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Saturday, May 4, 2019

Three Words that Need to be Retired

Words can be tyrannical. They can dictate the tenor, the direction, and the limits of political discourse, even political action. 

Contrary to the simplistic positivist account, words are elastic, they take on different meanings in different contexts, with different communities, from different motives, and at different times. Users can manipulate, distort, or shape usages to fit particular ends or effects. The coinage of new words-- like the creation of brands-- can persuade or influence. Indeed, words can become a political weapon, possibly unrecognized as such by its victims.

In his own fashion, Marx warned of the tyranny of words. He seldom couched his theories in the linguistic mode, preferring, broadly speaking, to write directly about the referents of words, as was common before the linguistic turn in philosophy. 


Nonetheless, it is sometimes useful to recast some of his thought into an argument about the role of words. This tactic is particularly of value in explicating his wonderfully rich and suggestive Fetishism of Commodities, Section 4 at the end of the first chapter of Volume one of Capital. Marx felt it necessary to devote an entire section to this often misunderstood idea after the publication of the first edition and in subsequent editions. Much could be said about this topic, but, suffice it to say that, in ordinary discourse, the word “commodity” and words denoting various commodities exert an almost hypnotic effect over our thinking, obscuring the complex of historically and materially determined relations that constitutes the deeper analysis of commodities found in Capital’s chapter one. But there are other fetishisms as well...
Terrorism

“Terrorism” and its associated words should be retired. To most of us, they conjure a vicious, brutal attack upon defenseless, innocent victims. Acts of terrorism are thought to be senseless and cruel, the product of a callous disregard for the lives of its victims. In this sense, “terrorism” aptly describes the slaughter of colonized peoples in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. 
The word is tailor-made for the plight of the indigenous peoples of these lands and their experience at the hands of European colonizers. 

Indeed, colonial genocide of native peoples might well serve as the ostensive definition of “terrorism.” What makes these acts so morally despicable is the gross asymmetry between the might of the colonizers and the powerlessness of their resisters.

But since the Second World War, the meaning of “terrorism” has been completely turned on its head by capital’s stable of idea-shapers. Western governments and the Western media have turned the resisters into “terrorists.” The Mau Mau risings in Kenya, the Hukbalahap resistance in the Philippines, the FLN in Algeria, the ANC in South Africa, the PLO in Palestine, and virtually all other national liberation movements have been slandered as terrorists by the colonizers, occupiers, and aggressors and their allies. Despite the overwhelming asymmetry of power and resources, the victims of that power are labelled “terrorists” for feeble, often desperate attempts at resistance.

In the brilliant movie, The Battle of Algiers, a telling moment comes when the fictional leader of the FLN, Ben M’Hidi, is captured. At a press conference, an indignant French reporter asks Ben M’Hidi how he can justify acts of “terrorism” against colonials. He replies, “Is it less cowardly to drop your napalm on our defenseless villages? ...Let us have your bombers and you can have our women’s baskets [in which the FLN plants bombs].”

Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s point is a profound one. In a war of liberation, the resistance must fight with the weapons available or submit to the oppression of their aggressors. In the best of circumstances, the balance of power still overwhelmingly favors the oppressor. The oppressed have their determination.

Similarly, Native Americans who fought against their genocide at the hands of US land thieves and the US military were called “savages” by the government and press of that time. Today, they would be called “terrorists.”

The US government has abused the term further by promiscuously using “support for terrorism” as a charge levelled at a whim to justify sanctions, blockades, and aggression, a charge levelled or withdrawn based on whether those charged are in or out of favor.

A further reason to retire the word “terrorism.”

Globalization

When “globalization” became a popular word, it was never clear what people meant by it. Some saw globalization as a new stage of capitalism: post-imperialist, post-nation-state, or on a course returning to a kind of new mercantilism. All those claims seem silly now, with imperialism caught in perpetual wars, a new burst of populist nationalism, and global trade struggling to reach levels attained before so-called “globalization.”

Even capitalist elites concede that it is time to retire the word.

Others, including many labor leaders, saw globalization as a job-sucking aberration of capitalism inspired by political mis-leadership and corporate over-reach. Lacking a class-struggle perspective, they failed to see that what they called “globalization” was really a continuation of a process that dated back to antiquity: the division of labor, in this case, a malignant global division of labor. 

In pursuit of profit and supported by revolutionary advances in the productive forces, capital was able to find cheaper sources of the commodity, labor power. They happened to find sources outside the old imperialist nexus, leaving the advanced capitalist countries with job growth only in finance capital, the professions, and the low-paying service industries, while locating manufacturing in low-wage countries.

By coining or embracing the misleading term “globalization,” labor and political fabulists were able to distract workers from the real source of job loss: the capitalist system. For that reason alone, “globalization” should be retired.

The Middle Class

All efforts to objectively and materially anchor the concept of social class have failed except for that of the Marxists. For Marxists, classes are grounded in a division based upon social relations dictated by the material production of society’s wealth. In the capitalist mode of production these social relationships produce a sharp division between those who purchase labor power and those who sell it. This division identifies two classes, appropriately named the “capitalist class” and the “working class.”

Of course there are grey areas-- strata-- at the edges of the two classes, varying in size and importance at different times, places, and under different conditions. Between the working class and the capitalist class, Marx identified a stratum which he dubbed the “petite” or “petty bourgeoisie.” This social stratum is comprised of people exhibiting some social relations of both classes, but subjectively identifying with the bourgeoisie while having a tenuous hold upon this intermediate status. 

Examples of this strata in today’s world of mature, monopoly capitalism are some doctors, lawyers, and small business people, as well as a coterie of courtiers, parasites, and entertainers to the bourgeoisie.

In the most wealthy countries of North America and Europe the petty bourgeoisie is large, even growing in size and wealth. It constitutes a buffer and political base for the much smaller bourgeoisie.

Historically, many social scientists have conveniently used the term “middle class” to designate the petty bourgeoisie, without doing great injustice to the Marxist distinctions.

But today, charlatans in the US union leadership, the capitalist media, and the political parties use the term differently. They describe everyone occupying the huge space between the hyper-rich (the so-called 1%) and the poor as “middle class.” 

Such a broad, wide-ranged notion of class is an affront to rigor and clarity. It blurs distinctions that reveal the social, political, and economic character of the capitalist system. It artificially and unrealistically ties the class interests of the working class with the apologists, advocates, and beneficiaries of the capitalist system. It masks processes that are impoverishing working people and enriching the capitalist class and much of its petty bourgeois appendage.

With this definition, the retail clerk and the laborer are in the same social class with the small business owner and the salaried mid-, even upper-level manager, sharing the same interests.

By consigning nearly everyone to a nebulous middle class, politicians, bankrupt union leaders, and media lapdogs paint a picture of harmonious common interests shared by everyone but the very rich and the very poor. There is no class friction except possibly at the extremes. Everyone shares in the bounty, shares a common world-view, and strives for the same goals, though some are more “successful” than others. Those outside the harmonious “middle class” and the “extremely successful”-- that is to say, the poor-- appear as somehow misfits, saddled with poor motivation and social dysfunction, worthy of society’s charity.

This Panglossian best of all possible worlds serves capitalism well, obscuring genuine class differences and conflict, while masking the need for working class struggle.

It is time to retire this misleading usage of the term, “middle class.”

The tyranny of words is insidious, especially when so much popular “communication” is limited to 140 characters. Social media encourages brevity, with little room for elucidation or nuance. Hence, millions pounce on words that seem witty, fashionable, or clever. Wit, fashion, and cleverness have never been the measure of clarity or truth.

More ‘subversive’ or ‘misleading’ words in future postings!

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

3 comments:

Carl Davidson said...

I agree with two out of three. 'Globalization,' however, has a rich and current meaning in exploring many dimensions of today's capitalism. Nearly 20 years ago, three of us in CCDS founded the Global Studies Association to study it. The effort has worked out well. The latest sesion in Chicago this Junes. Go here for more: http://www.net4dem.org/mayglobal/

Michael Munk said...


YES! I've used this same precise scene to make the same point over the years in many rants, wriiten and verbal.


"In the brilliant movie, The Battle of Algiers, a telling moment comes when the fictional leader of the FLN, Ben M’Hidi, is captured. At a press conference, an indignant French reporter asks Ben M’Hidi how he can justify acts of “terrorism” against colonials. He replies, “Is it less cowardly to drop your napalm on our defenseless villages? ...Let us have your bombers and you can have our women’s baskets [in which the FLN plants bombs].”

Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s point is a profound one. In a war of liberation, the resistance must fight with the weapons available or submit to the oppression of their aggressors. In the best of circumstances, the balance of power still overwhelmingly favors the oppressor. The oppressed have their determination."

Il compagno said...

Great column, expressing my many years of frustration hearing these terms used to obfuscate reality, especially "middle class". I always appreciate labor leaders who say "working class" and fortunately I am hearing it more."Terrorism" is used against any resistance to the established order.