All too often I consume leftist articles, posts, blogs, videos, and other media that bemoan the plight of the socioeconomically disadvantaged. I also write pieces about this topic. Phrases like “it’s unfair” or “it’s unjust” or “it’s cruel” are used to describe how so many people are unhoused, or without health insurance, or without food, or without access to a job, or who are generally suffering from lack of access to basic needs and dignity.

I think there’s a natural inclination to ask why things are like this. Why don’t we have the political will to house folx? Why don’t we have a broader social safety net? Where are The Commons? What happened to looking out for one another? The phrase “if we could just…” (followed by something simple like house folks in vacant real estate) is on everyone’s lips. We spend a (literal) .8 trillion dollars on weapons every year, and yet we can’t house and feed people? Can’t we fix this? What’s up?

Desire & Fear: Manipulation 101

Under Capitalism, corporations (and the government that they have created to enact their will in the public sphere) depend on you and me working as much as possible. When we work for others we are paid less than we are worth, and this is kept by our employers. They call it “profit”. We also pay taxes to the corporations through the government, so they get us twice. Your tax dollars go to fund things like weapons and technology purchases from private corporations, drug purchases from private corporations, and tax breaks for corporations that extract oil, gas, and minerals from the earth while laying waste to the environment. They provide cover to themselves for this theft by tossing us a few roads and bridges, and providing just enough scraps to keep the systemically destitute alive.

The Middle Class (a euphemism for everyone not in the ruling class but who hasn’t fallen below the “poverty line”) needs to be driven to work. If we stop working the ruling class loses everything. That cannot happen. So they use two types of manipulation/motivation to keep us in line. These are desire and fear. They are very old motivators - built into our DNA. They are drives that helped the species survive, thrive, and evolve to adapt to the changing environment of planet earth. We desire things that keep us alive - food, shelter, connection & love - and we fear things that might kill us - hunger, exposure, disconnection. The psychologists and sociologists who are employed by capitalists and their lap-dog government know this very, very well and they use it to inform policy decisions and marketing of this homicidal system to the Middle Class.

Desire is one side of the coin. We desire safety and security. We desire food, shelter, and love. We desire health, and freedom from pain. So they sell us those things for money that we have to work to get. But that is not enough. To maximize profit the corporations need to sell us more, so they manufacture desire by co-opting our competitive nature. They present images of all of the expensive items that others have. I can’t just have an apartment, I need a fancy apartment, or a fancy house, filled with expensive goods. I need a fancy car. I need a fancy entertainment system. In this way people will see I am successful. They will like me. I will have more connection. This is an innate desire. Expensive, unnecessary products and lifestyles are marketed to us continuously to drive us to spend our money. The broad cover for the manipulation is “we’re just giving people what they want.”

Fear is the other side of the coin. Thus, poverty, misery, incarceration, and death are an intentional feature of our economic system, not a bug. As we spend the little money we make to survive, and also whatever “excess” that we scrounge up (often in the form of debt) to “keep up with the Joneses”, we feel death nipping at our heals. We see what it is like to be poor in this country. We see what misery will befall us if we stop working. We see that the only alternative to work is to be unhoused, hungry, sick, incarcerated, and ashamed. This is also marketed to us through all media outlets. Look at how the unhoused are presented - as people who “want to be homeless”. The broad cover for this manipulation is the phrase “those (poor) people are just stupid and lazy.”

Imagine a different world

If for a moment you could... imagine a world where you could spend your days working with your community at something you all enjoyed, for whatever amount of time was needed to get the job done, and spent the rest of the time with family and friends, playing sports, creating art, making love, and caring for one another. Doesn’t that sound nice? That’s what the world looked like before a few people took ownership of all of the means of production and sold it back to us at a premium. Whether I call them kings, or supreme rulers, or corporations - these are the entities that have stolen our earthly birthright from us and have us on the hamster wheel.

As real wages decline, inflation soars, and the Middle Class disintegrates we feel the pain of this system. In this moment it can be hard to not blame the most marginalized. We are told to blame the “freeloaders” who steal our tax dollars, the “immigrants” who steal our jobs. White men are told to blame Black men for trying to “steal our women”. We are encouraged to “punch down” - attacking stigmatized, marginalized communities. This is Fascism 101, yet again.

I need to stop punching down, and start looking up. This system - including the encouragement to punch down - has been created by the ruling class to keep me distracted from the simple truth that I am one of their slaves. As long as I stay distracted and angry I’ll attack the first target presented to me. It’s like football - we’re all getting paid to bash each other’s heads in - without thinking to look up to the owner’s box and see the laughing billionaire. He’s got to be my real target.

So yes, I’ll put as many band-aids as I have on the wounded, but I commit to this. I won’t blame or harm my comrades who have been used as pawns to keep me working. I won’t abandon them to their misery. And I will work to sap the power of the ruling class. I’ll support unions. I’ll vote to tax the rich. I’ll participate in mutual aid and other forms of support that are outside the economy. I’ll protest and march against all the bullshit and if the time comes I’ll lay down my labor - the one weapon I have - and I’ll refuse to feed the beast.

Capitalism has built a world where violence is the system. The pain is the point. Forcing me to work for less than I’m worth is violence. Forcing people into poverty and leaving them to suffer is violence. Manipulating my survival instincts to trick me into over-consuming is violence. Manipulating me into blaming those that are suffering is violence. Why do they do it? Because all of this violence against us produces profit for our overlords. It’s time to head up river and confront the men drowning my family.

Do you know how fast Elon Musk and Warren Buffet and the Koch brothers would be on their knees at our doors if we all stopped working? Faster than you can say “Resist!”