jam esc
Social, economic and cultural inequality runs rampant in the United States and worldwide… It’s time to jam esc!
jam esc is an ongoing research project that will one day yield a lengthy (and likely unpublishable) textual work involving economics, social structures, culture, class, and my search for a way to live a life of conscience and cooperation. As such, jam esc is made up of three parts:
- I use twitter as a sort of bibliography and reading list. 140 characters tends to be enough space to give the title of the work (or a short description) and a shortened link, plus a tag or two to help me find things later, and to allow others to more easily follow my research should they so desire.
- When items require immediate comment or explication, I turned to tumblr, which served—until I started this blog—as a sort of annotated bibliography (among other things).[1]
- And finally, the work-in-progress ‘chapters’ of the jam esc project, lengthy rants against capitalism and the current socioeconomic situation in the United States, and shows an evolution in my thinking.
A great deal of the jam esc work is rather disheartening, but there are some moments of elation contained in it.
Readers should use caution, as the long-form parts contain descriptions of class conflict, suggestions for civil disobedience, and occasional profanity.
[1] My tumblog now serves as more of a stream of random things I come across: interesting charts, photographs I’ve taken, funny videos, and the like, with only occasional jam esc content.
Just Doing Our Jobs
10th September
So this interesting tale of a front-line foreclosure realtor showed up in my rss feed today. Go on, give it a read, and then come back. My comments can wait.
I feel for this person: it must be quite difficult to have a job that requires (at best) an appearance of detachment and a conscience, or empathy, or even a sense of another’s humanity, however strange and different that other may be.
And it’s good to hear the viewpoints of some of the (unwilling) foot soldiers in the Class War.
But I wonder what the world would be like if we all had the freedom to say NO, if we all pushed back, refused to perform socially destructive acts for our owners the corporations that employ so many of us, if we forced our jobs to conform to a common sense of humanity, … Read More »
The Insurrection of the English Underclass
22nd August
“The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few.”
That pretty much sums up my whole neurosis. In Britain, the top 10% have 100 times more household wealth than their compatriots in the bottom 10%, and that doesn’t take into account investments and other sorts of securities. This is a significant margin, and it should come as no surprise that the “underclass” revolted.
So what’s our excuse here in the States? The income and wealth inequalities are easily that high here, yet we see no riots, no looting. This is something to consider if we ever want to see any sort of equitable income and … Read More »
Nouriel Roubini: Capitalism will destroy itself
15th August
Among other things, Nouriel Roubini claims that Marx was right: Capitalism will destroy itself. Watch it!
Dylan Ratigan is mad as hell…
10th August
From the Dylan Ratigan Show, with apologies for the yelling:
So what’s the problem? The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches have been bought and paid for by corporations and bankers. Ummm… No5hi7.
So what’s the solution? For Dylan, it’s for the President to give a speech that lays out the connections between money and politicial power, and urges citizens to change the system. Sounds great! GoGo.
Except for one, smallish thing: The POTUS is bought and paid just like all the rest of the jerks that the corporations hired to serve their interests at our expense. Mr. Obama cannot solve the problem: he’s a big part of the problem.
So what’s the solution? It is going on all over the world, and I await its arrival here (but I’m not holding my breath).
Al Jazeera on the Indignant
28th July
AlJazeera on the Indignant.
Nobody expects the Spanish Revolution!
Columbia U., Race, Class and the Gentrification of Harlem – the Real News Network
25th July
Race, Class, and Gentrification in Harlem is a microcosm of the rest of the United States. Believe it.
Just Do It! a tale of modern-day outlaws
20th July
This looks pretty flipping amazing. GoGo Activism!
Update: I was privileged to receive a review copy from the producer, Lauren Simpson, and the film is amazing, just as I hoped.
It’s not state-side yet, but they’re working on it, and if you want to get involved, visit their website, and maybe you can help bring this inspiring tale to more people.
Barton Biggs: We need a Job Guarantee program
2nd July
Barton Biggs—a ludicrously wealthy hedge fund manager—advocates a job guarantee program (think WPA) to rebuild and upgrade US infrastructure, increased taxes on the rich, investment in companies and products with actual use-value, and a bunch of other stuff I never thought would come from someone in his class. GoGo. He remains wedded to neoliberalism, but has taken some surprising steps towards advocating for a more equal society.
Enjoy!
‘Business as Usual:’ a G.S.V. Self-Portrait (Rephotographed), Hammersmith UK
1st July
The G.S.V. is a bit hard to make out, here, and I didn’t notice the double entendre of the signage until much later. Oh well.
Whitewashing the Classwar
24th April
So a certain Mr. Kevin D. Williamson published this article in the National Review Online. Go read it, the rest of this can wait.
For those of you who can’t be bothered to click-and-read, Mr. Williamson argues—perhaps convincingly—that, since the Reagan era, the super-rich got poorer, and the poor got richer, and he gives some data that appears to back this claim up. He goes on to make the point that the richest people in the year 2000 were different people than the richest people in the year 2010, and therefore that the claim made by so many on the left, that ‘the rich are getting richer,’ is just so much hooey, and therefore the wingnut lefties are all crackpots.
First, let’s examine this statement: In 1991, “ the average income growth for actual households … Read More »
US Uncut visits Bank of America
18th April
US Uncut’s flash mob at Bank of America made me cry. GoGo! And I especially like the way some of the tellers appear to be thinking ‘Right On!’
We need quite a bit more of this in the United States, and not just against BofA, but against all Corporate and Political entities that 1) act as if they are above the law; 2) profit by screwing the poor and the elderly out of their hard-fought wages and savings; 3) encourage and extent corporate entitlements and redistribution of wealth from the poor to the super rich.
We The People must rise up and shake off the bonds of Capital and the power that comes with it. We must all stand up, band together, and chip away until we bring the corporatocracy to its knees, until the State and its corporate owners retake their … Read More »
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
3rd April
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
With the likes of Vanity Fair crying foul, can there be any doubt about it?
Yes, my friends, this is Class War, and we’re losing.
The Middle Class needs solidarity with itself, and must band together with the disadvantaged classes to topple the current social order.
Don’t let the rich and powerful confuse you!
Muslims are not our enemies; Jews are not our enemies; Christians are not our enemies; and Mosques are as holy as Churches and Synagogues!
African-Americans, Hispanics, and Arabs are not our enemies, and this country was built by and for Immigrants of all shapes, sizes and colors!
Our neighbors are not our enemies, be they teachers, fire fighters, welfare queens, obnoxious jerks, union members, or any of the other groups that regularly find themselves under attack.
The 1%ers—and those that pander to their … Read More »
On the Class War, part 1
If you’ve been following the liberal media [and by that, I mean, pretty much, Democracy Now, AlterNet, and similar Left, Progressive, whatever, but news organizations that focus on the plight of the working and unemployed populations, rather than advertisers and profit making/taking.]; if you’ve been paying attention to the union fights in Wisconsin and throughout the midwest; if you’ve paid any attention to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia, and the rest; or even if you’ve merely noticed the gulf between the super-rich (and the leaders we elected that are always already wholly-owned subsidiaries, of the super-rich) and other 99% of the population, you might suspect that something is amiss in American and world/human society.Some might say that the split between the have-way-more-that-they-could-ever-want-or-needs and everyone else in the entire World is perfectly natural, that hard work should bring rewards, and … Read More »
On Capital, part 3: Capital and Desire
So Capital is useful, in that it enables trade, but in doing so it alienates all sides of an exchange from the products being exchanged and from one another. While this is a problem, it is not insurmountable, or, rather, it may be insurmountable, but it could be alleviated somewhat, perhaps though an campaign of education or through direct intervention by individuals and groups. The biggest problem, and the one that can only be overcome if all humans everywhere decide to cooperate, is Capital itself, its desire, what it wants.
It may sound strange to claim that Capital—an inanimate, immaterial, and human-created object—can have desires, but I think it does. After all, many other objects have desires: chairs want to be sat upon, books want to be read, paintings want to be looked at. Ever driven past a vacant, garbage-strewn plot … Read More »
On Capital, part 2: the Uses and Abuses of Capital
So Capital has its uses (enabling trade and all), and you won’t find any argument from me on this point. After all, without some sort of system for creating, storing, and transmitting value, we wouldn’t have many of the luxuries we enjoy in the Early Twenty-First Century: I wouldn’t have a cheap, used netbook to type this on while I listen to crappy TV shows, streamed via Hulu on a MacBook Pro across the room, because it’s unlikely that a society based on mutual aid would choose to create netbooks, crappy TV shows, Hulu, MacBook Pros, or any of the things we normally think of as leisure goods. Without some form of Capital, there would be no Google, no Apple, no Microsoft; no Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Judges, Governors, Police, Emergency Services, or anything of the sort; limited options for … Read More »
On Capital, part 1
In previous posts, I’ve made a bunch of rather bold claims about capital, and so maybe it’s time I talk a bit about what capital is and how it operates, or, rather, what I (perhaps mistakenly) think of capital and how I believe it operates.Before I begin, I think it might be wise to reiterate Bourdieu’s theory of Capital. Whether I will keep it brief, expand on what I said in earlier essays, bring in direct quotes or anything else remains to be seen, so if you want to skip to the next section, please feel free.
Bourdieu claims that Capital comes in three or four flavors, or wears three or four hats, or takes on three or four guises, or however you want to put it, and thus penetrates virtually every relationship humans have, whether these relationships be between one … Read More »
Class, part 3
In the previous two discussions of class, I gave a brief history of the class structure, and sketched out a theory of how humans moved from no classes to two classes, then to three, four, many, and then back to two again, sort of. To reiterate: in the United States (and many other societies) class has nothing to do with the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. It’s not about the Rich and the Poor, nor is it about the producers and the consumers, though all of these have a place in the discussion. The class structure (and the resultant struggle) exists between those members of the society who consume without thought or question, and those who refrain from such consumption to every possible degree.
Or, to put it another way, the class structure can be defined by those who happily (if blindly) … Read More »
Class, part 2: the Class Structure, or Lack Thereof
Once upon a time, there were only two classes: the ruler(s) and everyone else. (Of course, prior to that, there was only one class, that is, there were no classes, because everyone worked together to build a society for everyone.) As populations—and thus society—grew, other classes developed: the courtier class (lackeys of the ruling class), the merchant class (who moved goods around and provided some limited services to the population), a class of clergy persons (who, depending on who you ask, provided hope and healing to the population, or those who kept the people asleep and in line so the ruling class could continue ruling without interference or worries of revolution, and maybe both), and the rest, the hoi polloi, rabble, the people.
Marx analysed this (and other social and economic forces) rather famously in his Capital, and his class divisions—proletariat, … Read More »
Class, part 1: the History of the United States is a History of Class Struggle
In case you weren’t aware, the Pilgrims weren’t the only people who landed on Plymouth Rock: there were also slaves, indentured servants, women to entertain the male Pilgrims, and other non-pilgrim sorts of folk who supported the Pilgrims by building, farming, cooking, and making while the Pilgrims prayed and otherwise got their Pilgrim on.
There are far more thorough (and more patriotic) discussions of this out there, and I’m not going to go into much detail, but believe: the country may have been founded by a bunch of pious folk who wanted to pray to their version of the one true god and who had no love for tax-paying, but the country was built by slaves, on a foundation of bent-backed indentured servants, and painted with the blood of wantonly slaughtered indigenous peoples. And all of these people, without whom the … Read More »
