adults under age 44. The suicide rate for Indigenous males aged 15 to 24 years is more than five times higher than it is for non-Indigenous youth. The suicide rate for Indigenous females is seven times higher.103 Suicide rates for Inuit youth are among the highest in the world, and 11 times the national average.104 Suicidology has chosen to reformulate the question: “Why are Indians killing themselves at such high rates?” as “What’s wrong with Indians that makes them want to kill themselves at such high rates?”105

The question “What is wrong with people who kill themselves?” was not asked of German Jews whose suicide rate during the Holocaust was 50 times higher than that of non-Jews.106 The ‘proper treatment’ for the ‘Jewish Suicide Problem’ wasn’t to send cheerleaders into what remained of their communities; it was the elimination of the system of unspeakable cruelty that destroyed their lives. And the ‘proper treatment’ for the ‘Indian Suicide Problem’ isn’t to send cheerleaders into our communities; it is the elimination of the system that is destroying our lives.107

Factors that protect against Indigenous suicide include more people speaking their Indigenous language, more women in decision-making positions, and more Indigenous self-government, including control over land, education, and medical and social services.108

Conclusion Oppression generates protest. Sometimes, protest is articulate, organized, and powerful enough to topple tyrants. At other times, it takes disguised or coded forms that signal terror, rage, and despair. To maintain control, the capitalist class must counter all forms of protest. Psychiatry plays a central role in subduing the exploited and oppressed, the conquered and enslaved, the incarcerated and institutionalized, agitated seniors, traumatized soldiers, overworked mothers, and rebellious children.

9. The State of institutions In the most elementary sense, the State is guarantor of the conditions, the social relations, of capitalism, and the protector of the ever more unequal distribution of property which this system brings about.1 — Harry Braverman (1920-1976)

The capitalist class would have us believe that the State is the government and, because the people elect the government, the State serves society as a whole. We are told that if you object to how things are, you can vote for a different government. If you do not vote, you have no right to complain because there is no alternative. In reality, the State is much more than the government; it is a network of institutions that keep the capitalist class in power. Electing different people or political parties to government does not change the basic nature of the State.

Rise of the State The State arises where, when, and to the extent that class antagonism cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the State proves that these class antagonisms are irreconcilable.2

For 99 percent of human history, human beings lived in cooperative, foraging societies with no class divisions and no State. While there were differences in social status, tribal societies were not split into classes where one group benefits at the expense of another.3 This began to change with the shift to agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Advances in agriculture made it possible to produce a surplus beyond what the community needed to survive. In some places, people shared the land and the surplus. In other places, elite groups claimed both as their own private property.4 The shift from communal sharing to private property split society into two classes: a ruling class who claimed exclusive right to the land and its bounty, and subordinate classes who had no option but to work for them. Rulers and ruled cannot peacefully coexist, so the dominant class must

construct a State to uphold their rule. Early States hired armed guards to restrict the use of the land and to collect or tax the surplus. As society became more complex, so did the State. Capitalist development modifies the nature of the State, widening its sphere of action, constantly imposing on it new functions, making more and more necessary its intervention and control in society.5

The economic and population booms that followed World War II increased the demand for professionals and non-professional managers. To fill these positions, States subsidized access to higher education for children from the middle and working classes and vastly expanded the scope of State institutions. The modern State includes executive and decision-making bodies, legislative and law-making bodies, a judiciary to apply laws, a military machine, a propaganda machine, and government-regulated agencies and social institutions. All rely on professionals and non-professional managers to implement capitalist policies.

Different forms, same function It is commonly assumed that different nations have fundamentally different States. In fact, their differences are superficial. Capitalism is a globally integrated system. Despite their regional, cultural, and historic variations, all existing States, without exception, are capitalist States that promote capital accumulation and block working-class rebellion. In no country have the working class taken collective control of the economy and eliminated the wage system. Capitalist States take many forms: religious States (Israel and Iran), one-party States (Cuba and China), monarchies (Saudi Arabia and Qatar), constitutional monarchies (Canada and the U.K.), and military dictatorships. The German State was just as capitalist under the left-leaning Weimar Republic as it was under Hitler’s fascist dictatorship, and Chile’s State was just as capitalist under President Allende’s elected government as it was under Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

States take whatever form will best support their capitalist class. During times of mass rebellion, a ‘social democratic’ or ‘welfare State’ may be necessary to avoid mass revolt. At other times, a neoliberal State is more effective at boosting profits. During times of war, States take direct control of their economies.6 State involvement in the economy is commonly equated with socialism in the mistaken belief that capitalism needs a ‘free market,’ without State intervention.7 The opposite is true. No capitalist class can survive without the financial, political, and military backing of a State. States provide the social infrastructure necessary for profit-making: roads, bridges, tunnels, railways, airports, shipping ports, power grids, communication systems, schools, and medical facilities. States use tax dollars to research new technologies, then gift the potentially profitable parts to the private sector.8 States support corporate expansion across borders, while defending against the predations of foreign corporations. They boost corporate profits by forming ‘public-private’ partnerships. They transfer wealth from workers to capitalists with corporate tax breaks, subsidies, and bailouts. Most important, States impose social controls that keep the working class ‘in their place.’

‘State socialism’? The super-rich in this country use the State to further their interests – why shouldn’t ordinary people do the same thing?9 — Meagan Day

The common understanding of socialism is not a classless, worker-run society, but a capitalist State that will curb the greed of the corporate class for ‘the greater good.’10 Many people share this idea. In a recent poll, half of young Americans said they would rather live in a ‘socialist’ country.11 Another poll found that almost half of all Americans would vote for a ‘socialist’ president.12 The leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, calls himself a ‘socialist.’ Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders describes himself as a Democratic Socialist, and the Democratic Socialists of America are growing rapidly.

Supporters of ‘State socialism’ or ‘democratic socialism’ want the State to limit profit-taking, transfer wealth from rich to poor, transform the economy to combat climate change, and publicly fund and manage social, medical and education services. These reforms would hugely benefit the working class, if they could be achieved. States will restrain some sections of the capitalist class in order to preserve the system as a whole, as was done during the Great Depression of the 1930s. However, the demand that the State serve as a benevolent guardian over society is incompatible with its mandate to advance the capitalist class.

The electoral system Any government that had both the power and the will to remedy the major defects of the capitalist system would have the will and the power to abolish it altogether, while governments that have the power to retain the system lack the will to remedy its defects.13

Capitalism is not a democracy; it is a dictatorship of the capitalist class. When workers vote to strike, employers use police and scabs to force them back to work. When masses of people demonstrate against war, they are ignored or attacked. If the majority voted to end capitalist rule, the full force of the State would be unleashed against them. Given a real choice, most people would never agree to work their entire lives to enrich their masters. They do not get this choice under capitalist rule. They get the illusion of choice, the false belief that society can be changed by electing different people or parties to political office. The public is never allowed to vote for a different social system, only for candidates with varying ideas on how to run the existing system. Elected politicians are free to break their promises, and voters have no recourse but must wait for the next election, when they will be betrayed again. The majority are not allowed to vote on vitally important matters such as who will benefit from the wealth produced by society. We can neither elect nor replace our bosses and managers. We do not get to choose whether to burn fossil fuels or develop renewable energy, whether to build prisons or

affordable housing, whether to bail out banks or eliminate hunger, whether to wage war or negotiate peace, and whether to build walls or welcome migrants. When necessary, States will deliver meaningful reforms as a way to calm rebellion and stabilize society. Once the crisis has passed, those reforms are whittled away or repealed. Today, any reforms won at the national level can be nullified by international trade deals and business interests.14 In 2015, the Greek left-reformist party Syriza was elected on a promise to end crushing austerity policies. A national referendum also produced a majority ‘no’ vote against austerity. Despite this mass support, Syriza succumbed to financial pressure from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank and implemented even harsher austerity measures than its predecessors. This betrayal by the Left has encouraged the growth of far-Right forces in Greece. It could have been different if Syriza had based itself on mass mobilization. It would have had to advance measures such as nationalizing banks under workers’ control, seizing the wealth of the oligarchs, imposing controls on the bosses’ ability to move money and assets and so on. This would have required an immense movement from the base of society and a deepening of democracy in the workplace and communities. This was possible, as the ‘no’ referendum showed. But [Syriza President Alexis] Tsipras ran away from it.15

States and unions States strive for maximum control over unions in order to prevent workers from exercising their class power.16 China’s largest union body is directly controlled by the State. Other States demand the right to approve or ‘certify’ a union as the official workers’ representative. States can set the terms required for union certification, change those terms at will, and demand regular re-certification votes.17 They can also block unions from collecting dues from their members.18 States can prohibit strikes, outlaw mass pickets, forbid workplace occupations, pass back-to-work legislation, and block secondary boycotts that prevent other companies from doing business with a company under strike. When workers press their demands in unofficial, ‘wildcat’ strikes, States

demand that union officials rein in their members, threatening exorbitant fines, jail time, and union decertification if they do not. States reserve the right to discipline unions that ‘fail to properly represent’ their members.19 While this can make the State appear like a friend of labor, it is a trap. When workers look to the State to deal with unfair bosses and corrupt union officials, instead of relying on each other, they strengthen the system that enslaves them.

State violence The ancient State was, above all, the State of the slave-owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal State was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative State is the instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital.20

Politicians and the mass media would have us believe that violence is caused by political terrorists, lone crackpots, drug addicts, foreigners, and the deranged ‘mentally ill.’21 This is a diversion. The greatest source of violence is the capitalist State. States organized the slave trade and the genocide of Indigenous peoples.22 States wage wars against other States and against sections of their own populations. State violence targets everyone whose suffering, political views, or actions make them an enemy or potential enemy of the capitalist class.23 As Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed, without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.24

The legal system Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside cannot get in. The laws are really organized for the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for justice, not the slightest in the world.25 —Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

The capitalist legal system is designed to keep a boot on the neck of the

working class. French philosopher Anatole France (1844 - 1924) wryly observed, In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.

The more social power you have, the less the law applies to you.26 Police kill poor and non-White people with impunity. The United States regularly violates international laws 27 and protects American military personnel from being investigated for war crimes.28 Legal definitions of crime support class rule. An ordinary person killing another is called murder, a cop killing an unarmed person is called self-defense, and State executions are called justice. Laws legitimize the crimes of the capitalist class. It is perfectly legal for governments and corporations to refuse to provide housing for the homeless, medicines for the sick, and food for the hungry, even when death is the inevitable outcome. However, people who seek shelter in vacant buildings, steal needed medicine, aid refugees, or feed the homeless are treated as criminals.29 Imprisoning common street criminals cannot be equated with justice when corporate executives get away with causing far more sickness, injuries, and death.30 Unlike many murderers sitting in prison for life, these gentleman bandits, these intelligent, educated men and women who slowly and methodically plan the crimes that wreck the future of untold numbers of people, know exactly what they are doing and who will be hurt. Their crimes of cold, selfish greed reflect, in their own way, even more indifference to life than murder.31

On occasion, the law will hold a corporation or high-ranking individual accountable when their behavior has been so publicly offensive that it would discredit the system to ignore it.32 Few are incarcerated, none are executed, and the system continues as before.33 Mass incarceration has nothing to do with justice; it is a billion-dollar industry that preys on the poor and oppressed.34 It is also political theater.35 Convicts and ex-convicts play an enormously important symbolic role in our society. The prisoner is the visible symbol of crime contained – the criminal caged and restrained – to give the unwitting citizen the feeling that the cops and jails are preserving his safety.36

The family Capitalism constantly tries to reduce our horizons to the level of the individual, personal responsibility, and detail. This is how the systematic nature of exploitation and oppression is obscured and denied.37

The tentacles of the capitalist State penetrate every aspect of family and personal life. No one wants to think of the family as a State institution. We need the family to be a warm heart in a cold and heartless world.38 In reality, the modern family was constructed by the capitalist class to meet their needs, not ours. Under feudalism, multi-generational families lived and worked together. Industrial capitalism shattered these kinship networks by sucking men, women, and children into the factory system. Each family member might work in a different location, and all labored such long hours that they seldom saw each other. There was no one to care for the sick, injured, disabled, and very young. Wages were so low that every member of the family had to work. Pregnant women worked until they went into labor and returned to work immediately after giving birth. Toddlers were put to work as soon as they could walk. Hazardous conditions, disease, malnutrition, and neglect caused more than half of all working-class children to perish before the age of 5. Parents could neither protect nor care for their children, and children “neither recognized duties to their parents nor felt any affection for them.”39 As family ties disintegrated and death rates climbed, it was feared that the working class would become too feeble to reproduce themselves. Instead of investing in social supports for workers, the capitalists used the State to construct an entirely new family system. Feudal and early-capitalist families had been units of production and reproduction. Industrial capitalism had relocated production to the factory, so the capitalist family system was organized around reproductive and caregiving functions only.

Laws banned women and children from the most dangerous (and best-paid) jobs and prohibited the youngest children from working. Other laws made men responsible for supporting women and children, held parents responsible for raising children, restricted divorce, and punished male homosexuality. These and other measures were the scaffold on which the modern family system was constructed. Hidden behind the aura of dominion implied by the term ‘family values’ is the expectation and demand that families be self-sufficient.40

The modern family is a State-regulated institution. Laws dictate who can marry and who cannot, who is a family member and who is not, and how many unrelated people may live in a dwelling. The law restricts access to contraception and abortion, outlaws prostitution, and determines at what age a person may legally engage in ‘adult’ activities. One cannot leave a family at will. The State can forcibly return run-away youngsters to their families, place them in alternate families, or confine them in detention centers. Spouses who wish to leave their marriages and parents seeking relief from childcare duties can be prosecuted and held financially responsible for ‘dependents.’ The State defines what it means to be a ‘fit’ parent and can remove children from those it deems ‘unfit.’ The State decides if families separated by national borders will be reunited or remain apart, and whether family members will be deported.41 State laws compel young people to attend school, whether they want to or not,42 and parents are expected to enforce this law. In Jacksonville, Florida, if a child has more than five unexcused absences [from school] in a calendar month or 15 unexcused absences in a 90-day period, parents can be arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, and face up to 60 days in jail.43

Choices All societies set limits on acceptable behavior. Cooperative societies cocreate social rules that protect the entire group. These rules are transmitted from one generation to the next and enforced by social pressure. Such

‘unwritten laws’ are not actually ‘laws’ as we know them today. Written laws first appear in class societies. They are imposed from above, and their purpose is to protect the few who rule from the many who are ruled. To stay in power, the capitalist class must limit the choices available to the working class. Creativity is channeled into waged labor. Options for managing mental and physical distress are restricted to what the State defines as medicine or treatment. Expressions of sexuality are stunted by emphasizing heterosexuality and by sexist depictions of male-female relationships. Care-giving functions are limited by the lack of social supports. One way the State demonstrates its ‘right’ to intervene in personal life is by restricting access to abortion. Instead of questioning the right of the State to restrict such a personal choice, people are drawn into diversionary arguments over what the State should and should not allow.44 ‘Free abortion on demand’ is both a call for unrestricted access to this procedure and a rejection of State control over personal choices. When it comes to mental suffering, the system offers only one way to respond – psychiatric services. Because such services are never sufficient to meet the need, distressed families and service providers campaign to increase funding for them. Others view psychiatric services as oppressive forms of social control and object to them existing at all. The mistaken belief that there is only one correct way to respond to suffering pits service users and service providers against each other. The deeper problem is that the majority are deprived of real choices in every area of life. Everyone should have the same right to real choices, not the restricted, coerced, and ‘fake’ choices offered under capitalist rule.

Family violence It would be hard to find a group or institution in American society in which violence is more of an everyday occurrence than it is within the family.45

The violence of the capitalist system is reflected in and perpetuated through the family. The State permits adults to use ‘reasonable’ physical force against

children; however, ‘reasonable’ is not clearly defined. In the United States, an estimated quarter of all children between 1 and 6 months of age, and half of all children between 6 months and 1 year of age, are hit by an adult. Almost 80 percent of people report being slapped, spanked, or both during childhood. Forty percent report that this happened frequently.46 Slapping or spanking children is not harmless. It is terrifying for children to be completely dependent on adults who are also a source of fear and pain. Adults who experienced physical punishment in childhood suffer more anxiety. They also have more relationship difficulties and problems with alcohol and other drugs. A meta-analysis of 75 studies found that childhood exposure to spanking, the most common form of corporal punishment, predicted 13 of 17 negative outcomes, including aggression, antisocial behavior, mental-health problems, low self-esteem, and physical abuse, and [predicted] antisocial behavior and poor mental health in adulthood.47

Physical punishment teaches children the fundamental rule of class society, that ‘might makes right.’ Children who practice this lesson on other children are shamed and punished as bullies, when they are only mirroring a society where adults bully children, capitalists bully workers, and stronger nations bully weaker ones. Cooperative societies raise children communally and do not use force. Instead, they devote time and effort to winning a child’s cooperation.48 In the modern family, coercion is the default response for exasperated adults who do not know what else to do. Exploitation, oppression, and hardship turn the family into an emotional pressure cooker.49 Men who endure jobs they hate in order to provide for their families experience deep resentment. Women’s lower wages compel many to stay in unwanted relationships. Impossible demands and lack of support cause overwhelmed adults to explode and children to turn on each other. It is easier to unleash one’s rage behind the closed doors of the family home than anywhere else.

The only way to end domestic violence is to end capitalist rule. Cooperative societies that take collective responsibility for raising children and caring for the vulnerable enable men, women, and children to freely choose how they engage with one another.

Medicine American medicine is as authoritarian an institution as you will find in this country outside of a correctional facility.50

When the capitalist class deposed the feudal aristocracy, they transferred control of medicine from the Church to the State. The State took over responsibility for organizing training for the main medical profession groups (physicians, pharmacists, midwives) and for certifying that training with diplomas; meanwhile, it granted the uniformly certified agents thus produced the monopoly over legitimate health practices.51

In America, the State partnered with corporations to shape the education and regulation of medical professionals. Individual philanthropists gave modest sums to build community hospitals, but the foundations created by corporate giants as philanthropists provided hefty grants to build medical schools, research laboratories, and teaching hospitals.52

Regardless of the extent of corporate involvement, modern medicine is a State institution. The State defines what medicine is, medical schools and facilities are regulated by the State, and only licensed professionals are allowed to practice medicine. Medical professionals are expected to enforce State laws, even when doing so could harm their patients. Without patient knowledge or consent, medical personnel must report to State authorities certain diseases, knife and gunshot wounds, attempted suicides, suspected child abuse, suspected drug use, and ‘interference’ with a pregnancy. Both States and employers expect physicians to police sick and injured workers by getting them off benefits and back to work as quickly as possible. When patients’ interests conflict with profit-making, the State protects

profits. American physicians are not required to report adverse effects caused by medicines and medical devices,53 nor does the State object when nearly 70 percent of oncologists who speak at national meetings, nearly 70 percent of psychiatrists on the task force that ultimately decides what treatments should be recommended for what mental illnesses, and a significant number of doctors on Food and Drug Administration advisory committees have financial ties to the drug and medical device industries.54

States claim the right to isolate or restrict the movements of people who are deemed a risk to public health. The use of segregation or isolation to separate persons suspected of being infected has frequently violated the liberty of outwardly healthy persons, most often from lower classes, and ethnic and marginalized minority groups have been stigmatized and have faced discrimination.55

One American city banned the public distribution of food to the homeless “to protect the public from hepatitis A.” This ban did not include public distribution of food at birthday parties, family reunions, and sports celebrations.56 Investing in social support is known to improve the health of populations more effectively than investing in medical interventions.57 Nevertheless, States spend far less on public health than they spend on medical systems.58 The dominant classes of capitalist society wanted to avoid the development of public health because collective action on health problems could strengthen political resistance. The corollary is that clinical medical practice, by situating the diagnosis and treatment of disease at the level of the individual, provided the ruling classes with a means of social control: Patients would fail to make common cause with each other or to protest the external, underlying conditions that make them ill. The effect is to de-politicize malnutrition, alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental illness by defining them as medical problems. Especially in the field of psychiatry, this aspect of social control is very clear.59

Psychiatry When control of medicine was transferred from Church to State, the disciplines of hygiene, forensic medicine, and treatment of the mentally ill had to adjust their production to State demands – to protect populations from epidemics, advise judiciary decisionmakers on the basis of scientific knowledge, define the place of mad persons in society, as this is what they had been created to do.60

The capitalist State views ‘madness’ as a problem of social control and

assigns physicians to manage it. Physicians do not want to think of themselves as social police. To create a false sense of autonomy from the State, they interpret State demands as medical problems, framing ‘madness’ as a disease requiring ‘treatment.’ Medical explanations for madness and the medical approach to treatment are grafted onto an older system of social organization and control. Once medicalization takes hold, it obscures the underlying functions, but the system remains, in essence, a moral and political enterprise.61

The role of psychiatry has expanded far beyond the containment of ‘madness.’ The modern DSM has become an authority on what is considered ‘acceptable’ behavior. By the time of the DSM-5, psychiatric diagnoses are blatantly mirroring neoliberal ideology in relating mental illness to under-performance [and] deficits and failings in character that threaten the productivity and consumption activities of the individual in many social and economic arenas of life.62

Each new edition of the DSM has increased the number of work-related references from ten in DSM-1 (1952) to almost 40 times that number in DSM-5 (2013). By focusing on an individual’s work ‘performance,’ psychiatry shifts attention away from collective, class-based responses to workplace conflict.63 Capitalists cut corners to boost profits, and the inevitable result is injury, sickness, and death. Psychiatry gave employers a way out when it added ‘accident-prone personality’ to the American Handbook of Psychiatry (1966). Today, the concept of the ‘accident-prone’ worker dominates all employerdirected ‘behavioral-safety’ programs.64 In 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked industrial psychologist as the fastest-growing occupation in the United States. The extension of the psy-professions in the areas of unemployment, job training, and work reinforces the neoliberal focus on the self as the site of change, while simultaneously depoliticizing the increasingly alienating work environment and constant pressures on employees to upskill and be ‘more employable’ in the jobs market.65

The dominance of psychiatry cannot be explained on the basis of its scientific validity or its clinical effectiveness, both of which are highly contested. Its influence comes from its usefulness to the capitalist class. The more useful it

becomes, the more power it is given by the State, and the greater its power, the more useful it becomes.

Psychiatric violence Force is the cornerstone of psychiatric practice. Without the power delegated by the State to incarcerate and impose so-called treatment, psychiatry would undoubtedly lose most of its hold on people.66

The State grants psychiatrists the legal power to confine the disturbed and disturbing, to declare someone dangerous or possibly dangerous without evidence, to indefinitely detain a person who has committed no crime, and to impose damaging interventions without a person’s consent and against their will. As one inmate in a Canadian psychiatric hospital wrote, If I had known about the indefinite nature of the sentence, the humiliating daily surveillance, the routine infantilization, the daily physical and psychological abuse, the forced drugging, the forced electroshock, the physical and mechanical restraints and solitary confinement, I would have run to the nearest jail and banged on the gate to get in.67

Most people would condemn forced drugging, forced electroshock, forced intubation, forced catheterization, prolonged restraints, and solitary confinement as torture. Psychiatry defends such measures as necessary and therapeutic. The development of digital drugs makes total control even easier. When you swallow the tablet, your stomach acid activates a sensor that signals a patch taped to the skin above your ribs. The patch relays the news to your mobile phone, which forwards it to anyone monitoring your care.68

Using such technology, authorities can monitor drug-taking that is required for release from prison or psychiatric detention.

Social control There is strong pressure on people to avoid psychiatry, and the surest way they can avoid it is to do what is expected of them and keep their mouths shut. Therein lies psychiatry’s covert, or indirect, social-control function.69

Some argue that coercive psychiatric interventions are abuses of power in an otherwise useful and necessary service. The same is said of police. Both

psychiatry and the police are State institutions of social control. Whether an individual cop or psychiatrist is helpful or hurtful does not change that reality. Policing and psychiatry use the same circular logic: Police justify killing Black people on the grounds that officers fear for their safety. This explanation is ‘confirmed’ by the disproportionate killings of unarmed Black people, who (it is argued) must be dangerous, or the police would not kill them. Psychiatrists justify using drugs and electroconvulsive shock against a person’s will on the grounds that their ‘patients’ do not know what is good for them. This explanation is ‘confirmed’ by the victim’s protest. Psychiatrists insist that if ‘patients’ knew what was good for them, they would not protest. Once the legal system convicts someone of a crime, their protests of innocence are dismissed as ‘denial.’ The person has been labeled guilty, so they must be guilty, because the system cannot be questioned. Until they admit their guilt, they cannot be released. Once psychiatrists label someone ‘mentally ill,’ their protests are dismissed as ‘denial.’ The person has been labeled sick, so they must be sick, because the system cannot be questioned. Until they admit their sickness, they cannot be released. Drawing a line between policing and psychiatry is increasingly difficult. Jails and prisons serve as the primary holding centers for the mentally distressed. By 2014, there were 10 times as many Americans labeled “severely mentally ill” in prison than in hospital.70 A similar pattern has been found in Canada71 and in other nations where psychiatric hospitals have been closed and replaced with prisons. Anyone can call the police to physically restrain and forcibly remove a distressed or distressing person to a place where they can be held against their will and ‘treated’ until they are judged capable of rejoining society, assuming they survive the encounter. In the United States,

In 2015 and 2016 combined, one in four police shootings was of a person with mental illness. Nearly half the people shot by police in Maine between 2000 and 2011 had a mental illness. Almost 60 percent of people killed by police in San Francisco between 2005 and 2013 had a mental illness that “was a contributing factor in the incident.”72

No rights In 2006, a United Nations investigation ruled that involuntary detention and forced psychiatric ‘treatment’ violate the U.N. Convention against Torture, “notwithstanding claims of ‘good intentions’ by medical professionals.”73 Such rulings have not changed psychiatric practice. In the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), a 2017 investigation found gross violations of human rights in the psychiatric system74 that were confirmed in a later government report.75 BC applies a ‘deemed consent’ model, which means that anyone detained in a psychiatric facility for any reason is assumed to consent to any and all psychiatric interventions. BC’s deemed-consent model permits treating physicians to make psychiatric treatment decisions unilaterally, without assessing whether a detainee is capable of making his own treatment decisions and without recourse to any other decision-maker.76

A physician is not required to interview a person but can order them detained based on past medical records or conversations with others. At any time and for any reason, a voluntary patient can be designated as an involuntary detainee. Once detained in the BC mental health system, the detaining facility controls virtually every aspect of your life and your body. You can be denied access to a phone or the internet. You can be denied visitors or the right to go outside for fresh air. You can be forcibly administered psychiatric treatment, including injections and electro-convulsive therapy. You can be placed in mechanical restraints that tie you to your bed. You can be put in seclusion.77

No limit is set on the length of involuntary detention. Individuals can be detained indefinitely on a continuously renewed cycling 6-month certificate. Unless individual detainees apply for a review panel, they can be detained for the remainder of their life.78

Amendments to the BC Mental Health Act in 1998 made forced detention even easier. The requirement for two physicians to complete the initial certificate was reduced to one physician. The safeguards in place to ensure independence between certifying physicians were repealed. Robust protections against liability were added for physicians who make detention decisions, to ensure that they are under no apprehension of any legal consequences for deciding to detain or not detain an individual.79

Police can only dream of such powers.

Conclusion The capitalist class require a State to sustain their rule. The modern State is a massive web of social institutions that keep the working class ‘in their place’ producing wealth for the capitalist class. Those who suffer most under capitalist rule have the most to gain by rebelling against it. The State exists to prevent such rebellion. While institutions such as psychiatry and policing claim to use violence ‘in the public interest,’ they use violence only in the interest of the capitalist class.

Part IV. The battle for freedom

10. Inspiring victory, long decline The Russian Revolution startled a war-diseased world and ushered in the most daring political and economic experiment of the twentieth century.1 — Lucy Wilson (1884-1937)

In 1917, the Russian working class overthrew the monarchy, then deposed the capitalist class and took power. Their inspiring victory and subsequent defeat still shape our understanding of the world and, specifically, the fight against oppression.

The great confrontation In 1914, capitalist rivalry erupted in a global war that took 10 million lives over four years. France lost one in five males of fighting age, Germany one in eight. Over 23 million shells were fired during the five-month Battle of Verdun – two million men took part, and half of them were killed. Yet neither side made any gains. One million died in the four-month Battle of the Somme in 1916, with Britain losing 20,000 men on the first day.2

The scale, horror, and deprivation of the war sparked mass protests and mutinies in many nations. In 1917, the Russian monarch was forced to step down. The Russian capitalist class were too weak to take power, so the working class formed their own government, the All Russian Soviet Congress, based on democratic councils (‘soviets’) of workers, soldiers, and peasants. They called themselves Bolsheviks, the Russian word for ‘majority,’ and their first act was to pull Russia out of the war.3

Inspiring victory For the few years they held power, Russian workers managed every aspect of society without capitalists, landowners, and financiers. In the process, they did more to end suffering and oppression than any country had done before or has done since.

Lenin, a leader of the Bolshevik Party, condemned imperial Russia as a prison-house of oppressed nations. He insisted that all nations must have the right to independence, because working-class solidarity across borders must be freely chosen; it cannot be forced.4 As soon as the working class took power, Finland petitioned for independence from Russia, and this was granted the following month. The workers’ government moved quickly to pass laws giving women legal equality with men, including equal pay and the right to vote. Contraception and abortion were legalized, and homosexual behavior was decriminalized.5 Women were not required to live with their husbands, and divorce was granted on request. The distinction between legal and common-law marriage was abolished, and ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ children were given equal status. Laws banned extended hours and night work for pregnant women and mandated paid maternity leave and family allowances. In 1919, Lenin stated, Take the position of women. In this field, not a single democratic party in the world, not even in the most advanced capitalist republic, has done in decades so much as a hundredth part of what we did in our very first year in power. In a literal sense, we did not leave a single brick standing of the despicable laws that placed women in a state of inferiority compared with men, of the laws restricting divorce and surrounding it with disgusting formalities, denying recognition to children born out of wedlock, enforcing a search for their fathers, etc., laws numerous survivors of which, to the shame of the capitalist class, are to be found in all civilized countries.6

Lenin argued that much more was needed. To free women from domestic drudgery, it was necessary to vastly expand cooperative living arrangements, community kitchens, public dining rooms, central laundries, and child-care facilities.

Education The stability of the socialist community is based not on the uniformity of the barracks, not on artificial drill, not on religious and aesthetic deceptions, but on an actual solidarity of interest.7 — Soviet Education Act, 1918

Before the revolution, 70 percent of Russians were illiterate. In 1920, the Bolsheviks launched a multi-language literacy campaign, including in the far North where Indigenous languages were encouraged.8

For the first time, textbooks were produced in hundreds of minority languages. Trade unions and youth organizations organized reading groups to promote literacy, with great success: according to the 1926 census, most people could read.9

The new schools welcomed everyone: men and women of all ages, peasants, workers, and soldiers. Thousands of children’s clubs, playgrounds, and nurseries were established, many in the mansions of former aristocrats. Despite a severe food shortage caused by the capitalist blockade, all students received free meals. The new education system emphasized collaborative play, student-directed projects, hands-on activities, and problem-solving approaches that required students to integrate knowledge across disciplines. The goal was to prepare a new generation to run society. American educator Lucy Wilson observed, Soviet Russia is actually giving to the masses in its state-supported public schools the kind of education that progressive private schools in this country and in Europe have been striving earnestly to give to the relatively few who come to them.10

In a war-starved economy, teachers had to be creative. The first post-revolutionary schools were without equipment, without books even, and their only possible laboratories were the great world of nature and in the museums and art galleries in which were and still are preserved the rich and abundant fruits of their old culture. Everywhere, every pleasant day, in the streets, round the town walls, in public buildings, in industrial establishments, in museums, in art galleries, may be seen groups of school children of all ages, oblivious of the world, absorbed in seeing and understanding.11

American educator John Dewey was surprised that, unlike American schools, Russian schools did not emphasize job training. Trained workers were desperately needed; however, creative problem-solvers were needed even more. Children’s work was taken seriously and always intended to culminate in authentic participation in social life. In one model school, for example, charts documented improvements to the children’s working-class neighborhood that they’d planned and brought about over the course of ten years.12

Dewey found no evidence of political indoctrination in Soviet schools. In his 1920 address to a national youth conference, Lenin argued against using propaganda in education. He insisted that the only way to overcome the capitalist divide between book learning and practical problem-solving was

not to lecture students but to engage them in solving real-life problems.13

International The Russian Revolution inspired a wave of working-class revolts that swept the world. Mass demonstrations, workplace occupations, and general strikes rocked Canada, Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, China, and the United States. In 1917, 10,000 African Americans marched down New York City’s Fifth Avenue to protest racist violence.14 More than two million workers defied the American Federation of Labor’s war-time strike ban.15 Britain’s Prime Minister, David Lloyd George warned, There is a deep sense, not only of discontent but of anger and revolt, amongst the workmen against pre-war conditions. The whole existing order in its political, social, and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other.16

These post-war rebellions failed to overthrow capitalism for two reasons: Capitalist classes outside Russia were more established, and there is a big difference between rebelling against capitalism and removing the capitalist class from power. In no other nation had the working class organized themselves in a political party for the purpose of taking power.

Defeat The astounding achievements of the Russian Revolution occurred under the most desperate conditions. Compared with Western Europe, Russia’s economy was extremely backward, with modern capitalist industries grafted onto a still-feudal agrarian economy. In 1917, only 10 percent of Russia’s working population were industrial workers, most of the rest being peasants. Russia’s weak economy was devastated by the war, starved by an international capitalist boycott, and ravaged by a civil war that was prolonged by invading imperial armies.

In total, the British alone would send 40,000 men to Russia. Other countries sent smaller contingents of soldiers, including France, the United States (15,000 men), Japan, Italy, Romania, Serbia, and Greece to overthrow the Bolshevik regime and to “strangle the Bolshevik baby in its crib,” as Churchill so delicately put it.17

The revolution prevailed, but at a terrible cost. Industries stood idle for lack of parts and raw materials, and starving workers left the cities to look for food in the countryside. Socialism cannot be built in conditions of dire scarcity. The survival of the Russian Revolution depended on a second socialist revolution in a more advanced industrial economy. This seemed possible in Germany as “huge demonstrations of workers and soldiers took control of Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Dresden, and scores of other towns.”18 Councils of workers, soldiers, and sailors formed across the country, and the emperor was forced to abdicate. Tragically, the German revolutionary party was too small, reformist parties were too influential, and Germany’s armed forces remained loyal to their State. The 1923 defeat of the German uprising left the Russian Revolution isolated.19 The Russian working class had become too weak to hold onto power, and the Russian capitalist class were too discredited to retake power, so the middle class filled the vacuum in the form of career-minded opportunists led by Joseph Stalin. In these desperate conditions, the Bolshevik Party came to substitute its own rule for that of a decimated, exhausted working class that was itself a small fraction of the population, and within the party the growing apparatus increasingly edged the membership from control.20

Lenin saw the warning signs. Before his death in 1924, he wrote, Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary [of the Communist Party], has concentrated an enormous power in his hands, and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution. Therefore, I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position.21

Stalin buried Lenin’s testament. Over the following decades, Stalin led a counter-revolution that restored capitalism in Russia and transformed the Bolshevik Party from a democratic worker-led organization into an

authoritarian capitalist State. Right-wing historians still equate Lenin and Stalin, who, in fact, represented two opposing classes. Lenin led the working class to power, and Stalin led the capitalist counter-revolution. The Russian Revolution proved that a united working class can remove the capitalist class from power. However, the defeat of the revolution, the continuing campaign to deny its achievements, and the false portrayal of socialism as State control have caused most workers to believe that genuine socialism is impossible. The success of this deception can be measured by how many people, including many on the Left, equate ‘socialism’ with State capitalism.

State capitalism The Russian Revolution had transferred social power to the base of society. When the working class could no longer rule, power reverted to the top of society. However, history does not run in reverse. The revolution had demolished both the old feudal order and the previous patchwork of capitalist industries. Stalin completed Russia’s capitalist revolution by centralizing the economy under the command of a single, enormous capitalist, the State.22 When millions of workers have rallied to the cause of revolution, the resistance of the privileged minorities is not difficult to break. [The counter-revolution], on the other hand, is carried out by privileged minorities against the laboring masses, whom it has to slaughter, to decimate.23

It took a second civil war to transform a democratic economy that had been run from the bottom up, into an autocratic economy that was run from the top down. To achieve this transformation, Stalin launched a bloody reign of terror, discrediting, imprisoning, exiling, and executing thousands of revolutionaries. The vast majority of those who had any roots in the Bolshevik past were liquidated and replaced by new personnel ‘uncontaminated’ by even the most tenuous ties with the working-class movement.24

State-driven production enabled a rapid accumulation of capital that was used to develop industry and re-arm the Russian State. This ‘progress’ was achieved through intense exploitation that further impoverished workers and peasants to the point that millions of people died of starvation.25 State capitalism revived all the old forms of oppression. The nuclear family was rebuilt by making divorce difficult and romanticizing marriage and motherhood. Homosexuality was recriminalized in 1933, and abortion was recriminalized in 1936. Indigenous peoples in the North were forcibly removed from their traditional lands, their children were incarcerated in ‘residential schools,’ and their languages outlawed.26 Revolutionary Russia needed everyone engaged in solving real-life problems, so rote learning and examinations were banned from schools. Capitalist Russia needed a submissive workforce, so Stalin reintroduced compulsory textbooks, rote learning, examinations, and deference to authority.27 The revolution had encouraged free and open debate on all matters. Under Stalin, political disagreement was forbidden as an offense against the ‘Supreme Leader’ who cannot be criticized. This authoritarian practice was reproduced in Cuba, China,28 and other State-capitalist regimes that allied with Russia during the Cold War.

Russian imperialism Stalin justified the ruthlessness of his regime by insisting that socialism is possible in one country and that the world’s only ‘socialist State’ had to survive at any cost. This was a complete betrayal of Bolshevik principles. The Russian Revolution had proved that socialism cannot survive in one country; it must spread or die. Stalin’s actual goal was to revive Russian imperialism. To that end, he sabotaged working-class revolutions in China (1927)29 and Spain (1936),30 and made alliances with other capitalist powers. A week before the outbreak of World War II, Stalin and Hitler signed a neutrality pact in which Russia and Germany pledged not to engage in hostile acts against each other. They also agreed to divide Eastern Europe between

them. Shortly afterwards, Germany invaded Poland from the west, and Russia invaded Poland from the east. The first demand of the revolution had been to withdraw Russia from World War I. Stalin plunged Russia into World War II, sacrificing 26 million lives to position the Russian empire as a contender for world domination.

The great lie The history of every conflict is written by the victors. The impact of the Russian Revolution was so powerful that Stalin could not admit his role in crushing it. Instead, he falsely proclaimed that his Statecapitalist dictatorship was still a socialist democracy, when it was nothing of the kind. Since then, capitalists and their supporters in all nations, including in Russia, warn workers against challenging their oppression by falsely insisting that Lenin led to Stalin, that State capitalism is equivalent to socialism, that socialism has nothing to do with the self-emancipation of the working class, and that a workers’ revolution will inevitably produce a totalitarian nightmare. The real lesson of the Russian Revolution is that a successful bid for working-class power must be organized well in advance, include the base of the armed forces, and be international in scope.

The Cold War World War II was followed by a decades-long competition between America and Russia for global domination. This ‘Cold War’ between the two capitalist powers was falsely framed as a political conflict. Russia called itself ‘communist,’ because the State controlled the economy. The United States called itself a ‘democracy’ because it had an electoral system. These were differences in form, not substance. Both nations were,

and continue to be, dominated by the drive to accumulate capital. However, masking their similarities served both empires, at home and abroad. Because conditions for Russian workers were so oppressive, Washington could claim that capitalism was better, and Americans who challenged racism or U.S. imperialism were denounced as ‘communist agents.’ Because conditions for American workers were so oppressive, Moscow could claim that communism was better, and Russians who challenged Stalin’s regime or Russian imperialism were denounced as ‘capitalist agents.’ In 1947, President Truman announced that the U.S. had a duty to combat ‘communism’ (the Truman Doctrine) and sent the Marines to Latin America to spread ‘democracy.’ In response, Russia dispatched the Red Army to Eastern Europe to ‘liberate’ people from capitalism. Portraying the United States as a ‘democracy’ and Russia as ‘communist’ was brilliant propaganda that created tremendous confusion. Many socialists in the West and the Third World were misled into believing the rulers of the U.S.S.R. were on their side, while many dissidents in the Eastern bloc believed Western leaders who claimed to stand for ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’ Those who stood out against this nonsense at the beginning of the 1950s were tiny in number.31

The Red Scare During the Cold War, Washington launched a Red Scare, also called McCarthyism after the zealous anti-communist ‘witch-hunter’ Senator Joseph McCarthy. Its purpose was to stamp out Left-wing politics in America. McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest-lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anti-communist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a Left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anti-communist crusade used all the power of the State to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.32

Conservative union leaders demonstrated their loyalty to the State by ripping the socialist backbone out of the unions. Between 1949 and 1950, the

Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled 11 Communist Party-led unions, more than 10 percent of its total membership. By 1954, 59 unions barred Communists from holding union office, and 40 unions prohibited Communists from being union members. Radical union members were a thorn in the side of conservative union officials. Purging these ‘troublemakers’ enabled the union apparatus to become even more conservative. In 1950, they signed the Treaty of Detroit, which tied raises in auto-workers’ wages to increases in productivity. It was a monumental betrayal. Measures to raise productivity include cutting corners on safety, speed-ups, short staffing, forced overtime, two-tier contracts, and union busting. Such measures increase the stress and dangers of work. They also undermine workers’ power on the job, making it easier for management to make further gains at workers’ expense. Union executives also settled for medical insurance for unionized auto workers instead of demanding a universal medical program for the entire working class. Only a weak labor movement sacrifices class interests to advance sectional ones, and a labor movement that does this becomes even weaker. Today, the United States is the only wealthy nation without universal medical care, paid maternity leave, and other State benefits that stronger labor movements have won in other countries. The capitalist backlash against the Russian Revolution not only furthered the bureaucratization of American unions, it also scuttled their efforts to challenge racism.

Racist divide The hostility between the Whites and Blacks of the South is easily explained. It was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave masters. They divided both to conquer each.33 — Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Early American craft-based unions were predominately White and hostile to

Black workers. In contrast, the CIO aimed to build working-class power by organizing everyone in a workplace or industry. This meant challenging racism. The African American community, especially, saw in the CIO a strong ally, as we struggled to arouse the nation to put an end to the racist Jim Crow practices that disfigured the American landscape. When the opportunity offered, we joined the CIO in great numbers and with great pride, and our community contributed dozens of gifted leaders, men and women who worked alongside their White counterparts as organizers – sometimes despite obstacles within the CIO itself.34

The American South relied on racism to prevent Black and White workers from joining forces. In response, the CIO launched an organizing drive called Operation Dixie. CIO president Philip Murray called it “the most important drive of its kind undertaken by any labor union in the history of this country.” In 1946, it recruited 250 organizers to go into the South and unite the workforce – Black and White, skilled and unskilled – under strong unions. The idea was that, once the workers were united, the factory bosses would no longer have the opportunity to use [racist] divisions to the detriment of the workers there – or anywhere.35

It took tremendous courage and determination for CIO organizers to stand up to Southern bosses, their police, and the Ku Klux Klan. When the CIO expelled its communist organizers, Operation Dixie fell apart. With American unions purged of radical socialists and the working class divided, the capitalist class could drive up productivity, make the U.S. the strongest economy in the world, and win the Cold War. When twentieth-century ‘organized labor’ ceased to be a [social] movement, the liberation of the South from the shackles of institutional racism fell to the initiative, creative leadership, and dedication of the African American community.36

Black liberation After World War II, African American veterans infused new energy into the Black freedom struggle. Three months after mustering out of the Army, I found myself in the midst of one of the bloodiest ‘race’ riots in U.S. history. It came to me then that I had been fighting the wrong war. The Germans weren’t the enemy – the enemy was right here at home. A lot of other Black veterans were having the same thoughts.37

The Black freedom movement grew to include most of the Black population and substantial sections of the White population. In response, the State conceded reforms. The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned discrimination at work, making it easier to organize unions. For many Black (and White) families, a union job meant that one could buy a home, send the kids to college, and retire with a decent pension. Public-sector unions were the key to raising living standards for Black workers.38 In 1962, the income boost from union membership was nearly five times higher for workers of color than for White workers.39 Black workers were strongly represented in public employment, from the postal service to city hospitals. The upsurge in unionism became a boon to Black communities, bringing higher incomes and stronger job protections to more Black families.40

Throughout the 1960s, the struggle for Black liberation and the fight for labor rights inspired and strengthened one another. This mutual inspiration goes a long way to explain the astonishingly rapid growth of publicsector unions during the civil rights era. In 1960 just 5 percent of state, county, and municipal workers were union members – but by 1966, the figure had jumped to 25 percent.41

During the 1960s, Detroit was the heart of American auto manufacturing. Thirty percent of the city’s residents were Black, and they were stuck in the dirtiest, lowest-paid jobs. In 1967, class rage against police brutality, segregation, and job discrimination exploded in a mass uprising that lasted five days. In 1969, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers formed to coordinate smaller groups of revolutionary union movements that were forming in industries with large numbers of Black workers. By 1973, there were dozens of such groups in Detroit, with hundreds of factory members debating the need for workers to take control of society. In the summer of 1973, militant workers closed three Chrysler plants in defiance of union bureaucrats who had done nothing about extremely high rates of workplace injuries and deaths. “Wildcat summer had brought together White and Black workers, the skilled and the unskilled, communists

and anticommunists.”42 The League went on to organize workers in factories, hospitals, a UPS distribution center, the Detroit News, and all across the city. It planned wildcat strikes; challenged the United Auto Workers’ undemocratic and racist practices; protested police brutality; won exoneration for a worker who had murdered two foremen; got the city to dismantle a racist anti-gang police unit; built a bridge to middle- and working-class Whites through a massively popular book club; created a publishing house, bookstore, and press; and produced a documentary about their work.43

Workers fight oppression Historians of the American sixties, which actually began in the mid-1950s and extended into the late 1970s, typically overlook or underplay the fact that workers took part in the liberation movements that sprang up in that era and the fact that many of the radical youth exceptionally active in those movements were children of the working class.44

During the 1960s, workers were involved in all the movements against oppression, and working-class communities mobilized to demand tenants’ rights, medical care, community control of schools, and an end to environmental pollution and police brutality. Like the mass actions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the wildcat strike wave of the 1960s and 1970s (documented in Rebel Rank and File45) started with radicals bringing their politics to work. This time, it wasn’t socialist and anarchist immigrants but Black-power activists, campus radicals, and former GIs, all fresh from the struggle in and against the Vietnam War.46

Labor feminists fought for women’s rights at work. More power on the job gave women more power at home and in society.47 Women asserted their rights in uprisings like the Farah strike of 1972-74, in which 4,000 Mexican American women struck for union recognition. The rebellion at Farah was part of a gigantic strike wave that stretched from 1968 into 1977, a period in which work stoppages numbered over 5,000 per year, involved an annual average of 2.5 million workers, and included quite a few wildcat strikes. This, too, should be seen as a sixties movement, for in virtually every case the strikers described their struggle as a fight for equality, fairness, dignity, and selfdetermination, in short, liberation from oppressive regimes.48

Converging struggles When masses of people move into struggle, they discover much in common,

and traditional divisions start to break down. During the 1960s, the American Gay Liberation Front and the Black Panther Party pledged mutual support,49 and demonstrations raised unifying chants such as “Gay, Straight, Black, White. One Struggle. One Fight.” Demands became revolutionary.50 In 1972, the Boston Gay Liberation Front presented ten demands to the Democratic National Convention, including an end to all discrimination based on biology, an end to U.S. imperialism and the complete withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, the legal emancipation of children from their parents,51 free 24-hour childcare centers, the legalization of all forms of sex between consenting individuals, a guaranteed annual income, and giving all government funds for ‘mental health’ to ‘mental patients’ so they can tend to their own needs. It concluded, Our liberation cannot be complete as long as any person is the property or the slave of any other in any way. All coercion and dominance must end, equality must be established, and we must search together for new forms of cooperation.52

Both the Black freedom struggle and opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam radicalized a generation. The name of the Gay Liberation Front referenced the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, as did the Insane Liberation Front (1970) and the Mental Patient’s Liberation Front (1971). Groups were united by certain rules and principles: Mental-health terminology was considered suspect; attitudes that limited opportunities for mental patients were to be discouraged and changed; and members’ feelings – particularly feelings of anger toward the mental-health system – were considered real and legitimate, not ‘symptoms of illness.’53

The women’s liberation movement opposed the practice of labeling women’s oppression as ‘mental illness.’ Feminist author Kate Millet described her experience of psychiatric assault,54 and Marge Piercy condemned psychiatric violence in her best-selling novel Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). The DSM inclusion of ‘premenstrual dysphoric disorder’ (PMDD) created a huge protest, with millions of people petitioning the American Psychiatric Association.55 According to Paula Caplan, who served on two DSM committees, The problem with PMDD is not the women who report premenstrual mood problems but the diagnosis of PMDD itself. Excellent research shows that these women are significantly more

likely than other women to be in upsetting life situations, such as being battered or being mistreated at work. To label them mentally disordered – to send the message that their problems are individual, psychological ones – hides the real, external sources of their trouble.56

Feminists, gay activists, and ex-psychiatric patients disrupted and demonstrated outside conventions of the American Psychiatric Association. Under growing pressure, the APA removed ‘homosexuality’ from the DSM-2 (1974).57 At the 1969 APA convention, anti-racists protested that psychiatry was targeting the victims of racism and not the perpetrators. After multiple racist killings during the civil rights movement, a group of Black psychiatrists sought to have murderous bigotry based on race classified as a mental disorder. The APA’s officials rejected that recommendation, arguing that since so many Americans are racist, racism in this country is normative.58

In the 1970s, disability activists and psychiatric survivors joined forces to demand equal rights, equal opportunity, self-determination, and an end to forced detention.59 Their efforts culminated in the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibited discrimination in employment, public services, public accommodations, and telecommunications. Anti-psychiatry’s success reflected the huge social struggles of the period, which led millions of people to see the main priority as changing the world rather than the individual. From 1971 to 1980, annual sales of psychiatric drugs in the U.S. fell from 233 million drugstore prescriptions to 153 million, and the proportion of medical school graduates studying psychiatry dropped from 11 to less than 4 percent.60

The solidarity that was built during the 1960s rebellion stretched into the 1980s. During the British miners’ strike of 1984-85, the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners became the single largest financial donor to the strike fund. On picket lines and demonstrations, lesbians and gays stood with miners and their communities. Both were attacked by police, and both were transformed by the experience. According to one gay activist, A few months ago, if anyone had asked us if this kind of alliance was possible we would never have believed it. All the myths and all the barriers of prejudice were just broken down. It makes me feel quite moved by the possibilities. You can unite and fight!61

After the strike, hundreds of miners and their families traveled to London to join the Lesbian and Gay Pride March. That same year, the National Union of

Miners campaigned to include gay rights in union policy. As one miner’s wife put it, “We’ve suffered over the last year with the police what they’ve been suffering all their lives and are likely to continue to suffer unless we do something about it.”

The long shadow When activists in the 1960s looked to the so-called socialist countries for alternatives to capitalism, they saw dictatorial nations filled with the same forms of oppression found in capitalist countries. There were two ways to make sense of this: One could conclude that these countries are not socialist on the basis that socialism is incompatible with oppression. Or one could reject socialism as incapable of ending oppression and look for ‘solutions’ that do not include the working class. In reality, the Russian working class could only sweep the capitalist class from power because they opposed all forms of oppression. There is no other way to unite a deeply divided majority class. The defeat of the revolution enabled a new capitalist class to reinstate all the old oppressions. Not knowing these realities, the 1960s rebellions were crippled with confusion about the nature of capitalism, the role of the State, the central role of the working class, and the revolutionary socialist tradition. Too few people understood the need to build revolutionary, working-class organizations that could challenge the capitalist class. The result was defeat. In France (1968), Chile (1972-73), Portugal (1974-75), Iran (1979), and Poland (1980-81), potential revolutions were betrayed by reformists who hesitated or outright refused to take power from the capitalist class.62, 63 In 1972, 300,000 workers in the Canadian province of Québec launched a general strike. They occupied mines and factories, took over radio stations, and brought entire towns under workers’ control. At the height of the strike, the police were powerless, the government was paralyzed, and the working class were in a position to take power. Union officials refused to take the

opportunity. No alternate, revolutionary leadership had been built, and the momentum was lost.64

Backlash In response to the 1960s rebellion, the capitalist class unleashed the power of the State. Police attacked peaceful anti-racist demonstrations with tear gas, water hoses, dogs, clubs, and guns. In 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four students at Kent State University and wounded nine others who had gathered peacefully to protest the U.S. war against Vietnam. Eleven days later, police killed two students and wounded 12 others at Jackson State College. The FBI used its counter-intelligence program, COINTELPRO, to infiltrate and disrupt the Black Panther Party, the American Communist Party, the American Indian Movement, the Socialist Workers Party, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, anti-war organizations, environmental activists, and other radicals. Undercover agents spread misinformation, provoked infighting, and tried to discredit leading activists.65 Many movement leaders were imprisoned, killed, or forced into exile. In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated. Three years later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. In 1971, President Nixon launched a racist ‘War on Drugs.’ His former assistant John Ehrlichman later confessed, The Nixon [presidential] campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti-war Left and Black people. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.66

Anti-drug and ‘tough-on-crime’ laws led to a massive expansion of the prison system. Between 1980 and 2018, the rate of incarceration rose 500 percent. Poor people of color were targeted to reinforce the racist myth that they are

born criminals.67 Many prisons were constructed in poor and largely White rural areas, deepening the racist divide.68 The U.S. Constitution permits convicts to be used as slave labor, so mass incarceration marked a return to mass slavery. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations, or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.69

With the capitalists attacking, union bureaucrats selling out, and no revolutionary alternative, the working class retreated from open struggle. Over the following decades, advances that were made in the 1960s and 1930s were rolled back. The result has been deep demoralization and the growth of Right-wing forces around the world. The logic of post-fascism is ‘cultural pessimism:’ defense of traditional values and ‘threatened’ national identities; claims for national sovereignty against globalization, and the search for a scapegoat in immigrants, refugees, and Muslims.70

Separating the fight for economic gains from the struggle against oppression weakens both. A labor movement that does not fight oppression is too divided to secure economic gains, and a retreating labor movement does not inspire anyone that it can end oppression.

Subterranean fire In 1886, revolutionary activist August Spies was sentenced to death on false charges. In his statement to the U.S. court he warned, If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement – the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery, the wage slaves, expect salvation – if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.71

Conclusion

The Russian Revolution proved that it is possible to defeat the capitalist class and completely transform society. The defeat of the revolution and subsequent efforts to bury its achievements have cast a long shadow that reaches into the present. Today, the working class are more numerous, more powerful, and more internationally connected than they were a century ago. General strikes are rocking Europe, Africa,72 and Asia.73 In 2018, the number of workers striking in America reached levels not seen for decades.74 Opposition is mounting against racist attacks and the growth of the far Right. Millions of people are demanding action on climate change. Now is the time to rebuild an international, working-class movement that can defeat the Right and end capitalist rule.

11. We are in deep shit With climate change, every callous policy, every deprivation, every oppression that exists in our societies, becomes a burning seed of further suffering.1 — D. M. Voskoboynik

We are in deep shit. We all know it, and we are all scared. In their reckless rush to accumulate capital, the ruling class have created a triple crisis of climate change,2 toxic chemical pollution,3 and pending nuclear war.4 Any one of these disasters could end life as we know it. The capitalist class refuse to acknowledge the dangers in which they have placed us, let alone do anything about them. This is not a matter of ignorance; they have been warned, in detail, repeatedly. They are locked into a competition for capital and cannot change course.5 So it falls to the rest of us to decide: Will we stand by while the ruling class destroy everything that humanity has accomplished over millennia? Or will we defend our right to a viable future? Undoubtedly, the majority choose to survive. The question is how. Various strategies to change society are based on different beliefs about the cause of the problems. Some say that the capitalist class are not the problem, that we can change society by changing how individuals think and behave. Others insist that we must convince the ruling class to ‘come to their senses’ or use the State to make them ‘do the right thing.’ Revolutionary socialists say we must end capitalist rule and rebuild society on a truly democratic basis. The problems we face are too serious and immediate to waste time on solutions that will not work. This is easier said than done. The capitalist class generate a thick fog of deception that conceals the source of our problems and the possible solutions. This chapter discusses morality-based strategies that aim to change individual

behavior and reformist strategies that aim to improve how capitalism functions.

Moralism Moralism is the practice of judging people’s attitudes, behaviors, and choices as right or wrong, good or bad, proper or improper, regardless of the social context. The capitalist class are amoral. They do not care if their actions are right or wrong, as long as they are profitable. Capital shuns no profit just as Nature abhors a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain profit of 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent profit will produce eagerness; 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, not a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.6

While capitalists observe no moral restrictions, they are full of moral lectures for everyone else. They attribute poverty to poor people being lazy; they blame unemployment on workers not having the right skills; and they hold workers responsible for job fatalities. Their lectures on ‘personal responsibility’ apply to everyone but themselves. The capitalist emphasis on personal responsibility falsely implies that society is no more than a collection of individuals who are equally responsible for creating and solving social problems. The managerial class largely accept this view and echo the moral lectures of their masters to the point that moralism dominates society, including academia and much of the working class.7 Moralists do not attribute social problems to capitalist rule but to the beliefs and behaviors of individuals who are judged as ignorant, bigoted, selfish, greedy, careless, apathetic, power-hungry, or violent. Their solution is to attack ‘wrong-doers’ and insist on ‘correction’ in the form of punitive measures, legal restrictions, moral education, psychotherapy, or ‘consciousness-raising.’

Organizations based on ‘moral values’ appeal to managerial types who feel entitled to direct what others should think and do.

Pacifism The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.8 — Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Nonviolence can be a useful tactic. Sometimes, it is the only way that oppressed minorities can begin to challenge the capitalist State. The Black freedom struggle in America used nonviolence as a moral accusation against racist violence. As the freedom struggle grew larger and more powerful, it was possible to use more confrontational methods, as the Black Panthers did. Insisting that self-defense is no offense, they armed themselves with guns and patrolled their neighborhoods to defend against police violence. While nonviolence can be useful in specific situations, pacifism is a moral principle that is applied in all situations. Pacifists reject all forms of violence, even in self-defense, on the religious grounds that ‘violence begets violence’ and the only way to end violence is to take the moral high ground and ‘turn the other cheek.’ As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated when he accepted the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.9

Cooperative societies promote nonviolence to resolve personal disputes. We do not live in a cooperative society, and we cannot create one simply by asking individuals to abandon violence, when the greatest source of violence is not individuals, but the capitalist class and their State. Four years after receiving the Nobel Prize, King was assassinated, as were many others who challenged the capitalist order. Pacifists insist that resorting to violence ‘makes us no different from them.’ The world is not divided into violent and non-violent people; it is divided into classes. The capitalist class have created the most violent society in history.

The violence of those who fight back is minuscule in comparison. Pacifism falsely equates the violence of the oppressors, that keeps people down, with the violence of the oppressed, who fight for their liberation. Because the working class are the majority, a well-organized revolution need not be violent at all. In Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), American journalist John Reed reported that fewer people than usual died on the first day of the Russian Revolution. However, the capitalist class do not accept defeat easily, and the working class must prepare to defend against a violent counter-revolution. Malcolm X emphasized that a successful struggle for freedom must be willing to use violence. It is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks. The time has come for the American Negro to fight back in self-defense whenever and wherever he is being unjustly and unlawfully attacked.10

Anarchism ‘Anarchy’ literally means “without rulers or hierarchy.” Anarchists tend to view all forms of leadership as oppressive and advocate Stateless societies based on voluntary associations. Historically, anarchism originated as a reaction against the brutality of industrial capitalism and as a desire to return to a rural, small-producer economy. This leads many anarchists to romanticize Indigenous cultures as models of how everyone should live. However, small-scale economies cannot solve global problems or meet the needs of 7.7 billion people. Anarchism is steeped in moralism. An example is anti-psychiatry, which insists that psychiatry does more harm than good and should be abolished in favor of community care. Aside from the problems of who would do the abolishing and how it might be accomplished, the demand to abolish psychiatry denies the right of people to choose the services they want. Even when there are no other options, anti-psychiatry activists support cutting ‘mental-health’ services. This is terribly misguided. Supporting cuts

to any social service advances the capitalist agenda of shrinking the State, and success in cutting any service increases the risk of losing them all. The net result is to reduce the choices available to the working class. Anarchism spans the political spectrum. Right-wing anarchists, also called Libertarians, are extreme individualists who reject all authority. They oppose workers managing society just as they oppose capitalists managing society. Left-wing anarcho-syndicalists, also called revolutionary anarchists or libertarian communists, build the labor movement as a means for workers to gain social power by taking control of their work. Socialists also want workers to control production; however, it is not possible to simply bypass the capitalist State. The working class must organize themselves into a revolutionary party that can coordinate the seizure of power. Anarcho-syndicalists reject the need to build a revolutionary party of the working class. This leaves them with no strategy for defending against the capitalist State. This is a dangerous omission. As the next chapter explains, the working class cannot take power unless they disarm the State. Anarchist distrust of authority leads to the promotion of leaderless movements or ones where everyone has an equal role in leading. Leaderless movements form and dissipate spontaneously, making them impossible to sustain. Movements where all members are involved in making every decision are restricted in size and get little done. The solution to authoritarianism is not to reject leadership in favor of individualism, but to make delegated power accountable and revocable.

Moral pressure Many people believe that change comes when enough people get angry enough to demand it. According to U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, if millions of young people stood up to say that they are “sick and tired of leaving college in debt, that they want public colleges and universities tuition-free, [then] that is exactly what would happen.”11

In fact, right now, millions of young people are actively demanding an end to gun violence and action on climate change. However, capitalism is not a democracy, and the capitalist class simply ignore popular demands that pose no threat to their profits or their rule. In 2003, between 12 and 14 million people in hundreds of cities around the world demonstrated their opposition to a pending war against Iraq. It was the single largest protest event ever. The highest mobilization levels were found in Spain and Italy, where 1 in 17 and 1 in 20 inhabitants joined the February 15 protests, setting participation records. In fact, the demonstration in Barcelona has been chronicled in the [2003] Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in human history.12

More than 100 American cities and counties passed anti-war resolutions, as did many unions. Public opposition to the war was so strong that the New York Times proclaimed, “There may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.”13 In reality, there was only one. President Bush ignored the global vote for peace and proceeded to bomb Iraq. Had the anti-war movement included strikes to stop the flow of profit, the outcome might have been different. In 2019, after shutting down U.S. government operations for weeks, President Trump backed down. He did not bow to public opinion (the shutdown has polled horribly for weeks), or back down out of concern for the plight of the furloughed (he’s made his contempt for the ‘deep state’ perfectly clear). Rather, Trump’s allies in Congress collapsed at their first glimpse of organized labor’s latent power to make life hard for people like them.14

Psychological moralism Socialists argue that oppression is structured into the capitalist system in order to divide the working class, and the working class must overcome those divisions in order to unite against capitalist rule. In contrast, moralists attribute oppression to psychological factors.15 An example is the belief that racism is rooted in ‘unconscious bias.’ If this is true, then racism can be uprooted with ‘sensitivity’ or ‘diversity’ training. In 2018, it was estimated that

U.S. companies spend over $8 billion a year on unconscious bias training. In New York, more than 40,000 members of the New York Police Department are currently undergoing classes in implicit bias, with over $4.5 million being handed to a private contractor to carry out the training.16

Michelle Obama, married to former-President Obama, believes that racism is a personal prejudice that should simply be ignored. In her best-selling book, Becoming, she attributes her own success to a willingness to work hard, get an education, and refuse to be held back by racist prejudice.17 Many people mistakenly believe that racism is not structured into the capitalist system and can be overcome by the sheer determination of the oppressed. That a Black American could be elected president is offered as evidence. The only way that individuals from oppressed groups can rise in the system is if they agree to be loyal servants of the system, as the Obamas did. During the Obama presidency, conditions for most Black Americans deteriorated. Michelle Obama continues her service with a book that transfers responsibility for overcoming racism from the capitalist class to their victims. The claim that racism is caused by unconscious bias has led to tests for measuring this bias and to efforts to identify sections of the brain that, presumably, are responsible.18 The effect is to transform racism from a social problem that must be challenged collectively to a neurological problem that can be ‘treated’ individually.19 Employers, police chiefs, and government ministers are all too happy to embrace the idea of unconscious bias. It points the problem away from them, their vested interests and their institutions. In fact, it can cast them as the enlightened good guys trying to retrain and restrain their employees’ baser instincts.20

Identity Instead of a politics of solidarity and class struggle, the focus on separate ‘identities’ has led to numerous academic theories and nonprofit career opportunities but no real power for oppressed and working-class people.21

As people engage in collective struggle, they share their experiences and uncover the common, social roots of their suffering. They also begin to see

similarities between their own oppression and that of other oppressed groups. Over time, struggles against different forms of oppression tend to generalize into a common struggle against the capitalist class and their State. When a wave of rebellion recedes, struggles tend to separate and turn inward. As the 1960s liberation movements disintegrated, the demand for social solutions was replaced by a search for personal ones. One result was ‘identity politics.’ Identity politics assumes that all members of an oppressed group share, or should share, a common experience and a common viewpoint that is not shared by people outside the group. This led to ‘male-identified’ women being excluded from feminist groups, lesbians splitting from straight women, French-speaking feminists in Québec separating from English-speaking ones, and all oppressed groups pushing out the socialists. The revolutionary goal of freeing society from sexual oppression was replaced by the celebration of sexual identities. The label ‘gay’ fragmented into ‘lesbian and gay,’ then ‘LGBTQ,’ then ‘LGBTQQIP2SAA’ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, androgynous, and asexual). Similarly, the struggle to free society from psychiatric oppression was reduced to a celebration of ‘mad’ identity and ‘mad’ studies.22 While pride in one’s identity can create a sense of connection with others, a judgmental approach to differences in appearance, language, behavior, and beliefs can deepen divisions among oppressed groups. Emphasizing identity overlooks the fact that oppressed people are divided by class, and different classes have conflicting interests.23 As Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver explained, We found that we had enemies in the Black community who were just as deadly as our enemies in the White community, so the White community and the Black community became meaningless categories for us.24

Oppressed people in the same class can also have conflicting views. Most Indigenous people oppose oil pipelines as environmentally destructive; however, some support them as a source of badly needed revenue and jobs.25

Working-class women are divided over how easy it should be to access abortion. The capitalist class insist that Blacks are fundamentally different from Whites, women are fundamentally different from men, Muslims are fundamentally different from Christians, immigrants are fundamentally different from non-immigrants, and so on. Whether an identity is imposed by the oppressor class or embraced as a badge of honor, social divisions are reinforced, leaving oppressed groups more isolated and with less social power. The real dividing line is not between those who share a particular identity and those who do not, but between those who fight for the rights of others and those who oppose those rights.

Privilege Where identity politics argued that only those who experience something can really understand it or be relied upon to challenge it, privilege theory accepts this premise and flips it over to focus not on the oppressed, but on the supposed ‘privileged’ oppressor.26

Some people act as if they are entitled to direct how things should be and what others should do. They get annoyed when questioned and refuse to be accountable. Displays of managerial-class privilege are based on contempt for others who, presumably, need managing. Such elitism can be countered by insisting on two things: a democratic process for making decisions and elected, recallable leaders. ‘Privilege theory’ does not explain elitism as a function of class domination but divides humanity into privileged and oppressed. It is simply assumed that those who do not suffer a particular form of oppression must benefit from it in some way, and they must relinquish their ‘privilege’ in order to be considered as allies.27 Because so many forms of oppression intersect, it is impossible to sort out who has more privilege, and efforts to do so are divisive and discouraging. As poet Audrey Lourde observed, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”28

Most people experience more than one form of oppression. The majority suffer working-class oppression, and most of the working class suffer additional forms of oppression, as women and/or as Black people, Muslims, Indigenous people, immigrants, gays, psychiatric survivors, and so on. Accusations of ‘White privilege’ and ‘male privilege’ imply that the White male capitalist and the White male worker have a common interest in upholding racism and sexism. While this may appear to be true, there is in fact no common interest of any kind between capitalists and workers, because the former oppress and exploit the latter. We are born into a capitalist system that is based on exploitation and oppression. We can choose to accept this or to fight it. Privilege theory discourages activists who do not share a particular form of oppression from participating in the struggle against it. This is dangerously self-defeating, because small movements are less effective. It is not necessary to have the same experience, or to fully understand another’s experience, in order to join with others to fight their oppression. The truly offensive ‘privilege’ is that of the capitalist class, who exploit humanity and nature in their pursuit of wealth and power. No one should have that much privilege.

Who benefits? Oppression exists because it is profitable. Tremendous fortunes were made, and continue to be made, from Black slavery and the theft of Indigenous lands. Today, the difference in wages between White and Black workers, men and women, union and non-union, resident and immigrant, and workers in richer countries compared with those in poorer countries goes straight into the capitalists’ pockets.29 Women’s oppression benefits the capitalist class in two ways. Women workers can be paid less, and the unpaid work they do in the home saves the capitalists a ton of money. Globally, the capitalist class would have to pay

$16 trillion every year to provide the reproductive services that families now provide for free.30 Oppression is also politically necessary to prevent working class unity. Even people in oppressed groups are pitted against each other.31 For instance, Black women who have been sexually assaulted face pressure not to ‘betray their race’ by charging Black assailants.32 To address this problem, Black men and women must unite against sexism as well as racism. Because most White workers are better off than most Black workers, it can appear that White workers benefit from racism. However, Those who argue that Whites benefit from Black oppression ignore the fact that no benefit from this division could possibly compare with what both could have if they pulled together. The [American] South remains the region where discrimination against Blacks is most severe. The South is also the region where incomes of White workers are lowest and poverty among Whites is highest; where the rights of labor, White and Black, have been most trampled; where trade union membership and influence have been most drastically curtailed.33

History shows that when White and Black workers unite against racism, they raise living standards for both. It is no accident that the politics of identity and privilege originated in academia. Professionals who belong to oppressed groups can, in fact, advance their careers and improve their professional standing by attacking other professionals who do not appear to belong to an oppressed group. For working-class people, the reverse is true. It makes no sense to demand that White and male workers renounce their ‘privilege’ of higher wages. If they took a pay cut, Black and female workers would not benefit; only the boss would benefit. Uniting against racist and sexist divisions is the only way for workers to gain the power to raise everyone’s wages. Identity politics and privilege theory are both based on a moral argument, that those who do not share a particular oppression must benefit from it, so they are the enemy. If this were true, then it would be impossible to unite different struggles against oppression. We would remain divided and powerless. The problem with moralism is that it cannot go beyond an endless recital of what or who is wrong. All social injustice is rooted in capitalist rule. The

question is what we are going to do about it.

Reformism Reforms are measures to improve society as it currently exists. Left-wing reforms include limiting the workday to eight hours, winning the right to abortion, and abolishing capital punishment. While such reforms do not change the structure of capitalism, they improve life for the majority and should be supported on that basis. Reforms are different from ‘reformism,’ which is a political strategy for improving capitalism in the belief that social problems can be solved without removing the capitalist class from power. Reformism dominates the Left. Most people who call themselves socialists are actually reformist-socialists. They support the working class – until they threaten the capitalist system. Reformists are willing to rock the boat, but not so much that it overturns. In contrast, revolutionary socialists unconditionally stand with the working class as the only force that can solve the problems created by capitalist rule.

Capitalist reformism The only thing better than controlling money and power is to control the efforts to question the distribution of money and power.34

Three-quarters of the people living in major capitalist economies believe that big business is basically corrupt.35 This is not new. During the 19th century, gangs of thieves, called ‘robber barons,’ conspired, bribed, lied, cheated, stole, clawed, and murdered their way to the top of American society. Needless to say, they had a negative public image. In his book The Gospel of Wealth (1889), American steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie advised the elite to polish their image by donating to worthy causes. Carnegie opposed raising wages or paying taxes for social programs because

there is no profit in such measures. Instead, he urged fellow capitalists to establish private, charitable foundations that would enhance their public standing, reduce their taxes, and enable them to steer society in a probusiness direction. Taking Carnegie’s advice, oil magnate J. D. Rockefeller founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901 and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. Both emphasized biological defects as the primary cause of human suffering.36 Today, the Gates Foundation continues the capitalist tradition of promoting technical remedies for social problems. Addressing the 2005 World Health Assembly, Bill Gates stated, Some say that we can only improve health when we eliminate poverty. But the world didn’t have to eliminate poverty in order to eliminate smallpox – and we don’t have to eliminate poverty before we reduce malaria. We do need to produce and deliver a vaccine.37

Technology cannot cure diseases that are caused and spread by poverty, oppression, and war. An effective polio vaccine was developed in 1955, yet polio remains a menace. [Despite] the US.$10 billion vertical polio campaign, and despite the recently declared elimination of polio from India, this [technological] endeavor is undergoing deep re-evaluation, following the resurgence of polio in Syria and Somalia and the appearance of wild polio virus in Tajikistan and Nigeria, and persistent endemic polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan in contexts of entrenched poverty.38

Capitalist reformists strive to “change things on the surface so that in practice nothing changes at all.”39 As Engels observed, It is infamous, this charity of a Christian capitalist! As though they rendered the workers a service in first sucking out their very lifeblood and then placing themselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when they give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them!40

Electoral reformism Lack of clarity regarding the nature and purpose of the State leads many to believe that State institutions can be redirected to serve the majority instead of the elite. However, efforts to do so consistently lead to defeat.41 —Vincente Navarro

The reformist strategy for ending oppression is to ‘get more oppressed faces in high places.’ This strategy has more than failed; it has backfired. The Black freedom struggle in America increased access to higher education and better jobs for people of color in America. Between 1972 and 1991, the number of Black professionals increased 470 percent. By 2005, more than 9,100 Black officials had been elected.42 Black mayors were elected in major cities including New York, Chicago, Houston, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Seattle, and San Francisco. A sprinkling of African Americans even entered the ruling class, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. In 2003, Oprah Winfrey was named the first Black female billionaire. In 2009, America elected its first Black president. The expansion of the Black middle class, the rise of Black capitalists, and the election of a Black president have not improved conditions for most Black Americans. Today, Black politicians, mayors, cops, police chiefs, and judges administer racist State violence.43 In Atlanta, Georgia, it’s Black people themselves, elected and appointed, who have taken the machinery of government and instead of using it to serve the interests of Black and other poor and oppressed people, they have used it to serve the interests of the developers, the capitalists, the business owners, and the big boys in Atlanta.44

The ruling class use the carrot-and-stick method to divide and conquer. The carrot is allowing some members of oppressed groups to rise in the system, as long as they use the stick to keep the rest down. In 2014, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus – all Democrats – voted to continue the Pentagon’s infamous 1033 program that has funneled billions of dollars in battle-grade weapons and military gear to local police departments. Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, increased the Pentagon’s militarization of local police 24-fold between 2008 and 2014.45

To justify their collusion with a deeply racist system, Black officials falsely blame poverty on the failure of Black people to make good choices, and they falsely blame high incarceration rates on Black ‘criminal behavior.’ The utility of Black elected officials lies in their ability, as members of the community, to scold ordinary Black people in ways that White politicians could never get away with. There have

always been class differences among African Americans, but this is the first time those class differences have been expressed in the form of a minority of Blacks wielding significant power and authority over the majority of Black lives.46

Similarly, incorporating Indigenous people into the State has not reduced Indigenous oppression; it has made it easier to enforce. In 2018, Tara Sweeney, the first Indigenous assistant secretary of Indian affairs in the U.S., ruled that the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe would lose control of their land because they did not meet the definition of ‘Indian.’47 In South Africa, mass rebellion against the racist apartheid system replaced a White capitalist government with a Black one. The majority of Black workers did not benefit from this change, and South Africa today is the world’s most unequal nation.48 The formation of a new national union federation, independent of the government, and a new revolutionary workers party inspire hope for a genuinely socialist South Africa.49

Feminist reformism Feminist reformism seeks to improve the position of women in capitalist society. In practice, it tends to benefit upper- and middle-class women at the expense of working-class women. Feminist reformists claim that men have always dominated women in all societies throughout time. If this were true, then women would have more in common with each other than they have with men. In reality, there is no sisterhood of women that overrides class and racist divisions. Women capitalists exploit male and female workers. Women as well as men were slave-owners,50 and leaders of the American suffragette movement were openly racist.51 Feminism is not a strictly Left phenomenon. Feminists played a central role in building the Klan. Not just fathers, husbands, and sons but mothers, wives, and daughters have always been central to the work of advancing White supremacist causes.52

Women in positions of power such as Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, and Theresa May have not improved the lives of ordinary women in their countries. The infamous Gina Haspel, who supervised torture for the CIA, is

now in charge of that institution. Women also head four of America’s five biggest military contractors. Feminists should not view this ‘rise’ of women as a win. Feminism is increasingly being coopted to promote and sell the U.S. military-industrial complex, a profoundly violent institution that will never bring liberation to women – whether they are within its own ranks or in the countries bearing the greatest brunt of its brutality.53

Promoting a cross-class alliance of women subordinates the struggle against capitalism to a struggle against men. Capitalist and professional women can advance their careers by competing against the men of their class. However, the majority of women are working class, and they can win their liberation only by uniting with working-class men against the capitalist order. Upper- and middle-class women reject the link between working-class struggle and women’s liberation because working-class rebellion threatens them as much as it threatens the men of their class.54 This means that working-class women who want freedom from capitalist rule cannot align with upper- and middle-class women who defend it.55

Labor reformism During the rise of industrial capitalism, a revolutionary labor movement called for general strikes to win “the rights and liberties of the industrial classes.”56 By the 1900s, reformist union officials had partnered with the capitalist class to calm revolutionary activity in the working class. While unions continued to battle the bosses, they abandoned the goal of transforming society in favor of improving conditions for workers in specific industries. Labor reformists avoid open class warfare by negotiating the terms on which capitalists will exploit workers. Like all reformists, they do not view workers as capable of fighting on their own behalf but treat them as cheerleaders for union campaigns and passive beneficiaries of whatever union officials can deliver. In 2018, reformists advised striking American teachers to seek election to public office instead of expanding their struggle into the larger working class.57 Where stronger labor movements exist, reformist labor

parties may form with the aim of electing ‘labor-friendly’ politicians to the capitalist State. While most of their members are working-class, these parties do not represent workers’ interests. Rosa Luxemburg observed that whether a labor movement is reformist or revolutionary depends on whether its leadership is middle class or working class.58 In 1920, Lenin described Britain’s Labour Party as ‘a thoroughly capitalist’ party, because although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the capitalists to systematically dupe the workers.59

The Labour Party has consistently supported British imperialism.60 During both World Wars, it helped the capitalist class to send British workers to kill workers in other countries. Labor parties with an exclusive focus on elections do not capture the State; it captures them.61 “Throughout history, once in office, socialists have faced enormous obstacles, with the whole of the political system working to block their initiatives, to marginalize them, or to force them to adapt to the status quo.”62 Adaptations include: resignation to very limited measures in the name of maintaining the positions acquired; refusal to criticize the institutions or their management in the name of possible future agreements; the idea that politics advances in small steps; fear of public opinion, which leads to not presenting a socialist alternative; desire to avoid conflict for fear of losing.63

This does not mean that one should abstain from participating in elections. Elections provide an opportunity to discuss important issues, organize around those issues, push candidates and parties to deliver needed reforms, and expose the utter failure of the capitalist class to solve social problems.

Climate crisis Helping to climate-proof the developing world is comparatively loose change: $150 billion is about the same amount that was spent on bailing out just one company, AIG, during the financial turmoil of late 2008.64

While toxic pollution and nuclear war pose huge threats to human survival, global warming currently dominates public discussion.

Since World War II, the escalating use of carbon-releasing fuels and the rapid loss of carbon-capturing forests have raised global temperatures,65 causing glaciers to melt. More and more people are being forced to flee rising water levels, extreme weather events, and drought.66 The climate crisis threatens the ability of human beings to survive. Yet mainstream suggestions for resolving it are woefully inadequate. Moralists blame and shame individuals, not the capitalist class. Ecologist James Lovelock typifies the view that, “We, personally, are the polluters. We buy the cars, drive them, and foul the air. We are therefore accountable, personally, for the silent spring that Rachel Carson predicted.”67 The New York Times takes the same position: “We simply cannot continue to hold our national security and the health of the planet hostage to our appetite for fossil fuels.”68 There is no ‘we.’ The capitalist class are solely responsible for the environmental crisis. They decide what is profitable, and they impose their choices on society, regardless of what the majority want or need. Lecturing consumers to reduce, reuse, and recycle is a feel-good project that does not stop corporations from flooding the market with ‘disposable’ products and plastic packaging. Insisting that people stop eating meat or driving cars to reduce their carbon footprint does not stop the reckless pursuit of profit. The capitalist class will substitute new harmful practices for older discredited ones69 and create new markets when old ones dry up.70 Anarchists insist that the problem is industry, and their solution is to return to a pre-industrial economy. Such an economy is incapable of supporting the current human population. Abandoning billions of people to die of starvation is unacceptable and unnecessary. Capitalist reformers insist that capitalism can be made to work for all.71 Some call on the State to force change on corporations and populations alike. Climate change, like a world war, requires government intervention. Citizens must adjust their behavior for the sake of solidarity.72

Increasing the authority of the State to control people’s lives strengthens the power of the capitalist class, and that would mean more environmental

destruction, not less. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that stopping further global warming would require massive system changes including restricting economic growth, replacing ‘market mechanisms’ with government regulation, changing the way land is used, and changing human consumption patterns;73 in short, an economic and social revolution. In response, climate activists and Left members of the U.S. Democratic Party are campaigning for a ‘Green New Deal,’74 a massive State-led program to end the extraction of fossil fuels, phase out gas-powered vehicles, transition to 100 percent clean energy, increase employment, and reduce inequality. In 2019, the U.S. Congress rejected this plan as ‘too controversial.’ The capitalist class cannot stop the unfolding environmental catastrophe for the same reason they caused it: their competition for profit.75 Instead, they deny the problem. The coastal state of North Carolina ordered agencies to ignore rising sea levels to protect real-estate development.76 After Hurricane Harvey devastated a part of Texas that was home to thousands of petroleum refineries and chemical factories, Washington refused to allow scientists to measure the levels of toxic pollution released.77 And when President Trump was asked about his own government’s report that warned of impending climate-caused disaster, he replied, “I don’t believe it.”78 The ruling class not only dismiss the need to stop global warming, they are charging full speed in the opposite direction, scrapping environmental protections,79 opening protected areas for oil and gas exploitation,80 and plundering the world’s remaining rain forests.81 In 2015, the U.S. spent $50 billion more to subsidize the fossil fuel industry than it spent on ‘defense.’82 The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single largest consumer of energy, using more energy in the course of its daily operations than any other private or public organization, as well as more than 100 nations.83 The U.S. military is also the world’s leading producer of toxic waste.84 Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted

uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, lead, and defoliants like Agent Orange.85

Together, China and the U.S. produce almost half the world’s climatewarming gases.86 Instead of cooperating to solve this problem, they are preparing for war.87 Moral outrage, individual actions, and reformist tinkering cannot possibly solve problems of such magnitude.

Conclusion The crises we face are so immense, so global, and so urgent that we cannot waste time on ineffective solutions. It is impossible to solve systemic problems and also maintain the system that creates them. Such efforts inevitably fail, like the mythical King Sisyphus, who was condemned to eternally push a heavy boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll down again or, in this case, crush us all.

12. We need real socialism Our objective is complete freedom, complete justice, complete equality, by any means necessary.1 — Malcolm X (1925-1965)

Every hour, the sun delivers more energy to Earth than humanity uses over an entire year.2 Solar power is clean, abundant, and universally available. The world is not powered by solar energy because highly polluting energy sources such as coal, nuclear fission, and fossil fuels are more easily controlled by corporations who can profit by charging for access. Massive profits for them create massive suffering for us. We can fight for a different world, or we can go down with this one. Fortunately for us, socialism is back on the agenda. A 2018 Gallup poll reported that Americans aged 18 to 29 were more positive about socialism than capitalism.3 Fox News host Laura Ingraham called this “terrifying.” Insisting that young people are being fed myths about socialism, she assured viewers, “We’re going to be exploding these myths all year long.”4 An accompanying article was titled, “How to get your child to just say no to socialism.”5 It will take a lot more than that. In 2019, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund warned, “I think capitalism is under serious threat because it has stopped providing for the many, and when that happens, the many revolt against capitalism.”6 This is a remarkable shift. In the late 1980s, American pundits crowed that the fall of the Soviet Union had proven the superiority of capitalism, once and for all. The current scramble to defend it has opened a space to discuss what socialism actually means and how we can achieve it.

Real socialism

Most discussions about socialism refer to social systems in the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and Sweden. This is misleading. Socialism is not about a country. Socialism is about class, specifically, which class rules society. Regardless of the political form of society, wherever there is waged labor, there are two opposing classes: those who control the means of production (the capitalist class), and the people whose labor they exploit (the working class). There is no place where the wage system has been abolished and workers control production. This does not mean that socialism is impossible; it means that achieving socialism is a bigger challenge than we are led to believe. However, the capitalist class have created the conditions for us to meet that challenge. Marx explained that class divisions arise during a specific phase in the development of human production, and when the laboring class grow large enough to form the majority of society, they can abolish those divisions. This point has now been reached. As Marx predicted, “What the capitalists produce, above all, are their own gravediggers.”7

Gravediggers The capitalist class have a fundamental weakness, an Achilles heel. No matter how much they strive to divide workers, globalized production brings workers together in ever-increasing numbers.8 Major corporations employ thousands of workers in single locations and many more in globally integrated production chains. More than 2 million people work for Walmart, McDonald’s employs 1.7 million, and more than half a million people work for Amazon. In almost every nation, factories function in the same way; stores carry similar goods; and young people listen to the same music, watch the same movies, wear the same clothes, and want the same things.9 Increasingly, workers all over the world are experiencing a common

exploitation, a common oppression, and a common desire for freedom. This makes it possible for rebellions to spread through industries and spill over borders in an international rhythm of revolt. The 2010 ‘Arab Spring’ protests that began in Tunisia spread to Oman, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Morocco, and Egypt, involving millions of people and toppling governments. In 2018 alone, 20,000 Google employees and contractors protested sexual harassment by leaving their jobs in Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, Berlin, Haifa, London, New York, Montréal, Toronto, and California. Thousands of Amazon workers coordinated demonstrations and strikes across Europe,10 and the ‘yellow-vest’ protests against austerity that began in France were copied in Belgium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Sweden, Israel, Iraq, Greece, Spain, Poland, Ireland, and Canada. Major strikes are sweeping Mexico,11 and a tide of revolt is washing through North Africa. Each success raises expectations of what can be achieved.12 After mass protests in Algeria forced a hated president from office, a Sudanese protester exclaimed, We have seen success in Algeria. That makes us even more determined to bring down our own dictator, and to cooperate with our brothers and sisters in Algeria to change everything.13

Cross-border strikes and solidarity actions are especially powerful. In 1973, after the bloody military coup in Chile, workers in Scotland refused to service Chile’s jet fighters, grounding the entire squadron for four years.14 In the 1980s, dockworkers in Australia and the U.S. refused to unload cargo from apartheid South Africa, hastening its collapse.15

Why the working class? Marx called the working class the universal class because all working-class people share a common relationship to capitalism, and, together, they form the unique force that has the power to abolish class society altogether.16

The mass media typically depict the working class as White, male, bigoted, manual workers.17 Nothing could be further from the truth.

As the majority, the working class are not only the most diverse class, they include the majority of people in every oppressed group. In America, 78 percent of Black mothers do waged work, and 80 percent are the primary earners for their families.18 Diversity diminishes as one moves up the class ladder precisely because of the barriers imposed by systemic oppression. This is why the capitalist class are predominately White, male, and bigoted. Workers are vastly unappreciated. Society can function without capitalists; it cannot function without workers. Workers grow, harvest, process, and package our food. They transport it to stores, stock shelves, operate cash registers, and pack our groceries. They construct the houses we live in, the vehicles we move in, the roads we travel on, and the bridges we cross. They load and unload ships. They collect, sort, and deliver our mail. They manufacture our vehicles, appliances, furniture, clothing, medicines, technology, and toys. They serve us food and drink. They build and maintain our communication networks. They care for our sick and wounded. They are factory and office workers, soldiers, bank tellers, warehouse workers, truck and bus drivers, hotel and hospital staff, groundskeepers, cleaners, garbage collectors, and cooks. Their contribution is so essential that society grinds to a halt when they stop working.

A revolutionary class As the majority, the working class can no longer emancipate themselves from the capitalist rule without at the same time freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class distinction, and class struggle.19

Socialism is the natural politics of the working class, growing out of their suffering and their collective power to end it. The working class produce all social wealth, form the majority of humanity, and include the majority of people from every oppressed group. This means that the working class are the only class that can end capitalist rule, abolish all forms of oppression, and construct a cooperative, global society. To win their freedom, the working class must be more than a class against capitalism; they must become a class for themselves. That is the difference

between strikes, where workers stop production in order to improve their conditions, and revolutions, where workers take control of production in order to meet their needs. The workplace is key. That is where workers have the most power and where the two classes battle for economic and social control. Whether individual capitalists have good or bad intentions does not matter. As a class, they stand in the way of human survival, and only the working class can remove them from power.

Objections to socialism Socialists see the exploitation of some people by others, the existence of an oppressive State, and the subordination of women to men in the nuclear family as products of human history. Our opponents see them as the result of human nature.20 —Chris Harman (1942-2009)

The belief that there will always be rich and poor, rulers and ruled, oppressors and oppressed is deeply embedded in the capitalist class and in professional and academic sections of the middle class. Their secular version of ‘original sin’ depicts the human species as morally corrupt and ‘human nature’ as greedy, aggressive, and competitive. This fundamental distrust lies at the root of all objections to socialism. Capitalist supporters say, “Under [socialism], people have very little power over their own lives. A small group of people is given power by the majority, and that group typically ends up becoming tyrannical.”21 This is a gross distortion of history. The Russian Revolution showed that a working-class majority who overthrow their oppressors will not relinquish their hard-won freedom without a fight. Once the capitalist class have been vanquished, the bitter experience of class tyranny and the high cost of liberation will result in mass resistance against anyone who tries to gain power over others or benefit at their expense. Capitalist supporters say, “With this [socialist] model in place, minorities don’t really have any rights. If the majority think people should live or work

in a certain way, everyone is required to obey, even if it violates their deeply held beliefs.”22 This is ironic, because minority rights are systematically violated under class rule. The capitalist defense of ‘minority rights’ gives the oppressors a “license to discriminate”23 against the oppressed, such as defending the ‘right’ of antiabortion doctors to deny women medical care, the ‘right’ of unionized workers to refuse to pay union dues, and the ‘right’ of Right-wing hate groups to speak on college campuses. In other words, capitalists insist that the minority should have the ‘right’ to act against the interests of the majority, which is what they do every day.

Class distrust The essence of elitism is the claim that the mass of the people are incapable of self-government now or in the future.24 —Duncan Hallas (1925-2002)

Capitalist supporters insist that ordinary people cannot be trusted to run society. Without a strong State to manage them, they will be irresponsible and destructive. In fact, the capitalist class are the ones threatening human survival. They are the class who cannot be trusted. Capitalists distrust workers not because workers are incompetent, but because the oppressed inevitably rebel against their oppressors. As capital accumulates at the top of society, the risk of rebellion grows, and it becomes even more important for the capitalist class to generate distrust against and within the working class. The capitalists cannot acknowledge their fear of working-class power. Instead, they use the myth of meritocracy to a) depict themselves as the best qualified to direct society, and to b) depict workers as ignorant slackers who need direction from ‘superiors.’ In reality, the capitalists are the least qualified to make decisions about human welfare because they value profit above all else. Their system functions, to the extent that it does, only because of workers’ contributions. Distrust of the working class lies behind the repeated claim that a workers

revolution would destroy ‘civilization.’ In 1916, Wilfred Trotter insisted that workers revolts and anti-war protests were no more than mindless “herd instinct.”25 Sigmund Freud described “man as a savage beast”26 and advised that “these dangerous masses must be held down most severely and kept most carefully away from any chance of intellectual awakening.”27 These are atrocious lies. It is possible to construct a cooperative society that rewards socially responsible behavior. Before class rule, everyone lived that way.28 Peer pressure still has more power to shape behavior than externally imposed rules, regulations, and punishments.29 People will always have conflicting impulses and tendencies. Human beings develop culture in order to direct those impulses in certain ways and not others. Capitalism brings out the worst in human beings. We can build a socialist society that brings out the best. Some middle-class reformers will agree with the need for socialism, yet they lack confidence in the working class. Some insist that before we can challenge capitalist rule, we must first “convince a skeptical populace that a society based on public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and communication could, in fact, work.”30 I have discussed socialism with many striking workers. All agreed that workers could manage society better than billionaires do now. They know from experience that workers get things done. They had no interest in details of how a socialist society might function; their primary concern was practical – how can workers overcome their divisions and ‘get it together’ to create such revolutionary change?

Overcoming divisions Today, every city and sizable workplace includes male and female workers who look different, speak different languages, observe different religions, and have different cultural practices. These divisions are pushed to the background when workers stand together against the boss. Even racism, which is deeply embedded in the working class, melts in the heat of class

struggle. Such is the power of class solidarity. While performing at a benefit for striking British miners, Black poet Benjamin Zephaniah was subjected to racist taunts. A White miner leaped onto on the stage, announced that Zephaniah had brought a substantial donation from the African Caribbean Association, and “delivered a diatribe against racism.” Zephaniah later wrote, “The miners’ strike changed White men’s attitudes to Black people; it changed men’s attitudes to women, and women’s attitudes to men.”31 It is not necessary for White workers to experience racism or to fully understand that experience before they join with workers of color. Understanding unfolds as the struggle develops. During the 1936-37 occupation of General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, The only Black sit-downer was Roscoe Van Zandt. At first, the southern White workers didn’t know what to make of it. When the food came in, he took his share and went around the corner because Blacks and Whites never ate together. This embarrassed the rest of the sit-downers. Then they began to talk to him. Before that, Black and White workers never got to know each other because it was a period of intense discrimination. When it came time for the victory parade, the strikers voted for Roscoe Van Zandt to carry the flag out of the plant.32

Hospital workers are a largely immigrant, low-paid, female workforce. In 1981, staff and wage cuts provoked 13,000 Ontario hospital workers to strike. Despite intense opposition from their bosses, the government, and even their own union officials, they persisted because class unity took priority over divisions based on national origin, skin color, gender, and sexual orientation.33 In the United States, 485,000 workers were involved in major strikes in 2018, the largest number in 32 years. Ninety percent of them worked in industries with a highly diverse workforce: education, health care, and social services.34 When class struggle erupts, the daily deceptions, divisions, confusions, and conflicts disintegrate, revealing one basic truth: If you are not on the side of the workers, then you are on the side of the capitalists.

Model ‘socialism’ Some claim that socialism can be built by promoting worker-run

cooperatives. While the capitalist class were able to develop their economy inside the feudal order, the working class cannot construct a socialist economy under capitalist rule. A capitalist economy produces for profit. A socialist economy produces what people need. The two systems are incompatible. Worker-run cooperatives that are embedded in a capitalist economy can survive only by competing with other producers. Some reformers design detailed models of ‘socialism’ on the false assumption that ordinary people are incapable of creating a truly egalitarian society and need someone to do this for them. All ideal, prefigurative, utopian, or ‘blueprint’ societies are based on the founders’ values. Michael Albert has written several books describing his version of an ideal society in great detail. Albert’s model is based on what he calls participatory economics, or Parecon. While he insists that Parecon is based on “people democratically controlling their own lives,” they do this through preplanned “original institutions” designed by Albert and other intellectuals. There can be no detailed blueprint for socialism, because socialism is not delivered from above; it emerges from the self-organization and self-activity of workers themselves. As Marx and Engels emphasized, “The practical application of [socialist] principles will depend, everywhere, and at all times, on the historical conditions at the time.”35 Parecon is another top-down, moralistic model of how some people think other people should live. The task of planning a future society properly belongs to those who live in it, and they will use whatever methods or models meet their needs at the time. Our task is to organize a socialist revolution to end class rule so that humanity has a future to shape.

Self-determination The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the workers themselves.36

The only people who should be making decisions are those who will experience the consequences of those decisions. This marxist principle of self-determination is the polar opposite of top-down efforts by ‘authorities’ to manage other people’s behavior. Top-down, leave-it-to-us managers include charitable organizations (give us your money, and we will care for the needy), union bureaucrats (give us your money, and we will deal with the boss), utopians (choose our social model, and we will organize your life), and politicians (elect us, and we will improve society for you). However well intentioned, top-down reformers treat the oppressed as powerless victims in need of rescue, not as members of a powerful class who are perfectly capable of liberating themselves. Some well-meaning professionals fear that a society without social managers would fail to protect its most vulnerable members. This raises the question: Do we believe that human beings are capable of treating each other well? Or will human beings always need social ‘managers’ to restrict their choices and ensure that they ‘do the right thing’? It is extremely difficult for professionals to reject everything they have been taught, which is to ‘fix’ or direct people instead of supporting them to get what they need to take care of themselves and each other. Distrust of ordinary people is so pervasive that even in revolutionary Russia, trusting workers to make good decisions proved to be a challenge. The revolutionary transformation of the Russian education system was based on councils of teachers, students, and local workers who decided the curricula and teaching methods. When a dispute arose as to whether this council system could make good decisions, leading Bolshevik Nadezhda Krupskaya replied that those who distrusted the councils still cannot throw off the old view of the people as an object of the intelligentsia’s care, like a small and unreasonable child. We were not afraid to organize a revolution. Let us not be afraid of the people; let us not be afraid that they will elect the wrong sort of representatives, bring in the priests. We want the people to direct the country and be their own masters. Our job is to help the people in fact to take their fate into their own hands.37

Struggle transforms Once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.38 — Studs Terkel (1912-2008)

Most people feel angry about all that is wrong in their lives. They blame themselves, each other, authorities, and nameless strangers. Becoming part of an organized struggle can focus anger against the capitalist class, where it belongs, and transform the person in the process. As one striking railway worker exclaimed, “I’ve never felt so alive!” Collective struggle can create positive and lasting change. After the 1981 Ontario hospital strike, a researcher interviewed the strikers.39 Housekeeper: “It’s like being in a life-type school. I remember how I thought laws and politics was for men to understand. I know now the same as men do – it’s a good feeling to know how things work.” Woman striker: “I don’t regret it – in fact, I’m glad we struck. You couldn’t begin to understand what it meant for me. I’m a different person at home and at work.”

Standing up to the boss gave women confidence to stand up to the men in their lives: Woman striker: “They all said I should use my head and not get involved. My father, my boyfriend, they sounded the same. I made two big decisions: First I decided to ignore them, then I went ahead with the strike.”

Mass protest changes how people understand their suffering. The 1960s rebellions in America were accompanied by a dramatic drop in the number of people in psychiatric facilities, even before asylums began closing in the 1970s.40 During Poland’s mass rebellion in the 1980s, one doctor reported that working-class patients began leaving hospital to join the movement, while their beds filled with sick government bureaucrats.41 People who engage in collective struggle are not only changed by the experience; they can also change ideas in the larger society. In 1960s America, most people blamed Black rebellion on the ‘pathology’ of Black people. However, a Harris poll taken in the summer of 1967, after major riots in Detroit and Newark, found 40 percent of Whites believed that “the way Negroes have been treated in the slums and ghettos of

big cities” and “ the failure of White society to keep its promises to Negroes” were the leading causes of the rebellion.42

Clarity about the social roots of oppression leads to more effective struggle, creating an upward spiral of rebellion. The chant “When we fight, we win” doesn’t only mean that collective action gets us victory. It means that the struggle changes our understanding of what’s possible, of where power lies, of who we are and can be.43

Socialism cannot be created by workers as they are today – divided, distrustful, and lacking confidence. The experience of fighting together, as a class, will transform what it means to be human. As Marx pointed out, Revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way but also because the class overthrowing it must go through the process of building the revolution in order to rid itself of the muck of ages and become fit to found a new society.44

The revolutionary party The leaders of the middle class teach the people to trust the capitalists. The revolutionary workers must teach the people to distrust the capitalists.45 — Lenin (1870-1924)

The capitalist class organize leadership or vanguard parties to advance their agenda. American capitalists have two such parties, Republicans and Democrats. British capitalists have several. Different capitalist parties represent different sections of the capitalist class with different strategies for advancing their own interests. In order to end capitalist rule, the working class must form their own vanguard party to advocate for socialism and to organize the seizure of power. A successful working-class revolution requires the majority to act as one on their own behalf. However, class struggle is uneven; it advances and retreats. Class consciousness also advances and retreats. Some workers gain confidence. Others become discouraged. Some are ready to move forward. Others waver. Given the unevenness of consciousness and the industrial and geographical divisions of the working class, a centralized party is essential to give to various actions of different groups that

cohesion and coordination without which their effect will be limited to local and sectional gains.46

A revolutionary workers party brings together the most committed workingclass fighters with the clearest understanding of the need for socialist revolution. This leading edge of the working class can encourage lessconfident workers, who think their only option is to compromise with the boss, that they could gain far more by standing with their class. Capitalists learn from past revolts and plan accordingly. Workers must do the same. Revolutionary workers organizations are essential to develop and sustain a socialist viewpoint, generalize lessons from past and current class battles, support workplace and social struggles, and gain practice solving problems democratically. The working class have a rich tradition of struggle. In times of political retreat, the best revolutionary organizations serve as the memory of the working class, retaining the lessons of previous victories and defeats in order to apply them when workers rise again. This is more difficult than it sounds. Over the past several decades, workers have retreated under the blows of the capitalist class. To survive this hostile political environment, some revolutionary socialist organizations closed ranks and became rigid. Others split, dissolved, or accommodated to middle-class, academic, and movement politics. Only organizations with roots in working-class struggles survived, although, not without distortions. Today, workers are rising again in protest against being forced to pay the price of capitalist crises. Now is the time to build democratic, outwardlooking socialist organizations that will support the working class to take power.

Democratic centralism Capitalist vanguard parties are controlled by well-connected insiders. Ordinary party members and lower-level politicians have little influence. In

contrast, an effective revolutionary workers party functions more like the human body. Every organ in the body uses hormone messengers to communicate its condition to the rest of the body and to respond to messages sent by every other organ.47 The brain serves as an executive center that enables the organism to move as a coherent whole. Similarly, a revolutionary workers organization needs every member actively engaged in shaping the organization as well as executive bodies to coordinate action. This form of organizing is called ‘democratic centralism’ because it combines democratic decision-making with unity in action. After a full discussion, where disagreements are openly aired, a vote is called, the majority rule, and everyone abides by the decision. This is how workers organize strikes. When the majority vote to strike, everyone must go out. Dissenters can hold opposing views as long as they move with the majority. When a move is not effective, members can vote to change direction, their leaders, or both. The capitalist class and their managerial servants favor top-down centralism without democracy. As a result, Left organizations that are dominated by members of the managerial class tend to be undemocratic. This problem of elitism is falsely attributed to marxism or ‘leninism,’ when it is actually caused by a lack of working-class leaders with confidence in the democratic process.

Consensus The authoritarian nature of capitalism leads some people to reject all forms of leadership. This stance is particularly strong among libertarians, anarchists, and other moralists who believe that power is inherently evil. Their alternative is to make decisions by consensus or mutual agreement. While the consensus model claims to be democratic, it allows a few dissenters to hold a group hostage. To prevent paralysis, those who disagree are pressured to go along when they are not truly convinced. This leads to a

false sense of unity and backroom dissent. The larger a group becomes, the more difficult it is to reach consensus, so a small clique will begin making decisions behind the scenes. These people were not voted in as leaders, so they cannot be voted out. The result is unaccountable leadership. The extent to which consensus decision-making is imposed on organizations indicates the extent to which middle-class, managerial politics dominate. Genuinely democratic organizations are free to choose the decision-making process that best meets their needs. A successful socialist revolution depends on millions of workers rising together to remove the capitalists from power as quickly and painlessly as possible. Achieving such a democratic feat will require disciplined organizations with seasoned fighters and trusted leaders who can convince the minority to hold back until the majority of workers are ready to choose socialist revolution.

Against terrorism We oppose terrorist acts because individual revenge does not satisfy us. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system – that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.48 — Trotsky (1879-1940)

The capitalist class condemn any challenge to their rule as ‘terrorism,’ including demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts. To them, revolution is the ultimate act of terror. This is supremely hypocritical, when the purpose of the State is to impose capitalist terror on the working class. Marxists reject individual acts of terror because they minimize the role of the working class in their own liberation. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Experience proves otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organization. When the smoke clears, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only police repression grows more savage.49

Disarming the State No revolution of the masses can triumph without the help of a portion of the armed forces that sustained the old regime.50

The Russian working class could take power because they were supported by the majority of soldiers and sailors.51 A contributing factor to the U.S. defeat in Vietnam was the rebellion of working-class ‘grunts’ who hated the war, hated their officers, and were supported by a vigorous anti-war movement at home.52 Reformists omit the military factor because they refuse to accept that the class war is really a war and that the capitalist class will use the military to defend their rule. Simply the prospect of left-leaning Jeremy Corbyn being elected as Britain’s prime minister caused one British general to declare, The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardize the security of this country, and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that.53

For military personnel, mutiny and advocating mutiny are punishable by death. To take that risk, they must be convinced that the capitalists are the enemy and that the workers will overthrow them. If they are not convinced, then they will obey their masters and turn their weapons against the working class. To build support inside the armed forces, a socialist movement must actively oppose all capitalist wars and support military war-resisters and their organizations.

The workers State Achieving socialism is a three-phase process. In the first phase, the working class must remove the capitalist class from power. In the second phase, the working class must secure their rule over the entire world and prevent the capitalist class from regaining power. That is the purpose of the workers State.

When the capitalist class overthrew the feudal aristocracy, they had to replace the feudal State with one that would uphold their rule. Similarly, the working class must replace the capitalist State with one that will uphold their rule. The workers State is unique. All previous States were used by a minority class to oppress a majority class. The workers State does the opposite; it upholds the rule of the majority by crushing any attempt by the capitalists to retake power. The workers State is composed of democratic decision-making bodies that are based in the workplace. These workers councils form whenever workers mount a serious challenge to their oppressors: Russia in 1905 and again in 1917; Glasgow, Berlin, and Turin in 1917; Spain in 1936-37; Hungary in 1956; France in 1968; Chile in 1973; Portugal in 1974-75; and Poland in 1981. The workers’ councils that formed during the 1979 Iranian revolution are typical: The councils and their executive committees were directly elected and were subject to recall at any time by the members. The committees were accountable to general assemblies, and their members were not paid any extra salary for their positions on the committee. Almost all workers in a unit would attend meetings in which heated debates would take place on issues concerning the running of the workplace.54

A supremely organized working class could take power without using violence; workers would simply escort their supervisors, managers, and bosses out the door. The violence comes when capitalists refuse to accept majority rule and try to regroup, rearm, and attack. We must anticipate and defend against this inevitability. The stronger the workers State, the less force will be required.

Only one class can rule During general strikes and revolutionary crises, workers form councils to coordinate the distribution of food and other essentials and to settle disputes. This can lead to an unstable condition of ‘dual power,’ where both classes are managing sections of the economy. The historic preparation of a revolution brings about a situation in which the class which is called to realize the new social system, although not yet master of the country, has actually concentrated

in its hands a significant share of the State power, while the official apparatus is still in the hands of the old lords. That is the initial dual power in every revolution.55

Only one class can rule. The Russian Revolution began when the Council of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies voted to depose the capitalist government and take power.56 Had they not done so, the capitalists would have retaken control and inflicted a terrible revenge. Tragically, the Russian Revolution was defeated before it could complete the second phase of consolidating workers’ power. Rosa Luxemburg explained, It is impossible to imagine that a transformation as formidable as the passage from capitalist society to socialist society can be realized in one happy act. The socialist transformation supposes a long and stubborn struggle, in the course of which it is quite probable the working class will be repulsed more than once so that for the first time, from the viewpoint of the final outcome of the struggle, it will have necessarily come to power ‘too early.’ Since the working class is absolutely obliged to seize power once or several times ‘too early’ before it can maintain itself in power for good, the objection to the ‘premature’ conquest of power is at bottom nothing more than a general opposition to the working class taking power.57

Transition to communism In order to abolish classes completely, it is not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists; it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to abolish the distinction between town and country, as well as the distinction between manual workers and brain workers. This requires a very long period of time.58 — Lenin (1870-1924)

During the third phase of revolutionary transformation, the threat of counterrevolution has passed, and the producers control the global economy. The revolutionary party has served its purpose and is no longer needed. The workers State has defeated the capitalist class and is also no longer needed.59 Having vanquished their oppressors, the producers will face two major challenges: solving the life-threatening crises created during the capitalist era, and constructing a completely different economy based on the communist principle of ‘one for all, and all for one’ or “from each according to their ability; to each according to their need.”60 Transitioning to a communist, needs-based economy will take time. In the meantime, people will need to be paid for their work. This will not be a

problem. The top ten U.S. banks alone have combined assets of more than $2 trillion. Every year, the capitalists spend $1 trillion on war. More than $32 trillion are currently parked in overseas tax havens.61 All of this wealth was taken from, and rightly belongs to, the working class. They have every right to use it to launch their new economy. When enough is being produced to meet everyone’s basic needs, money can be removed from the equation. Pre-class societies did not need money. People solved problems simply because they needed solving. Imagine not having to worry about money: making it, losing it, keeping track of it, spending it, saving it, and never having enough! Making things free makes people free. In an economy that produces for need, people will not exchange money for goods and services; they will exchange their ability to solve problems. Online information banks at local, regional, and global levels could connect people who need help solving problems with others who can contribute skills and materials to solving them. Human beings are a problem-solving species. Nothing is more deeply satisfying than solving a problem that makes life easier, safer, or more enjoyable. That is the purpose of human existence.

Equality of worth Equality should not be confused with sameness. While every person is unique, socialists insist that every human being, without exception, is equally worthy of having their needs met and of contributing to the development of society. That is certainly not how most people are treated today. Capitalist rule promotes master-servant relationships in all areas of life. The ‘masters’ are those with more money and power, and the ‘servants’ are those with less of either. Unequal relationships are a source of continual conflict because masters are never satisfied, and servants inevitably rebel.

Ending class divisions will put us all in the same boat. Socialists promote cooperation and teamwork in the belief that common interests are paramount, and everyone benefits when differences are accommodated. Capitalists claim that socialism will suppress individuality, when the reverse is true. Their system imposes conformity and crushes individual hopes and dreams for all but a privileged few. Individual development requires social support. The more people cooperate to meet their common needs, the more time is freed for everyone to explore, create, play, dream, or simply rest. Only the wealthy have such freedom today. Under socialism, everyone will. Ending class rule will free billions of people to contribute their unique intelligence, creativity, and skills to solving problems in ways that also replenish the environment. No one can be truly safe until everyone is safe. No one can be truly secure until everyone is secure. Improving life for everyone will make it better for us all.

No more borders The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization have helped create a world where capital moves freely while human beings are stuck at borders.62

In 1972, astronauts took the first photograph of planet Earth. It was a beautiful image of a world with no visible national borders. Foraging peoples had no need for national borders. Feudalism consisted of multiple fiefdoms with constantly changing borders. The capitalist class created the current system of nation-States whose borders are also fluid. As Mexican Americans point out, they did not cross the U.S. border; the border crossed them. A system of competing nation-States makes it impossible to solve international problems. As workers unite against capitalist rule, they will erase national borders as an obstacle to global cooperation.

Supporters of capitalism go berserk at the thought of abolishing borders. They warn that billions of impoverished people will flood into wealthier nations and drag down everyone’s living standards. This is absurd. There is more than enough for everyone in the world to have a decent standard of living right now. Many people will be forced to move because their homes have been destroyed by capitalist conflict and environmental destruction. There is room for them in richer nations where population growth has fallen below replacement levels. In under-populated countries such as the United States, cities occupy just 3.5 percent of the land.63 Canada is even more sparsely populated. It is also possible to create new habitats by reclaiming deserts and reforesting barren land. Human beings are a migrating species, and socialism will restore our right to travel wherever we please. We already have a global economy, where what is produced in one place can be sent anywhere. If there is not enough to support everyone in one location, people can move elsewhere, or they can work together to create enough for all.

Against pessimism The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.64 — James Baldwin (1924-1987)

Because reforms are so difficult to achieve, it is generally assumed that a revolution would be impossible. A reform movement aims to solve one social problem without changing the system that created it. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all social problems. Removing the capitalist class from power would be easier than convincing them to solve even one major cause of suffering. Pessimists insist that it is too late to save the world; the damage is too great, the capitalist class are too powerful, people are too divided, and workers are ‘bought off,’ so there is no point in doing anything. If it is true that human beings cannot change ourselves or the course of our

history, then we will become extinct, as millions of species have done before us. Species survive when they adapt to their environments. The capitalist class are destroying ours. However, unlike any other species, we can choose to change course. Human beings have the power to destroy our environment and also to be its guardian. Human actions have taken other species to the brink of extinction and brought them back again. We can choose to do the same for ourselves. No one can predict the future because we cannot foresee all possibilities. We do know that nothing stays the same. Empires rise and fall. One form of society replaces another. One species replaces another. Conflict and challenge drive life forward. A world where children demand that adults do something to save their future is a world worth fighting for. I say it is better to fight and risk defeat, than not to fight and ensure it. Even under class rule, humanity has accomplished an astonishing amount: sending people to the moon, increasing productivity, constructing a global communication system, and so much more. Imagine what we could do if everyone contributed and if we were not restricted by the tyranny of profit. By ending class rule, the working class will free humanity to reshape life on Earth in ways that we cannot imagine today. The possibilities are endless.

Conclusion We cannot allow the capitalist class to continue making decisions that threaten our survival. To save humanity, we must end capitalist rule now, not in some distant future. Only the international working class can remove the capitalist class from power and transform society from the bottom up. That is how we will win our liberation, end mass suffering, and secure our future.

Workers of the world, unite!

What now? We should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society.1 — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

If we want to survive, then we must put socialist revolution on the agenda. We must put ‘removing the capitalist class from power’ on the agenda. For that to mean anything, we must shift the balance of forces in favor of the working class. That means opposing all forms of oppression, taking democratic control of our unions, and building active support for striking workers. Every win for our side strengthens us all. Social institutions instill the belief that there are ‘experts’ or ‘smart people’ who know things and can do things, and if you are not one of those people, then you are not qualified to have an opinion about important matters, let alone do anything about them. This could not be more wrong. This is our world. Whatever decisions are made will affect us all. Many people hesitate to speak up or to become politically active because they fear reprisals that can range from social isolation to losing your job, or worse. Organization is the antidote to fear and powerlessness. When people see others like them speaking up and taking action, they are more willing to get involved.2 Use Rebel Minds to initiate political discussions in coffee-shops, in classrooms, and at work. The more people you include, the more you will be able to do. Effective action requires political clarity. If you are active in a social-change organization, use Rebel Minds to raise important questions, such as: • Does your organization have clear goals? • Are these goals restricted to what can be achieved under capitalist rule?

• Which class does your organization support? • How are decisions made? • Are leaders elected and accountable? • Are all members engaged in shaping the organization? • Does your organization seek active alliances with other organizations? • Does it emphasize members’ differences or their common interests? • Is there too much talk and not enough action, or is there too much action and not enough discussion about strategy? There is no time to waste. We have a world to win! Read. Share. Organize!

References Acknowledgments 1 Peltier, L. (200). Prison writings: My life is my Sun Dance, p.10. St. Martin’s Griffin.

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4. Is ‘mental illness’ real?

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52 Merced, W.D. (2016). How a blind astronomer found a way to hear the stars. TED, February. http://www.ted.com/talks/wanda_diaz_merced_how_a_blind_astronomer_found_a_w 53 Frank, L.R. (2001). MindFreedom International. Accessed March 3, 2019. https://mindfreedom.org/page/leonard-roy-frank-1932-2015/ 54 Frank, L.R. (1974). The Frank papers. Madness Network News. Vol.2, No.5, p.15. 55 Frank, L.R. (2001). MindFreedom International. Accessed March 3, 2019. https://mindfreedom.org/page/leonard-roy-frank-1932-2015/ 56 Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Diagnostic Criteria. http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html 57 Black, E. (2003). War against the weak: Eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race , p.416-417. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. 58 Curran, T. & Hill, A. P. (2017). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, December 28. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000138.pdf 59 Curran, T. & Hill, A. P. (2017). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, December 28. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000138.pdf 60 American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment II: Reference Group Executive Summary Fall 2016. Hanover, MD. http://www.acha-ncha.org/docs/NCHA-

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65 Marcetic, B. (2016). The FBI’s secret war. Jacobin, August 31. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/fbi-cointelpro-new-left-panthersmuslim-surveillance 66 Baum, D. (2016). Legalize it all: How to win the war on drugs. Harper’s Magazine, April. http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ 67 Azikiwe, A. (2018). Mass incarceration for profit: The 13th Amendment and national oppression in the U.S. Black Agenda Report, Feb 28. https://blackagendareport.com/mass-incarceration-profit-13thamendment-and-national-oppression-us 68 Ryerson, S. & Schept, J. (2018). Building prisons in Appalachia: The region deserves better. Boston Review , April 28. http://bostonreview.net/law-justice/sylvia-ryerson-judah-scheptbuilding-prisons-appalachia 69 Pelaez, V (2016). The prison industry in the United States: Big business or a new form of slavery? Global Research, August 28. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unitedstatesbig-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289 70 Traverso, E. (2019). The new faces of fascism: Populism and the far right. Verso. 71 Haymarket statements of the accused. August Spies. (1886). The anathema of the wealthy classes. https://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/articles/speeches.html#SPIES 72 Chukwudinma, C. (2019). Algeria on fire. Socialist Review, No. 446. May. http://socialistreview.org.uk/446/algeria-fire Also, el-Hamalawy, H. (2019). Sudan at the crossroads. Socialist Review, No. 446. May. http://socialistreview.org.uk/446/sudan-crossroads 73 Anish R M (2019). Why are 200 million workers on strike in India? People’s Dispatch, January 8. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/01/08/why-are-200-million-workerson-strike-in-india/

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11. We are in deep shit 1 Voskoboynik, D.M. (2016). Climate change is threatening to exterminate the Wayúu people. Pacific Standard, October 5. https://psmag.com/news/climate-change-is-threatening-to-exterminatethe-wayuu-people 2 IPCC, Masson-Delmotte, V. et. al. [Eds.] (2018). Summary for Policymakers. In: Global warming of 1.5°C . World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/SR15_SPM_High_Res.pdf 3 Di Renzo, G.C., et. al. (2015). International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics opinion on reproductive health impacts of exposure to toxic environmental chemicals. International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics , Vol.131, No.3, pp.219-225. https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1016/j.ijgo.2015.09.002 4 Hallinan, C. (2019). Nuclear powers need to disarm before it’s too late. Foreign Policy in Focus, March 11. https://fpif.org/nuclear-powersneed-to-disarm-before-its-too-late/ 5 Koshgarian, L. & Siddique, A. (2019). Trump's FY2020 budget request bloats militarized spending – and slashes actual human needs. National Priorities Project, March 11. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2019/03/11/trumps-fy2020budget-request/ 6 Dunning, T.J. (1860). Trades’ unions and strikes: Their philosophy and intention. pp.35-36. Quoted in Marx, K. (1867/1977). Capital Vol 1, p. 926. New York: Vintage. 7 Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the victim. Vintage. 8 Douglass, F. (1857). West India emancipation, p.22. Rochester, New York: O.P. Dewey.

http://www.libraryweb.org/~digitized/books/Two_Speeches_by_Frederick_Douglass 9 King, M.L. (1964). Acceptance Speech on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize. Oslo, December 10. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/26142-martinluther-king-jr-acceptance-speech-1964/ 10 Malcolm X. (1964). A Declaration of Independence. March 12. http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/a-declarationofindependence/ 11 Quoted in Collins, C. (2017). Reversing inequality: Unleashing the transformative potential of an equitable economy, p.60. Institute for Policy Studies. https://thenextsystem.org/inequality

12 Walgrave, S. & Rucht, D. (2010). The world says no to war: Demonstrations against the war on Iraq, p.14. Social Movements, Protest, and Contention. 33. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. https://web.archive.org/web/20160215153519/http://uahost.uantwerpen.be/m2p/publi 13 Tyler, P.E. (2003). A new power in the streets. New York Times, February 17. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/world/threats-andresponses-news-analysis-a-new-power-in-the-streets.html 14 Levitz, E. (2019). Airport shutdowns forced Trump to reopen the government. New York Magazine, January 25. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/airport-shutdowns-force-trumpto-reopen-the-government.html 15 David, E.J.R. (2013). Internalized oppression: The psychology of marginalized groups. Springer. 16 Choonara, E. (2019). Can implicit bias explain racism? Socialist Review, No. 444, March. http://socialistreview.org.uk/444/can-implicit-biasexplain-racism 17 Taylor, K-Y. (2019). Succeeding while Black. Boston Review, March 13. https://bostonreview.net/race/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor-succeeding-

while-black 18 Kahn, J. (2017). Race on the brain: What implicit bias gets wrong about the struggle for racial justice . Columbia University Press. 19 Terbeck, S. et. al. (2012). Propranolol reduces implicit negative racial bias. Psychopharmacology (Berl). Vol. 222, No.3, pp.419-424. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395337/ 20 Choonara, E. (2019). Can implicit bias explain racism? Socialist Review, No. 444, March. http://socialistreview.org.uk/444/can-implicit-biasexplain-racism 21 Haiphong, D. (2018). Theory 101: Class struggle in the age of US imperial decline. Black Agenda Report , October 3. https://blackagendareport.com/theory-101-class-struggle-age-usimperial-decline 22 LeFrançois, B.A. , Menzies, R. & Reaume, G. [Eds.] (2013). Mad matters: A critical reader in Canadian mad studies . Canadian Scholars' Press Inc. 23 Bailey, N. & Ford, G. (2019). A failed black upper class project to “reform” poor black girls. Black Agenda Radio, March 19. https://blackagendareport.com/failed-black-upper-class-project-reformpoor-black-girls 24 Black liberation theory: Eldridge Cleaver on limitations of cultural nationalism & racial dogma. Accessed June 8, 2018. https://youtu.be/jcAeuCiftgc 25 Schilling, V. (2019). 130-plus First Nations could purchase Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. Indian Country Today, January 17. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/130-plus-firstnations-could-purchase-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-projectjoT9VJ92vUSmSzzQ17obKA/ 26 Choonara, E. & Prasad, Y. (2014). What's wrong with privilege theory?

International Socialist Journal, No.142, April 2. http://isj.org.uk/whatswrong-with-privilege-theory/ 27 Adair, M., Howell, S. & Aal, W. (2017). Common behavioral patterns that perpetuate power relations of domination. Tools for Change. http://toolsforchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/patterns-ofpower-tools-for-change-2017.pdf 28 Lorde, A. (1982). “Learning from the 60s” in (2007) Sister outsider: Essays & speeches by Audre Lorde , pp.134-144. Berkeley: Crossing Press. http://www.blackpast.org/1982-audre-lorde-learning-60s

29 Reich, M. (1978). Who benefits from racism? The distribution among whites of gains and losses from racial inequality. The Journal of Human Resources, Vol.13, No.4, pp.524-544. http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~philips/soccer2/readings_files/Reigh%20Who%20Bene

30 Human development report 1995. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), p.6. New York: Oxford University Press. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/256/hdr_1995_en_complete_nostats.pdf 31 Basketter, S. (2019). Oppressed people aren’t always united. Socialist Worker, March 25. https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/48083/Oppressed+people+arent+always+united 32 Eligon, J. (2019). ‘You’re not supposed to betray your race’: The challenge faced by Black women accusing Black men. New York Times, March 22. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/meredith-watsonduke-justin-fairfax.html See also Pember, M.A. (2019). #MeToo in Indian Country; 'We don't talk about this enough.' Indian Country Today, June 10. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/metooin-indian-country-we-don-t-talk-about-this-enough-oXkstdPmDk2zSXoDXZSZQ/ 33 Perlo, V., Eisenhower, D., Weiss, L. & Perlo, E. (1996). Economics of racism II: The roots of inequality. New York: International Publishers. 34 Giridharadas, A. (2019). The new elite's phoney crusade to save the

world – without changing anything. The Guardian, January 22. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/22/the-new-elites-phoneycrusade-to-save-the-world-without-changing-anything 35 Hickel, J & Kirk, M. (2017). Are you ready to consider that capitalism is the real problem? Fast Company, July 11. https://www.fastcompany.com/40439316/are-you-ready-to-considerthat-capitalism-is-the-real-problem 36 Chase, A. (1977) The legacy of Malthus: The social costs of the new scientific racism . New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 37 Cited in Birn, A-E. (2014). Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting(s) of the international/global health agenda. Hypothesis, Vol.12, No.1, p.11. http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/11/HJ229%E2%80%94FIN_Nov1_2014.pdf 38 Birn, A-E. (2014). Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting(s) of the international/global health agenda. Hypothesis, Vol.12, No.1, p.18. http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/11/HJ229%E2%80%94FIN_Nov1_2014.pdf 39 Giridharadas, A. (2019). The new elite's phoney crusade to save the world – without changing anything. The Guardian, January 22. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/22/the-new-elites-phoneycrusade-to-save-the-world-without-changing-anything 40 Engels, F. (1845). Condition of the working class in England. Chapter 13. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/conditionworking-class/ch13.htm 41 Navarro, V. (1974). What does Chile mean: An analysis of the health sector before, during and after Allende's administration. The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 93130. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3349542

42 Shawki, A. (2005). Black liberation and socialism. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 43 Ford, G. (2018). Black Caucus sells out its constituents again – to the cops. Black Agenda Report , May 23. https://blackagendareport.com/black-caucus-sells-out-itsconstituentsagain-cops 44 Schulte, E. (2005). A former Panther’s Georgia campaign. Counterpunch. October 15. https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/10/15/a-former-panther-s-georgiacampaign/ 45 Ford, G. (2018). An electoral strategy to defeat police oppression – and its Black allies – in Chicago. Black Agenda Review, December 13. https://blackagendareport.com/electoral-strategy-defeat-policeoppression-and-its-black-allies-chicago 46 Taylor, K-Y. (2016). From #Blacklivesmatter to Black liberation, pp.7980. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 47 Bennett-Begaye, J. (2018). Interior denies Mashpee trust land: ‘You do not meet definition of an Indian.’ Indian Country Today, September 19. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/news/interior-denies-mashpeetrust-land-you-do-not-meet-definition-of-an-indian3qLsXhzf2kyptA5oxX4VpA/ 48 Roberts, M. (2019). South Africa: the dashing of a dream. May 7. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/south-africa-thedashing-of-a-dream/ 49 Stedile, R. & PC, Z. (2019). Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party launched in South Africa. People’s Dispatch, April 6. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/04/06/socialist-revolutionary-workersparty-launched-in-south-africa/ 50 Onion, R. (2019). Equal-opportunity evil. Salon, February 14. https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/02/women-slavery-history-south-

book-review.html 51 Staples, B. (2018). How the suffrage movement betrayed Black women. New York Times, July 28. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffragemovement-racism-black-women.html 52 Kantrowitz, S. (2018). White supremacy has always been mainstream. Boston Review, July23. http://bostonreview.net/race/stephen-kantrowitzwhite-supremacy-has-always-been-mainstream 53 Spade, D. & Lazare, S. (2019). Women now run the military-industrial complex. That’s nothing to celebrate. In these Times, January 12. http://inthesetimes.com/article/21682/women-military-industrialcomplex-gina-haspel-trump-feminism-lockheed-marti 54 Draper, H., Bebel, A., Marx, E., Zetkin, C. & Luxemburg, R. (2011). Women and class: Toward a socialist feminism, p.167. CreateSpace. 55 Blanc, E. (2019). When socialists won women's suffrage. Jacobin, March 8. https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/womens-suffrage-socialistfeminism-finland\ 56 Cliff, T., Gluckstein, D. & Kimber, C. (2019). The Labour Party: A marxist history. London: Bookmarks. 57 Kullgren, I. (2018). ‘Educator spring’ spawns wave of teacher candidates. Politico, July 4. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/04/teacher-candidatesdemocrats-midterms-664358 58 Luxemburg, R. (1900/1908). Reform or revolution. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ 59 Lenin, V.I. (1920). Lenin's speech on affiliation to the British Labour Party. The Second Congress of the Communist International , July 19August 7. http://www.marxist.net/openturn/historic/script.htm?lenin.htm

60 Newsinger, J. (2019). On Labour and Zionism. Socialist Review, No.446, May. http://socialistreview.org.uk/446/labour-and-zionism 61 Kimber, C. (2019). Continuity and change in the Labour Party. Socialist Review, No. 442, January. http://socialistreview.org.uk/442/continuityand-change-labour-party 62 Sawant, K. (2018) Democratic Socialists of America: The case for strong independent campaigns to build the left. Socialist Alternative, March 30. https://www.socialistalternative.org/2018/03/30/democraticsocialists-america-case-strong-independent-campaigns-build-left-2018/ 63 Louçã, F. (2018). Parliamentary action and social struggles - The experience of the Portuguese Left Bloc. International Viewpoint, March 31. http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article5696 64 OXFAM. (2009). Suffering the science: Climate change, people, and poverty, p.6 July 6. https://42kgab3z3i7s3rm1xf48rq44wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/suffering-thescience-climate-change-people-and-poverty_2.pdf 65 Wuebbles, D.J. et. al. (2017). Executive summary. In: Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment , Volume I. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 12-34. https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/executive-summary/ 66 Wester, P. et. al. [Eds]. (2019). The Hindu Kush Himalaya assessment: Mountains, climate change, sustainability and people. Switzerland: Springer. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-31992288-1.pdf 67 Lovelock, J. (1995). The ages of Gaia: A biography of our living earth, p.198. W. W. Norton & Co. 68 Editorial. (2007). Energy time. New York Times, January 16. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/opinion/16tue1.html 69 Schneider, K. (2019). Shell sees new role for former steel region:

plastics. New York Times , March 26. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/business/shell-polyethylenefactory-pennsylvania.html 70 Jacobs, A. (2019). How big tobacco hooked children on sugary drinks. New York Times, March 14. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/health/big-tobacco-kool-aidsugar-obesity.html 71 Roberts, M. (2019). Progressive capitalism – an oxymoron. April 27. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/progressive 72 Vettese, T. (2018). Climate gut check. Boston Review, December 5. http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/troy-vettese-climate-gut-check 73 IPCC, Masson-Delmotte, V. et. al. [Eds.] (2018). Summary for Policymakers. In: Global warming of 1.5°C . World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, p.17. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/SR15_SPM_High_Res.pdf 74 Carlock, G. (2018). A Green New Deal. Data for Progress. https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal/ Also: (2019) Legislation to address the urgent threat of climate change. January 10. https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/01/10/document_daily_02.pdf 75 Hickel, J. & Kallis, G. (2019). Is green growth possible? New Political Economy, April. https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/01/10/document_daily_02.pdf 76 Korten, T. (2015). In Florida, officials ban term 'climate change.' Miami Herald, March 11. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html 77 Rust, S. & Sahagun, L. (2019). Post-Hurricane Harvey, NASA tried to fly a pollution-spotting plane over Houston. The EPA said no. LA Times, March 5. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-nasa-jet-epahurricane-harvey-20190305-story.html

78 Holden, E. (2018). Trump on own administration's climate report: 'I don't believe it'. The Guardian , November 26. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/26/trump-nationalclimate-assessment-dont-believe 79 Popovitch, N. et. al. (2018). 76 environmental rules on the way out under Trump. New York Times, December 28. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trumpenvironment-rules-reversed.html 80 King, P. (2018). Trump administration takes first steps toward drilling in Alaska’s Arctic refuge. Science, April 19. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/trump-administration-takesfirst-steps-toward-drilling-alaska-s-arctic-refuge 81 Londoño, E. (2018). As Brazil's far right leader threatens the Amazon, one tribe pushes back. New York Times, November 10. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/world/americas/brazilindigenous-mining-bolsonaro.html 82 Dickinson, T. (2019). Study: U.S. fossil fuel subsidies exceed Pentagon spending. Rolling Stone, May 9. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-fuelsubsidies-pentagon-spending-imf-report-833035/ 83 Warner, J. & Singer, P.W. (2016). Fueling the “balance:” A defense energy strategy primer. Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2016/06/08_defense_strategy_singer.pdf 84 Linn, A. (2019). ‘This has poisoned everything’ – pollution casts shadow over New Mexico’s booming dairy industry. The Guardian, February 20. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/20/new-mexicocontamination-dairy-industry-pollution 85 Webb, W. (2017). U.S. military world’s largest polluter – hundreds of bases gravely contaminated. Mint Press News, May 15. https://www.mintpressnews.com/u-s-military-is-worlds-largest-polluter-

hundreds-of-bases-gravely-contaminated/227776/ 86 U.S. EPA. (n.d.) Global greenhouse gas emissions data. Accessed March 27, 2019. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gasemissions-data#Country 87 Klare, M.T. (2019). War with China? It’s already under way. Tomdispatch.com, February 17. http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176528/

12. We need real socialism 1 Malcolm X. (1964). The power of Africa. Audubon Ballroom, December 20. http://malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com/2013/07/at-audubon-ballroomdecember-20-1964.html 2 van Aubel, M. (2018). The beautiful future of solar power. TEDxAmsterdamWomen, December. https://www.ted.com/talks/marjan_van_aubel_the_beautiful_future_of_solar_power 3 Newport, F. (2018). Democrats more positive about socialism than capitalism. Gallup, August 18. https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialismcapitalism.aspx 4 Fox News. (2019). Millennials prefer socialism over capitalism according to new survey. January 28. https://video.foxnews.com/v/5995663112001/#sp=show-clips 5 Haskins, J. (2019). How to get your child to just say no to socialism. Fox News, February 3. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/how-to-get-yourchild-to-just-say-no-to-socialism 6 BBC. (2019). Raghuram Rajan says capitalism is ‘under serious threat.’ BBC News, March 12. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47532522 7 Engels, F. (1883). Communist Manifesto. Preface to the 1883 German edition. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

8 Moody, K. (2017). On new terrain: How Capital is reshaping the battleground of class war . Chicago: Haymarket Books. 9 Dresser, S. (2019). What happens to cognitive diversity when everyone is more WEIRD? Aeon, January 23. https://aeon.co/ideas/what-happensto-cognitive-diversity-when-everyone-is-more-weird

10 Burns, R. (2018). How European workers coordinated this month’s massive Amazon strike – and what comes next. In These Times, July 28. http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21323/amazon_strike_jeff_bezos_germany_sp 11 Campbell, A. (2019). Thousands of workers at US factories in Mexico are striking for higher wages. Vox, March 28. https://www.vox.com/world/2019/3/28/18251583/mexico-matamorosfactory-worker-labor-strikes Also (2019). Rivera, A. (2019). Wave of strikes a turning point for Mexican workers. El Universal , March 1. https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/english/wave-strikes-turning-pointmexican-workers

12 Egypt. (2019). Egyptian socialists on five lessons from Sudan and Algeria. Socialist Worker, March 21. https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/48074/Egyptian+socialists+on+five+lessons+from+S

13 Farrow, A. (2019). Millions-strong Algerian movement piles pressure on hated regime. Socialist Worker, April 6. https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/48154/Millions+strong+Algerian+movement+piles+ 14 Gilbay, R. (2018). On yer way, Pinochet! The factory workers who fought fascism from Glasgow. The Guardian, November 1. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/01/on-your-way-pinochetfactory-workers-fought-fascism-from-glasgow-chile-coup-nae-pasaran 15 Cole, P. (2015). Lessons that can be learnt from dockworkers who helped bring apartheid to its knees. The Conversation, August 18. https://theconversation.com/lessons-that-can-be-learnt-fromdockworkers-who-helped-bring-apartheid-to-its-knees-46209 16 Choonara, E. & Prasad, Y. (2014). What's wrong with privilege theory? International Socialist Journal, No. 142, April 2. http://isj.org.uk/whats-

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26 Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and Its discontents. https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FreudSCIVILIZATION-AND-ITS-DISCONTENTS-text-final.pdf 27 Freud, S. (1928). The future of an illusion, Chapter VII. London: Hogarth Press. 28 Smith, D. et. al. (2017) Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling. Nature Communications, Vol.8, no.1. p.1853. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5717173/ 29 Kushner, R. (2019). Is prison necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore might change your mind. New York Times, April 17. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/magazine/prison-abolition-ruthwilson-gilmore.html 30 Gindin, S. (2019). We need to say what socialism will look like. Jacobin, March 6. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/sam-gindinsocialist-planning-models 31 Cited in Richardson, B. (2018). Intervening in the national immigration conversation. Socialist Review, No. 440, November. http://socialistreview.org.uk/440/intervening-national-immigrationconversation 32 Rosenthal, S. (1996). Striking Flint: Genora (Johnson) Dollinger remembers the 1936-37 General Motors sit-down strike. ReMarx Publishing. https://www.remarxpub.com/striking-flint/ 33 Rosenthal, R. (2014). Rank and file rebellion: The 1981 Ontario hospital strike. ReMarx Publishing. https://www.remarxpub.com/rank-and-filerebellion-the-1981-ontario-hospital-strike/ 34 US Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. News Release. (2019). Major Work Stoppages in 2018. February 8. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkstp.pdf 35 Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party,

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