In J.K. Gibson-Graham’s seminal book, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) (1996), they concretize what many people were already beginning to understand intuitively. Capitalism had breached what might be thought of as an ethical wall, and leapt into a self-consuming runaway cascade of reactions, the aftereffects we are feeling today. In England, for the last four days there have been riots, which started in Tottenham, peopled mainly by disaffected youth. While the ignition point for the unrest was the unfortunate shooting death of a civilian by police forces, it has evolved into a guttural expression of those who have not, against those they perceive to have too much. Department stores are ransacked by youth, like Louis James, 19, who in the New York Times, said, “No one has ever given me a chance; I am just angry at how the whole system works” (Thomas and Somaiya, 8/9/11). He managed to nab a $195.00 sweater. Neither J.K. Gibson-Graham, nor I promote violent destruction of property, the burning of buildings, and harming of other human beings as a form of economic reform, but it certainly seems like a foreseeable byproduct of the lack of reform.
In the U.S., Verizon is faced with a union strike as it tries to reduce benefits, even as the company enjoys strong profits with a “net income of $6.9 billion in the first six months of this year” (Greenhouse, “Sharp Rift in a Strike at Verizon,” NYT, 8/7/11). In fact, many corporations are enjoying record profits, generating “14 percent of the national income in 2010, the highest proportion ever recorded” (Norris, “As Corporate Profits Rise, Workers’ Income Declines,” NYT, 8/5/11). At Verizon, workers are seeking to stop the management of a company by investor greed and a mantra focused around infinite growth (of profit). In Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter has instituted a curfew to curtail flash mobs with threat of fines and the possible imposition of child neglect charges for parents (“Philadelphia orders curfew after flash-mob attacks,” BBC, 8/9/11). Amidst the record profit taking by corporate America, congress is stymied on how to provide needed social services when so much is owed to other countries and the wealthy do not want to pay.
What this global dissent says to me (even encompassing the spring uprisings in North Africa and South West Asia where people rose up against different, but similar tyrannies) is that the balance is shifting to where there are ever increasing numbers of people who can not afford appropriate medical care, can not repair rotted teeth, struggle to pay for college, for rent, for food, are increasingly characterized as lawless others, and they are becoming aware of the existing inequalities. While some classes of people have full dental benefits with their employment, oftentimes, those very same people are trying to deny the most basic of benefits to their employees or voters. As the imbalance increases, and it does because while the mantra of growth is infinite, the Earth is a planet of finite resources, and more and more people begin to recognize this inequity, we see its impact in increasing and increasingly unpredictable ways, with increased crime, more conflict between workers and employers, and more disaffected youth.
Interestingly, the disaffected youth who are rioting in England, seem to intuitively know who their oppressor is. They are targeting department stores, the material goods of a consumer society produced by corporations who steal from the workers, and sell back to them, the very goods they are producing. A recent rash of burglaries in Western Massachusetts has targeted ATM machines. Even the Tea Party is motivated by this same disaffected anger at inequity. They certainly seem confused and radicalized, but I can understand where that confusion and simmering anger stems from.
What Gibson-Graham did in their book, was deconstruct the obfuscating lens of corporate language and financial media, and validate that what people feel and experience is also a valid truth, one that needs to be listened to and incorporated into a broader concept of what economy could entail. There are many ways in which this can happen, on the individual level through conversation and personal interactions, from teacher to student and vice versa, on the level of factory takeovers by workers in Argentina, by large scale protests, and so on. Politicians are no longer in touch with the American experience and are too beholden to corporate America. If we actually want to fix the system, create change to benefit the people, then we need to discover ways to help the politicians see what their policies engender. Change does not necessarily have to be traumatic, and successes do occur. Look at the recent change of track for automobile and truck companies on the issue of raised fuel economy. Such a concession would have been impossible to imagine a mere five years ago. Yet, the corporations have recognized the value of natural resources, protecting the environment, the dangers of carbon gases, the value of catering to people and the planet. So perhaps there is hope. There may be a day yet, where Americans are no longer seen as plunderers of the planet, to paraphrase the late Ray Anderson, Founder and CEO of Interface, and we become its stewards.
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